Iterative methods done right (life's too short to write for-loops) - <AUTHOR> http://lostella.github.io/blog/2018/07/25/iterative-methods-done-right <comment><USER2> Like the other commenters have remarked, I have a feeling this post is meant for folks in numerical computation.

In numerical mathematics, iteration is typically expressed as recursive equations, and I suspect the iterable construct in Julia helps lower the impedance mismatch of translating numerical ideas to code. There's a lot of tedious "book-keeping" (keeping track of indices, etc.) involved in numerical codes, and appropriate abstractions can help reduce errors, as well as improve composability and extensibility. At the very least, with iterables the code will match the math better than if for-loops were used.

For most other (general) programmers though, a conjugate-gradient example might be a little too complicated of an example for demonstrating iterables. Also, while iterables as an abstraction can be useful at times, the simplicity of for-loops can't be beat for most general use cases. There is also a performance overhead with iterables.

Also, just to point out there is a bit of overlapping but differing terminology here: "iterative methods" [1] refer to a specific procedure in computational math; whereas "iterables" in computer programming refer to iterators [2] which perform (lazy or eager) traversal. The latter can be used to implement the former, but they are mostly different ideas.

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

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

<comment><USER3> > There is also a performance overhead with iterables

Though, for the sake of pedantry, it's not something that can't be handled by an optimizing compiler that understands them. Haskell, for example, is good at this.

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth, just sticking to the Fib example, since that's a fairly standard benchmark:

      struct FibonacciIterable{I}
        s0::I
        s1::I
      end
      import Base: iterate
      iterate(iter::FibonacciIterable) = iter.s0, (iter.s0, iter.s1)
      iterate(iter::FibonacciIterable, state) = state[2], (state[2], sum(state))
      function iteratorfib(N)
        i = 0
        x = 0
        for F in FibonacciIterable(0,1)
            i += 1
            x = F
            i > N && break
        end
        x
      end

vs

      function loopfib(N)
        x0 = 0; x1 = 1
        N == 0 && return 0
        for i in 2:N
            x0, x1 = x1, x0+x1
        end
        x1
      end

Then I get:

      julia> N = 30;

      julia> using BenchmarkTools

      julia> @benchmark iteratorfib($N)
      BenchmarkTools.Trial:
        memory estimate:  0 bytes
        allocs estimate:  0
        </comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        minimum time:     31.351 ns (0.00% GC)
        median time:      32.723 ns (0.00% GC)
        mean time:        32.891 ns (0.00% GC)
        maximum time:     54.525 ns (0.00% GC)
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        samples:          10000
        evals/sample:     994

      julia> @benchmark loopfib($N)
      BenchmarkTools.Trial:
        memory estimate:  0 bytes
        allocs estimate:  0
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        minimum time:     37.831 ns (0.00% GC)
        median time:      37.871 ns (0.00% GC)
        mean time:        38.616 ns (0.00% GC)
        maximum time:     105.626 ns (0.00% GC)
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        samples:          10000
        evals/sample:     992

If instead of writing "N=30" and interpolating it ($N) I just used N, I'd be benchmarking the dynamic dispatch. If I declared N constant, or just wrote 30 directly, the compiler turns into a cheater:

      julia> @benchmark iteratorfib(30)
      BenchmarkTools.Trial:
        memory estimate:  0 bytes
        allocs estimate:  0
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        minimum time:     2.990 ns (0.00% GC)
        median time:      2.997 ns (0.00% GC)
        mean time:        3.030 ns (0.00% GC)
        maximum time:     56.348 ns (0.00% GC)
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        samples:          10000
        evals/sample:     1000

      julia> @benchmark loopfib(30)
      BenchmarkTools.Trial:
        memory estimate:  0 bytes
        allocs estimate:  0
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        minimum time:     2.990 ns (0.00% GC)
        median time:      2.997 ns (0.00% GC)
        mean time:        3.006 ns (0.00% GC)
        maximum time:     8.908 ns (0.00% GC)
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        samples:          10000
        evals/sample:     1000

Anyway, my points here are: 1) In this benchmark that should be focused on iteration, the custom iteration protocol actually seems faster than the for loop for some reason. 2) While for iterative algorithms like conjugate gradient, it does seem like a nice fit, it's probably not the clearest approach everywhere.

<comment><USER3> And Julia, too, apparently.

I've really got to take a closer look at it. How does it compare to Python, ecosystem-wise? Pandas might be the thing I'd be most likely to miss in the stuff I'm doing.

<comment><USER5> There's a lot of generic numerical analysis libraries which is where it shines over Python. It matches pretty well in areas like data science and machine learning. For example, for tables there JuliaDB which is more akin to dask since it works out-of-core (but it's also able to use built-in online algorithms), DataFrames.jl which matches R, and Pandas.jl which is a straight wrapper for Python pandas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Iteration is great but these extra-constructs seem like a unnecessary proliferation of syntactic sugar.

Which is to say, writing a for-loop is two easy lines, why worry about that?

Most of the convenience I see in the code of the OP is a language that can return pairs or N-tuples of values. That's useful for a multitude of things.

If you do operations with vectors that all the same iteration and subscription operations, then one-off errors aren't very likely. One-off/fence-post errors are much more likely when you iterate through a sequence assigned values in more complex or staggered fashion and here an iterator-type isn't going to save you since you have to figure out the logic involved (which you might encapsulate with some object or type or which might have idiosyncratic logic all its own).

<comment><USER7> I think this post is mostly showing off the new iteration protocol in Julia 0.7/1.0, not advocating for converting all the for loops into decorators.

However, the post doesn't make it clear, so it's just a guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love for loops because in one line I can grasp what the loop intends to compute and usually leads me towards what I should pay attention to when debugging.

This all seems to require me to remember how it's implemented and to think about what's happening, which is more work than I'd like to do. Perhaps the assumptions you'd bring along when using a language like Julia alleviates it a bit, but still if someone else looks at my code they'll have to look through all this fanciness.

<comment><USER9> >I love for loops because in one line I can grasp what the loop intends to compute and usually leads me towards what I should pay attention to when debugging.

C++ programmer here.

In my team I've actively pushed _not_ to have for loops when something from the algorithms library will do (transform, copy_if, find_if, etc). The reason: Because I usually _cannot_ quickly grasp what the for loop intends to compute - I'm quite surprised you're saying the opposite.

I met with some resistance, as people aren't used to thinking in terms of algorithms. So I was slowly browsing our code base, finding for loops, and converting the trivial ones to calls to the algorithms library. Then I came across one for loop that was, frankly, a pointless loop. It didn't seem to do anything useful. I was sure it was a bug, but I couldn't tell from the context what the code was supposed to do. I emailed the committer, and he fixed it. Then I took the fixed version and converted it to an algorithms call.

Then I made a presentation to the team showing some of my examples, including the one with the bug. That bug convinced many to start using other constructs. Every time you write a for loop for which there is an algorithm in the library, you are reinventing the wheel, and have a good chance of introducing a bug.

(Sorry, probably a bit of a tangent to the whole thread).

<comment><USER10> Very true, wish your comment had more upvotes to bubble up to the top of the thread.

Its a lot easier to miss edge cases, have off by one errors when one is manipulating iter count directly. Working with the abstraction natural to the problem reduces these. So manipulating /creating / merging rows, columns, blocks when working with arrays help avoid many of these problems. Usually the algorithm pseudocode is written in terms of such abstractions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >> I'll illustrate this by examples in Julia, using the conjugate gradient method for positive (semi)definite linear systems as guinea pig

Which links to a paper that says "An Introduction to the Conjugate Gradient Method _Without the Agonizing Pain_ ". I mean, I understand that's the kind of things you use Julia for, but as a dumb programmer, I see the article title, want to read, but I'm a bit thrown off by that kind of things.

I scrolled a bit through the article and at the beginning I had the same impression other commenters had here. I just see a few loops like in any modern lanaguage that accepts iterables [for element in iterable], and I'm quite confused until I reach the end.

Not really dramatic, but I just wanted to mention it, since the poster seems to be the author, I feel the title, introduction to the topic, point of the article, examples, etc, could be made clearer/improved for the general audience. Or maybe I'm just the wrong audience. Anyway.

<comment><USER12> I think the intended audience is optimization people, but the title didn't make that clear. Side note: a lot of folks really love that conjugate gradient reference, but it's not my favorite.

<comment><USER13> What is your favorite?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It probably got missed in the who conjugate gradient mess, but I think the main point of the post was that instead of using one giant for loop that contains your logic, logging, stopping conditions, etc., you can seperate out your for loop into different parts so that you can mix, match, and reuse your logic code, loggging code, stopping conditions code, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> No knowing julia, I'm not sure what I'm looking at.

Is that the julia equivalent of 'yield' (as seen in c#, python, js, etc.) being newly implemented and showed off ?

<comment><USER16> No, it's really just an iterator in Julia 0.7 or 1.0. At the same time it's just a function call.

        for x in itr
          println(x)
        end

Is exactly equivalent to and syntactic sugar for

        y = iterate(itr)
        while y !== nothing
          x, state = y
          println(x)
          y = iterate(itr, state)
        end

What makes this interesting is two things:

1\. It uses Julia's multiple dispatch: every iterator has to implement or extend the function `iterate(itr::MyIteratorType, state...) = ...`

2\. Julia can handle small union types efficiently. In the example above the inferred type of `y` will be `Union{Nothing,Tuple{...,...}}`. The compiler will generate efficient code -- in previous versions of Julia any `Union` type would result in a heap allocation and `y` would internally be a pointer. In Julia 0.7 there's clever code generation and no allocations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the first examples, namely:

      import Base: iterate
      iterate(iter::FibonacciIterable) = iter.s0, (iter.s0, iter.s1)
      iterate(iter::FibonacciIterable, state) = state[2], (state[2], sum(state))

looks a bit like Prolog I think. Interesting.</comment>


Creating Web 2.0 Graphics in GIMP - <AUTHOR> http://binnyva.blogspot.com/2007/01/creating-web-20-graphics-in-gimp.html

<comment><USER2> Cool, I've been looking for something like that 114 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=62967> ;-)

Since then I have also discovered inkscape, but the Gimp stuff is still relevant now and then.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice tutorials, IMO Inkscape is much easier than Gimp for those graphics. what do you think?

<comment><USER4> I don't like raster editors for the web (gimp, photoshop), because those images scale up poorly. I prefer a vector graphics, like fireworks (or, from what i understand inkscape). You can stretch those images to the size of infinity, and they still look great.</comment></comment>


'Amazing' Math Bridge Extended Beyond Fermat's Last Theorem - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/amazing-math-bridge-extended-beyond-fermats-last-theorem-20200406/ <comment><USER2> The art at the top of the article was commissioned from this artist: [https://www.dcmaia.art/portfolio/a-bridge-beyond-fermats- las...](https://www.dcmaia.art/portfolio/a-bridge-beyond-fermats-last-theorem)

<comment><USER3> I thought that was a beautiful header. Really well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an amazingly well written article, given how difficult the topic is to explain. It's about massive generalizations over the last few decades of the basic idea that Wiles proof of FLT depended on, and does a great job explaining the key role of collaboration in mathematical research. This is everything Mochizuki's "proof" of the ABC conjecture is not.

<comment><USER5> I think it's basically impossible to write a popular article on the Langlands program, but I really struggled with what they were trying to say. For example, when they were talking about "complex numbers", did they literally mean non-real fields, or did they mean elliptic curves with complex multiplication? I _think_ the author meant the latter, but I'm not really sure.

<comment><USER4> It's an extremely deep topic. I have a Ph.D. in number theory (Frank Calegari was one of my classmates), so maybe that's why the article was so readable to me. Also, fortunately, it's been known for a long long time that elliptic curves with complex multiplication arise from automorphic forms, since their Galois representations are relatively easy to understand compared to general elliptic curves.

<comment><USER6> I find it a little amusing that you describe yourself as one of Frank's classmates instead, e.g, as "I'm Bill Stein".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's strange to see an article about the progress of modularity conjectures for elliptic curves that doesn't mention either Taniyama or Shimura, and instead mentions Langlands as the originator of the idea. This is bizarre historical revisionism.

<comment><USER4> Taniyama and Shimura only formulated a conjecture about elliptic curves over the rational numbers. They didn't come up with a statement about elliptic curves over number fields, and this article is about work to generalize modularity to number fields. The Langlands program, on the other hand does, help enormously with such generalizations. It's not trivial to formulate a correct conjectural generalization of modularity of elliptic curves over general number fields, and some naive analogues don't work at all...</comment></comment>


Former grad student has paper retracted after mentor objects - <AUTHOR> https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/15/there-is-no-i-in-data-former-grad-student-has-paper-retracted-after-mentor-objects/ <comment><AUTHOR> Submission statement: I am interested in what the HN crowd thinks of this. I know some of you come from an academic background like I do. Maybe some of you are familiar with stories of PhD students getting burned for trying to defy their supervisors (something I have also witnessed).</comment>


Social Networks for Developers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thembid.com/index.php/2007/07/13/social-networks-for-developers/ Here are ten social networks every developer should check out. <comment><USER2> Most of these are online communities, but not exactly social networks, at least in the facebook sense. Advogato is close, but it focuses on open source.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking more in the Digg sense.</comment></comment>


Another attempt at clearing Surface stock - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/12/give-microsoft-your-ipad-and-theyll-all-but-give-you-a-surface/

<comment><USER2> This article misses the wording of the coupon which says "Use towards the purchase of a Surface or other cool products at the Microsoft store", so you don't have to buy a surface, just anything that is sold at a Microsoft store.

I'm a bit disappointed this offer isn't available in Australia (no Microsoft stores I don't think), but I'm tempted to send my iPad to my brother and pick up a Nokia phone.</comment>


Alfred for Leopard to stop getting new features after version 0.9 - <AUTHOR> http://preppeller.tumblr.com/post/3984137500/leopard

<comment><USER2> This is kind of the trick with Apple's stuff...historically they've definitely been willing to blast forward without making backward-compatibility all that easy. The only problem with the Leopard scenario is that it is the last possible upgrade for PowerPC-only Macs, which is an unusually early end-of- life compared to Macs before it.

Somehow I have managed to keep a program working from Mac OS X 10.3.9 onwards (an OS that is PowerPC-only without support for universal binaries). And this accomplishment has required a lot of creativity, to put it mildly. As Alfred's author says, simply choosing the latest OS makes it a lot easier to do cool stuff; I can't easily use Core Animation or other newer technologies. Also, Xcode 4 has finally give up on me completely, so I use Xcode 3.x.

If I were a conspiracy theorist I'd almost think it was designed obsolescence, since there are times I swear I could support another entire OS revision if not for just 1 or 2 missing APIs. From this point of view, open-source has a big theoretical advantage because a couple of missing APIs are technically easy to back-port (but Apple has no reason to spend time on this).

I am glad we at least have Objective-C now, though. There are pretty powerful ways to check at runtime if almost anything will work before you use it, which allows for rather flexible binaries. There have been various ways to do this for C++ APIs beforehand, but Objective-C is much cleaner in this area.</comment>


The far right is losing its ability to speak online. Should the left defend it? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/28/daily-stormer-alt-right-cloudflare-breitbart <comment><USER2> There's still plenty of far right hate on the "public square" sites the article mentions. As long as the hate comes with a veneer of civility, they don't care. Most importantly, they seem to apply it evenly across the political spectrum.

I don't know why the article focuses on how it affects the far right when I see people closer to my own political lean getting suspended every day. You can say "Respectfully, your kind should be exterminated." Meanwhile "I want to punch the asshole who wants to exterminate me" gets you suspended.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The word "freely" has been removed from the title because HN prevents titles longer than 80 chars.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you tend to visit a limited number of websites? - <AUTHOR>

When I first discovered the internet, I used to go on exploration expeditions, as I had no idea what the internet had to offer, nor really what I wanted.
As times have moved on though, I find myself visiting only a limited number of websites, which has almost turned into a habit, and at times actually get bored, but not having the time, have no inclination to go on exploration expeditions.
Is the internet becoming dominated by a handful of companies providing limited services? Has it lost its youthful energy of random exploration or experimentation, curiosity fishing expeditions in other words? Is the internet more and more becoming a limited tool, useful for only a limited functions?
In summary, practically and realistically speaking, for regular users of the internet, has the internet lost its magic? <comment><USER2> I think I have roughly 10 sites that I visit on a regular basis. The other sites that I hit are links from the top 10. I only go there long enough to read whatever article there is and close the page. I rarely use page 2 of google search unless I'm tracking down an answer to a problem I'm having.

I would say that yes, the magic is gone from the internet, but in it's place I am left with a fine tuned experience where I don't feel that I'm missing out on anything.

You might have something on the curiosity front. I don't find myself searching out random stuff that much anymore. Instead, I seem to rely on websites to tell me what is interesting. I think that realization is fairly disturbing but probably a trend overall for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have roughly 8-10 sites I visit regularly (probably driven by the tiles my Chrome homepage). When I find something particularly interesting though, my browsing becomes much more on the "exploration expedition" side. Kind of like this: [http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/10/21/an_unexpect...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/10/21/an_unexpected_connection.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> As work is currently so busy I reckon I only visit 3 sites, HN, Twitter and Engadget.

It's rare I go to any others, expect via links from the above...</comment>


Librem 5 smartphone crowdfunding reaches its goal - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-phone-funding-target-met-one-week-after-50percent-mark/ <comment><USER2> previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436716)

</comment><comment><USER3> A (new) linux smartphone is coming :).</comment>


Git 2.10 has been released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2242-git-2-10-has-been-released <comment><USER2> Meta: Beautifully written release summary, including hyperlinks and animated gif "demos".

Inspirational for our own releases :-)

<comment><USER3> Do you know what they might have used to make the gifs?

<comment><USER4> I use this on OS X and it works great:

[https://github.com/vvo/gifify](https://github.com/vvo/gifify)

I tried a lot other services to convert quicktime recording to gif but all of them have color encoding issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Original announcement with hipster mode off. ;) [http://marc.info/?l=git&m=147286906121492&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=git&m=147286906121492&w=2)

<comment><USER6> I just get

      no such message

on that page

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config) has the complete _color_ documentation (find for "magenta" to jump to it).

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's the release announcement from the people who actually bring you git: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/master/Documentati...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/master/Documentation/RelNotes/2.10.0.txt)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly, git-scm.com is still serving Git 2.9.3 right now.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is great and all, but do status bars and terminal colorings really warrant this kind of fanfare? I love git and I'm very happy that they are constantly releasing new stuff, but I think we should draw a line somewhere on what really matters and what doesn't as far as news coverage.

<comment><USER11> The news is on github, it specialises in everything _git_ and on the _git_ subject they can choose to shine the light wherever and it will not be out-of- place.

Maybe you could limit the criticism to the fact that it has been submitted to HN and voted onto the front page, which would be a criticism of distribution medium and of the medium consuming masses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems so easy to include a command line option to specify which PEM file to use but git just won't do it.

Yes I know there are ways around it and config files you can set up, but heck, it's just a command line "use this PEM file". It's not hard.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anybody really care about the progress meters? Those useless numbers! You can try to tell me you are not stuck every half second or so, but I don't want to see all the noise. I'd rather it not print out anything by default unless I ask for it or it fails.

Why do git developers concern about the colored output? It's completely unrelated to SCM at all. I love the functionality. But it shouldn't be only for git. Can we have a separate utility that reads a diff and gloriously print out the contents, all by itself, and only that?

I really don't want to see git becomes another bloatware.

<comment><USER14> Use the --quiet flag to turn off most output and don't bother defining any colors if you don't like them. Now git is how you like it. For diffs, try git difftool.</comment></comment>


Here comes another bubble... - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I

<comment><USER2> The Ford Motor Company vs. Facebook valuation point can be explained by the fact that Ford has a debt/equity ratio of more than 23 (debt to market cap of 11, 170 billion in total debt - <http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=F>) and is, like the rest of the US auto industry, in a downward spiral. This isn't a good company to use as comparison, because public perception of its economic muscle is much greater than what the stock market says. In relation to its revenue, Ford is in serious trouble.

Facebook is grossly overvalued by any traditional measure of company value (valuation/revenue in the region of 100), but on the other hand Facebook isn't priced by the open market. The only thing supporting the company's valuation is Microsoft's 250$ million investment, which was probably more politically motivated than motivated by economics. (At a valuation like this one, which other market players would be remotely interested in investing?)

At this point, what happens in Silicon Valley isn't a bubble. Investment is under control. Certain companies are overvalued, but the valuations aren't supported by any form of mass hysteria: if anyone is burned, the effects will be local.

And don't forget that even during the IT bubble at the turn of the millennium, many sound companies were created. There is bound to be a smaller or larger degree of dead weight dragged along by any new breaking of ground in technology. This isn't a new phenomenon by any measure.

<comment><USER3> _"Certain companies are overvalued, but the valuations aren't supported by any form of mass hysteria: if anyone is burned, the effects will be local."_

Where do you think the money is coming from? There may not be an IPO market, but Joe VC is getting his capital from individual investors and organizations that are just as flighty and nervous as they were in 1999.

All it will take is one or two high-profile failures, and it'll be nuclear winter in the valley again. The mechanism may be different, but the results will be the same.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but Joe VC's venture funds usually have a ten-year lifetime, so year-to- year fluctuations in the skittishness of investors shouldn't be that big a problem. Your average VC is still working to invest a big pile of money he raised years ago, while trying to raise money he won't invest for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> it's fun to watch the growing pains of a new form of communication. I bet there were similar bubbles at the dawn of television as the modern day super- stations formed.

</comment><comment><USER6> old but gold.

</comment><comment><USER7> I managed to miss out on seeing this video 6 months ago. I think it's even more true now that 6 more months are out of the way.

Catchy and creative!

</comment><comment><USER8> Déjà vu, I guess this made is to the front page about 6 months ago or so?

Anyway, still a fun watch.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is hella old! Hacker News should start thinking how to avoid links like this in future (I mean the ones that have already been here once).

<comment><USER10> just enjoy it ;)

<comment><USER11> Hells ya! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Fast Non-Cryptographic Random Number Generator - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a fast (non-cryptographic) random number generator. Preferably, it should have a relatively small state and it needs to be faster than the Mersenne Twister I'm currently using. <comment><USER2> One candidate worth considering is

[http://www.pcg-random.org/](http://www.pcg-random.org/)</comment>


Computer Science or Software Engineering? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/959828/what-is-the-difference-between-computer-science-and-software-engineering

<comment><USER2> _Computer Science is the science or the mathematics behind Software Engineering._

Software Engineering is a course when taking Computer Science. To further elaborate, software engineering is like a branch of Computer Science. In a venn diagram, Software Engineering is inside the Computer Science circle.

SE involves the process like agile, waterfall, scrum to create applications or system.

As the top answer in the link mentioned, Computer Science is the theory. And Software Engineering is the application of that theory / the practice. With it, Computer Science includes automata, discrete mathematics, neural networks, compiler theory, machine learning, and such.

</comment><comment><USER3> Computer science is to software engineering as science is to engineering -- science discovers things, engineering applies the discoveries.

Science | engineering.

Pure mathematics | applied mathematics.

Computer science | software engineering.

Very simple. Nothing to see here, move along.</comment>


Ask HN: Did you get in to Georgia Tech's OMSCS Program? - <AUTHOR>

According to the program's information page, today's the day people should be notified of their admission status: http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program/<p>Has anyone heard if they got in or not? <comment><USER2> An e-mail went out a few days ago saying people should be hearing back soon. I received a decision today.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nor have I heard. It still says it is to the dept for review.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nope. Haven't heard back from them.</comment>


Star Wars Episode IV retold with icons - <AUTHOR> http://waynedorrington.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-wars-episode-iv-retold-in.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Panel #25 is my fav.</comment>


Early History of PostScript (1985) - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/fa.laser-lovers/H3us4h8S3Kk/-vGRDirzDV0J <comment><USER2> Time to cue the NeWS reminiscing.

Around that time, X11, NeXT computer, Apollo Domain, and SUN (where the network was the computer) were all pondering how get programs to run on one machine and output on another. Printers and display screens were kind of the same thing if you though in terms of shipping a vector program around instead of a bitmap, so there were a number of advantages to that scheme. Of course, X went the bitmap route. But Sun Openwindows was built on PS, and it was glorious.

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

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

* [http://art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/NeWS.html](http://art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/NeWS.html)

Not to be confused with Sony NEWS... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS)

<comment><USER3> Hold on, Don Hopkins is on HN; he gave me a huge list of things to read since the days of NeWS. url incoming... done:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520680)

ps: he made other lengthy comments full of gems; check his comment thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"There are four PostScript printers announced and demonstrated by three OEM vendors..."

Brian Reid must have written this shortly before DEC announced its PostScript printer.

I was involved in projects interrupted by PostScript's ascendancy - twice.

1) Circa 1984-85, Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) Hardcopy I/O group was building a high-speed (40PPM) laser printer. The initial graphics language was GIDIS, a DEC proprietary graphics language. Mid-project, we had an abrupt change of direction. We were flown from Maynard, MA (helicopter to Logan!) to Adobe in Palo Alto to meet the team there, including Chuck Geschke, and got the lowdown on PostScript. Based on the meeting, we changed our bit-slice processor firmware from interpreting GIDIS to a single drawing primitive: draw-trapezoid. The Adobe PS interpreter spit out trapezoids and we rendered them. Worked quite well, though the change of direction killed our graphics interpreter development project which involved rather interesting algorithms for things like filling bound areas, Bresenham's line drawing algorithm, curve/ellipse rendering, pattern rendering, etc.

2) Shortly thereafter I was working on an Interpress interpreter for Intel 80286 at Compugraphic Corp. Somewhat hellish given the interpreter didn't fit in memory and there was no "virtual memory" so we needed to manually swap in/out memory segments. We had a Xerox Star for a compatibility reference standard. Fun toy. Along with our Apple Lisa, it was among the first WIMP interface machines I ever used. Mid-project the Interpress interpreter project was canned in favor of PostScript which was becoming dominant. Interpress was a very efficient byte-level encoding, but PostScript was much more interesting. As an HP calculator fan, I found the use of a stack and postfix fairly natural and I hand-edited a fair amount of PostScript for testing / debugging / experimentation.

</comment><comment><USER5> So I started to read about Postscript in attempt to learn more about printers and what's hackable about them. I know all the embedded stuff is about using embedded web servers with crap configs and coding, but there is something appealing to the potential of powning a printer by just sending it a print job.

Has anyone studied that, a la devttys0.com, and how did you get there? I am digging through old PS books, so I am hoping in a decade when I finish that to learn from your comments if left here. Haha.

<comment><USER6> Some of the best resources are:

PostScript Language Reference Manual (PLRM)

[http://hepd.pnpi.spb.ru/docs_html/ThinkingInPostScript.pdf](http://hepd.pnpi.spb.ru/docs_html/ThinkingInPostScript.pdf)

Experiment with GhostScript, the #ghostscript channel on freenode

Although PostScript is a complete programming language, allowing obvious attacks like going into an infinite loop, exhausting memory, etc, it's also easy enough for the printer to sandbox print jobs to prevent you from doing anything too nasty. Also, PostScript is really on used to define the print job output, it doesn't give you low-level control over the hardware or anything.

<comment><USER7> It's not low-level, but you could send faxes from some Apple Laserwriters from postscript (although that may not have been a generic faxing ability, according to [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump_the_Experts#Sample_Que...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump_the_Experts#Sample_Questions))

<comment><USER5> Cool. Now only to find an Apple Laserwriter in my neck of the woods. Haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a very nice postscript related story in a recent HN comment about Wes Clark:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11184792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11184792)</comment>


How Genode came to RISC-V - <AUTHOR> http://genode.org/documentation/articles/riscv <comment><USER2> Wow, this is really great.

Here at Berkeley Architecture Research and our spin-off company SiFive, we are working on finalizing version 1.9 of the privileged ISA, which includes a lot of useful features for operating system implementers. This includes a standardized way of performing memory-mapped IO, debug port, and possibility of standalone boot.

<comment><USER3> I say push as hard as possible to get actual boards out there. It's not going anywhere if nobody can use them. My suggestion is a clone of something like Pi that preferrably is compatible with its addon boards and such. Drop in replacement.

<comment><USER2> The lowRISC team at Cambridge are working on exactly that. However, there's a lot that needs to be finalized in the privileged ISA before it can be implemented in a board. Manufacturing a bunch of boards that require a non- standard toolchain wouldn't be very useful.

That being said, you can already use a RISC-V processor by programming the RTL onto an FPGA board. The Zedboard and ZC706 are both officially supported. Though both of these boards are pretty expensive.

<comment><USER4> I more or less agree with both of your sentiments. I also suspect that if you can get anywhere near the tinkerer's market first, it becomes that much more likely that you can get another foothold, and that much more likely that the next thing to draw further interest will come from somewhere you can take advantage of.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly my point. The tinkerers are buying ARM systems to learn. So, if they learn ASM or ecosystems, it's going to be ARM's. They'll contribute back to ARM's, as well. Same with various microcontroller CPU's from 8-bit sector. So, needs to be something to work with for RISC-V just to get people scratching an itch coding up stuff for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's great to see free and open hardware finally arriving.

I've known of RISC-V for a while, and just learned of IBM's efforts to open up their Power Architecture: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation)

Does anyone know of any other free and open processor architectures? I hope we'll see a GPU one soon.

<comment><USER6> VERY unlikely you'll see an open GPU - they're all too worried about lawsuits because so much of their architectures are the same.

Sparc is also open and has been for quite some time.

<comment><USER7> That in of itself isn't true.

If you make GPUs like NVidia, AMD, and Intel do, you may be sued.

However, nothing stops you from just spamming extremely simple cores attached to a standardized bus architecture that talks to a singular extremely wide and fast memory controller.

Largely, this is slowly what GPUs are turning into.

<comment><USER8> Like this?

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

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's a lot like what I'm thinking, or at least, they're going in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Their comment about the address space identifier field in the MMU setup is absolutely golden. We need to get more practical experience using the architecture to help inform the design from other perspectives.

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand how it could be that problematic. It would only be an issue if there was a memory access in between the time the ptbr changes and the asid changes. But the instructions for manipulating CSRs don't access memory. If you had the instructions for changing these two registers one after another, there should be no intervening memory access. This might be broken if the CPU takes an interrupt, but interrupts are generally disabled during the context switch routine.

<comment><USER9> In principle, the two instructions could cross a page boundary. Its a narrow corner case, but it is there.

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah. Didn't think of that. Actually, just crossing a cache block boundary might be enough to trigger bad behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very informative! Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Homebrew core does not accept signed binaries - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/25316 <comment><AUTHOR> The homebrew core team did not accept our pull request for installing from a signed binary or allow us to migrate to a custom tap.

In the interest of security and user experience, we think it's important to do this. Is there any other way around it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to be clear, we are big fans of HomeBrew don't think it is their problem. We just need a solution to sign binaries.</comment></comment>


Are We Wrong About Black Holes? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/craig-callender-are-we-all-wrong-about-black-holes-20190905/ <comment><USER2> > _If a black hole is obeying thermodynamic laws, we can presume that a > statistical description of all its fundamental, indivisible parts can be > made._

No. It is posible to define the entropy of an object that has no internal indivisible parts, for example a black hole.

> _Here's another way in which the analogy falls flat. Black hole entropy is > given by the black hole area. Well, area is length squared, volume is length > cubed. So what do we make of all those thermodynamic relations that include > volume, like Boyle's law? Is volume, which is length times area, really > length times entropy? That would ruin the analogy. So we have to say that > volume is not the counterpart of volume, which is surprising._

This paragraph makes no sense at all. No sense at all!

First, Boyle's law is a law for ideal gases (that can be applied somewhat correctly to real gases). It can't be applied to solids, it can't be applied to liquids, it can't be applied to a photon gas, it can't be applied to black holes. Trying to apply it to black holes shows a completely lack of understanding of the subject.

In particular:

> _Is volume, which is length times area, really length times entropy?_

What? First the entropy of a black hole is not equal to the area, it's only proportional to the area, there are some constants. (I had to look up S = A * c^3 / 4Għ.) Second, you can't pick any three length [1] and multiply them and expect that the result that has the units of a volume can be used in any formula you want.

[1] For example, the height of the Eiffel tower, the atomic radio of an iron atom in the Eiffel tower and the width of the door of the elevator of the Eiffel tower. You can multiply them and get a volume, but this volume doesn't follow the Boyle's law when the atmospheric pressure changes in Paris.

<comment><USER3> > No. It is posible to define the entropy of an object that has no internal > indivisible parts, for example a black hole

How? If there is no system of parts, there is no entropy. I'm not sure why you have a "black hole" as an example, when you talk about the entropy of a black hole afterward and it's has not been concluded that black holes violate the second law. You have failed to give an example and I think it's important to at least clarify your statement.

> First, Boyle's law is a law for ideal gases (that can be applied somewhat > correctly to real gases). It can't be applied to solids, it can't be applied > to liquids, it can't be applied to a photon gas, it can't be applied to > black holes.

He didn't say that Boyle's law applied to black holes. He was expounding on the initial point you objected on. If you have a system of parts, it has a volume.

> Trying to apply it to black holes shows a completely lack of understanding > of the subject.

You're being disingenuous by not even attempting to understand the assertion and then attacking every logical conclusion as if that means something. He has an understanding, even if you think it's wrong.

> Is volume, which is length times area, really length times entropy?

To your first point, it's semantics when you drop the constants. This isn't some obscure way of speaking and he uses it generously.

To your second point, he didn't.

This was a generalization of the concept expanded to how you calculate the event horizon of a black hole. A sphere's surface area can be calculated from the length of the radius (ie A=4πr2).

(from google) S/V = 3/R 4πr2/Volume = 3/r or Area/3/radius = Volume

So the interpretation is volume = Area x 1/length or Area x Length (ie radius) when dealing with the variants.

A x c^3 / 4Għ = Entropy (Bekenstein–Hawking formula) and dropping all the invariants (A = E) we get Area = Entropy So the volume of a black hole (given it has entropy) could be the volume of the black hole (Area x Length) = Entropy and since we can get area from Length, we can drop the invariants and we get Length = Entropy with constants and invariant proportions.

<comment><USER4> > If there is no system of parts, there is no entropy.

Define entropy?

Wikipedia says this about entropy:

> In statistical mechanics, entropy is an extensive property of a > thermodynamic system. It is closely related to the number Ω of microscopic > configurations (known as microstates) that are consistent with the > macroscopic quantities that characterize the system (such as its volume, > pressure and temperature). Entropy expresses the number Ω of different > configurations that a system defined by macroscopic variables could assume.

The number of possible configurations of a black hole is hilariously large and demands delving into up arrows and beyond. It includes collapsing stellar cores, primordial black holes, neutron stars accreting matter until collapse, merging black holes, kugelblitzes, etc., which all are bizarrely dislike microstatically. Yet the possible macroscopic variables are only three: Mass, angular momentum, and charge.

If you pretend quantum mechanics don't exist, sure, black holes don't have entropy. But we're pretty sure something that looks a lot like quantum mechanics does exist.

<comment><USER5> Moreover, entropy can be defined using either thermodynamics or statistical mechanics. In the first case (which was the first to be developed, historically) the entropy exists for any isolated system in thermal equilibrium, even though the system can be subdivided into parts or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really hate to do this (especially since I am not an expert in this field), but this really seems like a philosophical argument against scientific theory rather than one actually backed by evidence. No offense to the author, he just goes into some sort of superficial argument that thermodynamics doesn't apply to black holes because the analogy doesn't really make sense for what looks to be personal issues with how certain things are defined. Honestly, it's great and all that there are people willing to exercise caution about our current models, but I'm not seeing anything to back Callender's views here and his viewpoint comes across as pseudoscientific.

<comment><USER7> The very idea of a "scientific theory" is a philosophical concept, and your implicit assertion that empiricism trumps abstract reasoning (which I am here neither agreeing with nor opposing) is in itself a philosophical position.

Pseudoscience refers to activities that superficially have the aesthetics of science but do not follow its constraints. For example, homeopathy is pseudoscience. They dress in white coats and use chemistry lab equipment, but they do not test their ideas with experiments that could falsify them. This has nothing to do with reasoning with the current scientific theories. What do you think theoretical physicists do?

I say this because more and more I notice people using "pseudoscience" in a sense similar to "heresy", and treating philosophy as some sort of inferior system of knowledge that is bound to be replaced by science. These people misunderstand both science and philosophy, and would benefit from a bit more of reading and thinking outside of their comfort zone.

<comment><USER8> > I say this because more and more I notice people using "pseudoscience" in a > sense similar to "heresy"

I think that for some people science has replaced religion as a belief and social control system

For these people science defines what is possible within reality and how the world works in a fundamental way; but they don't really understand how these scientific theories work, they just accept them.

I am not saying that science is a religion (they do work under different constraints), I am just saying that science has started to serve a similar role within our civilization, like religion did back in the "dark ages"

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure that calling science "social control" in any context is fair. It's certainly replaced religion as a tool for explaining things, but that's what it's for.

Your wording makes it sound like there's only one "scientific" belief system, but It's in my view really only a component of one. I think constructing your worldview around at least theoretically verifiable claims is a definite improvement over religious dogma, but most important is the scientific mindset of accepting uncertainty and "I don't know" answers (until you figure them out).

I also think it's valid to trust experts, but extraordinary claims will still require extraordinary evidence.

Now, the social structures around science aren't perfect and bad science can definitely be used to mislead people. That's just another problem to solve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Stephen Hawking proved that the area of a black hole's event horizon — the > surface that marks its boundary — cannot decrease.

I thought he proved the opposite: that black holes (slowly) evaporate through Hawking radiation, lose mass, hence their event horizon shrinks. Could anyone please elaborate?

Also, do scientists actually say that thermodynamics and black holes are the same thing? Never heard of that. I think they only mean that laws of thermodynamics are universal and should be applicable to black holes as well.

<comment><USER11> He proved both. He and Penrose proved theorems that showed that, under certain assumptions, the area of a black hole's event horizon can never decrease. But he later showed that quantum fields near the horizon can violate some of the assumptions that are required for the area theorem, so when those quantum effects are taken into account, black holes can radiate and this can cause the area of their event horizons to decrease.

<comment><USER12> So he proved "if x then y", then later proved "!x"

<comment><USER13> No. x -> y && !x does not give !y, it just gives nothing.

He proved y under _some set of assumptions_ , and then later !y under _another set of assumptions_. So he proved a -> y && b -> !y.

<comment><USER14> But, given x->y, if you prove !y, you can conclude !x, so in a sense kibibu is right (possibly requiring "proved" to be read as "indirectly proved"), and we should give them the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER11> _> given x->y, if you prove !y, you can conclude !x_

But given x -> y, if you prove !x, you can't conclude anything. And kibibu said !x, not !y.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I interpreted:

> quantum fields near the horizon can violate some of the assumptions that are > required for the area theorem

as !x

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Arieh Ben-Naim is a well-respected thermodynamicist who believes that application of the laws of thermodynamics to the whole universe and to black holes is not valid. He's written books about it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arieh_Ben- Naim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arieh_Ben-Naim)

[https://www.amazon.com/Arieh-Ben- Naim/e/B001HD1O86/ref=dp_by...](https://www.amazon.com/Arieh-Ben- Naim/e/B001HD1O86/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1)

I enjoyed Ben-Naim's "Briefest History of Time, The: The History of Histories of Time and the Misconstrued Association Between Entropy and Time "

[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=briefest+history+of+time](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=briefest+history+of+time)

Ben-Naim takes credit for Hawking later cutting most of his "Brief History of Tme" in later editions.

</comment><comment><USER16> Black holes are the most astonishing of stellar objects. They were mathematically predicted first and then discovered, which is fascinating.

<comment><USER17> Just like Neptune! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Le_Verrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Le_Verrier)

<comment><USER18> And Vulcan! [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(hypothetical_planet)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_\(hypothetical_planet\))

... oops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _There's a long debate in the foundations of statistical mechanics about whether entropy is a subjective notion or an objective notion. I'm firmly on the side of thinking it's an objective notion._

I spread out two decks of cards on the table in front of you. One is thoroughly mixed up, the other one is neatly ordered by suit from spades to diamonds and each suit is ordered from ace to king, except for 7 and 8 of clubs, they are in the wrong order. »Which deck has the higher entropy?« I ask. »The mixed up one of course.« you answer. Out of my pocket I pull a flashlight and turn it on, under the shine of its blacklight you can read the numbers 1 to 52 written onto the mixed up deck in perfect order, the numbers written onto the neatly ordered deck are in no discernible order.

<comment><USER20> My question is "why does the symbol '1', followed by '2', ... '52' define an ordered state?" It would seem that the "cheat sheet" which defines the progression is part of the system. Not sure where I'm going with that...

This brought up another set of questions: is it possible to define entropy without a definition of simultaneity, or some other global ordering of events? Is it possible for two different observers to have differing views of entropy? What does rotation of the time-like axis do? Googling didn't find much, but it did find a discussion on physicsforums [0]. The answer seemed to be... it's complicated. Good discussion, though.

[0] [https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/time-dilation-and- entr...](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/time-dilation-and- entropy.837480/)

<comment><USER21> You can't calculate entropy without defining the macroscopic variables you are interested in.

Once you have done that, you can start counting the microstates that satisfy those macroscopic variables.

<comment><USER20> So, in other words, yes, entropy is subjective, and depends upon your definition of variables (and ordering). What's the other argument, leading to debate?

<comment><USER22>
        ΔS = Q/T

We tend to think of energy as an objective thing (the distance your car can go on a tank full of gas doesn't depend on your subjective beliefs), and the same is true for temperature (commonly manifesting as an average energy and measurable via thermometers). This implies that entropy should be considered an objective property of the system as well.

<comment><USER20> So then, would this be true:

The specific value for the entropy of a system depends upon the definition of the microvariables. However, regardless of the definition used, the measured value will increase over time. In the deck of cards example, above, one definition of entropy is the suites and rank, and another definition is the numbers 1 .. 52 written on the backs. Shuffling the deck will reduce the ordering, no matter which definition you look at.

This implies

a) No definition of microvariables and their ordering can result in an entropy level which is the inverse of another definition.

b) Its possible to define a set of all sets, which is the union of all possible microvariables and orderings. This uber-entropy will also increase over time.

I suppose the philosophical argument is that "objective entropy" is either referring to the uber-entropy, or the property that all entropies always increase, and "subjective entropy" is looking at specific values for one particular measurement system.

Also, c) increasing entropy over time only holds true for interaction functions which are fully transposable. For example, if microstate X is the result of an interaction "f" betweeen microstates A and B

state(x) = f(state(a), state(b))

state(a) = f'(state(x), state(b))

state(b) = f''(state(x), state(a))

f, f', and f'' are fully deterministic and yield unique results for every combination of inputs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The problem with black holes is that all of our science is observationally weak. You can't use any science that's based on the speed of electromagnetism or for that matter light.

If your observational weakness prevents you from making any observations. Then you know nothing at all about it.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Craig Callender worries that the analogy between black holes and > thermodynamics has been stretched too far.

Spaghettification

</comment><comment><USER25> The featured professor implies credentials he doesn't have by describing himself as a "philosopher of science" when his actual degree is in philosophy, not any hard science. In fact he has no scientific or mathematic background whatsoever. Read his opinions with the same amount of skepticism you would apply to a post on 4chan, because he's exactly as credible.

<comment><USER26> This breaks the site guideline against shallow dismissals. Please don't do that here.

<comment><USER25> Pointing out that someone is misrepresenting themselves as an authority is not a shallow dismissal. In fact I didn't even say he was wrong; I said take his claims with a large degree of skepticism.

<comment><USER26> Snarkily putting someone down because of his credentials is certainly a shallow dismissal, and just the sort of thing that guideline asks you not to do here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Human sees ant - Be busy as an ant. Ant is incredible, We have to colonise world just like they are doing. Ant has more strength when compared to its body. only queen ants talk to small ants. Queen controls the ants. Ants are disciplined. Some ants attack. Some ants build bridges.

What if Human are the ant?.

Proving it being right / wrong is not the point.</comment>


SoftBank plans to lend $20B to its CEO and employees amid volatile markets - <AUTHOR> https://mazech.com/2019/08/softbank-plans-to-lend-20-billion-to-its-employees-amid-volatile-markets/ <comment><USER2> there's reason to believe SoftBank is gonna go "boom", and in a big way:

\- they have tons of illiquid assets (equity in startups and early stage companies - hard to shed - see later)

\- SoftBank Vision Fund "borrows" from its huge illiquid assets (Uber + other SV stuff) in order to make the market by throwing around insane amounts of cash ($billions); in other words, they make their own markets in order to pump up their valuations but the underlying thing is fantasy-land VC goop (see any problems here?);

\- the only way to shed many of these assets are with buyouts or IPOs and the most recent ones haven't been great (the 'big names' of which [UBER, LYFT] were treated like hot garbage even shorted by IPO underwriters in case of UBER) so it's not like this garbage can be punted to someone else

\- SoftBank routinely sells assets to its Vision Fund and uses shady stuff like this in order to provide non-standard accounting; we have no idea what their financial health is due to a maze of non-standard reporting

\- SoftBank owns over half (!!) of Japanese corporate bonds

\- they have insane amounts of debt - "¥15.7tn ($143bn) of interest-bearing debt and ¥27tn of total liabilities, far greater than its ¥11.6tn market capitalisation"

as best i can tell this is approaching Ponzi territory. once more greater fools wake up to the fact that VC isn't all the rage, get the hell out of the way of anything that SoftBank touches.

<comment><USER3> I have a conspiracy theory kicking around in my head that Softbank might be a money laundering or tax saving scam of some sort.

Why else would you invest 300 million in a dog walking app ?

<comment><USER4> It's a pretty standard interpretation that the Softbank funds are a vehicle to deploy capital that is otherwise hard to invest (because of political controversy, dubious origins, etc). That's why they can afford to throw cash around so liberally.

<comment><USER3> So startups are like the art market now ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This smells like walking into bankruptcy.

SoftBank was missing some billions for its own new fund and the solution is create debt to fund the fund. Since it's illegal for themselves to invest in their own... they workaround it through it's own employees.

If a workaround/scheme is required to obtain enough capital for the fund... that means that either there isn't enough capital in the world or that the owners of such capital don't believe in the fund.

The important question is why it's better to resort to this scheme than to not have enough capital for the fund?

<comment><USER6> OP says SoftBank contributes for 38b to their own 100b fund directly, so i don't think your explanation is correct...

Plus they apparently did the same thing in their first fund a few years ago.

<comment><USER5> Correct, thanks for that note.

It seems that SoftBank wants to fund directly 38b$ and indirectly 20b$ through employees.

In the first fund SoftBank contribution seems to have been 28B$ in a total of 93$B.

It seems that SoftBank is having a hard time getting the Saudi Arabia to invest again in the new fund. In the first one they put 45B$.

<comment><USER7> Do you think they're still trying to get more Saudi money after the Jamal Khashoggi government sponsored murder? VCs need to be smart about their LPs. Idealistic startup founders / employees (the one's VCs tend to invest in) don't want to take blood money for their company.

<comment><USER8> > _Do you think they 're still trying to get more Saudi money after the Jamal > Khashoggi government sponsored murder?_

Yes. There has been zero backlash against SoftBank or Saudi-backed VCs from companies or consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tangentially related: Could someone explain to me why SoftBank often seems to be the only major company playing in the "traditional" VC space? We hear of the "SoftBank round", but not, for example, the "Microsoft round" or the "AT&T round".

Relative to many companies, SoftBank is not so big. And the bigger companies do have VC-style subsidiaries set up (e.g. Microsoft's M12). But SoftBank seems to make the highest profile investments by a significant margin. Is there any particular reason for this? Are they simply more tolerant of risk and therefore write bigger checks?

<comment><USER10> Softbank isn't really a traditional company. And it's not really a bank. It started as a kindof publisher for software ("software bank"), so it has a lot of expertise in identifying and distributing new technologies, and it's essentially acted as a holding company for tech investments (including alibaba) since 2000. Really it's the manifestation of Masayoshi Son, who is an incredible entrepreneur, technologist, and investor.

Apple+ more invest in the Softbank Vision fund, so the "SoftBank round" is already what you are thinking.

<comment><USER11> >Apple+ more invest in the Softbank Vision fund, so the "SoftBank round" is already what you are thinking.

Yeah, but by doing this they essentially outsource the process to Softbank.

I'm assuming OP is curious why they won't make the decisions themselves.

<comment><USER10> The Vision Fund is, among other things, the manifestation of the idea that an order of magnitude more scale will qualitatively change VC investing.

VC funds historically have been in the hundreds of millions, so you can invest up to tens of millions in any one company to keep a balanced portfolio.

SoftBank's Vision is in the hundreds of billions, so it can invest up to hundreds of millions.

This means they can single-handedly shepherd companies across the 'valley of death' or out-spend the competition to reach critical network effects... Essentially instead of just making bets, they're tipping the scales.

The point of this strategy is the scale, which is only possible by raising billions from sovereign wealth funds and mega corporations.

No one company could do it. Apple's net income last year was ~$60 billion.

The Vision Fund launched with $100 billion.

<comment><USER12> >No one company could do it. Apple's net income last year was ~$60 billion.

Apple has somewhere around 250 billion cash on hand, so they could definitely launch a 100$ billion fund on their own.

Microsfot has about 150B. Google about 100B . Lots of companies can theoretically build such a fund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's important to understand what SoftBank is, and why betting against them is a bad idea.

Globally we are going through a period of deflation.

Japanese Banks have been dealing with this problem for 30 years now.

BOJ can print money ( yen ) and flood the world and the value of the yen would still go up !

The reason is there is a lot of latent demand for Japanese exports.

When Softbank invests in lets say India, ( through Uber drivers ), and suffers losses.

The yens released ends ups creating demand for Japanese export.

From Softbank's perspective it's a win-win, they get to be owners of really important tech companies and at the same time Japanese companies see a demand surge for their products.

It's hard to understand initially - but don't be surprised to see Softbank clones propping up in Europe in 10 years - once the EU has been completely battered by deflation.

In the US you might yet see the largest types of these funds in the future once the US govt. decides it wants some fiscal spending.

<comment><USER14> I'm really not understanding this. What you seem to be saying is that when Softbank succeeds they get to own a load of tech companies. That's great, that's the upside of any VC.

Where I'm not understanding is you're saying when they fail, the money they've lost has gone into stimulating demand for japanese goods and kept the currency low. But firstly, that's still them failing - the company will fail, ROI will be low. It might help the domestic japanese manufacturing industry, but it's not going to help softbank.

But also to take your example, Softbank blows a load of money in India on Uber, those Indian Uber drivers go out and buy japanese cars. But it's not like 100% of the cash you're putting into Uber goes to Japanese car companies. It's probably not even 5% - the vast majority of the money will be going to stimulate the Indian economy.

I just don't understand, because what you seem to be saying is that for a primarily export based economy, you should just print money always, that doesn't seem correct to me - but I really don't know enough about it. Surely there must be downside? Normally I'd say this maps to inflation and squeezed living standards- but are we just no longer seeing those effects?

<comment><USER13> If you want a full comprehensive understanding of what is going on I highly recommend :

\- [https://www.amazon.com/Princes-Yen-Central-Bankers- Transform...](https://www.amazon.com/Princes-Yen-Central-Bankers- Transformation/dp/0765610493)

There is a huge overlap here with MMT ( Modern Monetary Theory ), but the book was published way before MMT become more widely read. Richard studies what happened in Japan from an economic history prespective. ( I will do a dis- service to the whole topic trying to explain everything in a few sentences, but I will try to answer specific point raised ).

> I just don't understand, because what you seem to be saying is that for a > primarily export based economy, you should just print money always.

As an exporter you cant help but accumulate FOREX. so the value of the yen would always head north, if you want to stay a top exporter you have to constantly print money to balance out your FOREX accumulation.

> Surely there must be downside?

Nope, no downside when you build capital goods that everybody else wants.

> Normally I'd say this maps to inflation and squeezed living standards- but > are we just no longer seeing those effects?

inflation happens when aggregate demand > aggregate supply. If you are not supply constrained then inflation wont happen regardless of how much money you print.

Japan specifically could print unimaginable amount of money and use it to create whatever technology they want.

Technology acts as an accelerator to this deflation doom loops, since these technology products further increase supply or reduce cost.

You might have hard limits due to physical commodities like oil. But technology has been able to squeeze even more value out each unit.

> Where I'm not understanding is you're saying when they fail, the money > they've lost has gone into stimulating demand for Japanese goods and kept > the currency low. But firstly, that's still them failing - the company will > fail, ROI will be low. It might help the domestic Japanese manufacturing > industry, but it's not going to help softbank.

Japanese banks are very much interwoven with their state, softbank might get certain lending quota from BOJ that they must lend out. Remember if Japan doen't print yen and spread it around then their deflation problem gets worse. My personal opinion is Japan should pay attention to their domestic proverty problem, they could just implement UBI, but having too much Yen domestically wont solve their deflation problem. The last time they tried helicopter money, everybody just bought government bonds, making the problem worse ! So they might prefer to figure out to create demand in foreign markets.

> It's probably not even 5% - the vast majority of the money will be going to > stimulate the Indian economy.

I do not think Japan really cares if the Indian economy is stimulated or not, they just want there to be healthy demand for Japanese products, printing money and lending it out and then suffering some loss might even be preferable to having a large marketing and advertisement industry like we do in the West.

<comment><USER15> > _Japan specifically could print unimaginable amount of money and use it to > create whatever technology they want._

And they're not doing this because...?

We are living in truly dangerous times if people actually buy into this nonsense.

<comment><USER16> You are completely right. This sounds like a fringe academic theory from someone without skin in the game.

<comment><USER17> Fringe academic theory is being generous. This is more someone watched that ten minute cartoon YouTube video on "how centralized banks really work" and now think they're economic experts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Based on where equities are and where the bond market are, you're going to have one hell of a hard time trying to get 5% return on the loans they're handing out. Take a look at some of the projections on 10 year returns for equities and bond market. The 2018 Vanguard report shows equities will return 3% real return over the next 10 years, and there are many estimates lower than that. Bond prices are also at all time highs. I wouldn't even take this loan if it were 2%.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sure we'll pay you, but the only place you can shop is the company store.

<comment><USER20> No. There's no requirement they invest the loans in the Vision Fund. Nor is there a requirement to take out the loan.

We already see something similar at law firms - partnership in a firm means literally buying into it, and one of the perks you receive at many law firms is the ability to take out a loan at favorable rates, particularly to help with said buying in.

<comment><USER21> I haven't heard of "partners" anteing up (paying) to become partners before - if you think about it this would favour "Tim nice but dim" with a rich mummy and daddy.

<comment><USER22> You sort of have to pay to become a partner to buy your equity share, that's just how it works, and as the other poster said, you can get a loan from the partnership to pay for your partnership buy in

<comment><USER21> I checked that and I don't see that requirement for Goldman Sachs or any other partnership set up - the potential for corruption and nepotism is huge if its pay to play.

Some form of coops Mondragon for example do but that is a very different type of employment.

<comment><USER23> Goldman's partnership today is that in name only. Prior to the firms IPO new partners did indeed have to buy their way in (via loans!).

<comment><USER21> The full value? GS was huge even before the IPO no individual could ever expect to buy the value of their share surly?

<comment><USER23> I think anecdotally it was around 6-800k USD, which could be covered no problem with a few years of contributions from salaries and bonuses. Basically its just company equity that you are buying. The amount can be token but you are still a "partner".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain to me how this is not like that episode of Arrested Development where they steal a dollar from the banana stand and then throw out a banana to "cancel it out"?

<comment><USER22> Of course it's nothing like that. That was one dollar, while this is 20 billion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can someone explain the economical incentives behind this and how it helps SoftBank and the employees?

I understand what they are doing but I don't understand how it will work to succeed.

<comment><USER10> 5% for a loan is pretty good these days if it's low risk. With yields way down and now negative, it's hard for companies to make use of cash reserves. If SoftBank has cash, and they know that employees are making way above 5% returns on average ( _cough_ Vision Fund), then it seems like a good investment.

For example,

0) SoftBank loans extra cash to Masayoshi Son.

1) Masayoshi Son invests a portion in the next Vision fund which makes 40% returns, and the rest in safer strategies (public equities, long-term debt)

2) Masayoshi Son makes a killing, has no trouble repaying the loan.

3) SoftBank just grew their cash reserves well above the market rate.

The key assumption here is 2). But since this is a loan, and Masayoshi Son invested most of the money in safe investments (and has a lot of wealth anyways), even if the Vision fund underperforms, SoftBank can be confident they can still make money back (step 3). They're using their advantages to build their own unique loan product.

<comment><USER26> Why bother with the middle man? If Softbank is so confident that its vision fund is going to make much bigger than 5% returns, it should be putting the money directly into there.

The fact that it doesn't do this is a little ominous. Why does it believe that it will get a better return by loaning out cash at 5% rather than investing in its own fund?

<comment><USER10> Because you can't just take corporate cash and invest it in a private equity fund.

Fiduciary duty requires low risk products, and liquidity. Generally that means long-term debt (e.g. t-bonds) or 'corporate paper' which are nearly risk-free. Those yields are 3% or lower, certainly less than 5%. The risk profiles are about as far away from a VC fund as can be.

Generally a personal loan would be way too risky for corporate cash -- so this is actually an incredible show of confidence in the Vision Fund!

<comment><USER27> >Because you can't just take corporate cash and invest it in a private equity fund. Fiduciary duty requires low risk products, and liquidity.

I call bullshit. Specifically, what you wrote is not remotely true under US law or under Japanese law.

A company's managers have very broad leeway to spend the company's cash however they like. In fact, if the cash, treasuries, corporate paper, etc, of a company starts to pile up over the years, the markets tend to take that as a sign of managerial incompetence or at least managerial lack of vision.

Anyone that can buy and hold shares in SoftBank can also hold cash, treasuries or corporate paper directly. In other words, SoftBank's investors don't need SoftBank to hold cash, treasuries or corporate paper on their behalf; they invest in Softbank because they expect that SoftBank has a more ambitious plan than that. Creating and selling the iPhone is an example of an ambitious plan that turned out extremely well for investors in the company with that plan.

If that argument is not persuasive enough, consider this concrete counterexample to your claim: for 6 years, Google had a venture-capital arm:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GV_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GV_\(company\))

Specifically, although GV is currently owned by Alphabet, for a period of 6 years before that it was owned directly by Google (under the name Google Ventures I believe).

<comment><USER10> can't as in "that asset class does not meet the risk and liquidity requirements for cash management in general"

not can't as in "de-facto illegal."

dereliction of fiduciary duty is illegal, of course the circumstances matter.

I think you are conflating capex + investments with overall cash management.

They already invest a lot in the vision fund. This is a way for them to route more money into the vision fund on top of what they already invest, by tapping into an additional asset class within their portfolio allocation.

If a company's portfolio is a high percentage of cash management products, that's a bad sign of low innovation. If the portfolio is too low a percentage, that's a bad sign also because they would be unable to access liquidity to cover operations given a downturn or sudden need for capex etc... Different companies have different allocations but healthy companies (including google) have allocations into a diverse bucket of asset classes...

> consider this concrete counterexample to your claim

The fact that Google also has a VC arm is not a counter argument. Google allocates some amount of its cash into cash management products as well.

> SoftBank's investors don't need SoftBank to hold cash, treasuries or > corporate paper on their behalf

Their customers do. They're still a major telecom company in Japan -- they certainly have operations they need to protect.

<comment><USER27> >Different companies have different allocations but healthy companies (including google) have allocations into a diverse bucket of asset classes

OK, but that's different from your "you can't just take corporate cash and invest it in a private equity fund". If you'd written instead, "having their employees carry some of the equity risk is a way for SoftBank to increase the size of the private equity fund while continuing to make sure that they have enough cash to continue operations", I wouldn't've felt the need to call you out.

I don't know enough about Japan to say, but if it were a US company making this move, I would be more inclined to believe that the loans are mostly intended as a perk for employees like this comment claims: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20736072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20736072)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bad idea: Being dependent on a single company for your salary while also holding mostly that company's stock in your investment portfolio.

Worse idea: Also investing in that same company's highly risky VC fund.

Worst idea: Borrowing money to do so.

<comment><USER29> Softbank's deals - Sprint, WeWork, and now this - make me question their financial intelligence.

<comment><USER30> Their last Uber investment is under water... wouldn't be surprised if the $2b in WeWork stock they purchased is crushed as well at IPO time -- but at least they didn't follow through with the $8b they initially promised to Adam.

<comment><USER31> I read that SoftBank structured their investment in some way that they made money on the IPO even though the price was below what they bought in at.

It didn't really make any sense to me, but I wanted to ask here:

Is there any truth to that? And if so how did it work?

<comment><USER32> I think they also bought common stock?

During private fundraising, investor (vs founder) stock generally has preferred rights when the company is sold and/or liquidated. There might also be restrictions on who and how someone can sell their common shares. This depends on the investors and the terms that were negotiated during fundraising.

So common stock generally is sold at a discount because it doesn't have any of these protections, and it's basically last in line to receive any payout.

However during IPO, often preferred stock converts into normal common stock so that it can be sold to Joe Smuck (or their pension fund institutional) investor.

Hence it's an arbitrage play; you purchase common at say a 30% discount in a late round and then sell it on the market for full price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What does this mean?

<comment><USER34> 19.999999999 billion for the CEO, 1 for employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Makes complete sense.</comment>


Ask HN: Where Does the Money Come From? - <AUTHOR> Between the government and the fed were looking at +US$2T in stimulus and asset buying. That's just here in the US. Where does all this money come from? Does anyone have a real and simple answer as to where this money comes from and how we fund it?<p>Thank you!<p>- A concerned millennial <comment><USER2> It doesn't. The government is spending money it doesn't have. This is common practice that occurs regularly, but never in principle so large.

The US government spends far more than it generates in revenue, which is called a deficit. The deficit is typically financed as debt and that debt becomes a financial instrument capable of restructuring, private ownership, and refinancing as secondary debt (debt on an existing debt).

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

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

</comment><comment><USER3> To be a little flippant about this... "money printer go brrr" (as the meme goes).

We can fund it through debt that we have to pay back (eg, issuing government bonds), but we can also literally print money.

Printing money can have inflationary effects because money is worth just a tiny bit less when there is more of it. But in a downturn this is generally a less important concern. There's no really simple answer for when printing money is fine and at what levels and when it is not, particularly since it is not a settled topic. The recent consensus generally seems to be that printing money in recessions is good though.</comment>


Did humans create the Sahara desert? - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/11260.html <comment><USER2> blogspam of

[https://blog.frontiersin.org/2017/03/14/did-humans-create- th...](https://blog.frontiersin.org/2017/03/14/did-humans-create-the-sahara- desert/)

which is in itself a summation of this David K. Wright paper, complete with images and references:

[http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feart.2017.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feart.2017.00004/full)</comment>


Wikidata - <AUTHOR> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page <comment><USER2> I was just thinking about something like this today (or at least what I think this might be, since I really can't tell from the page).

Here is what I want... I want a way to query and download Wikipedia metadata easily.

For example, I recently saw the Burke Museum released an Wildflower App, but none for Windows Phone. I was thinking I could use Wikipedia to build a very similar app, but I needed to get access to hierarchical metadata (flower type, color, region of the world, environment, etc...). I suspect it's largely there in Wikipedia, but it's not structured (or at least I don't know how to query it).

I can imagine this being of use for a lot of things: plants, birds, fish, basketball, football, countries, presidents, trees, foods, etc...

Has this been done already? Is it a solved problem with Wikipedia already?

<comment><USER3> That is the direction Wikidata is intending to go, yes. But it doesn't have a lot of semantic data in it yet.

In the meantime, some other options that might be useful:

There's another Wikimedia Foundation project specifically for species taxonomy: <http://species.wikimedia.org>

As 'riffraff mentioned there's a project, DBpedia, which is based on extracting structured data by parsing Wikipedia infoboxes: <http://dbpedia.org/About>

For certain kinds of queries the Wikipedia category system already provides some semi-structured data, e.g. you can consult <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fictional_parrots> to get a list of some famous fictional parrots. You can query by category programmatically using the MediaWiki API <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page>

<comment><USER4> > 'riffraff

Completely OT, but is this an established HN convention for marking usernames? I've noticed it here and there, and it seems like a goodish idea.

<comment><USER5> Well, not really. When you quote a username like this, it means you're talking about the name—the symbol—rather than about the user. So this makes sense:

      'riffraff is eight letters long

But this does not make sense:

      'riffraff mentioned the project

... since names don't talk.

<comment><USER6> You're being more philosophical about it than I am.

I just wanted to be able to refer to users with names like "the" without putting scare quotes around the names. What I wanted, in effect, was to prevent evaluation of the names in the sentence.

 _Not_ somehow quoting HN names feels even weirder; writing sentences like "anonymous says we should use the smoked paprika" or "nooonespecial stole our bucket of mashed potatoes" just feels wrong.

I'm happy for it to be an idiosyncrasy of mine, though.

<comment><USER5> But why quote the name? "gruseom wrote a comment to which tptacek replied" is no different from "Daniel did this and Thomas did that". Is it? If you don't evaluate the names, you end up talking about the names themselves.

(Not being pedantic, just curious.)

<comment><USER6> Because some people on HN have names that are ambiguous in sentence context. "gruseom" and "tptacek" aren't ambiguous; "the" and "noonespecial" are.

<comment><USER5> Ahhhhh, I get it now. Yes, ambiguity is an issue.

My son used to play an FPS that used scrolling text to report on what actions were happening. If you shot a player named, say, "gruseom", the scrolling text would read:

      You killed gruseom.

One day I noticed that some wag had picked the username "yourownmotherhowcouldyou".

Edit: You're basically using ' the way that @ migrated into general usage from Twitter. But the Lisp ' is so burned into my memory that it was surprisingly hard to see that. I do prefer your ' to @; it's not as heavy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        Universe

<https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q1>

        Earth

<https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q2>

        Life

<https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q3>

<comment><USER8>
      Douglas Adams

<https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q42>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> (Repost of part of my previous comment, still valid, I think)

Wikidata, just like Freebase, is trying to collect structured or semi- structured data instead of unstructured data such as that present in Wikipedia. I am happy about the aim (completely unstructured data is basically useless for any serious data reuse and data extraction) but my fear is that they will not succeed as well as they did with Wikipedia. Wikipedia funded its success on the fact that anybody could edit it. In order to edit a wikipedia page you only need very low technical skills and basic writing skills (plus knowledge of the topic, obviously). Adding and manipulating structured data requires people to obey to a certain mental grid, to a formalized model, to a schema developed by someone and put in place to be respected strictly. The vast majority of people is easily demotivated when they are required to learn something substantial beforehand and most of the edits of unskilled users end up removed by watchdog (something seen often in high quality Wikipedia articles: edits made by new users are quickly reverted on the grounds that they did not follow some of the many guidelines that must be followed).

My idea is that many problems found in structured-data projects (FreeBase, MusicBrainz...) could be alleviated by better interfaces and a wide use of automation, both things that Wikipedia projects do not seem to excel in.

<comment><USER10> Users and computers can here. Let any unskilled user make a change. There are plenty of editors who just watch the changelog and fix things up for grammer or for NPV violations, and now that can include include incorporating it into the structured data.

In the future, bots using some kind of NLP can scour over the changes and look for new facts to extract and incorporate, either by suggesting features to editors or to just make the change themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those who are confused (many of the posts currently appear to be), this seems like it is an attempt to semantic-ize Wikipedia-style definitions.

For example, representing a term as: Earth "is a" planet "belongs to" the solar system, "has" [properties X, Y, Z].

This has applications in natural language processing and other types of artificial intelligence (for example, within a particular niche, it could be useful in an expert system). Think about this type of thing as a complex graph representing "knowledge" in some abstract but still useful sense.

<comment><USER12> Also known as faceted classification.[1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_classification>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I missing something? Wikidata talks big, but apparently it only contains lists of different language versions of Wikipedia articles. ([https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction#What_do_...](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction#What_do_we_have_so_far.3F)) There doesn't seem to be any sort of codified plan forward, so I'm not sure what to think of it.

<comment><USER14> The initial goals don't seem world changing, but maybe at Wikipedia scale they could be:

We are working on three major things:

1\. Centralizing language links

2\. Providing a central place for infobox data for all Wikipedias

3\. Creating and updating list articles based on data in Wikidata

In particular I imagine this will have an initial impact of massively increasing the quality of the lesser used Wiki languages, by leveraging the work on the busier sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Previous HN discussion (50 comments): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3775212>

Commentary by The Atlantic: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the- pr...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-problem-with- wikidata/255564/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Entry Q13: triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13)

<https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q13>

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm thinking this is a one-stop-shop for public datasets? Maybe for when you're reading an article on something like 'gun violence in urban areas', but want to see stats from multiple studies on the topic. That's my best guess and I can see that solving the problem of trying to reference data from studies in a unified way.

</comment><comment><USER17> Noscript users, or in case anyone else sees lots of numbers like "Q1969448" instead of data values in the tables (articles?): Wikidata apparently requires javascript but doesn't make it clear. Allow scripts and refresh.</comment>


I am launching myself as a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://sherratt.ca/

<comment><AUTHOR> Trying to take a different take on finding a job, since I love startups I decided to market myself as a startup. Yes it is a bit narcissistic, but you have to try something different to get noticed.</comment>


TechStars incubator hatches 10 new companies - <AUTHOR> http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2009/08/techstars-incubator-hatches-10-new-companies.html

<comment><USER2> TakeComics, one of the companies mentioned, has the absolute worst copy ever on their landing page. It is rife with grammatical and spelling errors. A fine example of how to turn off visitors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another similar thread that's been killed but has more comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746701>

<comment><USER4> Why was it killed? Hopefully not because TS is perceived YC competition?

These incubators are great for all hackers and entrepreneurs who are the readers and contributors of HN.

<comment><USER5> _Why was it killed?_

It's a dupe; it's the same article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've used Vanilla forums before and liked them a great deal. Is this Lussumo in the TechStars program, or has someone taken their open-source app and run with it?

<comment><USER7> It's them. They're looking to take their goods to the next level.</comment></comment>