Dark matter nightmare: What if we are just using the wrong equations? - <AUTHOR> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/10/dark-matter-nightmare-what-if-we-just.html <comment><USER2> I very much wish no one had used the terms "dark matter" and "dark energy", as those imply far more knowledge than we have. It implies to those unfamiliar that there is in fact some form of energy or matter that has been "sort of" identified, but whose properties are unknown.

That isn't the case at all. We have equations we use to predict observations, and in certain cases, those observations are not quite matching what we predicted. There are a lot of reasons why this can happen, and using the equations poorly is but one of them.

I really wish they'd just said we've found an _inconsistency_ , between theory and observation, which is the actual case. It would, I think, better inform the public about the actual process of science, rather than making it sound like a new discovery has been made, which has not happened, clearly. Or perhaps the real discovery _was_ the inconsistency, and that should be the framing of the problem. Describing it using sort of known words like 'energy' and 'matter' makes the general public think a new type of matter has been found, rather than what has actually been found which is a hole in our understanding.

<comment><USER3> I disagree.

Dark matter is form of matter (matter is any substance that has rest mass) and it's dark (implying we can't see it and don't know what it is made of). Most hypotheses around the dark matter assume it's either new kinds of particles, or macroscopic objects.

Dark energy is also good name for hypothesis for unknown form of energy.

<comment><USER4> "Dark matter is a form of matter..." is a definitive statement, but you can't point to a single example of a direct detection of dark matter. It's quite possible the hypothesis is wrong.

The article, and the OPs aren't saying we shouldn't explore these hypotheses. They're just pointing out that they are, well, hypothetical. We should be cautious of talking about these things definitively as though we know they exist.

<comment><USER5> > "Dark matter is a form of matter..." is a definitive statement, but you > can't point to a single example of a direct detection of dark matter.

Are these not all cases of direct detection: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence)

<comment><USER6> Direct detection would be detecting/trapping the dark matter particle(s). Those observations are indirect and it may turn out that there is another explanation other than dark matter such as we are using GR equations incorrectly as suggested in the post.

<comment><USER7> What kind of detecting/trapping? We have to be specific. If we hypothesize a kind of matter that does not interact electromagnetically (only gravitationally), then it's kind of nonsensical to say that only direct electromagnetic interactions with such matter will count to confirm its existence.

<comment><USER6> Well that is the crux isn't it? How do we directly detect gravitational particles?

<comment><USER7> Maybe we don't. The evidence for general relativity is all indirect--we can't directly detect space-time. But plenty of people seem to think it's a solid theory anyway.

<comment><USER4> There is a significant difference in that GR made numerous very testable claims about all sorts of phenomena, which would not be at all expected without GR to explain them.

It also depends what is consider direct detection, which I accept is a matter of opinion. For example I'd consider comparing the times on atomic clocks inside and outside a gravity well to be direct measurement of time dilation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, maybe. The thing is, there are a lot of independent observations that match up really really well with the hypothesis, "there's a bunch of matter around that only interacts with us via gravity". If our models are off, they would have to be off in exactly the right way to affect our observations of gravitational forces but not really anything else. Which may very well be the case--or it may be the case that baryonic matter isn't really the end-all be- all of the universe and we're just a bunch of baryonic chauvinists for thinking so because that's what we're made of ;)

Obviously, nobody knows for sure yet. But I would caution most fellow laymen not to rely too heavily on the intuition that says, "dark matter? pffft!" or even, "but what about all of those observations that didn't match Newtonian dynamics?". Physicists (including the author here!) are generally smart enough to have thought of those objections themselves, which is why they've spent decades trying really hard to disprove the notion of "dark matter" by compiling all of these anomalous observations. Sometimes the universe is just unintuitive, at least to dumb apes like us.

I'm not saying you can't have a hunch that we're just doing the math wrong somehow; I just wouldn't be overly confident that's the case just yet.

<comment><USER9> I think you misread. Sabine is arguing that maybe dark matter is just the error term in our approximations of real matter, and pointing out that no one yet has actually taken the time to disprove that Occam's Razor theory.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't presume to argue against her, because she's a physicist and I'm not.

I'm mostly making the case to the peanut gallery here to maintain a state of epistemic noncommittal. It's a very popular intuition to think that "dark matter" is just a weird consequence of modeling things improperly, kind of like how we used to think there was another planet between Mercury and the sun because that was the only way to make Mercury's orbit consistent with Newtonian dynamics. If we _are_ modeling things improperly, I suspect it would have to be a pretty weird bug--and I think the one she's suggesting qualifies as such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing that every dark matter discussion goes the same way, with the same amnalogies to aether or epicycles, completely unlinked to the actual evidence. (Unlike the blog post, where Hossenfelder suggests a specific methodological problem, and that GR may in fact be completely correct. This is completely unlike anything people have suggested here in the comments.)

Dark energy is less well established, but based on the evidence we have, Occam's razor points strongly towards dark matter. Dark matter is a specific theory that makes predictions, and as far as we can tell these predictions are borne out. There was a competing hypothesis -- that GR itself is wrong and needs to be corrected. These were in competition, but the evidence has decisively broken in favor of dark matter. If it was just a question of fixing the equations, then you should be able to predict the apparent pattern of dark matter from the distribution of ordinary matter. For a while it looked like maybe you could, but more recent evidence has shown that you can't. (This is the reason why the Bullet Cluster comes up as an example so much -- the Bullet Cluster looks like what you would predict if galaxies have dark matter halos and two galaxies collided.)

People also misunderstand the incentives here. If you could write down a modified theory that could explain all of the evidence, you would be the greatest physicist since Einstein, maybe the greatest since Newton. You would achieve immortal glory as one of the central figures of the 21st century. So people try to write down that theory, but it turns out to be really hard to do.

<comment><USER11> Dark Matter is not a specific theory. Are you talking about WIMPs?

<comment><USER10> Some of the astronomical data is compatible with any kind of dark matter, though other observations (such as the Bullet Cluster) points at WIMPs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm imagining this thread if it were particle physicists and cosmologists arguing about the difficulty of the traveling salesman.

I'm not convinced we hobbyist physicists have anything to add to this topic. ;)

<comment><USER13> _I'm not convinced we hobbyist physicists have anything to add to this topic. ;)_

On average, I'd say that's a safe premise to adopt. But I'd add two things to that:

1\. The question "is that the point?" That is, cutting edge cosmological research isn't (AFAIK) generally done on HN. The "real experts" probably aren't coming here looking for new insights, and the rest of us idling around chewing the cud on this isn't really hurting anything.

2\. That said, this "cud chewing" may be beneficial to the participants in the conversation, or perhaps - in a "long game" sense - to science at large. If somebody reading all this is inspired to take up physics as a career field, or just learns something that they turn around and use as metaphorical inspiration in some seemingly unrelated field, well... maybe that makes it all worthwhile.

Anyway, at worst this is entertainment, and arguably of a higher quality than watching the latest episode of the sit-com de jour.

<comment><USER12> For sure. If I didn't totally agree with you I'd never read anything on HN. Entertainment indeed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have no expertise at all in the matter, but my understanding is that the evidence for dark matter is overwhelming. In particular, this Reddit comment (which is mostly just a TL;DR of [2]) seems pretty convincing:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/kucdk/dae_think_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/kucdk/dae_think_that_physicists_of_the_future_will_look/c2nb7nc/?context=2)

It seems to me a dark matter hypothesis is hardly extraordinary—that is, I don't see why anyone would have priors that particularly disfavoured it—and, if it were to exist, us not knowing much about it doesn't seem particularly surprising either.

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence)

<comment><USER15> There is no direct evidence for dark matter. It is a placeholder for observations that don't match theory. There are many current experiments trying to detect proposed particles but so far none has been detected.

<comment><USER16> Well, it's a placeholder, but a very specific kind of placeholder: it fits exactly everywhere. It's not like it's special-cased to one of the problems. It actually works in all of them.

<comment> denton-scratch The reason it "fits exactly everywhere" is that the only definition we have is that it's the exactly gap between observation and theory.

<comment><USER17> No, the definition is cold, gravitationally interacting matter. It just so happens that adding that one extra ingredient reconciles a whole number of different observations with theory. That didn't have to be the case. For example, if the dark matter is hot, structure formation doesn't match observations, or if dark matter is composed of massive, compact objects, we would observe a lot more microlensing events. But putting in just the right amount of cold dark matter makes everything we can test so far work. That could be a giant coincidence, but most cosmologists think it's because cold dark matter really exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> SciShow Space recently did an episode on Brown Dwarfs. They suggest that there might be so many brown dwarfs (which are hard to see), that they could account for a large portion of the "missing" mass.

And there's a theory that says there are small "primordial" black holes all over the place, which are also hard to detect individually, but together could also account for a large part of the missing mass.

Perhaps invisible brown dwarfs and invisible black holes are an easier pill to swallow than mysterious dark masses/energies?

<comment><USER19> This is the MACHO hypothesis, which seems to have fallen somewhat out of favor since we can measure this to some extent and we can't find anything close to the required mass [1]. Although it is likely there is unaccounted regular matter, I think it is considered unlikely that this will account for the 85% of "missing matter" that we need, not in its entirety and likely not for a significant part of that either. You will need a humongous amount of brown dwarfs to compete with the regular stars and known (supermassive) black holes that are already in the known 15%.

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

"A survey of gravitational lensing effects in the direction of the Small Magellanic Cloud and Large Magellanic Cloud did not detect the number and type of lensing events expected if brown dwarfs made up a significant fraction of dark matter."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think recently there was observation of galaxy with very little of dark matter. I think it makes the dark matter harder to explain as some sort of theory glitch not the real object.

<comment><USER21> That interpretation seems to be still up in the air: [http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/09/astronomers-cant- agree...](http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/09/astronomers-cant-agree-on- galaxies-without-dark-matter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The classical multibody problem, Heisenberg already struggled with it in quantum mechanics.

And Hossenfelder really means the we are using the equations wrong. Not that are using the wrong equations.

<comment><USER23> This is a really important point, a lot of comments in this thread seem to think the article is related to proposals for new laws of physics.

<comment><USER22> And only CS can help with this problem. If you cannot average non-linear functions trivially, you certainly can approximate it and minimize the differences. Something like a simplex method. The problem is called "Nonlinear averaging".

e.g. [http://www.eebweb.arizona.edu/Faculty/chesson/Nonlinear_aver...](http://www.eebweb.arizona.edu/Faculty/chesson/Nonlinear_averaging.htm) or [http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/schaefer/research/nonlinearSub.pd...](http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/schaefer/research/nonlinearSub.pdf) with nice graphs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can "using the wrong equations" explain gravitational lensing effects appearing apparently out of the void? The Bullet Cluster is a famous example referred to in this comment thread, but it's far from the only example.

As a non-physicist, observed dark matter gravitational lensing really points to "there's more gravity than we expect" rather than "gravity works differently than we thought" for me.

<comment><USER15> The Bullet Cluster observations are commonly misunderstood. There is indeed a missing baryonic mass problem for MOND but this is also a problem for ΛCDM too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems very plausible as an explanation for dark matter but I'm confused as to whether the author proposes it as an explanation for dark energy as well.

Are there not galaxies on opposite sides of the universe, expanding away from each other too fast for them to ever interact?

<comment><USER25> The case is specifically being made about dark matter, and in particular about the galactic rotation curves that are the primary motivation for the dark matter hypothesis. Dark energy has a completely different basis that wouldn't be subject to this particular alternative hypothesis -- though the very general point of "maybe the approximations we're using are too simple" does still apply. Though really they apply to pretty much any open question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't understand what the author means. Maybe someone can help me understand.

> Now, what we do when we want to explain what a galaxy does, or a galaxy > cluster, or even the whole universe, is not to plug the matter and energy of > every single planet and star into the equations. This would be > computationally unfeasible. Instead, we use an average of matter and energy, > and use that as the source for gravity.

Does this mean instead of individual objects we make our calculations with x units of mass and energy in every given patch of space and this may be an issue, or am I getting this wrong?

<comment><USER27> > Does this mean instead of individual objects we make our calculations with x > units of mass and energy in every given patch of space and this may be an > issue, or am I getting this wrong?

Pretty much yes, as we can only take observations like that.

More importantly, the GR equations are non-linear, so taking these 'average' observations and feeding them into our models may introduce significant error.

Or another way of saying that, it's possible that the model would give accurate predictions if you were able to feed it precise and complete information (the details of every single point mass) but not give accurate predictions if you feed it the sampled data we have (observations about whole galaxies, for example). People have discussed this elsewhere in this thread as the N-body problem.

It's also saying that even if we did have that level of detail, our numerical simulations aren't currently capable of calculating at that fine a level of detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm one of those students who questioned it.

Never got a satisfactory answer.

For example the gravity between two objects depends on the relative speed between them (since gravity is proportional to energy, not rest mass). Are we calculating that for each and every sun orbiting in a galaxy?

It's a lot of interactions, each sun interacting with all the rest.

It gets worse - gravity is also proportional to _potential energy_. So you need to include how much energy you would have if every sun fell into every other sun, not just their rotation.

I just can't shake the feeling that dark matter is just this unaccounted for energy in a galaxy.

<comment><USER8> That sounds somewhat plausible to me because it fulfills the criterion of something that would mess up our observations of gravitational force but nothing else. Is the n-body problem really so intractable we can't even handwave our way to an approximate answer that accounts for this stuff?

<comment><USER29> Everyone has thought "maybe it's just a bad gravity equation?" at some point. It's a fun idea, but it's contrary to observation.

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

<comment><USER24> Oof, a gravitational lensing based result at 8 sigma... so much for this fun little theory

<comment><USER30> >> gravitational lensing based result

What's wrong with basing your results on gravitational lensing? Is it related somehow to the complexity of inferring on how much the images are wrapped by gravitational lensing?

<comment><USER24> nothing, I'm talking about OP's theory. A gravitational lensing based result is particularly strong due to it being model independent. OP's theory cannot account for lensing inferred CoM differing from the baryonic CoM in the bullet cluster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm so tired of this blog and its author that just tells we're wrong without really leading anythere.

<comment><USER15> The post was intended to educate the general public. Physicists already know about this problem.

Most pop science, even the ones featuring physicists, present speculative ideas as if they were well established facts. (Hello string theory)

Finally, criticism of a theory does not require presenting an alternate theory. She presents an argument. If you don't agree with her conclusion then you need to rebut her argument.

<comment><USER31> I understand, but she has the same point about essentially every modern idea in physics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The hubble constant is where the equations breakdown.

Remember why he even added it in the first place.

It was to create a model of the universe that is frozen. It's creating a reference frame.

Depending on which reference frame we use, we get different numbers.

CMB vs Candles

<comment><USER31> In the most recent development it's been debunked. The problem was with the Hubble telescope measurements of the candles. Using another satellite and another class of candles they got to the measurement that was very close to CMB.

<comment><USER32> idk the plank data is still very iffy. Some even say it still requires new physics. Do you have some sauce where it's been "debunked"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can computational horsepower be thrown at this problem? To put some bounds on how wrong the equations are? We have enormous capacity these days with racks of GPUs and 64 core EPYCs and so on.

<comment><USER34> Cosmological simulations already take up month of run time on worlds largest supercomputers. (astro-)Physicists were the first users of large computations, in many cases inventing the computers along side with the physical theory the were trying to compute. Computer people like you who think that physicists are too stupid to make use of GPUs are as bad as physicists that think they are qualified to comment on biology or chemistry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Physics isn't about equations. It's about models of the universe that suggest a certain underlying "working" of the system. If our models are not predicting observations....it just means we still haven't figured out how things really work.

Not surprising given we still can't even explain the double slit experiment wwithout resorting to paradox and contradiction.

For all we know telepathy, magic, reincarnation and wormholes all might be true, we just haven't advanced our understanding of the universe and reality to that point yet.

</comment><comment><USER36> >> Dark matter filaments. Computer simulation.

To be honest, that looks just like a very old (ca. 1990's) noise filter from 3d Studio Max (where it would be used to make smoke, fog, but also very realistically looking veins, etc).

("Filter" is not the right term. Sorry, I haven't touched Max for ages.)

</comment><comment><USER37> Doesn't that describe almost any unsolved problem in physics?

<comment><USER27> The specific point is that we are using linear averages (over large collections of objects, such as galaxies) to model a non-linear effects (General Relativity interactions between individual objects).

It may be accurate to use those averages, or it may not be if for example the chaotic nature of N-body problems causes reality to diverge significantly from the simpler model; we don't know how large the error actually is and currently don't have a way to measure it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's the aether, stupid ;) If anything they should look into Maxwells original 20 equations.

</comment><comment><USER39> But surely, we already _know_ that we'll never be able to model the universe without a law of intelligence.

For instance, if you were an alien scientist on the other side of the galaxy measuring the atmospheric composition of Earth, there's no way that you could make a prediction to match the result without also modelling emerging properties of intelligence. We know that this is true, just as we know that intelligence and computation are physical properties of the universe - so why isn't there a serious branch of physics which tries to take this into account?

</comment><comment> denton-scratch So I'm no expert. My instinct is that these two dark stuffs are (as the OP said) "placeholders" \- stuffs that fall out of the equations, but which we cannot find, or even describe. If you want me to believe in stuff, then you need to be able to point at it (at least in some kind of metaphorical sense).

I have a similar opinion about "cosmic inflation", as it happens; it appears to be a solution to a problem with the equations.

In both cases, it looks to me very much as if someone has described the problem, and then announced that their problem-description is actually a solution. Nice work, if you can get it.

</comment><comment><USER40> You know harry potter also deals with the same question in this chapter

<comment><USER41> Dark arts?

<comment><USER37> Possibly referring to [http://www.hpmor.com/](http://www.hpmor.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> To my entirely untrained eye, dark matter and dark energy always looked wrong. Like a hacky way to patch our incorrect models. Not at all unlike Aether [0] later rendered unnecessary by Special Relativity, or the Cosmological Constant [1] later rendered unnecessary by, precisely, dark energy.

I find it very arrogant to believe that our current model is _the_ model. New physics are discovered when the model is found to be broken at the edges, and a new model emerges whose explaining power is a superset of that of the previous model.

I guess we're coming to the end of the "normal physics" stage of Kuhn's cycle of scientific progress [2]. I wonder whether the current incentive structure for science will let us progress to the next phase, or trap us for unnecessarily long in the current one. I hope it's the former.

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

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions#Phases)

<comment><USER27> > I find it very arrogant to believe that our current model is _the_ model.

I think it would be arrogant, but I've never met anyone who studies physics and believes this (though I wouldn't be surprised if some exist). It's not arrogant, however, to be dogmatic when faced with ideas that are incompatible with established models. It's unreasonable to claim someone must be using a broken model, because dark matter and dark energy looks wrong.

Scientific models are good when they are predictive, and powerful when they are simple.

It's incredibly rare for a model-in-use to be _wrong_ \- we would never use something that has no predictive power - but every day scientific models are tested, refined, expanded, and simplified in order to make them either more predictive (better accuracy) or more powerful (describe more things).

Sometimes this does manifest as being 'broken at the edges' but not always. Sometimes a model is just fuzzy, and improvements add resolution to every prediction.

<comment><USER42> I generally agree with all of your points.

> Scientific models are good when they are predictive, and powerful when they > are simple. [...] every day scientific models are tested, refined, expanded, > and simplified [...]

It seems to me that dark matter goes directly against this. The current model of gravity can't explain certain observations, so we come up with a form of matter and energy that we can't observe in any way, and doesn't interact with anything, except with precisely the one thing we need for our observations to match the theory. A theory that hasn't even been reconciled with quantum mechanics yet!

Smells super fishy to me. But as I say, my knowledge of physics and astrophysics is super basic, and I wouldn't call myself "someone who studies physics" in any meaningful way. I understand your feeling that it's unreasonable for me to criticise the status quo because dark energy looks wrong, as I have no idea about the underlying math.

<comment><USER27> > so we come up with a form of matter and energy

The current top comment by superqd[0] probably deals with this best. _Maybe_ there is a literal dark energy and dark matter, but the thing that is manifested is a 'correction' term in the way we use these equations, and it so happens that using those correction terms makes these equations more accurate.

I'd almost go so far as to say the uncorrected equations are a model that is broken at the edges, and dark energy and dark matter are simply a quantification of how broken they are (with the added benefit that adding them to the equations makes the model better).

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21279200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21279200)

<comment><USER42> That makes a lot of sense, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The Plasma Physics & Electric Universe models considers "dark matter" to be plasma in dark mode & utilizes equations used in Electrical Engineering & other Electrodynamic/Plasma models.

[https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Plasma-Universe-Anthony- Perat...](https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Plasma-Universe-Anthony- Peratt/dp/1461478189)

Relativity (time dilation) & > 3 physical dimensional mathematics is rejected in favor of physical experimentation & interpreting physical phenomena through the lens of plasma behavior (dark & glow & arc modes, discharge, z-pinch, Birkeland Currents, etc). The EU model has successfully predicted surprising phenomona of asteroids/comets & astrogeology and makes bold interstellar predictions. Luminaries, deviating from the standard model, include Hannes Alfvén, Anthony Peratt, Ralph Jurgens, Immanuel Velikovsky, Kristian Birkeland, Nikoli Tesla, David Talbott, Donald Scott.

Recent physical experimental success include the SAFIRE project. "The SAFIRE PROJECT reactor generates energy densities analogous to the Sun's ...in a laboratory on Earth".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTaXfbvGf8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTaXfbvGf8E)</comment>


From: Ex Mexican President To: Trump - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/superdeluxevideo/videos/476577189353503/ <comment><USER2> Unreadable unless you login to FB. They are deliberately breaking the web, making things into their own little (or not so little) walled garden. Inaccessible, unsearchable, unless you drink the Facebook kool-aid.

<comment><AUTHOR> my bad: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWlrauHGAbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWlrauHGAbY)</comment></comment>


What If Everyone's Wrong About China? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-19/china-s-liberalization-shouldn-t-be-ruled-out-just-yet <comment><USER2> I think there might be a misconception that liberalization in China would change anything.

I don't think that would be the case. In fact that would seal China's status as the top superpower.

They would become the largest democracy on Earth (at current population levels). Their attractivity would increase. Re-unification with Taiwan would become much more likely.</comment>


NoSQL for the Real-Time User Data Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.dataversity.net/archives/6698

<comment><USER2> From the architecture overview; they need 7 GB of memory to index 100 million objects. That's over 75 bytes per object, which is quite a lot.

To be able to guarantee maximum 1 disk access, they would need to store the hash, the address, and the size. You can do that naively by using 160 bits for SHA1, 64 bits for address and 32 bits for size, which is only 32 bytes. Maybe they use the rest for metadata like generation count...

<http://citrusleaf.net/_docs/Architecture_Overview.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone have a TL;DW version of this? This speaker takes an incredibly long time to get to the point, but I am interested in the topic.

<comment><USER2> Are you a human or a bot? The video is a 4m47s lightning talk which is basically a TL;DW for a real talk.

<comment><USER4> If you're going to post a video, post a transcript.

Who has time to watch these things?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would anyone use this as opposed to the proven open source alternatives?

Additionally, how does this actually actually solve any realtime requirements?</comment>


Smartassembly wins the Red Gate million dollar change - <AUTHOR> http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/09/smartassembly-wins-the-red-gate-million-dollar-change.html

<comment><USER2> It looks like Red Gate is building a miniature empire over there between this and their incubator program.

<comment><USER3> Buwahaha

<comment><USER2> I assume you work over there? I've heard nothing but good things; and getting support for SQL Compare has always been top notch ;)

(So you guys are allowed to have a tiny empire)</comment></comment></comment>


A first look at RPG: turns out it's not only Role-Playing Games - <AUTHOR> https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0548/ <comment><USER2> Applications written in COBOL, RPG, etc. will be around forever because they offer older coders job security. Ever work at a company run on one of these systems? Through overstatement of risk and cost, these applications persevere. Trying to retire one is like laying siege to a fortress.

RPG is a pretty cool language though, I never knew it was directly related to punch cards. Fascinating.</comment>


What happens when you're the #1 story on HN - <AUTHOR> http://jimplush.com/blog/article/179/What-happens-when-you-are-the--number-1-article-on-Hacker-News

<comment><USER3> _So how much cold hard Adsense cash did I get yesterday? I must have cleaned up for that giant traffic spike! Alas, 4 clicks out of 30,000 page views for a total of $2.76 :) So don't expect a goldmine from Hacker News traffic._

I wish information like this was more forthcoming in other blogs like this.

<comment><USER4> When I hit HN I got almost $40 from 10,000 hits, but that was mostly because I accidentally had the link back to the homepage right above an ad unit.

<comment><USER5> _"Accidentally"_

It's funny when unintended changes and mistakes lead to better conversions. An example that comes to mind was PlentyOfFish's poorly resized images leading to higher profile clickthroughs since people wanted to see the images with correct aspect ratios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One point of correction: It is definitely possible to see current, instant results in Google Analytics. Just click the drop down menu in the upper right and change the time period to include the present day. By default it shows the last month, not including the present day, but you can adjust the time period to show just results from today, for example.

So many people do not realize this and then say that you have to wait a day before seeing any stats in Google Analytics. On the contrary you definitely can see instant results, the interface just doesn't make this as easy as it should be.

<comment><USER7> Not the case, stats for the current day generally won't be properly up to date. See my other comment on this thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2187209>)

<comment><USER8> That really depends on the traffic your site is getting. If it's a decently large site (> 50k PVs a day), then yes, data for the current day will be lagged. But for most sites smaller than that, I've found the data to be only lagged by 15 minutes or so. It's definitely improved over the past year.

<comment><USER7> Can't speak to that, I don't pay close attention to daily stats for my personal site, and all the sites I work with are big enough to have a heavy delay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was a #1 story on HN this week too. I wrote up a postmortem here - <http://natgordon.posterous.com/hackernews-post-mortem>

</comment><comment><USER10> 40k pageviews to a blog entry should never crash your server.

And yet it does all the time. It looks like this guy has a typical LAMP stack running on a Linode slice, presumably running a single query to return a single record and render it as HTML.

Even assuming that all 40k pageviews came in one single hour, that's still _eleven requests per second_ , which gives you 100ms to serve each one. That's like _years_ in CPU time. There's no reason that should even spike the CPU off of zero. There's definitely no reason you'd need to worry about caching for a load that small.

I just don't get it.

Is LAMP really that slow out of the box?

</comment><comment><USER11> With Google anayltics, you can see the current day's traffic. You just need to manually adjust the date range to include it.

<comment><USER12> Depends on your traffic volume, we drive enough that it takes at least 24 hours before it charts traffic, to see traffic from Monday I have to wait until early Wednesday :(

<comment><USER13> Even if you manually change the date range to today? Most people don't realize that Google Analytics defaults to "yesterday" but can be manually changed to today.

(sorry if you already know this & answered it in your previous comment. I just don't want others to miss out on GA's real time capability)

<comment><USER7> Yes, you can change the date range to include the current day, however it won't show the correct amount of traffic.

Officially they say that data _won't_ appear until after 24 hours [1], but generally some of it will, but usually not all.

If you know the Analytics patterns of a site reasonably well (as I do my company's sites) then you can often look at the day's traffic and estimate how it's doing, but never expect it to be the final number.

(In some cases, I've actually seen traffic for the day _go down_ after twenty four hours, once Analytics has finished working it out. I'm not sure why..)

_[1][http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en-...](http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en- GB&answer=55544) _

<comment><USER6> Hmm, I have never noticed that big of a discrepancy. It seems fairly accurate for my sites. Even when my web app got 8000 hits in a few hours I was able to see them in near realtime. In my experience if the count is off, it can't be off by much.

<comment><USER7> I moniter a few sites that between them hit 20+million page views a month (~30k/hour), and can say from personal experience that, for any real idea of a day's stats from Google Analytics, you really do need to wait 24 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The post mentions disappointment in viewer conversion. I think it's fairly obvious that this kind of referral is awful for conversion. Viewers are loyal to Hacker News, not to the site referred. If the post showed a promise for more interesting content in the future, then you may gain some subscribers. But when it's merely a link to something else cool found on the internet, there's little incentive to subscribe.

FWIW, I had a #1 HN story that generated maybe 100 new subscribers out of 100,000 pageviews. I was impressed, however, by how many checked out the homepage to see other posts.

PS: I find putting ads on a personal blog to be a bad idea. Unless you blog for a living, the tiny revenue you might make from it is not worth the unprofessional appearance of displaying ads.

</comment><comment><USER15> Google Analytics might indeed be the old man in the room, but it's free. Real time analytics do matter when things get viral, but that kind of service comes at a cost. AFAIK there is no free product (as in _online service_ ) that provides such functionality with no price tag.

<comment><USER16> ObserverApp.com is free, and it has real time push notifications of every single visitor (try it, open observer in one tab and your site in another - <USER2> will increment in a matter of seconds).

The only problem is that nearly every second ajax link in the admin times out. That's been broken for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I try to view the site, a blog comment field popups and takes over the entire page, with no method of dismissing it: <http://screencast.com/t/IwfGfxcSsZG4>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm hoping open sourcing these stats from yesterday's article will help someone out there. I've learned a ton from reading HN so here's something back.

<comment><USER18> Mind me asking what size Linode you are running EE on?

I have an EE install on Linode with nginx and MySQL, so I was wondering what I could expect?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like I have the Linode 512 plan, so far so good :)

<comment><USER19> I've got a small blog network running on a 512 also -- Wordpress with supercache installed. During the Queensland floods one of the blogs got 50k visits in a day ... and I didn't notice.

Caching. Rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think Google Adsense is good for such kind of traffic. Google Adsense works better with targeted traffic (Search Engine traffic mostly). You may want to write a blog post and to advertise a product (affiliate program) that might interest the HN crowd. If you sell 15 copies of it, with $10 commission, that's $150.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've hit #1 a few times (or, more accurately, links to my site have - I didn't submit them) and this roughly mirrors what I encountered. Between 20-35k extra pageviews spread over a couple of days.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've hit #2 and #5 and not had to cache my site. I was running Rails 2.3.8, thin and nginx on the cheapest slice that Slicehost sells.

Is it normal not to have to cache for HN + Reddit?

<comment><AUTHOR> depends on concurrent connections vs spread out, cpu, traffic of other customers on your box, apache configurations, etc...

It's just good practice to cache when you can. There is no reason to ask the database for the same article 1000 times a second if it's not changing. I didn't feel the server was going to crash at that moment but I did notice MySQL was doing plenty of work it didn't need to.

The concern was if it got picked up by another site like digg or reddit then it could have been more of an issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has HN readership passed that of say Slashdot? HN is now my daily read but I stuck with SL for 10 yrs or so. Does HN have the equivalent of getting slashdotted...?

<comment><USER24> No.

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com>

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think I've hit the top, but I've been on the front page of Hacker News 3 times in the past 4 days. I really should start writing about these things...

</comment><comment><USER26> And now he is, once again, on the front page of Hacker News. The résumé you posted earlier was indeed good-looking yet very good at conveying the important information.</comment>


An intern made this gloriously awful site - <AUTHOR> I've been coaching one of our interns at Tilt how to make rails apps in my spare time. He needed a quick app for something and made this over the course of a few days. It's beautiful and horrible at the same time ha<p>https://tiltroulette-production.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> How would public ridicule help him become a better developer?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My 2 fav parts

1) He actually checks for an error if you have an empty file input

2) He thinks he's using react for this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> PSA he is not a dev intern ;)</comment>


Ask HN: selling to entreprise, is it possible as a recent graduate? - <AUTHOR>

Here is my situation.
A friend from college and I are ready to start building a product now. So we're at the "idea exploration" stage.
My dad works in a big corp (sales side), and after having talked to him I think I spotted an opportunity ( something that can be fixed using technology ). It's ideal for customer development because the product would be targeted at people like my dad !
The question I have is : do you think it's possible to sell software to big companies when the team is composed of 2 CS grads ( 23 years old ), at least at the beginning ?
What are the different techniques to sell to big and middle corporations when you don't come from inside ( but can have some connections, in this case through my father ).
Has anyone done it before ?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I recently talked with a co-founder of a company that sold to enterprises. He and his co-founder are in our peer group, and I asked him that very question. How does a young entrepreneur sell to enterprises? And, he said two things:

1.) Lower the barrier of entry for enterprises to test your product. Understand what their inhibitions are:

a.) Productivity costs caused by implementing new software that could require training and infrastructure investments.

b.) Fear that your startup could go out of business in a year, and they're left with this unsupported, buggy software.

c.) Disapproval from shareholders that they are taking a risk with this unproven company.

Then, create a solution to tackle those concerns, and sell them the benefits (typically ROI) that your product will bring.

2.) And, this young entrepreneur also recommended to have experienced people on your team, whether advisors, investors or employees, to give you credibility.

Two sales techniques I heard not too long ago:

Identify decision makers. If you can't reach them, then go through gatekeepers - like a personal assistant.

Avoid talking about technology. Most likely, the person you're speaking with isn't technical. Instead, give them a brief pitch about why you're product will give them a competitive advantage in their market.

And, remember an enterprises care only about two things: i. Making Profit ii. Managing Costs

Make sure your product fits in one of those categories.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all those advices. So bootstrapping a company to sell stuff to big companies seems pretty hard ( being backed by investors would relieve big companies I presume ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes, I've know a few people who've done it, but I have noticed an interesting pattern.

The more specialized you make your software, the easier it will be to sell to a particular company since you're solving a specific problem for them, but with that the volume you sell it also get smaller.

The trick with enterprise is connections and marketing skills more than the technical aspect.</comment>


Waves in Guinness - <AUTHOR> http://eprints.maths.ox.ac.uk/736/1/2008.1.pdf

<comment><USER2> Now if only someone could write a paper defining the math behind the happiness we get from drinking it!</comment>


Japan's curious passion for the business novel - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35125739 <comment><USER2> I would say a lot of fiction operates as an outlet for our suppressed day-to- day desires. By anecdote alone, there's likely an inverse relationship between the level of emotional self-expression allowed in society and the degree of escapism in that society's stories.

Japanese anime and manga comes to mind. Although not all of the medium panders, the shonen, shojo, josei, seinen and other mainstream categories tend to have highly dynamic, energetic, characters who speak and act in all sorts of absolute ways: stories too unbelievable normally to occur in real Japanese society.

We certainly have our own unbelievable, fulfillment stories in America, especially in comic books. But where Batman, Superman, The Avengers have become a hit around in international markets besides America, Japan non-cute stories have yet to achieve that kind of universal appeal.

I will admit to some bias here since I grew up on Japanese culture, and like anything else, I've come to, incorrectly, associate it with childishness.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what the Japanese Salaryman would make of Floyd Kemske's work:

[http://www.catbirdpress.com/authorpages/kemske.htm](http://www.catbirdpress.com/authorpages/kemske.htm)

<comment><USER4> Idle thought: I wonder how well DFW's _The Pale King_ sells in Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope they finally pick up Richard Morgans "Market Forces" for cinema. Asian film art would fit perfectly.</comment>


Libra Developers Site - <AUTHOR> https://developers.libra.org/ <comment><USER2> It's nice to see such a comprehensive documentation with 101 materials, white papers and design documents.

[https://developers.libra.org/docs/welcome-to- libra](https://developers.libra.org/docs/welcome-to-libra)</comment>


As Seen on TV - <AUTHOR> https://www.asseenontvlive.com/ <comment><USER2> That does not translate to a great domain name</comment>


Gerillass: The coolest Sass library! - <AUTHOR> https://gerillass.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Gerillass is an open-source toolkit with a set of Sass mixins to help designers and developers create better, faster, and consistent user interfaces.</comment>


Navy pilots report unexplained flying objects - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html <comment><USER2> The videos in the article are Gimbal[1] and Go Fast[2]. The incident that occured in 2004 is FLIR1[3].

This[4] analysis of Go Fast is pretty good, and sounds plausible, the author concludes that it's most likely a bird. He also analyzes FLIR1[5] and takes a look at Gimbal[6]. To me, it seems like FLIR1 might just be another jet moving away, and the "Tic-Tac" shape is just the IR-cone of a jet exhaust. As to Gimbal, Parabunk has yet to offer an analysis...

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1uLwUTDA0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1uLwUTDA0)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxVRg7LLaQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxVRg7LLaQA)

[3]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rWOtrke0HY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rWOtrke0HY)

[4]: [http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/analysis-of- ttsa-2015-g...](http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/analysis-of-ttsa-2015-go- fast-ufo-video.html)

[5]: [http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-2004-uss-nimitz- tic...](http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-2004-uss-nimitz-tic-tac- ufo_22.html)

[6]: [http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/ttsa-gimbal-and-go- fast...](http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/ttsa-gimbal-and-go-fast-videos- from.html)

<comment><USER3> It's appropriate that the first video is called "gimbal", because that's exactly what it is.

Watch the angle readout at the top of the video. The rotation of the object happens exactly around the time that the angle passes 0°. Why is this?

Have you ever watched a PTZ security camera rotate up and over the vertical axis and down the other side? It will tilt up until it nears the vertical axis, at which point it will rotate _around_ that axis, and then tilt back down, now facing the other way. It does this to avoid _gimbal_ lock [1], a state in which it would lose a degree of freedom of rotation. (In this case, it's not the vertical axis, but the forward axis.)

Why doesn't the image rotate then? [shallow speculation] The video software keeps it oriented so that it matches the plane's orientation. (Note that the feed is square, making it easier to make full use of the sensor regardless of rotation.)

Why _does_ the object rotate? This should give you a clue where the object is. If the background is not rotating while the camera is rotating, but the object is, the object _is on the camera_. It will _appear_ to rotate as the video software rotates the image to compensate for the camera rotation about the forward axis.

So why is the object moving? Well, it's not moving, not if it's on the camera. But whenever the camera moves, it would _look_ like it's moving relative to the background.

So why is the camera moving? It's tracking the object. But the object isn't moving! Well, the camera doesn't track _movement_. It tracks _position_. The object is slightly offset from the center of the frame, so the tracking software slightly moves the camera to compensate. This of course does not change the situation, so the tracking software repeats its compensation. This constant camera movement in a single direction gives the appearance that the object is moving.

Why does the object show up on an infrared camera in the first place? It must be warm.

So… what is this warm object, which is stuck on the camera, slightly off- center, causing the tracking software to follow it, through and around the camera's axis, giving the appearance that the object is moving and then rotating?

Well, it's the same thing as this article in the NY Times, which, in service of securing funding from the UFO & Hitler Channel (as @floatrock astutely noted), decided to lend its gravitas to an easily-explainable video glitch which has been paraded by conspiracy theorists as incontrovertible validation of their deepest-held beliefs that extraterrestrials, against all probability, regularly visit Earth.

Bird shit.

Why am I paying for a NY Times subscription again?

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

<comment><USER4> The problem with that theory is that the object rotates but the clouds in the background don't.

<comment><USER3> I called out that fact as evidence _for_ the theory, so I'm not sure what you mean. Can you clarify why this is contradictory?

<comment><USER4> Sorry I misunderstood your argument on first reading. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, it's a year later, and it doesn't really seem like there's anything new here. Luis Elizondo (who's basically Guy Fieri mixed with Fox Mulder) looks and sounds like a crackpot, and keeping this up sure seems like a good way to drive sales of Leslie Kean's book about UFOs. So I'm really not inclined to believe this is anything really extraordinary, since so little credible, verifiable information has trickled out over the past year.

"The incidents tapered off after they left the United States, the pilots said."

Yeeaaaah, sorry, but this sounds like complete bullshit to me. And IMO, way below what The NY Times should deliver.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't look like The NY Times website is delivering much of anything..

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was just reading on the SpaceX subreddit on how a lot of people are reporting the Starlink satellites as UFO:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/bso4wt/footage_of_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/bso4wt/footage_of_starlink_satellites_seen_from_the/?st=jw5r8wrb&sh=074c758b)

<comment><USER8> My family and I saw the Starlink satellites two days ago at midnight. They were twice as bright as anything else in the sky except the moon. It was surreal to see these bright points of light move across the sky in single-file lockstep motion, like a train on invisible tracks. My best guess was an asteroid had broken up in the atmosphere, but the lights were really too uniform for that to be correct.

<comment><USER9> I'm kind of worried right now. Is this a temporary configuration or will the Starlinks always be that visible? If it stays the same, the night sky is going to be wild once they lunch all 12,000 of them.

<comment><USER10> [https://youtu.be/GEuMFJSZmpc](https://youtu.be/GEuMFJSZmpc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anybody else notice an uptick of these sorts of articles lately in the mainstream press?

<comment><USER12> its a very successful marketing campaign by the history channel for the show mentioned in the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Both of those videos looks like optical illusions or radar bugs. Too bad there isn't some sort of standard helmet cam so we can see from their direct perspective and get a better idea of how it might happen.

Someone's digging through the radar data too and there could be more multi- source correlations.

So far it seems each of these are single source with two people in the plane seeing it? Or two pilots flying in tandem facing the same way and speed.

<comment><USER14> Those videos were FLIR, not radar. These are trained pilots with experience in identifying flying objects, and the thing that stood out to them is they didn't see a source of propulsion. The movement characteristics were unlike anything they've seen. The object in question was flagged for their inspection by radar and they followed up visually. What they saw was baffling. The videos came from the aircraft and have been released by the Pentagon.

Regarding how many eyes have seen this. Take a read of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group report of the incident (PDF) which might answer some of your questions and raise others: [https://media.lasvegasnow.com/nxsglobal/lasvegasnow/document...](https://media.lasvegasnow.com/nxsglobal/lasvegasnow/document_dev/2018/05/18/TIC%20TAC%20UFO%20EXECUTIVE%20REPORT_1526682843046_42960218_ver1.0.pdf)

Edit: adding a couple of excerpts from the report.

\- "AAVs would descend "very rapidly" from approximately 60,000 feet down to approximately 50 feet in a matter of seconds. They would then hover or stay stationary on the radar for a short time and depart at high velocities and turn rates"

\- "The AAV did take evasive actions upon intercept by the F/A-18 demonstrating an advanced acceleration (G), aerodynamic, and propulsion capability."

\- "The Anomalous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) was no known aircraft or air vehicle currently in the inventory of the United States or any foreign nation."

\- "The AAV exhibited advanced aerodynamic performance with no visible control surfaces and no visible means to generate lift."

So here's what this comes down to. Three possibilities in order of likelihood:

* A: Psyop fakery: doctored videos were released through official channels, trying to fool other countries we saw something unusual. But why? Who benefits from that? What does it show to others, that our own military is unaware of experimental technology?

* B: Another country has made a giant leap in technology, possibly physics resulting in aerial combat superiority and this should scare any military leader, because if it's real this means the U.S. is no longer the biggest sky predator.

* C: Nonterrestrial origin.

I don't think there are any other possibilities. Last two are a game changer. First one is just bizarre. The weirdest thing, again, is that these videos were released by the Pentagon. You can request copies yourself by filing a FOIA request with the following wording "seeking cockpit videos cleared for release to Louis Elizondo in the fall (September-October) of 2017."

<comment><USER15> There's another possibility. These reports seem to be coming from a very specific class of pilot. Not just military pilots, but those flying the fastest aircraft. Not from commercial pilots or people just in general watching the sky. (Plane spotting is something many people do). I see one obvious possibility: Accelerating like that is a huge physiological strain, and may very well cause artifacts in vision.

For something like the FLIR footage I'm similarly skeptical. Artifacts can appear there as well, and frankly if some unknown research group or ET is able to mask their presence in the visual spectrum, heat signatures ought to be _easy_ , it's tech that already exists.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps in some cases.

In some of these cases, your theory requires multiple systems (multiple human eyes, IR cameras, radar) to experience corresponding simultaneous glitches - sometimes aboard multiple craft, some of which are surface ships!

One of the incidents was picked up on radar both by the missile cruiser USS Princeton and (faintly) by an EC-2 Hawkeye radar plane. Those radar planes don't pull high G's, and last I checked the USS Princeton sure the _heck_ doesn't.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident#Encoun...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident#Encounter)

<comment><USER15> Sure, but given thousands uponn thousands of flight hours, multiple simultaneous issues can line up. It's the swiss cheese model of systems failures, a fascinating way of explaining complex failures. Basically it says that if you have the potential for lots of small failures, they may on occasion line up and cause something quite a bit bigger.

It's certainly seems more plausible than a phenomenal that no other commercial pilots, plane spotters, or even military pilots flying slower aircraft have reported like this

<comment><USER16> If these kind of incidents aren't optical illusions or equipment malfunctions (two very big if's!) then the next most likely explanation IMHO is that these are drones being used by foreign nations to probe our nation's defenses and/or send a message to us that they have some _very_ advanced unmanned aircraft.

If true (big "if!") that would explain why only military pilots have reported these things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Navy Pilot's 2004 UFO: A Comedy of Errors [https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a...](https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors/?%2Fsi%2Fshow%2Fnavy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors)

</comment><comment><USER18> Jacques Vallee, a noted computer scientist in his own right, is one of the best reads if you're interested in this stuff. He's not a crackpot and doesn't seem to be pushing an agenda one way or another.

<comment><USER19> Er...

"Vallée proposes that there is a genuine UFO phenomenon, partly associated with a form of non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time. The phenomenon has been active throughout human history, and seems to masquerade in various forms to different cultures. In his opinion, the intelligence behind the phenomenon attempts social manipulation by using deception on the humans with whom they interact."

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

<comment><USER18> To wit, there seems to be an intelligent phenomenon going on, and it appears throughout history. He doesn't say anything about what it could be, simply is describing the phenomenon.

Also, I've read his books. Wikipedia quotes don't really give the same impression as his writing.

<comment><USER20> It appears to have an observer quality to it. The one that sticks out the most in my recent memory is the 2006 Chicago O'Hare sighting. I remember this going through a pretty quick 1 or 2 day news cycle. Fairly alarming given the number of people witnessing the phenomenon and the backgrounds of the people observing it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Ai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting)

Obviously rainbows are an example of a shared hallucination and the phenomena manifests differently dependent on the observer's viewing angle. At the moment I'm not convinced these aren't unexplained atmospheric phenomena because I've never seen one. I know some ideas put forth include ball lightning for at least some UFOs. Assuming these cases to involve intelligence may just be our misinterpretation of the phenomena.

<comment><USER21> Wait, rainbows are a shared hallucination?

<comment><USER20> It's refracted light arcing in the atmosphere. That's not a hallucination. Treating it as some continuous entity is a hallucination of our minds. There's nothing suggesting the start of the arc has anything to do with the end, but we call the collective refraction phenomena we witness a rainbow. UFOs could also be something that we collectively fail to comprehend well enough to categorize the constituent parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd just like to point out that Navy pilots are not privy to all US government programs to build new flying objects. Some of those programs are secret.

</comment><comment><USER23> As someone who has personally seen a couple of these things, I'm convinced that either extraterrestrial anthropologists are observing our planet, or human governments are operating highly advanced, top-secret craft. (I tend to think it's probably both.)

Think of it this way: if a group of violent, power-hungry monkeys on a nearby planet invented ICBMs and nuclear weapons, you'd want to keep an eye on them... wouldn't you?

<comment><USER24> Why would I want to keep an eye on them when "nearby" is an interstellar distance that they have no practical possibility of crossing any time soon, when I have technology that massively outclasses theirs, and when I know where they are but they don't even know I exist?

Wouldn't I have better and more interesting things to do with my time?

<comment><USER23> Obviously, for the extraterrestrial theory to work, you have to imagine you can warp or fold spacetime to get where you need to go, rather than using a conventional engine. Then the universe gets a bit smaller.

<comment><USER25> >Obviously, for the extraterrestrial theory to work, you have to imagine you can warp or fold spacetime to get where you need to go, rather than using a conventional engine.

That's fantasy, though. One might as well imagine aliens coming to Earth riding dragons through magic portals, as far as reality is concerned.

For any extraterrestrial theory to work and be plausible as a speculative explanation for real world events, it has to assume the speed of light is an inescapable hard limit on everything, because that seems to be the universe we actually live in.

<comment><USER2> Wormholes can exist on hard and solid physics theories, and people are trying to find out if they can make this work in practical situations.

Therefore, your "fantasy" of them coming to earth through magic portals may not be so far off. Whether or not a dragon makes for a good spaceship remains to be seen...

<comment><USER25> > Wormholes can exist on hard and solid physics theories, and people are > trying to find out if they can make this work in practical situations.

You kind of skipped over the part where someone discovers that wormholes _do actually_ exist, and that it's possible for anything to traverse them, much less circumvent the speed of light while doing so. There is, as yet, not "this" to make work in any practical situation. Theories abound, but not all of them agree that wormholes, if they were to exist, are even practical[0].

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665563)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "It looked to the pilot, Lieutenant Graves said, like a sphere encasing a cube." That was oddly specific. A search on UFO + cube leads to this video. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPquewvNAE4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPquewvNAE4) with alleged photos of cube-shaped objects in clouds, which look cool.Yah just never know what to believe.

</comment><comment><USER27> Jumping from "It's not American" to "Maybe it's extraterrestrial" seems like a big leap. What if they're Chinese?

<comment><USER12> why would the chinese take the _insane_ risk of testing an experimental drone in US airspace and near US fighters during a training exercise...

<comment><USER28> why the hell would aliens take that risk

<comment><USER29> We are ants. It's no risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > It looked to the pilot, Lieutenant Graves said, like a sphere encasing a > cube.

I'm no expert, but how could this possibly make any aerodynamical sense for a flying vehicle? It makes me suspect that the objects are just meteorological phenomena.

<comment><USER31> MHD.

Also, completely off topic: why not try to make a MHD train instead of hyperloop ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> NYT doesn't take debit card and I don't have a credit card. Your loss NYT.

<comment><USER33> The unsubscribe process is even worse. You have to call them, it's not possible to unsubscribe in the website. Extra fun if you're not from the states.

<comment><USER34> Set you address as located in California. They are required by state law to allow you to unsubscribe via the web, and they enable that feature _only_ if you say you live in the state.

<comment><USER35> Or subscribe via App Store. Unsubscribing is also a pain (10 clicks in obscure places) but no calling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's much more likely that this is just because of bugs in the code than aliens. I imagine these systems consist of millions of lines of code, sooner or later there will be a bug like this.

<comment><USER23> You might also consider that there are orders of magnitude more stars in our own galaxy than lines of code in any system built on Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Uh, It just seems like insect in the sensor

</comment><comment><USER38> This has been posted and upvoted a lot one month ago, why again? No new data.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hooey! Sounds to me the Navy is in need of more funding and this is how they ask. FUD+$= Huge Penions/Perks.

</comment><comment><USER40> earth lights...google hessdalen

</comment><comment><USER41> Electrogravitic manipulation. Amazing, but if the science/tech behind it became public, it would be quickly weaponized.

Some day, maybe...

</comment><comment><USER42> Just going by pure math conjecture it's unlikely there is intelligent life remotely similar to us in our galaxy. Supposing it takes ten thousand years for a technological civilization to double the number of planets it occupies. In that case it will fill the galaxy in less than a million years, so for two species to meet before one dies out or prevents the other from evolving they have to arise within the same million year period. In a galaxy over thirteen billion years old that's quite unlikely.

<comment><USER43> There is no pure math in this space - just hand-waving and conjecture.

We have exactly no information about xeno-evolution. It's not even a given that aliens would be motivated to colonise the galaxy, or that they'd do it in a way that would be recognisable to us.

It's hard enough to predict where human civilisation is going to be fifty years from now. The idea that we have any clue what an alien civilisation will do over millions of years is... unconvincing.

<comment><USER44> I think it disproves the distances are too vast. Nothing more. The rest is in your head.</comment></comment></comment>


A good blog series on learning Java 8 - <AUTHOR> http://shekhargulati.com/7-days-with-java-8/ <comment><USER2> I liked part 1 and part 4 of this series a lot. Covers lambdas and Optional usage in great detail.</comment>


A History of the Sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." (1999-2015) - <AUTHOR> https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/BuffaloBuffalo/buffalobuffalo.html <comment><USER2> Another favorite:

If police police police police, who police police police? Police police police police police police.

And:

James, while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.

Also, of course Martin Gardner came up with a great one:

Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

<comment><USER3> Is the first one quite right?

Who police police police? Police police police police.

If police police the police police, who police the police who police police police? That would be police who police the police who police the police who police police.

Who (n)? (n+1).

If (n), who (n)? (n+1). [n > 2]

P.S. 10 edits later... Wait, is that even right? Ow, my head

P.P.S. Coding this chatbot is the next hot interview question.

<comment><USER4> Police police = Internal Affairs [1].

Who polices Internal Affairs? Internal Affairs-police police Internal Affairs.

As I used a hyphen myself in that sentence, you could make a decent argument that English requires a bit more punctuation in the original sentence. It certainly allows it.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_\(law_enforcement\)) , for those who don't watch as much police drama as my family does, or who live in a place that calls it something different.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I don't believe it relies on unmarked compounds, or, indeed, adjectives at all. This is mentioned in point 3 in the linked article, but was surprised to see people in the email threads (e.g. Neuner) not get this.

Basically, as I understand it, there are three rules to make this continue indefinitely, using only nouns and verbs:

 _Rule 1_ : Any noun or noun-phrase can be made into a sentence by placing a verb at the end.

e.g. "Police police" is a sentence. What do police do? They police. We could also say "Cops police." Likewise it works with noun-phrases: "[Eager cops] police."

 _Rule 2_ : Any Noun phrase + Transitive verb sentence can have a noun placed at the end, as the object of the action.

e.g. "Police police police." Who do cops police? Other cops. Similarly: "Detectives investigate criminals."

 _Rule 3_ : The object of any sentence of the form above can be re-arranged by placing the object in front, to form a noun-phrase with the same number of words:

"Detectives investigate criminals" => "Criminals detectives investigate... [tend to get caught]". This can also be phrased as "Criminals THAT detectives investigate" for clarity, but the THAT is unnecessary in English.

"Police police police..." => "Cops THAT cops police... [tend to quit their jobs]

This forms a new noun phrase (a sentence fragment) that you can apply rule #1 to, and then continue indefinitely from there.

To apply these three rules up to seven words:

"Police police police: ("Cops police cops").

"Police police police police" ("Cops cops police police"): Turn the object of the sentence above into a noun phrase, from rule 3: "Cops (THAT) other cops police...", and add a verb (Rule 1): "The cops THAT other cops police, themselves police.

"Police police police police police" ("Cops cops police police cops"): Who do they police? Other cops. (Rule 2)

"Police police police police police police" ("Cops cops cops police police police"): (Rearranged noun phrase, from rule 3: The policemen (from the line above above) THAT are policed by cops that are themselves policed by cops) + (Rule 1 Verb: themselves police).

"Police police police police police police police" ("Cops cops cops police police police cops"): ... and who do they police? Other cops. (Rule 2)

...Anyway, this is how I worked it out myself, when trying to understand the buffalo sentence, and then was always very disappointed to find the variation with the capitalized "Buffalo" adjective being touted as the canonical one, since it always seemed less interesting to me.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you. This is the most profound way to interpret these kinds of sentences, and it exemplifies a consequence of how English allows you to omit the "that" in dependent clauses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's an entire subreddit dedicated to these things.

Definitely worth a check.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/](https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/)

EDIT: Adding some good examples:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/3ogese/a_sw...](https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/3ogese/a_swindler_passes_by_a_bird_in_the_stairwell_of/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/6so5w4/the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/6so5w4/the_longest_word_avalanche_ever_at_1366_chars_261/)

<comment><USER8> My favorites

The President of the United States is going to debate the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Nobody's sure who's going to win. - "Trump may trump May, May may trump Trump."

I've never done cocaine. - "My nose knows no snows."

The guy who sketches crossbreed dogs is suitable for the role - "The labradoodle doodle dude'll do."

<comment><USER9> At least we all know what did the Doge do.

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's also a Japanese version of this: 子子子子子子子子子子子子

Unfortunately I can only find a Spanish language Wikipedia article about it ([https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_no_ko_koneko,_shishi_no...](https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_no_ko_koneko,_shishi_no_ko_kojishi)) but its roughly "kitten is the son of the cat, 'puppy' is the son of the lion" (we don't really have an English word for baby lion)

<comment><USER2> _(we don 't really have an English word for baby lion)_

Cub?

<comment><USER11> Definitely better than puppy, but not quite specific to lions.

<comment><USER12> It's specific to lions, just not exclusive to lions.

<comment><USER13> Ooh, pedantry, my kind of thread:

[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/specific](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/specific)

I think it fails on most if not all definitions of specific.

"Lion cub" is specific, lion and cub are both specifiers. But "cub" is specific to juveniles of a range of species; so I'd say "not specific to lions".

Interesting then to think which species do have specific English single-word names for juveniles. Owlets, foals, and joeys spring to mind ...

French has _louveteau_ for a wolf cub, perhaps it has a specific lion cub word too? I'd imagine Kiswahili to have a specific word, perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> See also the German compound word:

Rhababerbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbarbärbel

Which roughly translates to 'She's the Barbie of the bar where the beer of the beard barber for the barbarians of Rhubarb Barbara's bar is sold'

Explanation video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8)

(in German, translation in video description)

<comment><USER15> If we're going off on a tangent: in Dutch, you can have a sentence ending in seven infinitives: "Ik zou hem wel eens _hebben willen zien durven blijven staan kijken._ " (I would _have liked to see_ him _dare to stay stand watching._ )

(Although Dutch and German syntax are almost identical, this doesn't work in German.)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing that. I'm learning Dutch (Flemish) for the last two-ish years, taking night classes). I heard my teacher say you can string along three infinitives, but didn't realize you can go up to _seven_!

I recently finished B-2 and now "C-1" level[+]---the most difficult so far. I'm going to persist...

[+] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages)

<comment><USER15> The sentence is a bit contrived, but any Dutch speaker will readily understand it. Three infinitives in a row is quite common, four is not that rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Police is a much better word for this, IMHO. :) To spell it out, it's an adjective (e.g police car) verb (e.g. police the streets) and obviously a noun. Buffalo has never struck me as a very good verb...

<comment><USER18> Here in the UK, I've never seen buffalo used as a verb, so the buffalo sentence has never seemed all that clever to me.

I've always preferred the publican's complaint - "This sign is painted wrong, you missed the spaces between Dog and and, and and and Duck" \- because it doesn't rely on unmarked compounds like police-police or Buffalo-buffalo no- one uses outside linguistic puzzles :)

<comment><USER19> American here. Never heard anyone use "buffalo" as a verb either outside of this puzzle.

"Police police" (as well as extensions) is reasonable enough:

"Internal Affairs is like the police police."

"So are their supervisors like, the police police police?"

<comment><USER12> It has a valid usage that's somewhat archaic. I've run into the term in literature and old TV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I prefer the "ship shipping ship shipping ship shipping ship" because there's a nice picture (possibly fake, but still) for it:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/pB0VXKq](https://imgur.com/gallery/pB0VXKq)

<comment><USER21> It's real.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And then there's the 2002 Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken paper by Doug Zongker ([https://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/08/14/chicken-chicken- ch...](https://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/08/14/chicken-chicken-chicken- chicken-chicken/))

Such an enlightening read!

<comment><USER4> It may not be the original video, but a video presentation of it is available at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk) by the original author, contrary to the link's claims. It is probably the better way to approach the paper, due to the importance of timing in comedy and the fact that paper presents so much to you in a way that it can't control the timing, though unfortunately the video resolution is quite low. Plus the Q&A is pretty good.

It is an amusing combination of video that is a trenchant commentary on the excessive similarity of the vast bulk of hard science papers, and a video that my four year old enjoyed back in the day. That puts your standard "family friendly" comedy movie to shame in terms of how much comedy ground it is capable of covering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Missed opportunity for a great domain name - [http://Buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.edu](http://Buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.edu)

</comment><comment><USER24> A bit of a stretch, but there's also:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

(NewYork bison [that] NewYork bison bully [also] bully NewYork bison)

<comment><USER25> This rides entirely on your local vernacular having a verb "buffalo" which means "to bully". I'm not sure how widespread that is but I sure never heard it before reading an explanation of this sentence.

<comment><USER26> It's in mine.

Maybe not common usage, but it's there.

Source: From the western US.

<comment><USER27> I grew up in Iowa/Minnesota, and buffalo is (was) used there. But is it a regionalism or anachronism?

To me, "to buffalo" canotes a combination of verbal bullying and deception more than physical bullying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It works for any noun that is also a verb and a place name. It might not make sense depending on what the noun and verb mean but it would be grammatically correct. If there's a town named Fish then you could substitute fish for buffalo.

<comment><USER29> No town as far as I could find but several rivers called Fish. So yes, you can fish Fish fish.

<comment><USER28> I can see a Dr. Seuss style of book being written about "smelt" since it's a noun (a fish) a verb (extract metal from ore) and when spoken it's not very distinguishable from "smelled" and both "smelts" have are relatively strong smelling.

<comment><USER29> > and when spoken it's not very distinguishable from "smelled"

In fact "smelt" is a completely valid alternative spelling of "smelled" (see [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smell#Verb](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smell#Verb)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What I find most fascinating about this story is the "I'm certain I came up with this" notion, given the last several emails on that webpage. Memory is a terribly imprecise thing. We seem to fill in gaps with other memories that are shaped to fit the gap, or we logically reason it out without telling ourselves that we are using logic not memory. I personally have very detailed provably false memories.

</comment><comment><USER31> always fun.

i'm fond of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher)

and [https://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php](https://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php)

as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> Speaking of words ... here's one of my favorite German compound words:

 _Verschlimmbesserung_ — "an intended improvement that makes things worse"

I'm sure many of us here can relate to the word :D

History of the word:

"This construction doesn't just present contrasting concepts. It also employs a playful use of German's grammatical structures to tie them together. The word begins with two verbs – verschlimmern ("to worsen") and verbessern ("to improve"). It then conflates their prefixes (ver-), and adds the suffix (-ung) to turn it into a noun. This process compresses an idea that only a wordy English translation can unpack: "an intended improvement that makes things worse."

Source: [https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has- so-m...](https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has-so-many- great-words-55554)

<comment><USER32> I've heard that called "refucktoring" :)

<comment><USER16> Haha. A German colleague called it "inferiprovement". But I like the version you heard better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A great example of the beauty of the english language.

German translation: Büffel-büffelnde Büffel büffeln Büffel. Not nearly as nice.

<comment><USER34> I'd say that it's an example of a flaw in the english language: I don't know german but I think that the fact that not all words are exactly the same in the sentence will make it easier to parse. I'm not a native English speaker but I think I'm fairly proficient, and I find that I struggle parsing newspaper and website titles much more often than I would expect - I never struggle when speaking with people. I think this is due to the fact that short sentences omit articles and prepositions, which makes english way harder to parse since it doesn't have the redundancy in grammatical cues that other languages have.

<comment><USER35> Words being the same makes it harder to parse, but easier to speak/write...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://oeis.org/A007477](https://oeis.org/A007477)

"For n>=2, a(n) gives number of possible ways to parse an English sentence consisting of just n+1 copies of word "buffalo", with one particular "plausible" grammar."

</comment><comment><USER37> See also the palindrome "Bob bob bob bob bob".

[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=shs1DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=shs1DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=A+Plenum+of+Palindromes+for+Lewis+Carroll+A+Plenum+of+Palindromes+for+Lewis+Carroll&source=bl&ots=mYdUI6EyOJ&sig=ZceJl7Ilco-4TFiZ3n_avbzRWjE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwin35mGhcXeAhXMAsAKHUQ4AxMQ6AEwAnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=A%20Plenum%20of%20Palindromes%20for%20Lewis%20Carroll%20A%20Plenum%20of%20Palindromes%20for%20Lewis%20Carroll&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER38> A few years ago I created a syntactically correct, but semantically meaningless programming language based on this.

Devoid of syntactic sugar, Buffalo Lang has only one token.

[http://bfalo.com](http://bfalo.com)

<comment><USER39> Did someone really ask for pointers?

<comment><USER38> It's Esoteric Enterprise ready..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> A famous one in Chinese is The Lion-Eating Poet in a Stone Den, which has all characters sounding out as "shi": [http://www.fa- kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML](http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML)

This is somewhat cheating since not all the "shi" are in the same tone.

In general, homophonic sentences are easier to write in Chinese because (1) it's a monophonic language, so the set of possible syllables is small and (2) Chinese grammar is flexible, and words can be liberally rearranged in a sentence and still read fine.

</comment><comment><USER41> Frankly I'm not surprised. The only bison in the city of Buffalo are in the zoo. As we all know, bison are native to the great prairies, and would be happy only if they had freedom to roam. It must be very stressful for them to be cooped up in small spaces. So they are likely to take out their frustrations on their fellow zoo residents.

Shame on Buffalo for condoning animal cruelty! They should close down the zoo.

</comment><comment><USER42> The buffalo have been buffaloing for quite a while:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER43> I just wish my alma mater's website could make the front page of HN for something other than this!

</comment><comment><USER44> Probably a more of a statement about my sense of humor than anything else, but this is, by not even close, the funniest thing I have ever read on Hacker News!

</comment><comment><USER45> One of the "Yes, Yes, No" segments on Reply All featured this and it was the only time I've come away from it more confused then when they started

</comment><comment><USER13> How about "man eating lion eating man eating lion eating man ...".

It should probably be "man-eating lion" for the lion that eats a man, but that spoils it.

</comment><comment><USER46> It's funny, because Buffalo buffalo are actually Bison bison bison. And when one decides to buffalo, the other is usually cowed.

</comment><comment><USER47> Humorous but does this move us closer to true AI?

</comment><comment><USER48> The 'sentence' is not correct English because it's missing important punctuation marks. In fact, it's not a sentence.

The definition of a sentence according to Google is: "a set of words that is complete in itself...". Without punctuation, it is incomplete; so it is not a sentence. Maybe it's a phrase?

Adding punctuation makes it a sentence:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

...

Buffalo buffalo which Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

...

Buffalo bisons which Buffalo bisons bully, bully Buffalo bisons.

</comment><comment><USER49> Polish polish Polish polish polish, polish Polish polish Polish polish.

Uniform in writing, though pronunciation shifts with casing.

</comment><comment><USER50> Goose is one of those too, though the plural sort of ruins it. Still poetic though:

Geese geese goose goose geese.

</comment><comment><USER51> i know a german one which almost also works in english: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher" which should translate to: if behind flies flies are flying, flies are flying behind flies.

</comment><comment><USER52> The only thing missing is an explanation why buffalo and dog are verbs. Non native speaker here, but afaik they are not.

<comment><USER53> See:

[https://www.dictionary.com/browse/buffalo](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/buffalo) (verb)

[https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dog](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dog) (verb)

"buffalo" is almost never used as a verb in everyday speech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is useless. Also, as a non-native speakee, I don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Buffalo * 10

<comment><USER56> No plus sign, so buffalo^10 :)

<comment><USER55> yes</comment></comment></comment>


The Freeze Frame File System - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/songweijia/fffs <comment><USER2> Project home page: [https://fffs.codeplex.com/](https://fffs.codeplex.com/)</comment>


Keep writing Dustin - <AUTHOR> http://sufficientlyadvanced.net/keep-writing-dustin

<comment><USER3> From dustin's article:

"Reasonable people would probably not spend the time to read a book about the history of flatware, buy twenty sets, and test the feeling of each metal utensil against their teeth. That sounds completely insane. But who cares about reasonable people?"

Out of curiositiy: how much money 20 sets of designer flaware cost? Because if it is something around the price I suspect, then dustin's original article is very close to saying: 'I am rich, and you should be too'. You know where I live ... I've just sold some of the used clothes of my 1 year old child to a middle-class woman... Even buying designer stuff is about money, not to mention buying 20 sets just to try out...

Fortunatelly there are obscure hobbies for unreasonable people which do not take money. (Like learning set theory just for the fun (or insight) of it.)

tl;dr: dustin's original article is a triviality:

1\. if you have enough money 2\. you have enough time 3\. your obsession is buying very well designed things

then go for it.

But it is a triviality that most people lack (1.) even if they do not lack (2.) and (3.) (And because of lacking (1.) many people lack (2.) and maybe even partially (3.) (having bigger problems, they do not think about these things that much))

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems like this author misses the point too. At first it seems like he was trying to reshape the original posts' message into a sort of 'live the best way possible' message, but instead he turns his focus back onto material goods.

"This isn't materialism, it's a deep consideration for the non-materialistic things that depend on the material. A lamp for reading or helping. A flatware set for eating. A backpack for hiking. A towel for traveling. These are all intellectual and spiritual pursuits that are also important."

Eating is not about flatware, neither is hiking about backpacks, nor traveling about towels. Obsessing over the best backpack takes away time you could be spending actually hiking.

<comment><USER5> You need a backpack to hike. You could hike without one but that would involve carrying everything in your hands. Backpacks are the evolution of ergonomic design to make carrying items on long journeys comfortable.

You need a towel if you travel. You could drip dry after each shower or decide not to at all but that introduces another set of hygenic and time-wasting problems.

You need utensils to eat. You could use your hands, again not paying attention to hygiene, or you could be civilized and use a knife and fork.

Researching and buying the best ensures you should only buy once. It's appreciating that someone, or group of people, have spent months, even years paying attention to every detail in designing something that serves an important purpose.

<comment><USER4> All of these things potentially improve your experience. Despite not using the best designed tools for any particular job, I personally remember experiences for who I was with or what we did, not with with which brand of x or type of y.

<comment><USER5> But that's what Dustin is saying. If you're using the right tool or the right equipment, you won't focus on it. You won't worry about something breaking. You'll get to enjoy the experience. These quality 'things' don't improve the experience, they prevent other factors (such as a poor quality backpack breaking) ruining the experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This does not share an interpretation with the "empty madness" retort - <USER2> may as well be talking about totally different posts.

Doshi writes "the takeaway for me is: find the best possible things you deeply depend on in life." Clearly, mapgrep instead read the post as a celebration of materialism. The meanness of the language may have been unjustifiable, but the point made was not irrelevant. There _is_ an argument around how we prioritise people versus things, and some will fall so far on the people side that a preoccupation with things seems almost offensive. pg asserting that the popularity of the post was "the decline of HN embodied" seemed to me equally wrong. I (a lowly newcomer) thoroughly enjoy a top-voted post that strongly contrasts the submission, especially when the pair serve to draw attention to a dichotomy.

Edit: On reflection, the most interesting thing about the two texts might be that they actually seem to _share_ a frustration with materialism. Where the author of the vitriolic response wants the notion of design quality entirely out of the equation, dcurtis liberates himself by settling it one object at a time. I see examples of both in my own life: choosing _the_ watch or _the_ sneakers and buying them over and over, so that I never again need to think seriously and qualitatively about watches or sneakers. And, in moments of design obsession, waking as if from a trance thinking "When was the last time I called my mum?"

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that engineers spend an inordinate amount of time researching the best hardware and software, yet can't understand someone who extends that search into the material world. A search for perfection is admirable in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER8> Like Dustin is going to stop writing because random folk criticized him on the internet... (I side w/ random folk in this one though)

</comment><comment><USER9> Who's Dustin? Link anyone?

<comment><USER10> Here's the link to Dustin's previous article and a link to a discussion which took HN ablaze. - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4755470></comment></comment>


Review my project: WhatIsMyUDID.com - <AUTHOR>

http://WhatIsMyUDID.com
After spending 3 hours trying to explain to a non-technie user how to retrieve and send over the iPhone UDID for testing, I decided to spend 12 hours on this project to save everyone's time.
1. Got to http://www.WhatIsMyUDID.com on your iPhone or iPad
2. Tap START (only if you're on an iOS device)
3. Tap INSTALL to display the device UDID.
Hopefully, this solution will help save many other developers from having to go thru the same pain :) No more 12 steps with iTunes, no more explaining how to download and install Apps, no login, no registration.
It just works.
Or, if it doesn't work well enough, please let me know your feedback and suggestions where to take the project from here! Thanks. <comment><USER2> Seems nice, and I may use it in the future. Alternatively, I tend to just tell people to install this app and email it to me.

<http://appshopper.com/utilities/ad-hoc-helper>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks arn, we were trying to do the same -- explain how to install an app, but had problems explaining it over email (search "udid" in App Store returns way too many results).

It was much easier to say, "Open Safari on your iPhone and go to <http://WhatIsMyUDID.com>.

We actually wrote a simple AdHoc UDID as well, but decided that a single- function webpage was more straightforward.

<comment><USER3> I definitely prefer this to downloading an app just to turn around and delete it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice if Apple's crash logs actually worked as advertised in iTunes Connect. That would save me the trouble of needing UDID's from my users in the first place.

This works great for clients though.

<comment><USER5> For those doing work for clients and need to install beta software into the client's devices, <http://WhatIsMyUDID.com> will come pretty handy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, this is so simple and useful! It just works! Keep up the good work. :)</comment>