The EmDrive just won't die - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a33917439/emdrive-wont-die/ <comment><USER2> If nothing else, the EmDrive has been a great exercise in how hard it is to control all variables in a sensitive experiment where the measured effect is small.

It actually blows my mind how well the LIGO folks have accomplished this to be able to detect gravitational waves.

I really like the effort going into this, despite a positive result being impossible to our knowledge. Those are the high risk high reward experiments with the potential to discover new physics. I still expect it to be experimental error, but there's always that remote chance we'll learn something we didn't expect about the universe.

<comment><USER3> Well, maybe they _didn 't_. How would we ever know?

The problem with LIGO is that is not making the expected number of discoveries, it has, as far as I know, one signal that correlated to something visible with other means, and it is so expensive that there won't be independent confirmation soon.

Don't get me wrong, experiments like LIGO are massive achievements. But from an outsider point of view, that very scale and effort seems to be problematic when it comes to reproducing the results of experiments if there are no immediately useful predictions.

<comment><USER4> > that very scale and effort seems to be problematic when it comes to > reproducing the results of experiments

First of all, LIGO is 2 observatories so every result out of LIGO was observed by at least two locations.

There is also an independent project called Virgo which is making gravitational wave observations, and the results are being correlated with LIGO. They have made a number of overlapping observations, which further moves us towards reproducibility.

Future observatories are also planned (like LISA), which will be another opportunity to further validate events.

<comment><USER5> Additionally, one of the gravitational wave observations was corroborated by immediate follow-up observations with normal telescopes [1].

[1]: [https://www.as.arizona.edu/discovery-optical-counterpart- gra...](https://www.as.arizona.edu/discovery-optical-counterpart- gravitational-wave-event)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And it shouldn't die until the anomalous effect is adequately explained. That's how good experimental science works, regardless of current theories - if you see an effect you can't explain, you test it until you can explain it. There's a very high chance the tiny force is attributable to something mundane, but it's still worth finding out what that thing is.

<comment><USER7> i think we're wrong putting so much effort on understanding and proving it on Earth (where it can never practically be used anyway). Just put it into space and turn it on - whatever the nature of the effect if it is present - great, lets use it, and understand it with time, if there is no effect - well, we're done here.

<comment><USER8> My understanding is running this experiment in space would cost >$10m, a very pricey experiment when the expected outcome is negative.

<comment><USER9> It sure seems like collectively the world has wasted more than $10m of attention on this concept by now.

<comment><USER10> Unrelated to the thread topic:

We live in an attention economy. If you read a story, or watch a video, it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with the content; you're still traffic.

Just viewing content on most of the internet boosts it's signal, and creates value for someone; much less engaging further by commenting, up/down voting, or sharing it. It's a pretty ugly system.

<comment><USER11> The most surefire way to acquire massive wealth in the 21st century is to get convince people to pay as much attention to your app's notifications as they would an incoming phone call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > This is a technology which could transform space travel and see craft > lifting silently off from launchpads

Not with 12 millinewtons per kilowatt! In space, sure but not from launchpad.

<comment><USER13> With a cold fusion reactor attached, with some gravity shielding it should be viable.

<comment><USER14> Why not just teleport to where you want to be?

<comment><USER15> I was thinking rocket roller skates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you could produce a constant force (and therefore constant acceleration) for a constant power use, then both speed and the total energy spent would rise linearly with time. This is in conflict with the fact that kinetic energy goes up with the square of speed. In other words, if this works as described you can create energy out of nothing by sticking the drive on the outside of a rotating system and using it as a generator.

<comment><USER17> Please forgive my ignorance. If you are floating in a vacuum, how do you know what kinetic energy you have? isn't that all with respect to some other object?

I believe the trick here is that constant-acceleration with constant power use is due to the (puzzling) particulars that there's no ejection mass

<comment><USER16> Kinetic energy is relative to some inertial reference frame. You can pick any reference frame you want and each will give you different numbers, but conservation laws should still hold in each.

Addition of kinetic energy is pretty unintuitive in this regard, e.g. when throwing a ball, the "work" done by your muscles depends on the reference frame that you pick to analyze the event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Many physicists had dismissed the revolutionary space drive as simply fake science._

The use of "fake" here really bugs me. Fake implies lies and I don't think that's at all present here.

<comment><USER19> It looks like an example of pathological science.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The sticking point is the law of conservation of momentum, which says that > inside a closed system momentum remains constant.

...wait...

> The current design is calculated to provide a thrust of about .012 Newtons > (equal to the weight of a paperclip, or a raisin) for one kilowatt of power, > similar to the drives used to maneuver satellites.

It requires power input. Doesn't that mean this _isn 't_ a closed system?

<comment><USER21> I have a similar question. How can a system be truly closed ? It's always interacting with the stars and galaxies through their gravitational fields. Similarly, and closer to your question) the spent energy can only be Generated through a chemical or nuclear reaction (both of which should lead to a loss of mass, which will be impacted by the gravitational fields, making it a non- closed system), or by gathering energy from outside The system (solar panels or other technologies), thus making it a non-closed system

What am I missing here ?

<comment><USER22> It can often be considered closed for the purposes of the phenomenon that we want to describe. To be specific, masses like galaxies, stars and planets accelerate all parts of our tiny rocket the same way. Yes, there are differences, but they are usually so small that they can be neglected. Our rocket works mostly the same no matter how it is oriented to these sources of gravity. Of course, as it gets closer to such masses, these forces (called tidal forces) start to matter and will eventually rip it apart, given that it doesn't burn up or collide first.

Rockets, differently to balloons, do not depend on an interaction with a gravitic field for their operation. They work by ejecting reaction mass opposite to the flight direction and relying on Newton's third law of motion. Most of the time, the energy to eject the reaction mass is generated by combustion, but it doesn't really matter. Rockets can also be driven by the reaction mass's pressure inside its tank.

In general, any system can be turned into a closed system by including all sources of force in the description. Of course, the more forces are included in our model, the less useful it gets. Therefore, physicists and engineers must decide which forces can be ignored. Else, even experiments would become useless because without a model, the experience gained from experiments cannot be generalized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can't we just shoot one of these into space and see if it moves? We'd need only a few days to generate any appreciable thrust and prove or disprove the theory.

<comment><USER24> Sending stuff to space isn't cheap.

<comment><USER25> It's certainly cheaper than funding the research and the cost to send stuff to space has gone down and continues to go down

<comment><USER26> You seem pretty confident of this, share your numbers.

<comment><USER25> I cant find the numbers for the EmDrive research for the past 20 years but my guess is that it wasn't cheap at all. Comparing that to sending a few pounds into orbit as a proof of concept is probably peanuts. I don't have numbers and its all speculation on my part. If you do have numbers please share them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The best thing I can see to come out of this is some sort of standardized, more easily replicated test apparatus for precise measurements of very small thrust in vacuum chambers.

Such as for testing things that do actually produce thrust, built into low cost satellites, such as very small ion and hall effect thrusters.

</comment><comment><USER28> I feel like at this point it'd be easier to send it to space and toss it out the airlock with a battery and just... See if it goes anywhere

<comment><USER29> You can generate thrust in Earth orbit with electricity by pushing off the planet's magnetic field, so it's not quite a perfect test.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Seems strange to not see a single mention of the "Quantum Vacuum" in an entire popularmechanics article about the EmDrive AKA Q-Thrusters.

Sonny White of the Eagleworks lab discusses this subject in a Breakthrough Discuss 2018 [0] talk. Has everything he says in that talk been since disproven or something?

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-hjS7pdXGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-hjS7pdXGU)

<comment><USER31> Wikipedia link for those that don't like to watch videos: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wrote an article on the EmDrive some years back and have a little more insight on it than the average bear.

Good to see the Dresden group is still plunking away after all these years. Other than Eagleworks and a group in China, they were early leaders on verifying the concept.

The law of conservation of momentum was created before quantum mechanics was discovered. Let's assume there's a base medium in which all energy (that is, mass) is embedded. Furthermore, let's assume there's a way to interface with this medium. The EmDrive works if one allows mass (that is, energy) to be transferred into this base medium. Momentum is conserved because the mass/energy is transferred to the all-encompassing medium. This medium is the same medium which enables quantum entanglement.

In theory, the quantum vacuum and surrounding phenomena provides that medium. Frankly, I feel the classical interpretation of CoM is insufficient to explain the workings of the EmDrive. The article uses the phrase "a physics violation," but a more accurate statement is "a high-school level physics violation."

How big of a deal is the EmDrive? It's an EM-wave-to-thrust device. Take a moment and consider the significance of such a device. Satellites could remain in space effectively forever, because solar panels continuously source the "propellant". Build one strong enough to counter Earth's gravity, and you get the hovercraft. As long as you have access to electricity, you can generate thrust.

The article also mentions Salvatore Pais and his patents. His story took off after one particular Hacker News post and a comment on that post. You can read the full comment at the link below, but here's the most important points:

"Whether or not the named inventor was a crank, and whether or not the invention was equally frivolous, this was a patent prosecuted by a Navy attorney, vouched for by the Navy CTO, and pushed through under atypical circumstances, in a public forum.

What's even more intriguing is that, if the Navy wanted, it could obtain the patent under a secrecy order that would keep it from the public's eyes until it was declassified.

Knowing all this, now ask yourself why this impossible sounding patent issued in a public forum with high-level brass support under tax payer dollars."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763445)

My gut tells me the EmDrive works. Time will tell, of course.

<comment><USER5> > _if one allows mass (that is, energy) to be transferred into this base > medium. Momentum is conserved because the mass /energy is transferred to the > all-encompassing medium. This medium is the same medium which enables > quantum entanglement._

What are you talking about? Entanglement is not mediated by a medium. If it was, it would have speed of light limitations.

This is like saying there's an unknown type of matter that enables statistical correlations to exist. It's mixing together incompatible concepts. Correlations just don't behave that way. Neither does entanglement.

<comment><USER32> >Entanglement is not mediated by a medium. If it was, it would have speed of light limitations.

This medium is that in which all energy is embedded. Two particles becoming entangled does mean they're highly correlated with each other. But what enables this correlation? I don't see this question as answered, because wave function collapse is actively disputed.

While my view of quantum entanglement is limited, I don't fully understand how entangled particles can be strongly correlated but can't transmit information FTL. Is it correct to say that two separate entangled particles are now one- and-the-same? I suppose you then get into a philosophical question of whether all parts of a system can ever observe the exact same thing at the exact same time. If this statement is false, then information must be transmitted, no?

>unknown type of matter that enables statistical correlations to exist

Matter and energy are one and the same. Why can't other types of energy exist which we don't fully understand? For example, how does dark "matter" work? We only have incomplete theories thus far, and I know of no paper that discusses physical manipulation of dark matter.

The ether as a concept existed because people didn't understand the vacuum of space. But perhaps the zero-point field is a more accurate rendition of what etherians were trying to communicate.

<comment><USER5> > _Is it correct to say that two separate entangled particles are now one-and- > the-same?_

It's not. If they were literally the same then swapping them should have no effect, and you shouldn't be able to distinguish whether you applied effects to one qubit or the other. But often this is not the case. For example, the state |00> \+ |01> \- |10> \+ |11> is a maximally entangled state but applying the swap operation to it produces a different state. And if I give that state to you, and you secretly apply a bit flip to one of the qubits before giving it back to me, I can do measurements that determine which one you flipped over.

There are some entangled states where the swap operation has no effect, but there are no states where all possible operations on both qubits become identical. They're never literally the same.

<comment><USER32> So, the entangled particles remain independent but highly correlated, that one can be used to determine information about the other (and vice versa)?

Am I correct in reading that the broader scientific community doesn't fully understand the mechanism which enables this correlation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Yup, the Earthlings are still using warp drives to heat food. We will revisit this solar system in 25 of their planet's revolutions to check for further progress."

</comment><comment><USER34> This is an interesting counterpoint to scientific discoveries that found utilization some time after the discovery happened. For each of those discoveries, there were always those standing on the sidelines going "Yeah, but what is it good for?" The world has been changed many times over by such discoveries that found later application.

The EmDrive sits on the other side of the fence. We know what it would be good for so there are critics who dismiss it precisely for that reason citing wishful thinking.

I do wonder if the curious force measurements would be much less contentious if people didn't know what it could be used for. The focus would be purely on "Why is it doing that?"

</comment><comment><USER35> How is the test of this not just to put one in space and see if it moves in a controlled manner?

</comment><comment><USER36> LENR and emdrive used to be my favorite topics on reddit. Right or wrong, you can learn many amazing stuff which wont be found on other subs.

</comment><comment><USER37> Even if it did work I don't think the EmDrive would be revolutionary. A vehicle equipped with it still has to generate energy. It terms of how useful it is you've just moved the payload requirement from the fuel tank to the generator module. Going by these experiments the EmDrive doesn't have a hope of ever matching the mass efficiency of an ion drive.

<comment><USER38> That's the irony of it all. Power plants capable of powering an EmDrive that's practically useful for manned flight can be summed up with one word: nuclear. With the exception of the (lovely but insane) Project Orion, all of the nuclear propulsion designs like NERVA and the nuclear lightbulb generate a ridiculous amount of heat that we have trouble handling here on Earth, let alone in vacuum without convection - most nuclear plants are built with access to large natural or artificial bodies of water as a heat sink.

The future of manned space flight is almost certainly nuclear and it looks like tiny cabins attached to giant passive heatsinks or spacecraft that constantly have to accelerate just to dump all the waste heat and avoid cooking its inhabitants.

<comment><USER8> > Project Orion

Here is some declassified test footage of Project Orion. I don't believe any of the test crafts used nuclear explosions, but you'll get the idea from this footage (on why it's a terrible idea that could only exist in the 40s or 50s)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Sv5y6iHUM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Sv5y6iHUM)

<comment><USER39> I love the top comment on the video, "External combustion engine."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What is stopping us from producing a larger scale model with 10~100x the performance? Presumably the effect should scale in some fashion with the dimensions & power levels. I would expect a larger magnitude effect could make it easier to identify the cause(s).

<comment><USER41> Would require a military grade klystron to generate 10+kW of S-band energy, for starters. In a vacuum setting, I'm not sure how you'll sink all the resulting heat to avoid melting the thing.

I think even then it's very challenging to measure ~100mN thrust

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I thought that Tajmar already debunked it in August. But no, they postponed their results to February. But then it will be dead for sure.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wish science articles would stop making the front page of HN. So few experts, for many opinions.

</comment><comment><USER44> I always figured it was based on a rounding error in the simulation.

</comment><comment><USER45> I really, really wish that there was something to the emdrive/mach effect drive/etc, but alas, physical theories do not exist to make our lives better.

<comment><USER46> Many of those physical theories aren't all that old though. While I agree it's pretty unlikely, it's possible that they can be overthrown with more research.

<comment><USER47> The physical theories that prevent the EmDrive (conservation of momentum) are centuries old, and utterly fundamental to our university of reality on every scale from black holes merging to atoms radiating. A violation of this principle would involve _radically_ altering the very foundations of modern physics, on a level more profound than anything that has ever happened in the history of the field.

<comment><USER48> What about the idea that parallel lines do not intersect and that there is exactly one line through a point parallel to another given line? These were thousands of years old and well accepted until pretty recently.

<comment><USER22> Our daily lives are not greatly impacted by this assumption not being true. Unless we look at the horizon or at a map, it is easy to forget that we live on a globe. And without atomic clocks it is very hard to measure the curvature of spacetime.

<comment><USER49> And slight flaws in the conservation of momentum wouldn't affect our current daily lives either.

But this would still be an extremely useful effect if it does exist, for devices designed to focus it. Look at how an electric field's influence on semiconductors has almost no relevance to anything except when harnessed _just right_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > McCulloch says that the thrust appears to be between one and four > micronewtons—exactly the amount his theory predicts

Somehow I thought physics was meant to be a little more precise than this

<comment><USER51> Physics is precise. The uncertainty is due to error-bars in measurements. Any measurement has error bars for systematic, random and absolute errors, then there is the combinative error as multiple types of measurement are combined together.

It's more of a worry, tbh, if you _don't_ see an error estimate in a result...

<comment><USER52> I think the objection is that those are large error bars compared to the force measured. And that even a modest source of experimental error could put this at zero real output.

ETA: and since "non-zero real output" implies that virtually all of our physics is incorrect, and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, the bar for measurement error needs to be exceptionally small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> For the people in this thread gleefully calculating the absurd energies required to achieve miniscule thrusts, please remember two things:

1) The version in the lab and the device that would actually be used for satellite production are very different. The lab version is _not designed for efficiency_. It's designed to be easy to manufacture and test, using simple, well-characterised technologies. For one, a production design would use a superconducting cavity for much better efficiencies, easily 100 to 10,000x better.

2) Miniscule propellentless thrusts are still useful with solar power. Satellite stationkeeping is largely limited by the finite propellent capacity onboard. Even Xenon plasma thrusters, the most efficient currently available, run out of fuel eventually.

Now, I'm not saying the EmDrive _works_ , I'm just pointing out that it's a distraction talking about the efficiency or utility of a "benchtop experiment".

<comment><USER49> I dunno about 1, it sounds like the extreme inefficiency makes it extremely hard to get numbers stable enough to do a test with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I don't think human spaceflight will ever be a significant factor in our history. We evolved for this planet, and there is little reason to send humans through space when we can send robots. When we discover another earth-like planet, we will send robots there that can replicate human life, and the two civilizations will communicate with each other but it's unlikely any person will ever travel between the two. As to how robotic interstellar travel is fuelled, we'll probably use converted asteroids with thrusters built into them.</comment>


Promising New App Helps Entrepreneurs Make Better Buying Decisions - <AUTHOR> http://www.insideup.com/about/pressreleases.html?id=49

<comment><AUTHOR> This app is free to download at www.insideup.com/mobile, and is available for review.</comment>


Are Lottery Winning Numbers Really Random? - <AUTHOR> http://www.analyticbridge.com/profiles/blogs/are-lottery-winning-numbers-really-random <comment><USER2> A new study reveals that, yes, they are.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for getting into tech from Fortune 100 - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to make the jump and my imposter syndrome is kicking in.  I've been a manager at a Fortune 100 company for the last 5 years.  First, leading a software development team.  Then, leading our analytics team.  I have a list of accomplishments under my belt and feel confident about my management ability.
However, having not done a job search in awhile, it seems that most managers are expected to be hands-on at a number of these tech firms.  They're also looking for experience in newer tech that my current organization is just starting to investigate.  I'm worried that my outdated technical background will be a liability.  I'm also concerned that I don't have enough experience at the scale a tech firm operates.
So you're probably asking, why aim for a tech firm?  Part of it is that it's sexy, part of it is the money, but the big driver is that at a Fortune 100 company, I'm a cost center.  I want to be part of a profit driving organization where my team can have a real impact on the bottom line.
Has anyone made this jump?  I'd appreciate any advice on how to approach this. <comment><USER2> Coming from the IoT industry where we usually are pretty up to date with the latest trends. You are right it is though for people with outdated skills to get up to speed. So much they have to forget, and sometimes ego gets on their way.

What I can say to you is that it is worth for those who accomplish it. I can only say that it takes patience, hard work and a lot of time to study. Impostor syndrome is your ally, and past accomplishments your enemies.

I can relate to what you are feeling. I'm jumping from consultant to entrepreneur. I want to improve job searching that is a process skewed towards companies' interests, not talent. I am still learning about the industry, this is my first iteration: [http://yobs.ml/](http://yobs.ml/)

I wish you good luck on your search. And do keep me updated on your journey and progress.</comment>


Student disqualified for using stackoverflow, on stackoverflow - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33156198/null-pointer-exception-when-splitting-to-string-array <comment><USER2> It looks like the teacher is annoyed that the student is sharing his work, as opposed to the fact he's asking for help.</comment>


Southwest Airlines Launches 72-Hour Fare Sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/22/business/AP-US-Southwest-Fare-Sale.html?_r=3&src=me&ref=business

<comment><AUTHOR> For anyone living on the ramen budget, this struck me as a good deal so I thought I would share here.</comment>


Ask HN: Hacker forum or IRC? - <AUTHOR> Is there a forum or irc channel aimed at all hackers? I have never managed to find a good one <comment><USER2> Why not just all jump into #hackernews? What does hackers mean again? Who's definition?

If you're actually looking for HN people, why don't we just participate on #hackernews on freenode.

<comment><USER3> I just logged onto #hackernews on freenode.

My god, it's full of avatars!

<comment><USER2> Since my original comment about #hackernews on freenode, the room filled up and got talking and so far it does not suck.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about others, but I find IRC a little intimidating. So I get in, but I never speak. I just hide out in the corner and sip my beer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel the exactly opposite way, I think IRC is the place where I am the most open

<comment><USER2> Lurking in IRC is fine, being extroverted is fine. The ability to even remotely understand who HN actually is is weird enough without talking. Otherwise all there is are single line headlines, terse often neckbeardy comments, and no real-time presence -- no "moment" to figure out what even some of these people here really are. So far whether you lurk or talk it's better than just looking at the posts and threads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Never found a good one either. I think it's because HN members stay in their respective domain channels - #python #javascript for example.

#startups on freenode is supposedly made up of HN crowd, but I've never found it a friendly place.

<comment><USER6> freenode in general isn't a very friendly place :/

that said, i think #clojure and #reactjs are fairly friendly and helpful to questions, even the most basic ones.

<comment><USER7> #django is one of the active channels I've tried. Lot's of people willing to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The biggest problem with this question is the breadth of the term 'hacker'. Hackers tend to clump into whatever projects they are currently working on. Try starting off in places like #ubuntu and other projects (that interest you!) that are very newbie friendly. Master a topic and try helping other newbies with that topic. It takes time but my personal experience is the best way to be involved in the 'hacker' culture is to be recognized as someone who brings value and contributions back to the group, regardless of the size of those contributions.

<comment><AUTHOR> But the whole point is to have a general place with lots of people where all things hacker could be talked about, I spend some time on topic-specific IRC channels but I don't want to talk about python or arch all day, I wanted a channel that was about the community

<comment><USER9> For s sense of community, perhaps your local hackerspace has a channel that can help. If you don't have a local hackerspace, consider starting one, or at least occasionally participating in something less local.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hm, if there isn't one already (and i know of none) i guess the only answer is:

Set one up on a network that has a high # of hackers, tinkerers etc.

IMHO, this network could be chat.freenode.net

When you're done, let people know in this thread and i'm sure they'll come...

P.S.: There's a channel named #startups already on freenode which seems to have a few people from HN already...

<comment><USER11> #startups is a terrible channel

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Slack [0] is a piece of beauty for community/team communication. I don't if there is already a HN channel on it.

[0] [https://www.slack.com/](https://www.slack.com/)

<comment><USER13> I really don't see the big deal with slack. I don't see what it does that any other chat software doesn't?

<comment><USER14> It has a cool name

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> look at irc channel of different hackerspace ... as that one : [http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/London_Hackspace](http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/London_Hackspace)

<comment><USER16> This is the best recommendation. Find a hacker space nearby. They also usually have some sort of public mailing list which is like a forum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why would you want to chat with hackers? Might as well just go into work and talk to coworkers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I am 16</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to create a small unique fingerprint of a 25h+ audio book? - <AUTHOR> I'm the author of m4b-tool (https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool) and I noticed, that there are not many sources for audio book chapters (especially non english ones) to tag my audio books correctly.
So i decided to create my own database for chapters, but at the moment i am struggling how to identify audio files correctly.
With ffmpeg extension chromaprint it is possible to create fingerprints of audiofiles:

  ffmpeg -i "input.mp3" -f chromaprint fingerprint.txt
 This works nicely, but the longer the audio file, the bigger the fingerprint (which is reasonable). Since i would like to store the fingerprint in a database, the smaller it would be, the better.
But for a 25h+ audio book the process takes extremely long and produce a ±5MB (!) fingerprint file.
I can think of three ways to solve this problem:

  - Only take the first X Minutes of the audio file (fast, relatively small fingerprint storage, but inaccurate)

  - Hash the full fingerprint with e.g. sha512 (small fingerprint storage, but slow and is this accurate?)

  - Hash the X Minutes fingerprint (fastest, small fingerprint storage but most inaccurate)
 Which would be the best way? Are there other ways, i did not think of?
Thank you <comment><USER3> Have you seen musicbrainz? [https://musicbrainz.org](https://musicbrainz.org)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thank you. MusicBrainz actually uses the same fingerprinting technique i like to use (chromaprint / AcoustID), which is open source, see [https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Fingerprinting](https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Fingerprinting).

And yes, they also store audiobooks, e.g. Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone: [https://musicbrainz.org/release/e2310769-2e68-462f-b54f-25ac...](https://musicbrainz.org/release/e2310769-2e68-462f-b54f-25ac8e3f1a21)

Unfortunately, only the most famous audio books are stored in the database. If you look for the author Jay Kristoff, you don't find anything.

In the meanwhile i found a resource, where the comparison of audio fingerprints is explained:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/acoustid/Uq_ASjaq3bw/k...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/acoustid/Uq_ASjaq3bw/kLreyQgxKmgJ)

So according to this explanation it would be a very bad idea to store the sha256-hash of the fingerprint, since they do not exactly match every time they are generated.

So i think that the fingerprint has to be created on the first minutes of the audiobook and stored completely. Comparing has to regard additional shift, if the fingerprint of two candidates is not starting at the same point in the audio book, e.g. when an intro has been cut of or something.

<comment><USER3> "Unfortunately, only the most famous audio books are stored in the database." Anyone can upload new entries there AFAIK. They also have a workflow to dedupe works manually that you'd probably need to otherwise implement yourself too. Do you think you'll be able to add a lot of value reinventing this wheel? I'm honestly curious because I was thinking about mp3 fingerprinting in my collection as some point and went for Apple Music instead at some point (which is also less than ideal).

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right... you can add releases: [https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_to_Add_a_Release](https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_to_Add_a_Release)

But i did not find any documentation, how to do this programmatically / via API, which would be essential for m4b-tool.

It's not like I want to criticize your proposal. You are absolutely right, yet another track / chapter database would not be very helpful in general - <USER2> the things that i could find out about musicbrainz do not really fit my needs. Especially, because musicbrainz is more for music than for audiobooks.

In my opinion, the usability of the web interface, the filtering options and the api of musicbrainz are not always helpful...

An example: Open musicbrainz.org and try to find "Harry Potter" with the search bar on the upper right. It's nearly impossible without further investigation. Sure... you could provide the authors name "Joanne K. Rowling" and then do a facetted search for the title, but in my opinion this could be much better.

m4b-tool is able to use the music-brainz-id for loading chapters and tagging audiobooks. But another problem is, that there is a shift between the cd version, mp3 version, download version etc. of the audiobook. So chapter marks have to be matched via silence detection and best fit, which is not always 100% accurate...

I am working on an audiobook database, that contains very sophisticated filtering options. It's a project just for fun and perhaps it will never be released / online :-) I could certainly do better with my time and the value is questionable, but as long as it's fun... ;)

<comment><USER3> API is kinda here: [https://acoustid.org/webservice#submit](https://acoustid.org/webservice#submit) "The AcoustID web service currently supports only two operations, searching in the fingerprint database and submitting new fingerprints into the database." But I believe you can just reach out to whoever is behind MusicBrainz or Acoutstid and get some information to make a better decision.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ExCode, a site to show algorithms in any language (in progress) - <AUTHOR> http://excode.io/discover

<comment><AUTHOR> I should clarify, the site doesn't automatically convert code from one language to another. It's just meant to organize code from many different languages together.

So, for example, you can see how quicksort might be written in each language ([http://excode.io/code/7/quick-sort/swift](http://excode.io/code/7/quick- sort/swift)) assuming someone has uploaded the relevant code

<comment><USER2> This sounds similar to RosettaCode ([http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, it is. I didn't find out about Rosetta Code until over halfway through making this site, but I decided to keep working on it since Rosetta code lacks features I thought were helpful. Thought it would be nice to add voting, comments, editing, categories, etc.

Hard to compete with Rosetta's amount of code, though :)</comment></comment></comment>


Fast-food restaurants in America are losing 100% of workers every year - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/fast-food-restaurants-in-america-are-losing-100percent-of-workers-every-year.html <comment><USER2> It's a very interesting mix of economic decisions that each actor is making.

The first thing that is happening is that people are choosing to eat enough fast food that the demand exists for these companies to employ workers and agree to long term supply deals with landlords and ingredient suppliers.

If everyone decided to only eat from grocery stores, the industry would disappear.

Next, we have the laborers. Many come to fast food as a temporary bridge. They need some money to pay for school or as a bridge income before they get a different job.

Others want to stay for a long time. They do good work. They rely on this income.

The fast-food industry is doing everything it can to eliminate these workers, and it uses headlines like the above to garner public support. "Of course we have to roboticize everything, look at all the turnover we have!"

<comment><USER3> Grocery stores are getting into the fast food business, so the line isn't as clear. Ingles (a regional chain) is rolling out pizza, Chinese food, and Starbucks to all its locations.</comment></comment>


Social Shopping - <AUTHOR> http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/can-social-shopping-finally-take-136611

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you guys think about social commerce? There are several startups trying in this field. I personally think it would be something substantial but people just haven't found the right model and catalyst yet. Some of them seem good but they are just like small experiments not something substantial (like gangaroo.com and stucck.com, they are just some small tweaks from traditional reviews that every online shopping site has, and also what would the monetizing strategy be for these site?).</comment>


This is the most demonically clever computer security attack I've seen in years - T-A https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/ayXVWrFpQus <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion [1] of the paper.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11768980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11768980)

</comment><comment><USER2> So I suppose if we're going to be _exceptionally_ paranoid, we would run everything on virtual machines. Unless I'm missing something, even if a process in a VM managed to trigger a physical nonideality on the physical machine granting access to supervisor mode, it would still be in user-mode on the VM. Then at least _other_ clever things would have to be done to get out of the VM sandbox and into exposed physical-machine supervisor space.

Of course, if we're going to be paranoid, we should probably assume that the CIA and their friends have already come up with something even more nefarious that goes through these countermeasures like tissue-paper.

<comment><USER3> Once you have control of the supervisor you could just bitflip something within the VM to give you root there, if you needed it. Or you could just read/write arbitrary memory.

<comment><USER2> But you _don 't_ have control of the supervisor if the attacking process is confined to the VM, do you?

You certainly don't have access to the VM's supervisor mode, since its "chip" wouldn't have this sort of physical vulnerability.

<comment><USER4> Depends on the type of VM. A VM emulating the same type of processor just runs the client code direct on the processor. What stops the client code from messing with the reat of the system, which includes the VM supervisor code, is the processor's protection circuitry. If client code does the exploit to kick the processor into supervisor or hypervisor mode it will be running client code in that elevated mode. Priveliged instructions would no longer trap to the VM's supervisor or host OS.

Now if the VM is emulating the client's individual instructions, which is the usual for running code for a different type of CPU, then it's a different story. Under pure emulation it wouldn't work. The exploit would have to know what the host CPU architecture was, get the emulator code to trip the extra gate. As you said, all that would do is put the VM supervisor code into the CPU's supervisor mode which it probably is already in if the VM is running bare metal without a host OS.

But if the VM use JIT conversion of the instructions for speed then the exploit becomes possible again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Makes perfect sense but implementing it at any sort scale seems cumbersome/expensive with current tech. Implementing it without scale is meaningless, you could just send a beautiful woman to seduce someone important and have a ton less loose ends, fewer things to screw up, etc

<comment><USER6> As a beautiful man I take exception to this. Why can't I be sent to seduce someone important?

<comment><USER7> You can, there's just a slightly smaller demographic.

<comment><USER8> I mean, this goes against community rules, but gotta say it: bravo! Perfect setup and delivery. :)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I thought I would be down faded into oblivion, but instead I get 13 points and you get down faded. Sorry mate, what a fickle audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This totally ignores the non-functional test modes and dft modes of any modern ic. There are many modes which work down at the gate level and even sometimes transistor level to identify and isolate logic error, badly designed circuits, and manufacturing defects. This can be done in an automated way on every IC. I would be surprised if this attack couldn't be twarted by a series of cleverly designed scan vectors. And since the attacker doesn't know what I'll run when designing his circuit hiding should be very hard. For example, The attack in the paper is basically just a cross talk bug and this is the kind of thing low level testing chased out at this level.

[http://anysilicon.com/overview-and-dynamics-of-scan- testing/](http://anysilicon.com/overview-and-dynamics-of-scan-testing/)

<comment><USER10> You should read the paper, all of this was considered.

<comment><USER9> I agree it's unfair to say modern testing techniques were totally ignored but I think many standard techniques were not considered.

For example, they dismissed the idea of filling empty space. I think this is easily achieved. Post place and route go find all empty space and fill it with scan flops. If you need something smaller put inverters between them. Tap into the chain in vicinity of the void and to minimize route impact. At test, scan through a random bit pattern. This will ensure all flops are present as I can determine the chain depth and all bits of the string must be retained. I also am critical of the need to test against golden references as I can just compare against the CAD. I've personally designed scan TD vectors which found one weak buffer incorrectly selected by the mapper and I didn't know the problem was a weak buffer when I started. I think this is equivalent to loading the net with extra gates. On process attacks, process monitoring circuits exist. I can verify them with external equipment on an analog test bus which is how we DV them.

I definitely think the paper is very good and I will go through it in more detail when I have time but I also think they are too quick to dismiss the defenses and I don't think their defense list is exhaustive.

I should also mention, this is my opinion on detecting circuits inserted in parallel to a given design. If the attacker is allowed to modify the design directly... Then all bets are off. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Forget going in and "hiding" a backdoor, the people over at Libreboot have been professing about the dangers of Intel's Management Engine for years now -- [https://libreboot.org/faq/#intelme](https://libreboot.org/faq/#intelme)

</comment><comment><USER12> Even "most demonically clever" than the cryogenically frozen RAM attack? [http://www.zdnet.com/article/cryogenically-frozen-ram- bypass...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/cryogenically-frozen-ram-bypasses-all- disk-encryption-methods/)

<comment><USER10> Yes, A2 doesn't require physical access.

<comment><USER13> Physical access to a semiconductor fab isn't exactly easy pickings.

<comment><USER14> It is easier for a large agency with interest in controlling computers to install a backdoor at the manufacture stage, than individually accessing "suspects" computers. Compared to the RAM attack, physical access to a semiconducter fab IS easy pickings for a clandestine government agency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron Billions of transistors on a modern chip wafer... Anyone who claims to know exactly what all of them are there for is either very smart, or a little naive.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's likely enough undisclosed OS kernel vulnerabilities known to state actors that this kind of attack would not be very necessary.

<comment><USER16> And yet people are still seriously considering online voting.

<comment><USER17> Because paper is incorruptible? There is plenty of room for tampering with physical votes too.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but it's much harder to hide a conspiracy to tamper with paper votes if it comes right down to it, since they're not all counted at the same place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I don't know if I want to guess how many three-letter agencies have already > had the same ide

As of right now... all of them?

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess is for "state actors" that aren't privy to this backdoor.

[http://hackaday.com/2016/01/22/the-trouble-with-intels- manag...](http://hackaday.com/2016/01/22/the-trouble-with-intels-management- engine/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Trusting trust attacks! Yay!

<comment><USER22> Indeed. I think it's a pretty good idea to reread the Trusting Trust paper by Ken Thompson from time to time. Here is an annotated version [http://fermatslibrary.com/s/reflections-on-trusting- trust](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/reflections-on-trusting-trust)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sorry, but that's a clickbait headline. I clicked it expecting to see a real attack dissected, not someone's idea on attacking an hypothetical platform.

(cute idea though)

<comment><USER24> A proof-of-concept is provided. If you are saying that the only way to gauge that an attack is "clever" (an adjective I'm not sure I'd apply here anyway) is to find it in the wild, I don't think that's fair.

<comment><USER23> Proof of concept on your own platform doesn't count. Security wise, it gets interesting when you attack an existing product, not when you set the rules for the "attack" that you'll carry later.

Obviously with this attack it's a bit of a problem to provide a PoC - but at this point comes the mislabeling of the post. Should have been called "a clever attack concept".

<comment><USER25> The attack is carried out on an existing product, an open source chip OR1200 that has its schematics generally available.

<comment><USER23> Calling it an "attack" is no less of an hyperbole than changing the sources of nginx to introduce a remote exploit.

What this team did is to create a compromised version of an open source product. They engineered it to be defective in the first place. This is nothing beyond a thought experiment.

<comment><USER10> There is a crucial difference between hardware development and software development that you are missing: hardware has several stages of development/implementation that spans several parties only connected by business contracts.

If you want to squeeze the attack into your analogy, it would be as if a compiler writer was malicious an added an attack to any/all nginx binaries without modifying the original source code.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beating Kaggle the easy way [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ke.tu-darmstadt.de/lehre/arbeiten/studien/2015/Dong_Ying.pdf <comment><USER2> The title should be Losing At Kaggle The Easy Way. They never even broke top 10.</comment>


Why does my iPhone game, Thick Lips, suck in United States? - <AUTHOR>

I am an indie iPhone game developer living in Hong Kong. I've developed the game "Thick Lips". This game got pretty cool sales figures in Taiwan/Hong Kong, but not in US. Please take a look at the game (http://thicklips.eddyl.com), and comment to advise why the game sucks (and how to make it better) in United States. Thanks for your help <comment><USER2> Keep in mind that the guys at rovio made 51 other games before they came up with the hit that was angry birds. The lesson is to keep trying until you have a hit :) I've got 6 apps out there, and for the life of me i can't pinpoint which ones will or wont succeed, you're not the only one scratching your head wondering. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't have an iPhone so I'm not able to try the game itself, but here's my thoughts.

I think there's nothing wrong with the game--it looks fine to me.

It's possible that people are put off by the name: "Thick Lips" sounds like it might be a racist slur against black (African) people.

More likely--and I really hope I don't sound too harsh--is the writing on your advertising. You are more than good enough at English to communicate clearly-- I never had any trouble understanding what you were trying to say.

Unfortunately, the grammar is just enough "off" that it's clearly written by someone who is not a native speaker. (You make some small mistakes that native speakers rarely make, but you don't make any of the mistakes that native speakers usually do.)

Worse for you, most people in the U.S. have basically been trained that anything on the internet written by someone in Africa or Asia is probably a scam. Even if you convince them that it's not a scam, people in the U.S. seem to associate Chinese companies with low-quality products.

The good news is that you are already 90% of the way there. As I said before, your writing is clear and easy to understand. This is good because professional translators are expensive. :-) You just need to get a native speaker of American English to polish your writing.

I would suggest going to the English-language Google page (google.com, not google.cn or whatever you use locally) and searching for "copy editor". (In this context, "copy" means any writing that is meant for advertising.) In the advertisements on the right, I get several services that specialize in writing and editing for websites and advertisements.

Out of those, the sites I looked at were definitely built by people with above-average English skills. If they can edit and fix things by native speakers, they can definitely help you!

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your explaining the US culture. It helps a lot, especially for a Chinese like me who watches a lot of Hollywood movies without having been to United States.

I've tried searching the copy editor, and it seems it worth to try those service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wack a mole type games have long gone out of style here. At theme parks, mini golf places etc there used to be many hands on versions of them,. Now everyone just want's to shoot stuff. Reason why even in video games, the wack a mole ordeal is pretty much 2 generations out of date.

My suggestion, is make it so you have to shoot the critters etc with a gun (or, less violent, with say a lazer gun/beam). Just my idea though. I'm sure others will chime in. It looks like you have done a pretty good job.

If you want to stick with the wack em game, without shooting etc, you could always make different artwork. Like wack it, Jersey Shore style, or Real Wrold wack it,.

<comment><USER5> I agree with this.

First off, I may consider a name change. Thick lips is ??? whereas Fat Lips means something different. I'm not too up on slang so I don't believe that means anything else other than "giving someone a fat lip" when you hit them. It also works for you because I think what you're getting at is the moles have thick lips. Not sure though.

For "Americanizing" it, you're probably going to have to play with the mechanics/sound effects/art. Wack-a-mole is nothing new; you may have to spice it up with something like bowling pins or baseball bats or chainsaws or ACME anvils or ??? (if you want to keep the melee aspect). I suspect that will keep people playing.

It's like the shooting fishing game that was featured a while back. Fishing games that drop a line is nothing new, but shooting the fish afterwards is novel enough that people will pay for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, what's the difference between Thick Lips and Fat Lips? I am a Chinese who doesn't understand the language quite well. It seems Americans will use "fat" instead of "thick" to describe the lips?

Besides that, according to other comments, "Thick Lips" sounds like it might be a racist slur against black (African) people. Do you think "Fat Lips" will get rid of this issue, or I should try another completely different name?

Thanks for your brainstorming anyway :)

<comment><USER6> > Besides that, according to other comments, "Thick Lips" sounds like it might > be a racist slur against black (African) people. Do you think "Fat Lips" > will get rid of this issue

It's hard to say. You might want to look into changing the artwork, too:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minstrel_PosterBillyVanWar...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minstrel_PosterBillyVanWare_edit.jpg)

I'm not sure I would have been put off by the artwork on its own, if I wasn't already aware of the name, though. So as far as that type of negative reaction, it's possible that you don't need changes there.

"Fat Lip" has no similar connotations, and a "fat lip" is used colloquially to refer to the swelling that happens when someone gets hit in the mouth, or more generally, in threats to beat someone up, so it should be apropos, actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's the name.

Thick lips sounds like a lot of things to a lot of different people, none of which are particularly flattering.

Fat Lips might be a better choice for this market.

</comment><comment><USER8> Couple points.

1) The name isn't really descriptive of the game play. With the obvious caveat that many games, indeed, have names that don't relate directly to their content, many of the most successful ones do. Angry Birds, Halo, Super Mario Bros, World of Warcraft, etc.

2) The term "thick lips", while not directly insulting anyone, still has many negative connotations in the US of referring to folks of African descent. A similar scenario might be present if you made a game about collecting firewood and called it "Fags".

3) Your game might just be boring. (Please don't take this the wrong way as I haven't played your game)</comment>


First Cable-Free Elevator Zooms Horizontally and Vertically Using Maglev Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608167/worlds-first-cable-free-elevator-zooms-horizontally-and-vertically-using-maglev-tech/ <comment><USER2> One function of elevator cables is the emergency brake system (fail closed) — hope the power in this mag system is really really redundant!

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how the elevator works, but if you've ever tried to toss a magnet down a copper tube, it appears to defy gravity - no electricity involved. Something similar could work to create a "fail-proof" elevator.

<comment><USER4> In this case the eletric current creates the magentism though. Turn off power and poof, gravity is back

<comment><USER5> Only half of the setup are electro magnets. The other half are permanent. If the elevator falls the permanent magnets will induce the coils.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does this behave in the event of a power failure?

</comment><comment><USER7> how well will credit cards and storage media survive being inside the linear engine "rotor" ?

<comment> TD-Linux The linear motor is confined to the rails behind the cabin. It's basically a bigger version of the linear motors seen on some CNC equipment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious to learn about the routing algorithms for this -- more precisely, how they differ from 1-d elevator scheduling routines.

</comment><comment><USER9> Going horizontally and vertically in an elevator is like playing side scrolling games but this time you are inside the game! Very exciting!

</comment><comment><USER10> 5 times as expensive to install, and looking at all those moving parts probably 10 times as epensive to maintain.

<comment><USER11> That's only for the first version. It's not unlikely that they can compete by price in the future. First versions of a new technology are (nearly) always more expensive than the existing, mass produced product.</comment></comment>


Computer's Screen Inspired First Video Game, 'Space War' - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=197713661 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a great little interview with Steve Russell, of whom Norvig wrote, "So the first Lisp interpreter was the result of a programmer ignoring his boss's advice." (PAIP p. 777) Too bad it isn't longer.</comment>


Stackless Python for Python 3.0 and Python 3.0.1, now available. - <AUTHOR> http://zope.stackless.com/Members/rmtew/News%20Archive/3.0 <comment><USER2> That's cool and all, but cores are practically growing on trees now. Is there something out there that'll let me efficiently do tons of active objects (coroutines with data that can make sync or async calls?) but scale out across processors and machines (hi EC2, I love you) also? I can do without shared data.

As it stands now, unless I had a big need for bazillions of contexts, I wouldn't touch stackless because I've already got to use other mechanisms to get work running on a lot of different cores / machines at once anyway. Since I'm already doing that, it's nicer to stick to the one mechanism and design things to work within it (keep contexts <1,000).

<comment><USER3> I hear you, I'd love to have the same thing.

Still the big deal about co-routines for me is not mainly raw performance (or core-utilization) but rather the programming model. I've literally slashed the LOC-count in half for some of our projects just by moving to co-routines, that's what I call a productivity boost.

Also I find myself _enjoying_ co-routines much more than the tangled mess of callbacks and data-locality issues in the multithreaded world.

<comment><USER4> I still remember with fondness the first coroutines I wrote, almost 35 years ago: it seemed like a really cool hack to connect a producer of bytes to a consumer of them (both already written, just 6 lines of assembler plus a little bit of init code).</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Not Accepting Opera Mini on iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/20455/Apple_Not_Accepting_Opera_Mini_on_iPhone <comment><USER2> I'm always confused by this. If Dell didn't allow Opera or Firefox or Linux to be installed on the computers they sell, or Microsoft didn't allow 3rd-party applications on Windows, people would be up in arms. But Apple is allowed to block _anyone_ from installing any application _on their own personal iPhone_ , and there aren't lawsuits flying?

<comment><USER3> Is Apple preventing it from being installed _in any way_ or just via Apple's app distribution mechanism? (I don't know either way, just asking.)

<comment><USER4> just via Apple's distribution mechanism. Which is the only way to install stuff on your iPhone, short of jailbreaking it.

<comment><USER5> the appstore is by no means the only way to install things on your phone. as a developer you can install whatever you want on your phone including write applications that run in the background. apple will just refuse to publish said apps to the apple store.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but you have to pay apple, and be approved by them before you receive a developer key. Apple still plays the gatekeeper.

<comment><USER5> Before the SDK was released you had no way to get any apps onto your phone, or anyone else's. I see the current situation as a step forward and I believe Apple will looses restrictions for ad-hoc distribution of applications, they just need to figure things out (the same way they needed a while to figure out building a good SDK and distribution platform).

<comment><USER7> Sure there was, and there still is. It's called jailbreaking, but Apple doesn't like it (will refuse to support your iPhone should there be problems, so you'll have to revert). There were multiple apps one can still use to get jailbroken apps on one's iPhone.

It also happens to be the only way one can pirate existing app store iPhone applications, sooo...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gruber at <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/10/30/opera-iphone>:

"I don't see how this is surprising at all. One can argue about whether it's a good policy for Apple not to allow third-party web browsers on the iPhone, but unlike other rejections, this one is not arbitrary. The iPhone SDK Agreement clearly forbids writing your own JavaScript interpreter."

<comment><USER9> What if the only reason it forbids it is to prevent Opera, Flash, et. al. from coming to the iPhone? Then Gruber has his cause and effect wrong. Even if he doesn't, this is still sick in sort of the same way that Alumni preferences keeping blacks out of state funded schools is--sure there is technically another reason than there blackness, but the end effect is still bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't believe this surprised anybody, including the Opera team.

<comment><USER11> Agreed, it's not like this is the first time Apple has denied a "competing" application.

I can't wait for Android to be released on a decent handset. Then I can give my iPhone to my wife.

<comment><USER10> This isn't Podcast Listener Pro or whatever; nobody will be surprised if Apple turns down Windows Media Player or Azureus either. One expects Opera did this largely as a publicity stunt.

You're going to be the one geek in the room with the Android phone and the Nomad MP3 player, you know. =)

<comment><USER12> This year maybe. But in two years time most phones will be Androids. We've been down this road before, except this time around an unencumbered OS is there from the inception of the environment.

<comment><USER10> Want to put $100 on that?

<comment><USER12> What exactly would we be betting and how are we going to judge the outcome?

new phones in the preceding month?

estimates of phones in use at time t[0] and t[1]?

iPhones are in the minority of total phones in use right now.

What geographic area do you want to restrict it to? Remember that most of the world cannot buy and operate a 2nd gen iPhone without voiding the warranty, and if you think that iPhones are going to dominate the market in asia and africa, you are being optimistic.

<comment><USER13> Stop me if I'm wrong, but Apple actually got AT&T to develop features on the backend of their network to get visual voicemail working.

Android was also a bid from Google to have the newly opened bit of spectrum be a "utility" band, where any device that gets FCC certified can plug into that network -- regardless of carrier or manufacturer. That didn't fly.

I would wager that's a more telling indication of who's going to come out on top of the scrap heap. The wireless handheld market is not beholden to perfect competition. Especially not within the US of A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Classic example of a business sacrificing long term gains for short term gains. Sure they gain money by doing this via google or whatever. But in the long run, well, this is why there is no Apple developer ecosystem.

<comment><USER15> _This is why there is no Apple developer ecosystem._

Is this a known fact or your personal opinion?

I only develop for the web but I always thought Apple had strong support from developers which is why it has some of the best designed software.

<comment><USER16> It's fairly well known that Apple has a very small developer base and that they treat developers poorly in a number of ways. For one, they've been known to break backwards compat. like it's nobody's business.

Sure, a lot of _nix people use Macs now, but ask them if they're developing software for the Mac OS. Most likely, the answer is no. They're doing_ nix stuff.

Compare the Apple developer "ecosystem" to that of the Windows and Linux world. Can you see any big differences?

<comment><USER9> Yeah I can see a difference--Linux breaks backwards compatibility way more than Apple =P.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's ham-handed typical Apple, but honestly, I'm glad. One of the main reasons I enjoy developing iPhone sites is that I don't have to support a bunch of random user agents.

<comment><USER18> You should be developing _mobile_ sites, not iPhone sites.

Or do you think that making "MSIE only" sites too is an acceptable way of dealing with web-pages and users?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Concurence déloyale

</comment><comment><USER18> While I'm not surprised by this, it kinda sucks. If you are going to make mobile pages, being able to test on as many browsers as possible is a good thing.

With moves like this, Apple pretty much forces me to keep a Windows Mobile phone around as well.</comment>


Looking for feedback on new DevOps venture - <AUTHOR> https://forms.gle/yVNNFf7JAQLJFpnv5 <comment><USER2> Correction, you are looking for participants for a vague DevOps survey</comment>


So what is it like working at a big technology company? - <AUTHOR>

Is it good, bad or ugly? Whats the differences between a big tech company and a startup? What considerations should one make when moving from one to the other? <comment><USER2> I'll only make one point (out of the many) regarding my own experience from having worked at both large corp and startups:

\- Big Tech Companies have way more money to fund new projects. If they do back a project up, they give it proper resources. Big companies are however more stringent about which projects they back, and the risk has to be as minimum as can be. Business sense most often trumps vision.

\- Startups are very free-form. There might not be money floating around but organic (as in self-thought-out, grown, and nurtured) projects are encouraged and rewarded.</comment>


Is Android 3.0 the Answer to Google TV's Problems, or Is It Already Too Late? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/12/27/is-android-3-0-the-answer-to-google-tvs-problems-or-is-it-already-too-late-op-ed/ <comment><USER2> I got a Logitech Revue the other day and my impression so far is that the hardware isn't up to the task.

Oddly, one of the first sites I tested in the browser was youtube. I tested twice and each time the machine stopped responding and eventually rebooted itself.

Lightweight sites seem to work fine in the browser.

One other oddity is that I heard a strange buzzing noise coming from the TV and the hard drive in the Revue was spinning like crazy (I'm not using it as a DVR b/c I don't have a cable box, so I think it must have been malfunctioning). Normally one wouldn't expect a device like that to make noticeable noise.

So overall the Logitech Revue has mediocre build quality and seems underpowered. I'm very much looking forward to any future software updates that might improve usability on low powered hardware.

The only other annoyance is the position of the back button (it's right where the trackpad left button should be).

I actually really like the Google TV UI layout and design concept. With some strong TV oriented apps it can be a killer platform.</comment>


UK Government relaxes employment law for startups giving equity - <AUTHOR> http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_91_12.htm#a

<comment><USER2> The devil will be in the detail of the act I suppose.

This presumably assumes that a free market for those shares exists or that a fair method for valuing them is put in place - otherwise it is just an income boost for lawyers.</comment>


NEOGEO's 25th Anniversary: Bundle of SNK games making their PC debut - <AUTHOR> http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/134804467944/celebrate-neogeos-25th-anniversary-with-a-bundle <comment><USER2> Is it a wrapped emulator?</comment>


Know Your User Feedback Tools - <AUTHOR> https://getchipbot.com/blog/stop-guessing-know-your-user-feedback-tools-now <comment> brutal-ux-me This is the funniest post I've read all day, the way it sarcastically promotes things that drive users nuts had me cracking up. Good one. The kicker was when trying to read and a pop up jumped in asking me to sign up and then near the end the final floating icons at the bottom, genius.

</comment><comment><USER2> direct linking to `google.com/search?q=intercom+bad+experiences` is kind of ... very crude</comment>


Why is the US banking system so far behind? - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/why-our-banking-system-so-far-behind

<comment><USER2> I agree with the article - the reason the US banks are behind is because the banks haven't been required to do proper upgrades. Consumers rarely have the power to change things in this situation: The pressure would either need to come from the government or it would have to come from a partner company - something along the lines of Visa or paypal or the like.

I will say that the system in Europe seems much more secure: additionally at least here in Norway people do give out their bank account number to others - which was shocking to me as an american at first, but truly is simply more telling about the low risk level in doing so. The other person wouldn't be able to do anything but deposit money with the bank account number, rendering transactions safer.

<comment><USER3> I disagree completely - the reason the US banks are behind is because the heavily-regulated environment they operate in means they are not subject to free market competition, and they have no incentive to capitalize (pay for) proper upgrades when they don't have any competition that will take away their market share if they don't.

It's the same reason our internet speeds are subpar compared to the rest of the world -- when you have government-enforced monopoly status, you are going to lag behind the free market. Make it easier for new ISPs to enter the market, and you will see AT&T and Comcast all of a sudden deciding it's worth it to offer a better product. Make it easier for new banks to enter the market, and you will see Bank of America etc all of a sudden deciding it's worth it to offer a better product.

When people see a market that isn't operating efficiently, and then proclaim "Well the reason this inefficiency exists is because the government hasn't forced them to be efficient!", that is personally very frustrating to me.

<comment><USER4> So Sweden is free market leader in banking?</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook says it doesn't benefit from hate, but its algorithms show opposite - <AUTHOR> https://sociable.co/social-media/facebook-says-doesnt-benefit-from-hate-algorithms-tell-different-story-oped/ <comment><USER2> I really miss early facebook culture. Where people would post pictures of them having fun at parties. Every professional person I know is too worried about their appearance that they only post fun stuff on their instagram story. It's not the same, and I feel like we would all be having better social lives if facebook was still a real social network.

<comment><USER3> Do you think this is a problem with the users or with the platform?

<comment><USER2> I don't know. Everyone treats their profile like a social linkedin page. Facebook should be able to leverage the fact that it has your social network to create more fun experiences.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: recordable video chat API services? - <AUTHOR>

I've been trying to find a service that will allow me to host flash-based video chat sessions, and record both sides of the resulting chat.
I've been looking at justin.tv, ustream (watershed), and stickam (streamapi), but as far as I can tell they're more 'broadcast' based and only record one side of the conversation (the broadcaster) - though i'd love to be proved wrong about this if someone knows better.
I've also been toying with the idea of building it myself with Red5 but would rather pay someone else to provide it if possible.
Does anyone have any idea if such a service exists? <comment><USER2> We can do it at tinychat.com and give you raw access to the FLV's. Send me a ping and I will set you up with our private API.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds great! email sent.</comment></comment>


Show HN: CodeHorizon – App for hackers who battle in Algorithm Arenas - <AUTHOR> http://www.star-lord.me/CodeHorizon/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my first app on the iOS AppStore - a side-project that I have worked on weekends stretching throughout the last month. The challenge was to convert a single rss feed (available here - [https://www.hackerrank.com/calendar](https://www.hackerrank.com/calendar)) into an utility app that notifies enthusiastic coders about the live and upcoming algorithmic challenges on the internet.</comment>


The (logarithmic) calendar I want  - <AUTHOR> http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2011/01/logarithmic-calendar-i-want.html

<comment><USER2> "Logarithmic". That's the word I needed. I've been trying to visualize a calendar that captures everything from seconds to years (akin to the marvelous but abandoned "once around the sun" work some years back), and at last pondering was wondering how to scale a spiral-of-spirals-of... which would capture the cyclic nature of our model of time; problem was scaling. Some application of logarithmic scaling may work...

<comment> DanI-S Since I can remember, I've visualised time as a set of continuous spirals - years are the largest, with Christmas at the top and early summer at the bottom. The years lie on top of one another and fade off into the distance, like a slinky viewed end-on. I see days, weeks and months separately, but in continuous spirals of their own. I don't know how common this is, but I vaguely recall reading that it is a form of synaesthesia.

I've always found this pretty useful. I can see the positions between events and intuitively judge their distance. I can see how recurring events are 'pinned' through multiple years. I see time periods - like months, or vacation times, as segments of the coil that are somehow 'different' (like being a different colour, except not). If I'm trying to remember when something happened, or is going to happen, I mentally flip through the slinky layers.

Does anyone else think this way? How do people regularly visualise time? I've always thought it'd be a pretty fantastic digital calendar UI, since it seems so intuitive to me - how does it sound to others?

Edit: Here's an article I just found. There are some people with similar visualizations to mine, and someone who perceives a year as a giant numeral '7'! Interestingly, the article talks about this perception underlying unusually good memory - but my memory of the past is actually pretty atrocious.

[http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/11/the_cognitiv...](http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/11/the_cognitive_benefits_of_time- space_synaesthesia.php)

<comment><USER3> This exactly how I view time. Freaky. If I zoom into one small period of time however the view often feels more like standing on a small ring-world planet. I can see waaay off into the distance, but only big things are visible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> s-phi-nl See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1248496> and especially <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1248922> for another discussion of the same idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> The 43 folders system bears some resemblance to this idea. If you haven't already heard about it a hundred times, it's about having 31 "day of month" folders - the shorter time frame, plus 12 "month" folders - the longer time frame. The shuffling of tasks is pretty obvious: the tasks from upcoming month get reshuffled into their respective day folders. You could extend it with one or two more levels (year? decade?) and get something similar to what the author describes.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would love this for a paper calendar.

I remember being stumped by the same problem of wanting a better overview over periods of time, and so came up with a scrollable-zoomable-timeline visualization called LineTime (<http://www.linetimeapp.com>). Smooth pinch-to- zoom and it displays days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries.

At this point, LineTime isn't a productivity app but a history timeline. But actually I like this idea almost better for a productivity tool, since it enables you to "compartmentalize" a bit better than with a flowing timeline like LineTime.

<comment><USER4> _"Would love this for a paper calendar."_

This one would be tricky - it looks like this needs continuous re-scaling. This would probably need a system of movable paper parts - labels, post-its or whatever. There's a serious danger you'd spend more energy tweaking those than thinking about the actual tasks :)

<comment><USER6> A magnetic / whiteboard planning calendar might work though.

You'd have current month large, then scale down through future 3 months, remainder of year, future years. Post-its / whiteboard marker / magnetic markers for various events.

The advantage of software is of course that you can have scaled views but infinite (or at least very large) storage capacity.

<comment><USER7> Well, the other advantage of software is that you wouldn't have to re-draw your paper version of a calendar when the months change. Imagine having to move important events from the smaller "future" boxes to the now much bigger "soon" boxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a great idea, and fits nicely with the observation that humans seem to perceive many things, including time, logarithmically:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber–Fechner_law>

<comment><USER9> One thing I've always wondered about is the dials or sliders for temperature settings in the car. Many of them (especially the linear sliders) seem to be set up in a logarithmic way rather than a direct linear scale. Although I'm not sure whether I'm basing that on the scale of the tick marks next to the slider or on my actual perception of the temperature -- probably the former...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I posted a submission to the JavaScript 10K apart competition last year which was an HTML5 calendar utilizing localStorage. It essentially gave you a view of all twelve upcoming months in a snapshot. Perhaps even something as simple as this would help with the visual aspect. As far as the "bindings" are concerned, I think you could use tabs along the top and do some redesigning for the different timeframes.

<http://10k.aneventapart.com/1/Entry/233>

</comment><comment><USER11> I actually created a logarithmic calendar app for a class a few years ago... Maybe I'll dig it out, update it and post since other people seem to like the idea...

<comment><USER12> Just do it and post it. Don't post a comment with "Maybe..."

<comment><USER11> Pay for my time and I will. Don't post a comment with "Just do it..." when you have no idea what other stuff I have going on or how much effort it would be to get it to any sort of presentable state.

Lighten up man.

<comment><USER13> Do or do not, there is no 'try' \-- Yoda

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Spot on. I feel quite sure people do think in something like this way. I've thought about it in the past as well and have been working on some similar ideas for mapping: [http://danieljmaxwell.tumblr.com/post/12074739965/a-better-k...](http://danieljmaxwell.tumblr.com/post/12074739965/a-better- kind-of-mapping)

</comment><comment><USER15> Combining this long-range view with a short-range view like SpiraClock ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605709> ) might be an interesting app.

</comment><comment><USER16> Dave Allen's _Getting Things Done_ suggests having multiple levels of task/tactical/strategic/life tracking and review, roughly like you are describing, although doesn't suggest a special view for it.

</comment><comment><USER17> caliander</comment>


Show HN: Video reporting of problems directly in your web app - <AUTHOR> http://demo.sessionstack.com/reporting <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, guys! One of the developers behind SessionStack here. Looking for some feedback about the idea of allowing users to record problems directly in web apps instead of filling up forms, attaching screenshots or doing remote desktop sessions with the support team. During the recording of the problem, all unhandled JavaScript errors are being logged with the corresponding stack traces to provide additional context.</comment>


Why a Traffic Flow Suddenly Turns into a Traffic Jam (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/71/flow/why-a-traffic-flow-suddenly-turns-into-a-traffic-jam <comment><USER2> In the US one of the biggest problems I have experienced is that drivers do not adhere to the international rule of having slow drivers on the right side of the freeway, especially in California.

As a result to this there are more lane splitting episodes (even within the speed limit) in order to finally being able to keep moving at a faster speed because the lane is effectively blocked by other drivers.

In addition to that, occasionally drivers will go faster (emergency, being late, and so on) and those same slow drivers that occupy each one of the 5 lanes at the same time will amplify the lane splitting, ultimately causing temporary traffic jams.

I never really understood why is this - in Europe we automatically merge to the right and always try to keep the leftest lane available for whoever needs to use it.

<comment><USER3> One of the biggest problems I experience on freeways in the US is that traveling 5 or even 10 mph above the posted speed limit makes you a "slow driver". So even though you might feel that travelling at or above the _maximum legal speed limit_ should give you the right to occupy the "fast" lane someone will prove you wrong by screaming up your ass at 80 mph, 90 mph, or more, flashing their high beams and becoming irate.

<comment><USER4> You don't get the "right" to "occupy" the left lane just because you're going fast. You have the _obligation_ to _yield_ the passing lane to anyone who wants to go faster.

You do not know who has an _emergency_ , and who doesn't. You don't get to enforce one law (speed limits) and flout the other (yield the passing lane). In fact, you don't get to enforce any laws if that isn't your job, and if it were your job, you should not disregard one of those laws.

<comment><USER5> What is the rule exactly?

1) Yield the passing lane for anyone that wants to go faster

or

2) Yield the passing lane if lane on the right is free.

I am asking because I am not sure, but (2) would make more sense to me. You should not be required to break the speed limit to be allowed to pass the slower traffic.

<comment><USER3> It seems to vary by state (see the link I posted in a sibling of your comment) but the general rule is that the left lane should _only_ be used for passing in which case logically there should only be one "pass" happening at a time so yielding is not an issue.

<comment><USER4> Of course, in heavy traffic this goes out the window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article doesn't mention a strategy you can take for breaking the wave:

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

I originally found this info via the happy mutants at boingboing:

[https://boingboing.net/2013/06/23/howto-singlehandedly- erase...](https://boingboing.net/2013/06/23/howto-singlehandedly-erase- tra.html)

After using this technique for years, I can tell you that changing your mode of driving when you encounter traffic is difficult. Especially when you're not used to "letting people pass". But I'm convinced it helps break the jams.

I wonder if the autonomous vehicles in our future could adopt a similar strategy when encountering traffic to reduce jams for all of us even if they're a small percentage of the overall drivers.

<comment><USER7> I liked the article, but I agree they should have made the way to correct this more clear. They briefly mention to increase you 'headway' in the end. I wish they would have hammered this point home, instead of waxing poetically about fluid-dynamical models, & detonation waves.

The articles you linked do a great job at explaining how to fix this. Thanks for that! I believe this information should be taught as a basic part of drivers education.

I intuitively started doing this many years ago. To me, it was obvious. You can see the wave of break lights in the distance, and the wave is slowly moving back towards you. People are so impatient, they insist on riding the bumper of the car in front of them, even in a traffic jam. Then they are caught in the cycle of accelerating quickly, then coming to a full stop.

It's a simple fix. Drive slowly and steadily. Keep a large number of car lengths between the car in front of you. If you can manage to maintain the gap in front by the time you come to the back of the next 'jamiton', without breaking or stopping, the Congratulations! You just 'erased' that jam, or the wave of cars coming to a stop in that part of the jam.

All of the cars behind you will benefit. And if enough drivers were practicing this, jams would be less & clear up faster.

You are right though, the hard part is learning to not care when impatient drivers angrily speed around you, only to run up to the back of the (clearly visible) stopped cars. I just smile and laugh at how silly they are, pat myself on the back for being a smart driver, and a good citizen to all the cars behind me ;)

<comment><USER8> My view of jams is they are caused by three expectations drivers have: 1) that the speed limit is still the "minimum speed" recommendation in heavy traffic. Ie, if it's 65, one can still attempt to drive 74. 2) that the left lane is going to be the fastest in heavy traffic and 3) that somehow using the soon- to-be-closed lane in a lane closure/traffic shift scenario is "skipping the line." In my view if we had adaptable speed limits /expectations of speed, we could probably avoid jams altogether if everyone agreed that 35mph was an optimal speed for heavy traffic. There would be far fewer brake lights and people would have far better reaction times (provided the slower speed didn't give them false sense of security leading to checking their cell phones). In any case, try this the next time you're in a jam- move to the right most lane. Not only is everyone around you doing the opposite (trying to go left for fast), but there are also people exiting the highway altogether... creating a slightly faster moving lane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been intrigued by traffic after moving to SoCal from Oklahoma. day after day you will hit pockets of slowness only to find out there was no obstruction.

in the past I read about 'shockwaves' in traffic. one guy changes lanes too fast, which causes multiple lanes to hit their brakes, and then you get the shockwave effect ("Jamiton" in this article) and it lasts a long time. but after doing enough highway driving, I don't think that's the main issue.

my hypothesis is it's simply merging traffic. I've noticed on my daily routes that traffic is always bad where there are a bunch of roads merging, and immediately after all the merges finish, traffic speeds way up. bad drivers aren't causing these shockwaves, it's all the sudden merging. I attribute this to bad planning. "hey, this is a major road and it's going across the highway, it should probably have a merge here."

a lot of people bring up zipper merging - better training of drivers will help a bit, but properly planned highway merging would be much more efficient.

<comment><USER10> I've found that a lot of times it's not an onramp merging into you, it's people waiting until the last second to merge to an offramp and slamming on the brakes and/or cutting off someone to not miss the exit.

I deal with this every day when I come home from work on my exit off the 405. People don't want to wait in line because it's slow, but it's slow because those people cut in at the last second and cause the entire lane to apply the brakes.

The 405/55 interchange is another example of that, particularly 405N to 55N in the evenings.

<comment><USER11> You are absolutely correct. In my experience, traffic is caused by drivers who 1) refuse to plan ahead and 2) are fine with fucking over other people in an effort to mitigate that lack of planning ahead.

<comment><USER12> You're being generous by saying they "refuse to plan ahead". I think they are actively planning to "cheat" and cut in line, thus screwing over all traffic behind them.

I deal with a merge every day where 3 interstates come together. The first two (I64E, I195N) run together for 1/2 mile and finally merge from 2 lanes to one _just before_ they merge into a dedicated lane on the destination interstate (I95N). They recently (last year or so) added the dedicated merge lane on I95N to try to speed things up, but it has not helped. The real problem is people waiting until the last second to merge 2:1 for the merge on to the destination highway.

I think things would be more effective if traffic from both interstates were forced to merge to a single lane as early as possible. Then traffic would be moving at close to the speed of the destination highway, rather than at 5mph due to all the lane jockeying resulting from the 2:1 merge just before the final merge onto I95N.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's been a big investment in the UK recently in "smart motorways"

[http://www.itsinternational.com/categories/detection- monitor...](http://www.itsinternational.com/categories/detection-monitoring- machine-vision/features/uk-defaults-to-hard-shoulder-running-to-expand- motorway-capacity/)

[https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/driving-advice/smart- moto...](https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/driving-advice/smart-motorways/)

These have overhead screens which show the speed limit (it's variable) and whether each lane can be used. They also have a lot of speed cameras enforcing that the displayed speed limit is being followed.

The intention is to keep traffic flowing at a much more consistent speed to avoid bunching. It also means if something happens traffic can be slowed down many miles away.

It essentially means the same road can have 30% greater capacity.</comment>


Donut math: How donut.c works - <AUTHOR> http://www.a1k0n.net/2011/07/20/donut-math.html

<comment><USER2> Iñigo Quilez has the best live coding tutorials on simple raytracers I've seen:

<http://www.iquilezles.org/live/index.htm>

It's so much easier than I thought...

<comment><USER3> What editor is he using? It looks a bit like fluxus but for some funky custom- library-laden version of C++...

Edit: Looks like it's an editor he designed himself to work on OpenGL fragment shaders (see the bottom video). I can't find any working link to it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Former discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2787227>

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies. Didn't realise it was previously posted. I was under the impression HN prevents you from linking the same article twice.

<comment><USER5> HN only stops it for a few months, that post was from more than a year ago.

<comment><USER4> Actually HN stops very old posts as well (it can fail, but it is very infrequent).

On this case, the urls are not identical: the older one did not have the www.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While quickly glancing over the HN front page: I read it as "Donald Knuth: how donut.c works." :)

</comment><comment><USER7> This article demonstrates why it is important to learn math if you want to develop software.

<comment><USER8> I'd say the article demonstrates the importance of math in the demoscene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unless it summons a real donut, I don't want to hear about it.</comment>