One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people - <AUTHOR> http://onedollarglasses.org <comment><USER2> Glasses are a total racket. Purchasing your glasses online is many, many times cheaper than going to Lenscrafters or basically any other brick & mortar store in the US. I've been buying online for years and they're every bit as good as usual ones. You do need your pupillary distance, but you either measure this yourself with the help of a friend, or ask your optometrist. If they refuse or tell you how evil buying glasses online is, get a new optometrist.

The best sites I'm aware of are:

[http://www.zennioptical.com/](http://www.zennioptical.com/) (what I use)

[https://www.goggles4u.com/](https://www.goggles4u.com/)

[https://www.39dollarglasses.com/](https://www.39dollarglasses.com/)

<comment><USER3> I would love to buy glasses on-line, but have a simple issue of having an absolute massive head. Unless I go in and physically try on a pair, I just have to assume it won't fit (usually the width of face, but temple length is also a pain...)

:(

<comment><USER4> I have a really wide head, but a relatively narrow face. I have a lot of problems with fit as well as style as a result. I just went to Costco and tried on every pair of glasses they had, figured out what style looked best, took the measurements off the frames that fit, and used that to order glasses online. Costco's profit comes from their membership fees rather than selling anything, so you don't have to feel bad about not buying anything (since you already have a membership).

The one thing I need to look out for is how the hook on the arm is constructed. One of my ears is slightly farther back than the other (by maybe 2 millimeters). If I buy frames where the arm can't be readjusted the glasses can rest a bit askance on my face.

<comment><USER5> > Costco's profit comes from their membership fees rather than selling > anything

Membership is key both because its essentially zero cost, and because paid membership motivates choosing Costco as the place to make purchases (one reason Costco sells so,much more per unit of floospace than, e.g., WalMart), but Costco, absolutely, does make profits from sales, even if its margins are fairly low.

<comment><USER4> Well, their stated goal is to only make as much profit as is needed to cover their expenses. I personally don't consider that profit, but the price they sell goods for is indeed greater than the cost they bought them for.

<comment><USER6> Surely salaries have to be taken into account? If they fill their boots ratger than shareholder profits customers still pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My glasses cost $39 from one of the many online cheap glasses makers. So now I have more money to donate to the $1 glasses campaign :)

Last time I got glasses, I tried a test, I bought the $300 glasses from my eye doctor ("only" $200 after insurance), and I bought a pair of $39 glasses online. I found no difference between the two other than price (and the ones I bought online arrived by mail the day before the expensive pair was ready from my eye doctor).

And I bought a second pair of backup glasses for less than my eye doctor wanted for his "lens protection insurance".

Though admittedly, I have a simple, low-power prescription (< -3.0, no astigmatism), so your milage might vary with a more complex prescription.

<comment><USER8> Last time I got a new prescription I asked them to include the PD number and they refused. They would only give that to me if I bought glasses through them. I couldn't even pay them for just the measurement (I suggested $10-$20).

It's easy enough to measure myself, so that's what I did.

My glasses were $45 and he said his costs were more than twice that. Where's all that money going?

<comment><USER9> >It's easy enough to measure myself

Do you have any recommendations about this? It's the kind of thing I'm a bit nervous about searching as I can see many, many ways I might accidentally read the optician equivalent of an anti-vaccination blog.

<comment><USER7> Here's a guide from one of the online glasses sellers:

[http://www.zennioptical.com/measuring-pd- infographic](http://www.zennioptical.com/measuring-pd-infographic)

They sent me a free PD ruler (it has a slit in the middle so you can see your pupils and a notch in the middle to center it on your nose) with my glasses, but I just used a standard ruler the first time I measured, and got the same measurement when my glasses arrived and I used their ruler. I was off by 1 mm in one eye when I compared to my eye doctor's measurements. For my prescription, that's not very significant, but it might be for a stronger prescription.

You can buy a PD ruler for a dollar or two from eBay if you don't want to use a standard ruler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is fantastic, and I will definitely be making a donation, but I think they would benefit from taking a page out of the Lucky Iron Fish book, and sending a pair of the glasses to donors who contribute 50 dollars or more. I have found the Lucky Iron Fish I have to be helpful in convincing others to donate, and I think having a pair of these glasses could similarly make the project more tangible to prospective donors.

[http://www.luckyironfish.com/](http://www.luckyironfish.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Why aren't these kind of hardware driven campaign fully open source?

Why is there not a pdf with plans and clear cut instructions on how to build the wire bender (which at 2500 Euros is absolutely insane)?

I understand using the money for funding more glasses makes sense, but in reality if your mission is for this hardware breakthrough to improve everyone's life all around the world, why hide and hog the design?

I'd like to build this in my machine shop in the other corner of the world, why send 2500 Euros to Germany? I just don't get it. It makes me think of ulterior motives and when that happens I quickly lose faith in the organization. Everyone loses, the cause itself being the most affected.

<comment><USER12> Very nice! I only wish your web site had og metadata so that I could socially share your site on FB, LinkedIn, etc. and have the title, description, and preview image show up in my posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM)

Luxottica currently owns 80% of the eyeglass business

</comment><comment><USER14> How do they do cylindrical axis with a small inventory of lenses and non-round lenses? The three parameters for lenses are spherical radius, cylindrical radius, and axis of the cylinder. A complete set of a good range in all three is large, which is what leads to custom lenses.

There's a known way to cut costs with round lenses. With round lenses, you can have a small inventory of premade lenses with only two parameters. The axis is set with a little notcher that makes a notch which locks it to a bump in the frame, so it can't rotate. These have been used in India for decades. There's an optical store in an attache case.

If the One Dollar Glasses guys only use 25 different lenses, are they just blowing off the cylindrical correction entirely? Are these just "readers" like the ones available cheaply at most drugstores? Those you can get on Alibaba for $0.75 each in bulk.[1]

[1] [https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Premade-Distance- Glas...](https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Premade-Distance- Glasses_121759902.html)

<comment><USER15> That is the impression that I got - they are just like off-the-shelf reading glasses. But so what? They are giving cheap glasses to people in poverty who had nothing before. Sure, you can buy similar thing in bulk for similar prices, but can you then also deliver them to these people for the other quarter? Even if you can do so, are you actually doing so? These guys are. I'm not going to criticize them for it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The guy is a physics teacher who invented a small wire bending device which is used to make the glasses locally anywhere at material costs of 1$.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's pretty amazing how much extra cost most glasses cost. And this comes at a very steep cost for most people. I've worked with a charity organization called Remote Area Medical (RAM) which provides free medical, dental, and vision care. Lots of people are there because they can no longer see, cannot get a job because of it, and thus have no money. RAM can create a vision prescription, prepare the lenses on the spot, and give a patient glasses for a cost of $15 in an hour, patients dont pay anything. We really need to do more in making cheap glasses more available to people in the US.

Here is one person's struggle in getting glasses while poor (clip from 2008, but we see this at clinics constantly) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TfraBGSGg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TfraBGSGg8)

</comment><comment><USER17> I got 4 pairs of glasses on amazon (needed the opposite of reading glasses which are hard to find in stores) for $8. I was pretty darn impressed by how cheap the free market is vs doctors offices.

<comment><USER18> Having worked in the optical business to put myself through engineering school, I know that glasses can be very expensive; there's a poop tonne of overhead at those places.

That being said, be very careful of cheap glasses. If you have a strong Rx, you need the OC to be aligned properly with your P.D. otherwise you're inducing prism. This can cause severe headaches and eye fatigue. You should also make sure you go see a Dr regularly; those exams test more than just your vision. You could be going blind in a preventable way and not know until too late.

Oh, cheap frames just aren't as comfortable at the end of the day as not as cheap frames. Buyer beware.

* Not a Dr myself. I worked in the labs. Don't take anything I say to be any sort of medical advice. I'm merely saying be very careful with your precious eye sight.

<comment><USER17> Hmm. I got the least strong one they had. I think 1.5. Hopefully that's okay. I only use them sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is obviously a really admirable cause, and as someone who wears contacts, I couldn't imagine not having access to corrective lenses.

Just a word of caution to anyone considering making a donation, their donations page is not served over HTTPS. Their unsecured page renders an iframe [1] from their payment processor that is served over HTTPS though. I haven't tested it, but you should be able to make a donation securely via that link.

I reached out to them to let them know and offered some assistance.

[1] [https://secure.fundraisingbox.com/app/payment?hash=UuYpAgAJ0...](https://secure.fundraisingbox.com/app/payment?hash=UuYpAgAJ0Hx7eupPM9waOFGDallJQMgpPR%2BuRijuDzdHgGleT3LxJTsbnksg9Rs%2FG5whDWRy%2BmkXSMtbIq4SNn3dfUMtaq05RA6PAg%2B%2BGBx8hCkpLTS8OXJY015Gpk9LMtUmLx0HvCsnNodWV%2FcdTQ%3D%3D#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.onedollarglasses.org%2Fdonations%2F)

</comment><comment><USER20> I am using prescribed glasses since I was in 3rd grade. I feel like I'm wasting money when I spend more than 1000 INR (around 15 USD) on glasses. I can't imagine spending 700 USD on glasses. I can live on that money for about 4 months with that money.

<comment><USER6> People spending $700 are buying it from a store that has to pay US rent, US employers paing US rent. You need to adjust for local wages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Related: work is also being done on a $1 microscope -- to identify disease in poor countries, and/or for education/classrooms. [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/525471/the-1-origami- micr...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/525471/the-1-origami-microscope/) and [http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/origami-microscope- les...](http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/origami-microscope-less-dollar)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a bit (actually a lot) worrying that their donation page that you enter personal and credit card info is not over HTTPS. Possibly it will significantly decrease the donations they'll receive online.

</comment><comment><USER23> The comments are very interesting. I think glasses are a very specific issue. The question is: do want perfect view or just want to see something better.

For better view this is great.

But for the developed world it is not comparable. Either because the eyeglass frame should follow some trend, or the glasses itself needs some additional threatment.

For example, my glasses are 'cheap' even as I need special glasses. Yes, the diopter are different between left and right. But much more important is the parallax compensation for me. My optician exchanges the glasses even for free, if they don't fit. So online, is realy not an option.

</comment><comment><USER24> Buying glasses in Asia or online is so much cheaper than the scam run by Lenscrafters, most optometrists in the US. Its sold as a designer product where you spend $$$ on frames, the glass material with fancy treatments, and they charge you maybe 5-10x the actual costs.

I have ordered from Goggles4u, Zenni etc and these places must have razor thin profit margins, they always have coupons and its dirt cheap, never had issues with the quality of the lenses. You can always go to any optometrist/Costco etc and get the lens checked out to confirm.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have found purchasing glasses can be hit or miss weather I buy $600 glasses or less that twenty dollar glasses. I may miss a bit more with cheap glasses, but I can take a lot more shots.

I've used zennioptical.com and it has worked really well. I've run into frames that do not fit, but they were cheap mistakes and once I found something I liked, I just reorder every few years.

Paying attention to the frame measurements is pretty important if you buy online.

</comment><comment><USER26> I will definitely be donating. I've had glasses since I was 3 and I understand how expensive they can be. (as a kid, I used to break mine often and my parents would have to pay insane amounts of money to get new ones).

From what I understand, the frames themselves are just overpriced[0]

[0] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7H-_8UkmFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7H-_8UkmFU)

</comment><comment><USER27> mass produced chinese glasses beat it first

i bought a dozen negative glasses for $15 five years ago at chinatown in Jakarta, Indonesia; should be cheaper in china.

same model, same power, but can't choose color.

the retail is available so i can choose model, power, color, etc for $2 per glasses

I also bought a +4 glasses for less than $1, metal frame. positive glasses are cheaper maybe because there's less demand.

their quality depend solely on material, not price. my more stylish glasses (no-frame-around-glass, flexible handle) lasts about 3-6 months on heavy use. sturdier styles (harry-potter-styele, thicker plastic frame) lasted more than a year till my-then-baby-boy tore it forcefully from my face. my <$1 positive metal frame glasses seem to last forever.

nb: i wear positive lens everyday for my eye training and choose to no longer wear negative lens; therefore, i haven't bought any lenses for about three years; however, the prices are still about the same last time i checked at jakarta's chinatown.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've heard that all these different brands in eye glasses industry are mostly owned by just a few holding companies. Hence the high price for everything related to eye glasses.

Never bothered to actually check but I remember hearing that in a podcast.

</comment><comment><USER29> The site makes it look like exclusively a charity? I can donate and that means someone gets glasses. But can I buy them for myself or a friend as well? I couldn't find the answer (on mobile)

<comment><USER30> Based on this page[1], it looks like they provide the machine and training required to produce the glasses on-site in remote locations by locals so that they can operate their own businesses. This makes a lot of sense, because it's a lot cheaper to deploy X quantity of materials required to produce the glasses all at once vs hundreds of individual glasses. Also, it helps boost their local economies.

[1]: [http://www.onedollarglasses.org/the-glasses/production-on- si...](http://www.onedollarglasses.org/the-glasses/production-on-site.html)

<comment><USER31> If they really want this to go wide spread, they should make a way for locals to "make money" on the machines, like they can resell them for $2

then it could spread and be self-sustaining, and everywhere would have $2 glasses, which is actually somewhat affordable, even in developing countries.

My only other concern is what about astigmatism? Are they teaching the people that distribute it to accomodate for that (like "2 hour optometrist training" LOL)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So, where can I buy high quality sunglasses (have 20/15 vision)? Obviously junk doesn't cut it, and I really don't want to feed the Luxottica monster.

<comment><USER33> Maui Jim sunglasses are reportedly exceptionally high quality, also not part of Luxottica. My brother loves them, I don't wear sunglasses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> why are these glasses so cheap?

<comment><USER35> The real question is why are other glasses so expensive, and the answer is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica).

<comment><USER36> It's a bit disingenuous to compare these $1 wire glasses to glasses you would buy from an Optometrist.

There are some very clear and distinct differences.

Yes, there is a lot of bloat in prescription glasses pricing, but it's not 99% bloat (ie. it's not a $1 cost-to-manufacturer product being sold to you).

Frames are overly expensive, but a trivial comparison will reveal most frames are a lot more sturdy/well-constructed than a simple 18awg wire bent into shape.

The real expense is the lenses, and their coatings. The lenses in the $1 glasses surely cannot have anti-glare/fog/scratch/shatter coatings, otherwise the lenses alone would cost far more than $1! Also, the quality of manufacturing plays an important role, as other HNers have pointed out (the precision shape of the lenses, etc.).

The real "meat" of this thing isn't to highlight how over-priced prescription glasses are, it's to showcase a well intentioned charity that's providing clear vision to people who would not be able to get it any other way. These people will accept less quality, because the alternative is not being able to see. The $1 donation price-point enables a wider range of folks to be able to donate, which feeds the cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wore cheap glasses for the last ~15 years, my eyes are still 20/20 the last time I checked which was ~3 months ago.

<comment><USER38> Why do you wear glasses if your vision is already 20/20?

<comment><USER39> I am assuming he meant sun shades ?

<comment><USER37> correct :).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why are Hackathons an all-night event? - <AUTHOR>

Why not over 2 days (a weekend) so people can get some rest in between? Am I just being soft here because I don't like the idea of staying up all night anymore? The culture of all-nighters and ridiculous caffeine/sugar consumption is overrated. And absolutely terrible for your health.
This is coming from someone with a day job who's interested in Hackathon-like events but generally unwilling due to the logistics.
Disclaimer: I am a college student who's been through the exact typical "hacking" conditions.. Staying up 72 hours before a big deadline to put together a project was the norm. I suppose the biggest argument in favor of this are the unique social experiences you get under this kind of duress.
What are your opinions on this? <comment><USER2> If there was a period of rest in between two sessions then some teams would keep working and get an unfair advantage. It would effectively turn into a 2-day hackathon rather than a 1-day hackathon.

And isn't an extremely big effort kind of the meaning of "-athon"?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not all Hackathons are all night events - most in my opinion are throughout the weekend, but the hacking is usually 10-7 on saturday</comment>


Show HN: Jazzle – An Innovative, Fast Transpiler for ECMAScript 2015 and later - <AUTHOR> https://www.github.com/JazzleWare/jazzle <comment><AUTHOR> Hi. I'm the original (and the only!) author of jazzle. I started working on it around Sep. 2015. I am from a country where I can no longer access npm without tor, and even then it is so excruciatingly slow as to be unusable. As such, aside from the ever essential node and vi, I had to build everything, including the builder and the test framework, not to mention the parser, the emitter, and the transformer, and the bundler, from scratch, by myself.

it certainly took some time, but now, it can even build itself!

Among its features are:

* very fast compilation times (2x faster than babel, with sourcemaps, on my early benchmarks.)

* on-the-fly minification

* built-in bundling

* economic sourcemaps

* built-in regex-verifier (and I'm working on a standalone regex-emitter, too)

* runtime this-before-super() checks

* runtime (rather than parse-time) checks for constant re-assignments

* cheap yet full temporal-dead-zone tracker (and everyone thought it is impossible)

* non-invasive, arguably more efficient transformation for loops having closures around their lexicals

* zero-dependencies, obviously (though I'm not much proud of it; cf. above)

* aggressive temporary-variable-reuse (though I have to say there are still some rough edges)

* and needless to say, nearly all ES2015 constructs (except for getters/setters and generators; I'm currently working on a cool generator transformer too, but that's at least two months away.)

Now, this is a project still in its infancy (and the two years I've been working on it had better be looked at as its embryohood), and I have to confess I'm getting more and more spent working on it, so I'm actively, eagerly looking for collaborators, particularly for receiving real-world feedback and for helping me complete the test suite.

Comments, suggestions and any other sort of feedback is most welcome.

Thanks a lot reading this far.

<comment><USER2> How is it better than babel? Why is it innovative?

<comment><AUTHOR> > How is it better than babel? Why is it innovative?

Just for the record, this submission's original title was "A very fast Ecmascript Transpiler+Bundler+Minifier in less than 80kb minified, gzipped"; There was indeed another submission with the current title, but I actually deleted it, thinking it was somewhat pretentious. I'm not sure how the title got reverted during migrating the submission to show HN.

I made no such claims as jazzle being better than babel; I'm not even sure such comparison would be logically true. All I said was that it has performed better than babel on my local benchmarks.

As for innovativeness, what I can tell off the top of my head is its advanced tdz tracker, along with its non-invasive transformation strategy for closures containing loop lexicals.

Thanks a lot reading this far, and I can't wait for your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll admit, I probably won't ever try this unless it gets some popularity behind it.

That said, congrats on a pretty full-featured javascript package that has no dependencies. That's huge, especially in JS land.

Mind if I ask _which_ country that you live in that blocks npm? Just curious.

<comment><USER4> > I probably won't ever try this unless it gets some popularity behind it.

Wow, the javascript community is militant about who picks flavour of the week and noone else trying other flavours huh?

<comment><AUTHOR> he might be partially right, because I have not yet found time to write tests for certain functions of the transpiler (I have been effectively unemployed for a few months now and making ends meet is my only priority at the moment.)

that said, I too believe sheer popularity may not always be a great heuristic to judge the stability of a piece of software with .....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does it compare to buble in terms of speed? (And yes, I realize buble does not support a variety of es2016 features).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking! jazzle's feature set is currently roughly that of buble's, so I guess that won't be something jazzle will especially win at. As for speed, jazzle was about 70%-80% slower than buble, at least the buble I installed about a year ago.

but please take these into consideration when comparing the two:

* jazzle always tracks tdz -- buble doesn't; I'm working on a way to make tdz optional.

* jazzle always records source-maps, so any comparison against other transpilers should take this into account. (as an aside, jazzle's sourcemaps are propably _much_ smaller than buble's; there are some other tiny, cool features there too but I havenot yet found time to document them)

* jazzle tracks all top-level scopes during name synthesis; buble tracks just the first, which means things like 'var a; { let a; (function() { var a$1; a; })(); }' will not compile the way it should. actually, I created a gist, [https://gist.github.com/icefapper/f672b71f569b95c0c1a8e31746...](https://gist.github.com/icefapper/f672b71f569b95c0c1a8e317466c1f41), and sent its link to Rich, but never received a response; it may be that he simply did not get to scroll down enough, as I'm sure he is a very busy man.

* jazzle, while fairly up and running (it can build and bundle and minify itself in slightly above 2secs on my 2011 vaio), has still a number of bottlenecks; after all, all these two years were spent to just rush it into production; with enough time (say, two months or so), I am very much confident I can make it run as fast as buble, without making any compromise on its accuracy.

* these, and I would be very glad if you could help me with the benchmarking!</comment></comment>


Hackers at convention to ferret out election system bugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-conference/hackers-at-convention-to-ferret-out-election-system-bugs-idUSKBN1KV0ZQ?il=0&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter <comment><USER2> Some useful information about paper ballot process, based on my experience as a Minnesota election judge. Minnesota has _excellent_ election law and process, which is how we've survived two high-profile statewide recounts in the recent past without incident.

First and foremost, paper ballots everywhere. No touchscreens.

Second, from printing time onward, _all_ handling of ballots, whether marked or unmarked, must be done in the presence of representatives of at least two political parties. At no point are ballots left alone with individuals or only one party (this is something a lot of states could learn from us!). This eliminates many avenues for cheating by adding or removing ballots from the count.

The ballots themselves are Scantron, fill in the dots with ink. The state provides standardized pens for this.

All registered voters in a precinct are tracked in a paper roll. In order to get a ballot, voters must either be in the registration book, or apply for a provisional ballot (which requires identification). Names are marked off the registration roll as they get their ballots, and a count is kept. At the end of voting, the total count of the voting machines must match the total count of voters _exactly_. Any difference triggers a manual count.

Scantron machines are randomly spot-checked - some percentage of them will be hand-counted, and those counts checked against the machine results. Multiple mismatches across the district/state would trigger an election-wide hand count. This insures against cheating by altering the behavior of the machines. (This is also where touch-screen machines fall down, imho, and should be flatly banned! There is _no_ manual guarantee of the integrity of the results in a touch-screen machine.)

Initial counts on election day are provisional, and need to be certified via additional checks before being finalized (including the possibility of recounts).

There's more, but these are the big ones, and you get the idea. This entire system depends on protecting the integrity of physical ballots, which as you can see, is pretty straightforward.

<comment><USER3> Such incredibly simple steps.

Who thought it was a good idea to "disrupt" voting by going electronic?

<comment><USER2> It's not just electronic voting. Let's look at a _real_ attempt to subvert elections - Voter ID laws. Voter ID is presented as a solution to a problem that actually does not exist, given this system.

In Minnesota, you show up at the polling place, say your name and address, they find you on the registration list, check you off, and hand you a ballot. No need to prove you are who you say you are. If someone pretends to be you before you vote, then it's immediately and obviously brought to the attention of the judges (and we aren't seeing a massive wave of fakery now). If someone pretended to be you after you vote, they'd get caught.

Of course, someone could fake it, with someone's registration that they know won't vote. But if they repeated it at a single precinct, the odds of being recognized as a repeat voter by the election judges goes up. So they would have to move from precinct to precinct, with a list of viable registered non- voters to use.

Now, consider scale. A statewide Minnesota election is about 1.5M voters. To move the outcome 1% requires 15,000 votes. If one person can manage to vote illegally ten times in a day, it would require 1500 people in a conspiracy. Plus data management, tight enough for no errors. And NO leaks while these 1500 people are trained (and probably paid, if you want that many).

With that in mind, the idea of actually manipulating the election with votes that could be prevented with Voter ID is absurd. But! If we put ID laws in place, we could well reduce the number of voters by 1%, and that result would be biased toward people who are poor or otherwise not fully integrated into mainstream society.

Election manipulation, completely legal, and more effective than the mechanism it purports to prevent. Ugh.

And hey, if voters are dumb enough to fall for that, maybe we can get them excited for touchscreen machines!

<comment><USER4> This comment has put me firmly in the anti-Voter-ID column. I've always been on the fence regarding Voter ID.

One one hand, I can see the effect that it would have on the makeup of the voters: older, richer, more established.

On the other hand, I couldn't shake the idea that voting is too sacred to not enforce some level of identity verification.

You just swept away my "on the other hand". Thanks.

<comment><USER5> So I still think we should have Voter-ID, but I don't think we're ready for it yet.

My arguments for:

First, don't people have to register to vote in most places? I don't see how bundling your Voter-ID acquisition with registering to vote would be bad.

Second, a valid state ID should be enough to vote even with Voter-ID. This DRASTICALLY reduces the number of IDs we need to handle.

My main argument against not doing it right now:

We'd need proper funding that we're not going to get in the current political climate. A half-assed solution would be BAD.

<comment><USER6> > I don't see how bundling your Voter-ID acquisition with registering to vote > would be bad.

How many times have you forgotten to bring some random item you need for something you're doing? Why stop someone from voting because of a mistake virtually anyone could make?

<comment><USER5> I don't think forgetfulness has a political bias

<comment><USER6> I has a time based pro-wealth bias that becomes much larger when you combine it with your second argument, as you're less likely to forget something you take every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think the goal here is to secure the electronic voting systems; that's impossible, and everyone knows it. The goal is to provide ammunition for getting them decertified.

<comment><USER8> Is it really impossible though? I feel like we could eventually figure it out.

<comment><USER9> The threat model is corrupt election workers, who have unmonitored access to the machines.

And if you find problems after the winner is declared? "Only the losing side cares, and they're just sore losers"

Or an adversary could not commit fraud, just trip the fraud alarms in areas their opponent is strong.

So it's very, very difficult to secure.

<comment><USER10> Somehow we manage to secure electronic banking despite possibly corrupt bank tellers having unmonitored access to the ATMs. I'm sure of the money were there we could secure voting the same way.

<comment><USER11> >manage to secure electronic banking

Quite a bold statement. Electronic banking is primarily secured by the means of insurance.

<comment><USER10> Which detects problems and fixes them. That's all we really need. A reliable way to detect problems and fix them.

<comment><USER12> It takes a long time to detect and fix problems. That's OK with ATM machines, because if you catch the insider who tampered with them months or years later, you can put them in jail and probably get most of the money back. But reversing election results more than a day or two after the first announcement is really bad for the stability of the country.

In fact, people are still digging into whether voting machine fraud happened in some states in the 2016 election. Any result now is too late.

Also, the nature of hacks is that you can often detect that one occurred, but not exactly what was changed. How would you take the news, "It looks like the Russians had root on every voting machine. But we've reconstructed the correct vote counts from analyzing deleted database files found in the free block list, and the winner is..." Not too convincing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are the people at this convention privy to classified information about actual hacks attempted? [1]

[1] [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians- penetrat...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians-penetrated-u- s-voter-systems-says-top-u-s-n845721)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think anyone in the attendance who knows that would come forward.

<comment><USER13> What I'm getting at is, if not, then wouldn't it become just a thought experiment? Granted one conducted by very intelligent individuals.

<comment><USER14> Voting machine security had a presence at Defcon before the 2016 election. The 2016 election interference might increase its activity, but it's never been just about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The key property we need to be looking for is software independence.

[https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/RivestWack- OnTheNotionOf...](https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/RivestWack- OnTheNotionOfSoftwareIndependenceInVotingSystems.pdf)

That doesn't mean that securing the software isn't important. But it does mean that, in any evaluation of a voting system, we should be evaluating the whole- system design (including the _critical parts_ of the software) in terms of how software independence is achieved.

</comment><comment><USER16> Being one who delves into the conspiracy corners of the Internet I got to thinking on a theory about all this. I am just spitballing here, but what if the bad guys who put all the bugs in these voting machines at one Intelligence Agency are in a hacker war with the good guys at some other Intelligence Agency on election night and the vote total is just the final score of the hacker battle. Neither side wants to call the other side out, because they don't want to air all their dirty laundry in public.

<comment><USER17> You're being worried about the wrong things. The problem is companies that make these products care about making money, not making safe votes. As long as their marketing is good enough, they can hire sub-par programmers to do a shoddy job. No conspiracy is necessary to end up in the situation at hand.

Consider seeking out a medical professional to help with your delusions.

<comment><USER16> I said I'm spitballing[1] which means purely speculating for fun and not saying that I'm sure that that's the truth. It's really weird how these days you can't even throw out ideas for fun without some guy bringing out the heavy duty personal attacks.

Anyway, if you looked at Wikileaks vault 7 leak, the CIA stockpiles zero days that they use to remote hack all kinds of different platforms. Other intelligence agencies do the same. One of the voting machine companies had pcanywhere installed on their machines which is even known to be full of holes[2]. Whether this is negligence or malice is really up to a jury to look into, but certainly the possibility is there.

[1][https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spitballing](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spitballing)

[2][https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb4ezy/top- voting...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb4ezy/top-voting- machine-vendor-admits-it-installed-remote-access-software-on-systems-sold-to- states)

<comment><USER17> Let's be clear, your theory is that "bad guys" _put_ the security holes in the voting machines (not incompetent underpaid workers) and that they are having a _hacker fight_ with the _good guys_. Watch less tv, and stop reading those conspiracy theories sites. You are losing your grip on reality.

Security bugs are real. Hacking is real. What you are talking about is not spitballing. That's just fantasy.

<comment><USER16> Wow, I must have hit a nerve cause this kind of ad hominem arguing that you're doing is unusual for HN.

People saying the NSA was working with hardware vendors to purposefully insert backdoors in routers were called crazy too before the Snowden leaks. I guess you haven't been keeping up with the news or do you think the Snowden leaks qualify as baseless conspiracy theories?

"A 2012 TAO budget document claims that these companies, on TAO's behest, "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communications devices used by targets".[1]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obligatory: [https://xkcd.com/2030/](https://xkcd.com/2030/)

<comment><USER19> previous discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717676)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17732437](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17732437)

<comment><USER20> I'd like to call attention to what I consider the most informative comment in either of those discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17730681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17730681)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pretty good comment.

I helped write the software for the Brazilian voting machines (state issued, standardized, made to spec by competing companies) and we had a long list of scenarios we had to guard against. The people who wrote the spec were field experts who studied attempted and successful (but caught) voting fraud every election. The resulting combination of hardware, software (the application itself is ridiculously simple), analysis and (and this is most important) procedures surrounding the physical devices (never left alone unguarded, clear chain of custody, created layers of protection and, in the end, a reasonably secure device. It's possible to make it absolutely secure? I'm not sure. Would that be usable? I doubt it.

It's foolish to make a flawless voting system when we can't guard against propaganda and other forms of manipulation through social media or even the most traditional paying voters (either explicitly or through promises) to vote a certain way.

<comment><USER21> I must offer my congratulations to you and your colleagues. I am broadly opposed to electronic voting, but the Brazilian implementation seems to be the most sophisticated, elegant and well-engineered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. It was an interesting experience and I'm proud of what we accomplished.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chrome 78 Released with CSS types, native file system, SMS receiver, and more - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/10/nic78 <comment><AUTHOR> Actually it was released 4 days ago but it wasn't covered on hackernews (only the DevTools)

If you want to look at all the new features: [https://www.chromestatus.com/features/schedule](https://www.chromestatus.com/features/schedule)

FEATURES IN THIS RELEASE:

Blink>Bluetooth Web Bluetooth getAvailability() Blink>CSS CSS Properties and Values API Level 1 (Houdini) Percentage opacity Blink>Forms Apply opacity for the default style of INPUT/TEXTAREA placeholder Blink>HID WebHID (Human Interface Device) Blink>JavaScript>Internationalization "numberingSystem" option for Intl.NumberFormat / "calendar" and "numberingSystem" option for Intl.DateTimeFormat Blink>JavaScript>WebAssembly WebAssembly Reference Types Blink>Loader Subresource prefetching+loading via Signed HTTP Exchange

Blink>Media>Session Seeking for Media Session Blink>Network>WebSockets WebSocketStream

Blink>Payments More restrictive hasEnrolledInstrument() for autofill instruments PaymentResponse.prototype.retry() Redact address in PaymentRequest.onshippingaddresschange event Blink>PerformanceAPIs User Timing L3 Blink>SMS SMS Receiver API

Blink>Scroll Rendering Independent Scroll Offsets Blink>SecurityFeature XSS Auditor

Blink>ServiceWorker Extend byte-for-byte update check to all service worker importScripts() resources Blink>Storage>FileSystem Native File System

UI>Browser>WebAppInstalls Screen Enumeration

</comment><comment><USER2> Most excited about the native file system API. Oh, how I would love to have a DAW like Reaper, or a (significantly lighter-weight) iMovie in the browser.</comment>


Better performance in App Engine with new Lisp language Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/05/better-performance-in-app-engine-with.html <comment><USER2> Posts like this really make me want to move to Clojure.

Python is now my go-to language, especially because of Scipy, NetworkX and bridges like RPy.

I would definitely put in the time if someone with mathematical modelling experience can support the idea that I'll be more productive in Clojure. Anyone?

I really would love to see a list of testimonials and anti-testimonials of people from various fields that switched to Clojure and either got much more done or got burned.

Sorry, I realise that this is a wee bit off the main topic.

<comment><USER3> You should spend a little time playing with Clojure. I don't know if you'll be more productive in it or not; people seem to either prefer lisps strongly or dislike them strongly. If you like lisp then you'll have no problems being tremendously productive, especially with libraries like Incanter available.

<comment><USER4> I very much like the elegance of lisp code, but I'm still a 'reader', not a 'writer'. I hope to change that one of these days, but as long as that magic 'click' hasn't happened I'm not confident enough to jump in and start some major project.

Maybe that's what I should lose, the paralysis of starting out down the wrong track and simply do stuff wrong until I find a better way.

<comment><USER3> One of the charms of lisp is that it makes it easy to change your mind. It is really well suited to iterative development; even if part of your iteration process consists of getting things wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I was in an App Engine workshop at PyCon and asked an engineer about running Clojure on App Engine, which resulted in a confusing exchange. Then I realized they thought I was talking about Google's Closure Library. Argh! I guess this wasn't on the radar.

This shows a lot of promise, and it would be great if App Engine could become (in a way) Clojure's Heroku.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've looked off and on into using App Engine's Java interface. But even the "hello world" app looked much more bureaucratic than the Python equivalent (it's due to Google trying to do things the Java way).

Do you still have to deal with Java's baggage even if you run Clojure on App Engine? How much can you abstract away? Any libs?

<comment><USER7> Occasional you do have to deal with Java's baggage in Clojure. The best example I can think of right now is the build process. The consensus is to use Maven or the Clojure tool Leiningen.

The good news is that you also get Java's "Deployment for Dummies" solutions (just copy the JAR/WAR and you're good to go), though.

<comment><USER8> Leiningen is actually pretty cool. It uses Maven under the hood (but you don't have to know that).

The nice thing is that if you suddenly decide you need to use a Java library (say, one of the Apache Commons libs), you just add one line to your project.clj file, do "lein deps" and boom, you can use the library in your project.

Having written quite a bit of software in Common Lisp, this is a welcome change.

<comment><USER9> Huh?, how's this easier than adding a package entry to the depends-on form in an asdf-file in CL?

<comment><USER10> You can add jars from any JVM language and use it directly with the great Clojure Java-interop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a very readworthy slide from the CTO of freiheit and the project: [http://www.slideshare.net/smartrevolution/how-a-clojure- pet-...](http://www.slideshare.net/smartrevolution/how-a-clojure-pet-project- turned-into-a-fullblown-cloudcomputing-webapp)

I'm curious about the "how to get rid of Eclipse"-part. How do you "Go to implementation" and "Find usages" in Clojure without a 7 key-combination in Emacs? I would love to take a Clojure-IDE for a spin.

<comment><USER12> NetBeans with Enclojure is probably the best option for those who do not already know Emacs (or Counterclockwise if you are already in the Eclipse ecosystem.) I use Emacs for Erlang and Python coding, but for some reason the swank-clojure setup never really clicked for me. I keep at it and I am sure at some point I will not think that my Clojure dev environment is not more of a hinderance than a help, but if you are not already using Emacs I would probably suggest you start off by looking at the list here: [http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2010/03/clojure-ides- the...](http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2010/03/clojure-ides-the-grand- tour-getting-started/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A question I've been meaning to ask but didn't want to make a completely new post about it:

If you could write a server (not a plain HTTP webapp necessarily) in Clojure, Python, or Node.JS, provided you know all three, which would you choose and why?

<comment><USER7> I'd go with Clojure if you need any of the following:

1\. Concurrency 2\. The most (largest qty of) available FOSS libs anywhere 3\. Speed 4\. The ability to extend the language 5\. WORA 6\. Text/string processing

Python will win in scripting/*NIX integration, though.

Don't really know enough about Node.JS

<comment><USER14> I really have a hard time seeing Python losing to Clojure on (2), (5) and (6). What kind of software/library would you find on Clojure but not Python? How is Python not WORA? Where does Python lack in text processing?

<comment><USER15> > What kind of software/library would you find on Clojure but not Python?

Java has a lot of great libraries for which there are not terrific examples in Python. Clojure gets all of them.

> Where does Python lack in text processing?

Clojure handles large strings better than Python (unless you start using substrings, in which case an underlying java bug hits you).

(oh, and Clojure is not a deliberately and comically crippled language).

<comment><USER16> How is Python deliberately and comically crippled? I'm honestly curious.

<comment><USER17> I think he may be refering to the GIL.

<comment><USER18> Don't forget one-line lambdas.

<comment><USER15> It is true. I really, really, really do not like those. I dislike them to the point of irrationality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> JVM apps on appengine start up slow. I encourage anyone looking into using a JVM app on appengine to put together a simple app, wait 10 minutes after deployment, and then hit the url and see how long it takes to load.

It bothers me that people don't mention this.

<comment><USER20> It's called "loading request" and Google mentions it in the docs. They claim that with the number of users rising, relatively few people will actually experience it. But the ~10 seconds it takes to load my clojure app surely is not pleasant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It doesn't really say much about performance...

<comment><USER22> It doesn't say _anything_ about performance. I checked find-in-page in case I somehow missed it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The blog referenced in this post has more details on their use of Clojure: <http://www.hackers-with-attitude.com/search/label/Clojure>

</comment><comment><USER24> Where do the 30% and 50% numbers come from?

<comment><USER25> I took it to be an educated guess, not a statement based on hard data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am using Clojure a lot right now on a customer's project, a cool language for sure.

That said, I have doubts about Clojure + AppEngine because of the loading request times. I can get a Java + AppEngine app to do about a 1 to 2 second loading request time by not using JDO and minimizing dependencies.

Unfortunately, loading the Clojure JARs (or the JRuby JARs) increase the loading request time.

Sometimes when I go to TheDeadline, I see almost a 10 second delay on the first page load. Does not happen often, but it does happen.

</comment><comment><USER27> _On Google App Engine, Google's cloud computing platform, developers can officially choose between two languages -- Python and Java -- and both run on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM)._

If they've got Python running on the JVM, why aren't they contributing back to Jython (or releasing their own Python->JVM bytecode compiler)?

<comment><USER28> Where are you getting that quote from? They don't run Python on the JVM.

<comment><USER29> I think the article has been changed after andreyf quoted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting, but I cringed when I read this:

"Writing less code requires less time."

Seriously? Then again, it /is/ a "to-do" app...

<comment><USER31> Seriously. Studies from a wide variety of languages over several decades have found that average lines of code/developer is reasonably close to constant independent of what language the developer is using. Therefore languages and libraries that result in less code to get your work done generally result in higher productivity.

<comment><USER32> I'd be interested in seeing similar studies with relatively modern languages, though. The only ones I've seen have been comparing things like C, Pascal, and Cobol.</comment></comment></comment>


The Soviet Nuclear Disaster the West Covered Up. - <AUTHOR> http://www.sobify.com/kyshtym-the-nuclear-disaster-both-the-soviets-the-us-tried-to-hide/

<comment><USER2> Most of this appears to be copied from the wikipedia article.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Click-bait headline, it should be:

 _" Kyshtym – The Nuclear Disaster Both the Soviets & the U.S tried to hide"_

<comment><USER4> The article asserts in one sentence that the CIA knew and covered it up. I'd love to hear what they actually knew; Give the level of soviet secrecy, it's possible they really didn't know enough information to make it worth talking about.

<comment><USER5> "According to Gyorgy, who invoked the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to the relevant Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files, the CIA knew of the 1957 Mayak accident since 1959, but kept it secret to prevent adverse consequences for the fledgling American nuclear industry."

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

"Kept it secret" on Wikipedia and "cover-up" in the article title both imply malice, but it's not very clear to me that the CIA had an obvious obligation to report everything bad that happened in the Soviet Union which doesn't impact non-Soviet citizens. When they do publish something, it's for propaganda reasons, and, as stated, this incident wasn't really suitable for that.

<comment><USER6> There's also a _very_ strong bias towards keeping what you learn secret by default because you don't want to let your adversary learn your means and methods, e.g. particular spies, "national technical means" like surveillance aircraft back then and satellites nowadays, how you do analysis, all the way up to the scope of your efforts.

I'd add that this disaster doesn't seem to implicate the US nuclear industry at all, sounds like it was part of their plutonium breeding effort, which is for weapons. Back then and for a very long time Oak Ridge would enrich natural uranium to, what, 5% U-235, and then it goes into a separate cycle which could and no doubt someday will include reprocessing (although not for weapons grade plutonium, too much Pu-238 and Pu-240 if you let it brew long enough), but didn't then nor does it today.

<comment><USER5> Any nuclear-related disaster plays into the hands of anti-nuclear campaigning, regardless of the finer details of the truth -- indeed Gyorgy's book for which the FOIA was invoked is titled "No Nukes: Everyone's Guide to Nuclear _Power_ ", so the assessment that it might have had adverse effects seemed correct.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Goes Gaga (Lady GaGa talk at Google) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNa_-1d_0tA <comment><USER2> This actually was a really, really good interview. Lady GaGa is very well spoken. She is comfortable talking about herself and explaining her music without snubbing at anyone. Thx Google, Marissa, and Lady GaGa.</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't we just build one app that does it all? - <AUTHOR> There are too many apps (websites included). The whole ceremony of coming up with an idea and business model, gather resources to implement it, implement it, market it, support it, etc. is extremely wasteful.
From a user's perspective, this is a nightmare. I must discover these services/apps (actively or passively through ads), install the app, create an account, maintain a profile, add friends/interests, learn a new UI, etc.
How many times have you filled a form with your name and email address in your life? How many different messaging apps can you contact your friends with? Likely dozens.
I will not accept the idea that this fragmentation is necessary or, worse, beneficial. This is one of today's most important problems. It's the bottleneck of human progress. This must end.
Let's build one system/interface/app/service/OS/language that will make 80% of others obsolete.
You don't think that's possible? Think again. <comment><USER2> When the UK was tinkering with National ID cards I was mostly horrified at the idea, but a tiny part of me was so relieved at the idea of not having to put my name and address on so many forms.

It's frustrating to me that a government agency will mail a form and the envelope has my name and address, and the cover letter will have my name and address, and the first bit of the form is a field asking me for my name and address.

And then when the UK was tinkering with a fantastically expensive and mostly failed NHS IT project I thought "Are they taking the IETF RFC approach of specifying what the data MUST and MUST NOT be, and then leaving implementation down to vendors?"

So if you come up with a set of RFC-like documents for identifying me to a service, with cryptographic protection, and permissions for the amount of data I want to reveal, and allowing for clean separation of alternate identities, on a suitably tiny USB device it might take off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aren't the variety of individual needs, desires, preferences, etc. going to get in the way? I get the frustration, but it feels like saying there should be only one food item for everyone (why do we need yet another variation on the Oreo?), but clearly not everyone wants the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this not essentially Microsoft's catalog?

</comment><comment><USER5> Sure, but you have to conform to what I need out of my apps/OS, I'm not sacrificing anything to suit you.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a mistake. It is users that need to conform to the system.

The main reason why most software today is crap is because it's designed for users. The day we design software properly/purely, users will improve.

<comment><USER6> _It is users that need to conform to the system._

Can you think of any other domain where this is expected? This seems foolish on the face of it. People have different needs. How would you expect one system to provide for everything? How would such things be developed? Have some standard that everyone needs to conform to? How would you be able to improve such a system if everyone is expected to use the same one? If I'm working on something new, I'm not using the same system as anyone else.

What OS would you use? Which architecture? Which hardware? Which toolchain? Which programming language? Look at the heated discussions that occur just here on HN. Different domains often need very different tools. I can't imagine that there's one ideal system that fits all of these needs, and one that tries to incorporate all of them would surely be unwieldy.

If you have some thought that you can distinguish between developers and users, remember every developer is in turn a user of some system.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Can you think of any other domain where this is expected?

Mathematics? A keyboard?

> People have different needs.

I don't believe that. I believe that most needs are created as a side-effect of telling people they can have unique needs. Truth is, most people have the same needs.

> How would you expect one system to provide for everything? How would such > things be developed? Have some standard that everyone needs to conform to? > How would you be able to improve such a system if everyone is expected to > use the same one? If I'm working on something new, I'm not using the same > system as anyone else.

I don't expect a system to provide everything on day one. Most things will be added, not as features but as content.

Take something like the English language. It's general purpose enough to be used to communicate almost anything. I want to apply the same idea to software, make a general-purpose app/UI that can be used to communicate almost everything. Imagine a language like English, but communicated through an interactive interface rather than through static words.

Yes, there will be standards that people will need to conform to in order to use the system.

We're all using English. We're all using the Internet. Yet, they're flexible enough to allow creativity a wide range of content to be created.

> What OS would you use? Which architecture? Which hardware? Which toolchain? > Which programming language?

Ultimately, I intend to replace the entire stack, down to the hardware. For now, I will live with the hardware and OS we have, and only create the language. It will heavily borrow logic programming and dependent typing ideas from Prolog and Idris. Hopefully, it will be an interactive language, not just text files.

> Look at the heated discussions that occur just here on HN. Different domains > often need very different tools. I can't imagine that there's one ideal > system that fits all of these needs, and one that tries to incorporate all > of them would surely be unwieldy.

I don't buy it. Heated debates happen between idealists and realists. I'm an idealist, and I'm sure other idealists will agree with the vision. Realists are selfish and simply don't want to get out of their comfort zone to improve the world.

I don't see why the systems and languages should make any compromise. We're dealing with a digital/dynamic medium here, there's no reason it can't adapt to all contexts.

> If you have some thought that you can distinguish between developers and > users, remember every developer is in turn a user of some system.

I find the developer/user dichotomy idiotic. I want to eliminate the distinction between consuming and creating software. It should be completely seamless. This is a prerequisite for such a system to even be considered.

<comment><USER6> >> Can you think of any other domain where this is expected?

> Mathematics? A keyboard?

In mathematics there are different notations used in different domains; sometimes different notations in the _same_ domain. There are multiple different keyboard styles and layouts. To me, it makes sense for people to use a keyboard they like and works best for their language. And, no, I don't expect everyone to speak or work in the same language.

>> People have different needs.

> Truth is, most people have the same needs.

In your view, you can't say most. You only allow for one system. Or if they have different needs are they expected to have those needs unmet?

> I don't buy it. Heated debates happen between idealists and realists. I'm an > idealist, and I'm sure other idealists will agree with the vision. Realists > are selfish and simply don't want to get out of their comfort zone to > improve the world.

There are heated debates between idealists of different flavors as well. You expect them to all to agree? Or are they selfish if they don't?

You're obviously very fired up about this. I think this idea is very naïve, though I wish you the best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> > In your view, you can't say most. You only allow for one system. Or if they > have different needs are they expected to have those needs unmet?

I only prescribe one system (a default one), but I can't prevent alternatives to exist.

> There are heated debates between idealists of different flavors as well. You > expect them to all to agree? Or are they selfish if they don't?

Show me an example. For now, I will assume they are selfish if they don't.

> You're obviously very fired up about this. I think this idea is very naïve, > though I wish you the best of luck.

Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> HyperCard + Gopher all running on a sweet sweet Minitel network?

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't solve any of the big challenges:

\- Identity

\- Reputation

\- Semantics

<comment><USER7> \+ Blockchain

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It appears to me that your critique may be of capitalism/free enterprise which extends far beyond the scope of apps. It's quite a big topic to unfold, but in the example you provided, stagnation and a lack of convergence on what constitutes the ideal app are low hanging fruit to be addressed.

Note that in some industries the benefits of shared utility clearly outweigh those of competition, the classic example being infrastructure.

Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Diversity and competition is good as a creative process to discover value. However, this doesn't scale very well, and unification is eventually necessary. My position might sound extreme, but I intend it more as a guideline than as a law that should be enforced. I'm 100% in favor of free market and opposed to coercion.

I think that people don't believe or even consider that such a system could exist, which explains why nothing of the sort exists today. I'm interested in starting a discussion to evaluate possible approaches to this problem.

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's extreme and I think many people favor such a system on a categorical basis.

How do you know when all creative value has been unveiled and it's time for convergence? I would argue that the very nature of creativity makes this perhaps impossible to answer and best attempts to do so in the categories that you mentioned would be at best local maxima.

If I'm understanding the main issue you've raised, it's that utility would be higher from the productivity gains under a single agreed upon platform than exists today due to productivity limitations from fragmentation. There may be an equilibrium point, and I'm not convinced the market isn't fairly decent at finding it. Look at how difficult it's been for other vendors to enter the smartphone market and how quickly developers were willing to abandon Blackberry to decrease their development costs. I wouldn't be surprised if economic forces favor unification and that many hope for ecosystem diversity at the cost of lost utility/productivity for long term benefit. Thiel certainly argues the former in his recent book.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct. The market will decide these things. What's missing today is an architecture that allows seamless/automatic branching and merging. When you must manually consider whether it's time to branch or merge, you've already lost.

Funny you mention Peter Thiel. I decided to post this just after listening to a podcast featuring Peter Thiel. I agree with him regarding competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is such an app. It's called the browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> Websites are just like apps. They need to be built, people need to discover them, create accounts, etc.

<comment><USER10> So like a shell? Content creation is still necessary even if we create the end-all, be-all CMS.

<comment><AUTHOR> True.

Most software jobs are about creating containers, not content. This is extremely wasteful.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Magnesium and the Brain (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201106/magnesium-and-the-brain-the-original-chill-pill <comment><USER2> There was a thread on this about a year ago here, and after reading through the results I decided to start taking Magnesium supplements. I've had very good results. I really recommend it to anyone that has issues with anxiety or depression. While its certainly not a cure-all, its easy, cheap, and safe, so its absolutely worth a try.

<comment><USER3> Agree. Magnesium Glycinate made a world of difference in calming my nerves. [https://www.amazon.com/KAL-Magnesium- Glycinate-400-tablets/d...](https://www.amazon.com/KAL-Magnesium- Glycinate-400-tablets/dp/B00013YZ1Q)

Also, L-Theanine is incredibly calming as well. [https://www.amazon.com/NOW-L- Theanine-200-120-Capsules/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/NOW-L- Theanine-200-120-Capsules/dp/B00GQV9YX6)

<comment><USER4> Is magnesium glycinate easier on your stomach?

<comment><USER5> If I recall correctly magnesium glycinate is the most readily absorbed and utilised form of supplemental magnesium, followed by magnesium citrate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of discussion on supplements in the comments (which are totally fine). But for additional info, sources of dietary magnesium are (descending concentration): spinach/chard, pumpkin seeds, yogurt, almonds, black beans, avocado, figs, dark chocolate, banana.

<comment> Z-Widwil I would also like to add quinoa, broccoli, and peas. There is a salad I frequently make which I call the 'Max-nesium salad'. It's pretty much just a combination of spinach/chard, raw almond shavings, black beans, quinoa, broccoli, and peas. You can also throw in beets if you like them.

<comment><USER7> "Max-nesium salad" would be just spinach though :) "Tasty and colorful max- nesium salad" would be yours.

<comment> Z-Widwil Way to shoot my pun out of the sky. My only defense here is to go with the hard definition of a salad being a mixture of vegetables. Which means spinach- only would not constitute a salad. You are however correct that 'Max' would also be something like a bunch of spinach and a couple pumpkin seeds. That doesn't sound great, so I'm willing to drop it to 'Tasty Max-nesium Salad'.

<comment><USER8> If this is a democracy I say keep your damn Max-nesium salad! Don't let GP's literalism bum you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Checking Google Scholar, this seems to be proven by clinical trials: [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0180067). Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a circadian rhythm disorder (non-24) and have tried a bunch of stuff that could potentially help with sleep, including magnesium in three or four different forms (including time release; they all seem to have the same effect). I also have a fairly good diet and likely get a good amount of magnesium from food.

500-600mg supplementation helps me stay asleep (but not get to sleep) but then I am much more tired the entire next day vs not getting the extra sleep. 300mg supplementation doesn't seem to do much of anything positive or negative.

From this experince, I would recommend:

1) If you want to try a supplement, I suggest powder so that you can try different doses easily. The form does not seem to make a difference for most people from what I've read. There are flavored powders widely available (look for store brands) that mix with a small amount of water.

2) If magnesium supplementation helps you then that could be a sign that your health would be improved more by improving your diet than adding a magnesium supplement.

3) Pumpkin seeds are a good way to add magnesium and great snack food in general. I like PumpKorn Origional (soy sauce, garlic, and pepper) or Go Raw Sprouted Pupkin Seeds (a bag looks expensive but lasts a while so is actually one of the less expensive ones; the sprouted ones seem lighter). Also, if you add just about any squash to a meal you can easily roast the seeds with a bit of salt. Squash and brown rice plus some cabbage family veggie are a good combination. If you pick the lightest squash of a particular size they are more likely to have more seeds.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe this is TMI, but anyone wanting to try magnesium needs to ramp up their dose, as a sudden intake of magnesium supplement is likely to cause you to evacuate your colon in glorious fashion...

<comment><USER12> Magnesium citrate and magnesium oxide (often called elemental magnesium or buffered magnesium) are the forms to avoid unless you're trying to clean out your colon.

Look for Magnesium glycinate or magnesium bisglycinate, but be careful because some of those will include significant amounts of "buffered" or elemental magnesium.

<comment><USER13> Is elemental magnesium good or bad? Looking at reviews on Amazon they make it seem like a good thing.

<comment><USER14> Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't listen to medical advice from the comments section of Amazon.

<comment><USER13> I don't see how it's any better than a comment here. I just wanted clarification as to whether the poster thinks elemental magnesium is a good thing or a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I started supplementing Magnesium about two years ago after listening to Tim Ferriss' interview with Charles Poliquin [0]. It has absolutely improved my sleep quality, workout recovery, testosterone levels (likely due to improved sleep), and mild depression. I recommend listening to the interview if you're interested in this type of stuff. Charles is a bit polarizing but he has consistently produced world class athletes over the years so he knows a few things.

[0] [https://tim.blog/2015/07/21/charles- poliquin/](https://tim.blog/2015/07/21/charles-poliquin/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've no doubt of some efficacy in certain situations for magnesium. However this article reads like this is the magic bullet to society's ails. Very anecdotal and hand picked cases do not make for a cure all, because there is no one substance that possesses this ability.

<comment><USER16> Magnesium is pushed as a silver bullet for decades already. But real researchers are discovering new uses for it all the time.

I guess it is just yet another of those nutrients that our diet is lacking.

<comment><USER17> Mercury was also a silver bullet, back in the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Emily Deans writes very informatively about nutrition topics in a sea of dross (also about medicine, psychology, biology if I recall correctly). Another use of Magnesium is as a adjunct to Vitamin D3 supplementation, since magnesium is used up in its metabolism and action.

<comment><USER19> Got linky? I can google, but you may have the best link. ALso, anyone know of any good but inexpensive purchasable supplements that target magnesium / related compound mixes to reasonable research results like this? (or just to buy them separately)

<comment><USER18> Can't recommend a specific link, but I remember when looking into vitamins and so on several years ago I found the Vitamin D Council and the Weston Price Foundation both interesting and useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've recently given the Ketogenic diet a try. One of the things I was reading is that Keto-ers are generally pretty low on magnesium and may need to take supplements. I wonder if the lack of magnesium in the diet explains the so- called "keto flu."

<comment><USER21> I think the keto flu is more due to being in a state of low blood sugar and inability for your body to deal with the change in fuel supply rather than mineral/vitamin deficiency. You could quickly shock your body by not eating for a day and working out hard to speed right by a prolonged keto flu

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Magnesium isn't good just for stress reduction, it is also great for sleep and relaxation. It also stimulates sex drive. Another wonder mineral is Calcium which can relieve back pains. When I take a combo of Ca+Mg I feel like I am 10 years younger.

<comment><USER23> [http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart- attack/e...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart- attack/expert-answers/calcium-supplements/faq-20058352)

 _Some doctors think it 's possible that taking calcium supplements may increase your risk of a heart attack. Other doctors believe that calcium supplements have little or no effect on your heart attack risk.

Many people take calcium supplements to treat or prevent bone disease, such as osteoporosis. It's thought that the calcium in these supplements could make its way into fatty plaques in your arteries — a condition called atherosclerosis — causing those plaques to harden and increase your risk of heart disease.

A 2013 study from the National Institutes of Health suggests there is an increased risk of heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular diseases from taking calcium supplements for men only. Other studies suggest there is an increased risk for both men and women.

More research is needed before doctors know the effect calcium supplements may have on your heart attack risk. The calcium supplements that some doctors are concerned about are generally those that contain only calcium. However, more research is also needed to determine the effects of supplements combining calcium and vitamin D. Calcium from food sources, such as dairy and green leafy vegetables, is not a concern.

Current recommendations for getting enough calcium for people who have, or have risk factors for, osteoporosis haven't changed. As with any health issue, it's important to talk to your doctor to determine what's most appropriate in your case._

<comment><USER24> > _Some doctors think it 's possible that taking calcium supplements may > increase your risk of a heart attack. Other doctors believe that calcium > supplements have little or no effect on your heart attack risk._

Shouldn't it be what the medical science says on the matter, and individual doctors having no say in this?

<comment><USER25> Think of the human body as a system of many tightly coupled functions. Tinkering with one function can have effects on 4 other seemingly unrelated ones. That's why generalizations don't work very well when they are shorter than a full-blown study paper. You primary care doc _should_ have a much better context about your health, your existing conditions, the particular risks that you have... all which may require a different recommendation from "the average".

If you have always been healthy and don't have have a primary care physician (generalist), go find one with whom you're comfortable (look for good communication and someone who suits your personality/expectations) and establish a history. It will feel like you're throwing away a few hundred dollars but with time this will come in handy. The one I have now is happy to help me, an engineer, understand the underlying concepts of my care, without wasting time dumbing things down too much—I can grok logic and tradeoffs, I'm just not clinically trained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can anyone recommend a good supplement? There seem to be so many choices and compounds.

<comment><USER22> Avoid Magnesium oxide, it has low bioavailability. Try Magnesium carbonate instead, or any variant ending in -ate (Mg citrate, Mg chelate, ...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I remember reading once about an essential Magnesium to Calcium ratio being 1:2 or 2:1. I didn't follow references, but that article mentioned that having that intake ratio severely distorted can affect your health negatively. Can anyone with better understanding of the subject comment on the Magnesium to Calcium ratio?

</comment><comment><USER28> Here's a guy who can't absorb magnesium properly (among other things) and needs regular injections. He's also literally a carnivore: [http://forgetamnesia.tumblr.com/post/127847035996/i-am-an- ac...](http://forgetamnesia.tumblr.com/post/127847035996/i-am-an-actual- carnivore) He recently lost his job, his home, and some teeth. [https://twitter.com/ForgetAmnesia/status/910536598990741504](https://twitter.com/ForgetAmnesia/status/910536598990741504)

</comment><comment><USER29> I use magnesium water (milk of magnesia in soda water) to calm my heart palpitations. It's worked better than any prescription from my doc so far

<comment><USER7> I'm curious have you talked to your doctor to complete that feedback loop?

<comment><USER29> Yes , I did. She basically said "oh,yes, that's a good idea. We often prescribe it for the condition"

<comment><USER7> I've noticed the interactions with my doctor are strictly as, or less, informative than interactions with google. It's worrisome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are there many nutrients which may be present in good quantity in some food item, but some other chemical in that same food, interferes with the absorption (by the human body) of that nutrient?

Thinking of examples like spinach, where it is supposed to contain a lot of calcium, but also has oxalates (or oxalic acid) which interfere with the absorption of the calcium. Or is that a one-off case?

<comment><USER31> I was taught that some of the minerals in whole wheat were not available because of phytic acid.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytic_acid#Food_science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytic_acid#Food_science)

<comment><USER30> Thanks, good to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have celiac. Most people know that that means "no wheat", but it also means having a difficulty absorbing nutrition in general, and I've gotten up close and personal with a variety of nutritional deficiencies, even in cases where I nominally had enough in my diet. For me personally, I seem to have the most trouble with the metals we're supposed to absorb; I can't speak to how common this is for celiacs (and I haven't found any particular research on that exact question; it may very well be out there but I haven't seen it). It turns out that in the last year I've discovered this also encompasses magnesium deficiency. What fun.

So, I'd add: I'm really not convinced by the bioavailability of magnesium oxide. YMMV because maybe there's a threshold effect and I couldn't get anything from it and your normal digestive system will be able to, but I would suggest that if you are interested in magnesium, the actually bioavailable stuff isn't that much more expensive. I've been using: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BD0RT0/ref=oh_aui_deta...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BD0RT0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and it very likely is having a positive effect on me where magnesium oxide was not having any effect. (For various complicated reasons it is difficult for me to be completely confident in that, but this claim is very likely.)

In fact this seems to be a general pattern; what you can buy in your local grocery stores is often quite crap in terms of bioavailability, and even what you can get from dedicated health stores is often only marginally better. So you might think the "good stuff" must be likely to be more expensive... but it often isn't actually that much more expensive if you order it online. It's sort of weird.

The other thing the article at best tangentially alludes to is that magnesium supplementation is likely to be a relatively slow process. In my experience, for some deficiencies I take a pill or two and within 24 hours I know _yeah, I was missing that_ ; iron I knew about after about a week (takes time to make blood). Magnesium takes a lot longer; I've read from others in similar positions to me that six months to a year in you can still be seeing improvements, which is matching my experience. If you want to try this out, be aware that it may be a subtle improvement over a long period of time, but it could also be a really important one. And that _sucks_ , because the low amplitude of the signal relative to the day-to-day noise makes it really hard to tell if it's doing anything for you. However, that is simply what it is.

Another thing that's relevant is that there are some nutrients that need to be in some balance, and it is possible to raise up your magnesium only to find out that need more potassium, too. There's also some interaction with calcium and sodium. I suspect that if you're normally healthy and eat reasonably healthily that you won't encounter these issues, though. (I have substantial evidence, but again, no proof, that my body does a particularly poor job absorbing potassium. Hard to imagine what proof would look like, honestly. Fortunately and/or amusingly, potassium supplements have the opposite problem most supplements have... they're actually _dangerously_ bioavailable. So that one turns out to be somewhat easy to cover, except that I have to remember to take it in small doses throughout the day, and it shouldn't be mixed with magnesium at the same time because it turns out they like to get together in your stomach and react to form a compound that has neither the magnesium nor the potassium bioavailable. Isn't this just such fun? Ugh.)

(Also, before someone smacks reply and starts trying to read me the riot act, please do review the careful caveating I've written into this post. I'm not an expert by any means; it is just that due to circumstances beyond my control and that I would not choose, I've been thrust into the deep end of this world and forced to go beyond what science can provide me completely rigorous answers for. And I am working with the conventional medical system here... however, there are just some ways that I'm having to improvise because when it really comes down to it, we're all unique whether we like it or not, and the doctors don't have all the answers for me. I'll cop to not being as careful as gwern, but, well, I'm generally dealing with much larger effects and much greater urgency than he is... I'm generally thinking in a multi-armed bandit style moreso than a conventional null-hypothesis p-value style.)

<comment><USER33> I'll +1 that recommendation. I use magnesium to manage amphetamine tolerance and the chelated magnesium subjectively works much better than the regular magnesium tablets at my local co-op.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm surprised the article doesn't mention chlorophyll. You know; the magnesium-based stuff that makes plants green.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_in_biology#Chlorophy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_in_biology#Chlorophyll)

</comment><comment><USER35> I take magnesium every day because I have leg cramps, and supposedly it helps with that. Can't say that I notice any nootropic effects at all, but I do get less cramps, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER36> Magnesium solved two problems for me: stiff muscles and insomnia.

Scientific information about how magnesium works is hard to come by. Here's what I have been able to gather from various sources: The cells in your body need calcium to go into "on state". To go into "off state" magnesium has to go in and displace calcium.

When your body is low on magnesium your muscles can't go into "off state" and your muscles become stiff. To relax you need an Epsom salt bath (it contains magnesium) or just take magnesium supplements.

When your brain cells can't go to "off state" you can't sleep. You need magnesium to help your brain cells go into off state. However there is this thing called "blood brain barrier" (look it up) that prevents magnesium from easily entering the brain. However magnesium l-threonate (that's a compound of magnesium, not a brand name) can pass through the barrier and help you sleep.

I have had sleep issues for many years. I saw many doctors including sleep specialists but all they wanted to do is put me on prescription meds. But these meds are addictive and you have to take it for the rest of your life. I didn't want that. These are "quick fixes". As a software developer I was interested in finding the underlying problem and fix that, as opposed to the quick fixes that the medical community was offering me.

A breakthrough came when I saw a naturopathic doctor for my stiff muscles and she advised me to take Epsom salt baths. That seemed to help. I investigated more and found out that the ingredient in Epsom salt that helped me is magnesium. Then I found out that you can actually get magnesium pills and tried that. That worked remarkably well. But the big surprise was that I slept better the night I tried the magnesium pill. Since then I have been researching how it is that magnesium helped me sleep.

Stress depletes magnesium in your body. If you are a software developer you are stressing your brain all day when you do your job and you are depleting magnesium. Low magnesium levels causes muscle issues as well as sleep issues. Magnesium supplements solve the problem.

It is very unfortunate that medical doctors don't seem to be very knowledgeable about this topic. When I see doctors I mention that I am taking magnesium for muscle and sleep issues and they seem surprised, but no doctor has yet told me that I am wrong.

Note that magnesium is a natural mineral, not a drug, essential for your body, and found in many foods. Excess amounts of magnesium can cause a laxative effect, but this is very temporary. Take magnesium before you go to bed, and the worst thing that can happen is you go easily the next morning.

<comment><USER37> Epsom salt baths and a dropper full of CBD oil under the tongue completely eliminated my insomnia. And as a bonus, eases my DOMS.

<comment><USER38> If you don't mind - which CBD oil are you using and is it readily available?

<comment><USER37> I've been using Charlotte's Web (mint flavor is great), which I can purchase online, as I'm not in a legal medical marijuana state.

<comment><USER38> Excellent - thanks. I'm not in a legal state either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I should recommend taking magnesium chloride for strengthen your immune system, it is very well used in functional and natural medicine these days.</comment>


The Proposal of the Neutrino (1930) - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-proposal-of-the-neutrino <comment><USER2> At first, I thought the title was a mistake, as the letter speaks of 'neutrons' throughout. But it turns out that the term 'neutrino' came only later:

'Pauli earlier (in 1930) had used the term "neutron" for both the neutral particle that conserved energy in beta decay, and a presumed neutral particle in the nucleus, and initially did not consider these two neutral particles as distinct from each other'

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

<comment><USER3> I thought the HN headline was incorrect until I read Pauli was looking for a particle of ~0.01 proton mass (neutrons and protons are about the same mass).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Basically Pauli can't get his dear theory to work so has to invent magic dark matter to get the theory to match the experiments. This 'quantum' atom looks more and more like ptolemaic epicycles.

Clearly we need to throw the theory away and start from scratch.

[this being the internet: /s ]

<comment><USER5> I came here to snark this exact snark.

<comment><USER4> best part is that neutrinos are literally dark matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," which is a great book and covers the early discovery of Quantum Mechanics, including this letter. Recommended.

<comment><USER7> The follow-up to that is basically _Command and Control_ which covers what happens after those things were made.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_\(book\))

It starts out where those weapons and prototypes from World War II were sitting on a shelf in a hut in the middle of the desert with no real security. That program had been all but shut down, the team disbanded.

Equally interesting is _Stalin and the Bomb_ which covers the Soviet efforts to replicate what the Americans had created: [https://books.google.ca/books/about/Stalin_and_the_Bomb.html...](https://books.google.ca/books/about/Stalin_and_the_Bomb.html?id=ICO6aUnQ2KcC&redir_esc=y)

There's accounts of scientists painstakingly re-discovering fundamental things only to realize their superiors already knew the correct approach to take, their intelligence had stolen the files, but were concerned that the information was faked to lead them astray. They must have felt like high- school students getting their homework checked by the teacher.

<comment><USER8> Well don't get to ahead of yourself. The follow up should be "Building the H Bomb: A Personal History" by Kenneth W. Ford.

<comment><USER7> True. There is _that_ thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The beginning "Dear Radioactives" is a classic, we even learnt it at school

<comment><USER10> As this was sent to experimental nuclear physicists in the 30's, it may well have been a reasonably accurate description.</comment></comment>


Google overcomes Apple in Webkit Commits - <AUTHOR> http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2010/02/webkit-commits.html

<comment><USER2> Some discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1107020></comment>