What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? - <AUTHOR> https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/strategic-petroleum-reserve1.htm <comment><USER2> Curious, does anyone know if the US govt is filling the reserve now, or even adding capacity? With oil so incredibly cheap right now, now is the absolute best time to be building and expanding our reserves.

<comment><USER3> $3B was allocated to precisely this purpose in the stimulus proposal before it passed, but it was later dropped over opposition:

[https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/bailout- for...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/bailout-for-big-oil- democrats-eliminate-3b-strategic-petroleum-reserve-purchase-in-pandemic- relief-package)

I agree with your assessment and this was a serious mistake in my opinion.

There is now however an alternative plan to monetize the remaining open space by leasing it to oil companies that need storage space:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-usa- reserve/us...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-usa-reserve/us- to-lease-space-for-initial-30-million-barrels-of-oil-in-emergency-reserve- idUSKBN21K33E)

Storage space is in very high demand at this point - to the extent that oil tankers are being used as floating storage:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-04/the- most-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-04/the-most- profitable-trade-oil-all-over-the-oceans-right-now)

<comment><USER4> > it was later dropped over opposition

Both parties make mistakes.

Sigh.

Why on earth did they frame this as a "bailout for big oil"? It's a strategic concern for national security.

<comment><USER5> > Why on earth did they frame this as a "bailout for big oil"?

Because that is exactly what it is. You're talking about the largest companies in the world, they've have decades and decades of war and subsidy supporting them.

They don't need more support now, especially considering the environmental destruction they cause. Now is a much better time to push forward higher quality energy production technology like solar, wind, batteries, etc.

<comment><USER6> why would now, while we're in the midst of a public health crisis and the ensuing economic turmoil, be a good time to radically change our energy infrastructure to something that still has a higher unit cost?

I can obviously see that, politically, now is a good opportunity to push agendas that would otherwise not be accepted, but does that really make it a good time overall?

<comment><USER7> It's not a good time at all. Even if you put the cost and reliability problems aside for a moment, the entire planet's supply chains are massively disrupted and largely shut down. Plus, even if you could get the equipment manufactured, installing it is a health hazard right now - it means lots of people from all over the place in close quarters on sites with poor access to sanitation facilities. This will set back green energy a year at the very minimum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This would be the time to buying. I remember when it was 100+ dollars people were saying it will never go less than 100. Then when it was at 40 it will never go to a 100. Then it went to 100 in 2014. It's like people just don't look at history.

<comment><USER9> When I was attending Colorado School of Mines (~1999) conventional wisdom held that the maximum price should hover around $80 a barrel, since alternatives for industrial applications start becoming competitive beyond that point.

Keep in mind that oil can degrade while in storage, and degrade the storage itself. Taxation complicates the picture for commercial interests.

All things considered, the world probably has more above ground storage than it needs, and what exists is already full. From the perspective of at least one major oil company that I know of, this was already the case a decade ago.

<comment><USER10> Go Orediggers! Mines '00 here, I was across the street in Brown Building though (CivEng).

During the last round of oil shocks ('07-'08) I remember a lot being made about the inelasticity of demand for oil, and how that made prices so volatile. I'm sure that it's still very inelastic, but now that there are non- petroleum transportation alternatives (mass-produced EVs) I'm curious to see what future oil shocks will look like, and whether we'll reduce some of that storage as price volatility goes away.

<comment><USER11> How much oil demand is elastic though?

Over 10 years people can buy less gas cars and more electric cars. But over a month, the car in your garage is either gas or electric. Not that many individual things that can do both. Maybe some power plants, where say neither coal nor oil generators are at 100% capacity...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To provide some context, the US uses about 20m barrels of oil per day. We have about 35 days worth of oil reserves. It seems if there was some kind of extended emergency where we could not produce oil, 772m barrels would be wholly inadequate.

<comment><USER13> I'd imagine that in such a situation, a lot of things would be shut down - there's a good chance it'd last a little more than 35 days when use is lower.

<comment><USER14> And North American production will ramp up as quickly as possible. We've seen very expensive oil in the last decade which has made a variety of alternative extraction methods economical. Not entirely sure how a situation could arise where oil production is impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hate headlines like this. The oil isn't "hidden": the strategic petroleum reserve is a completely up front and public thing. There's no hiding going on. That word in the headline is just clickbait.

<comment> kube-system The word 'hidden' has meanings other than 'secret'. It can be correctly used to describe something that is known, but out of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If some great catastrophe someday flattens our civilization, these reserves (and others of the sort, globally) will probably be the only oil sources accessible to civilization as it tries to rebuild. They may even be enough - we use oil at an absurd rate now, but for most of our technological development (excepting perhaps the world wars) I'd imagine it was much less.

<comment><USER17> LOL. The US has hundreds of times more oil than the reserve can hold, just in other holes in the ground, or in shale.

The idea that pumping it from one hole to another is disaster insurance is ludicrous.

<comment><USER18> Just like shipping a few million N95 masks from one place in the world to another as disaster insurance is ludicrous?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am sure an alien race visiting the earth in 2020 would be astonished to see how frenzied human beings are in digging up meteors (the ONLY source of gold outside the Earth's core) but worst of all, why are these humans digging up liquids in Saudi Arabia and transporting them halfway around the world only to bury them in Louisiana?

</comment><comment><USER20> In a way, oil reserves (even more so with precious metal reserves, for that matter) amount to prepping at the state level, don't they?

I get why in an economy that to a large extent depends on petrol having such a reserve might alleviate some fear.

However, I also don't want to imagine a situation where the US actually would have to use this reserve.

</comment><comment><USER21> Two naive questions:

Does the salt of the actual cavern dissolve in the oil? And does that effect the quality?

Are these reserves easy military targets? It would seem causing an explosion in one of these would be catastrophic. I can see why this wouldn't be, but I'd like to leave this question as is to promote (fun) discussion.

<comment><USER22> The village I was born in sits on caverns like than which are used to store year worth of gas supply for whole country. Back in 70s one of the tower blow up resulting in huge huge gas burner/candle (100 meters tall). No damage or lives were lost but it took army two weeks to handle it (blew it by jet engine). This fire actually happened on my grandma backyard, but no evacuation was needed. In case oil behave the same like gas I would say it is relatively safe.

<comment><USER23> Two jet engines mounted on a tank ! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Ss3BMrscE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Ss3BMrscE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The 2018 Trump tax reform authorized selling 30% of the reserve in order to shrink the federal deficit. They only sold off 10% before halting, due to a glut depressing US energy industry.

[https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_sndw_dcus_nus_w.htm](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_sndw_dcus_nus_w.htm)

Line 7 under Stocks list the weekly SPR. Clicks its box, the graph button at top to get a history graph.

</comment><comment><USER25> So what about other emergency reserves? No point in hoarding oil if you are dead.

<comment><USER26> Well as long as everyone has enough toilet paper the oil should get us through the rest, right?

<comment><USER27> Oil and TP makes a pretty good zatar baklava.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Something I'm curious about - what would happen if a barrel caught fire? Would it just starve out the oxygen before any significant burning?

<comment><USER29> They're not literal barrels. It's a unit of measure equalling 42 U.S. gallons

<comment><USER28> Derp - i assume they're in large containing tanks - but the question was more "what happens in the mine if some of the oil does ignite?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are they in the same condition the 'emergency supplies' they sent to Alabama were?

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow, I used to live on Quintana Beach, TX. Never knew there was an oil reserve there!

</comment><comment><USER17> Didn't turn out to be the best investment, did it?

</comment><comment><USER32> Imagine if we hid some damn masks next time. We have to broaden our minds about what things threaten national security.

<comment><USER4> Masks break down over time, so they're not something we can safely stockpile. They have a relatively short shelf life.

<comment><USER33> I thought it was the elastic that broke down and not the filter?

If so you can basically fix a mask with elastic and a stapler.

<comment><USER34> The elastic does breaks down alarmingly quickly (I wonder if this is intentional) -- I have a box of N95 masks I bought a couple of years ago when doing some drywall work and the elastic has utterly failed.

Meanwhile the elastic in my underwear seems to last forever! I guess I know how I can fix those masks ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Moderators, the title here is inappropriate and arguably linkbait. The article itself does not claim that the US strategic petroleum reserve is "hidden". The article's title, "What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?" would be better.

<comment><USER36> Right, we changed it a while ago. The submitted title was "The US has 727 million barrels of oil hidden in underground salt caverns". Submitters: it breaks the site guidelines to do that, and we eventually take submission privileges away from such accounts. There's plenty of explanation for anyone who wants more:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20cherry- picking%20title&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

(If you want us to know something, please email email@example.com. We only see comments like this randomly.)

<comment><USER35> _> we changed it a while ago_

I saw that, yes.

 _> (If you want us to know something, please email email@example.com. We only see comments like this randomly.)_

Ah, good to know, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wouldn't call it "hidden", it's public knowledge. It needs to be filled however because oil is so cheap.

And for the keyboard nay-sayers that are typing on a keyboard made of ABS, walking their down on a nylon leash, holding their iPhone in a TPU case, drinking from a polycarbonate reusable water bottle, wondering how we're going to refine steel for wind turbines, oil is an incredible useful substance.

Let's learn from the N95 mask shortage. It's incredibly important to have national stockpiles to decouple ourselves from the events in the world (like the one happening now).

<comment><USER38> [https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/](https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/)

I don't think any of the "keyboard nay-sayers" are saying that petroleum isn't useful, and it's worth engaging with their actual arguments.

<comment><USER39> That comic is a terrible Reductio ad absurdum. The first one is a fair point – Apple products are not a necessity. Therefore if you think the company behind them is behaving unethically, don't buy their products in order to not support their activities.

The other two examples – not so much.

<comment><USER38> Sure, but

1\. The validity of the argument isn't affected by whether one is a hypocrite. If Apple is indeed behaving unethically, it's still behaving unethically even if I own an iPhone. If Apple isn't behaving unethically, then you should be able to argue that on grounds other than "you bought an iPhone." The poster in this case made specific, refutable claims - that Apple dodges taxes and can't pay decent wages to their Chinese factory workers. A legitimate counterargument is that they don't in fact dodge taxes or do in fact pay decent wages (or perhaps that their current behavior is okay), not an attack on the person making the argument.

2\. Apple products are not a necessity, but in the current era, a smartphone is very close to a necessity (yes, there are people who steadfastly avoid them, and there are also people who live in the forest, that's not what "necessity" means). And there are relatively few options for good smartphones, none of which come from morally blameless companies. (Personally, I find security valuable, and Apple has the best track record of producing phones with long-term security support, which means you can buy _fewer_ Apple products than anything else.) It might be hypocritical to buy a product from company X while steadfastly believing that company X is behaving unethically, but it's hardly a sign that you don't in fact believe that company X behaves unethically. You might simply have weight the alternatives and decided that buying from company X is the best of several bad options.

<comment><USER39> 1\. I think the issue is that "unethically" is a very subjective standard. The hypocrisy does not invalidate the argument, it merely brings into question whether this is an "accurate" moral judgement if it is not serious enough to warrant a (relatively easy) change in behavior from the person espousing it. In other words: morality is very inherently subjective, so hypocrisy _does_ matter. It's not about convincing me that something is _happening_ (like sweatshops). Facts are easy. The problem is convincing me that the thing that is happening is _bad_. And you're not going to do that if you can't put your money where your mouth is. If you're a hypocrite about issues of morality, you're either preaching to the choir, or you're not going to convince anyone.

2\. If _I_ truly believed Apple and every other smartphone manufacturer was causing human suffering to produce their smartphones, my own morality would dictate that my "need" for a smartphone still does not justify the purchase of one. It's a null point to me though, because A. I don't actually believe that Apple's manufacturing practices are "wrong", and B. I know plenty of successful people that get by without smartphones in the current era.

<comment><USER40> Are the working standards to a level you would feel comfortable working in? Would you personally be okay putting together smartphone products and/or pulling rare metals out of the ground?

The alternative to a smart phone is a feature phone made in a similar factory, and the alternative to that is a landline, also made in a similar factory, and the alternative to all that is maybe a laptop with VoIP, also made in a similar factory... It's exploitation all the way down.

When the markets only way to offer prosperity to some is to exploit and shaft others, while maintaining the position of elite classes, there is a problem.

<comment><USER39> You say exploitation, I say more opportunity than they had before.

<comment><USER40> That doesn't answer the question at all. It sounds like you are saying you wouldn't work in those conditions. Why? Because the conditions are poor. Poor conditions with little alternatives... Hmm, one could say such situations are ripe for _exploitation_.

Just because the alternative is potential death, it does not excuse exploitative practices.

<comment><USER39> I wouldn't work in a plethora of roles. In fact, the vast majority of "jobs" that have existed in the history of humanity I would prefer not to do.

That doesn't mean anyone doing them is being "exploited". And if that _is_ your definition of exploitation, you've reduced the word to be effectively meaningless.

<comment><USER40> > I wouldn't work in a plethora of roles. In fact, the vast majority of "jobs" > that have existed in the history of humanity I would prefer not to do.

Examples and why would you prefer not to do them? Are they legally allowed in your country anymore? Is there a reason for that? Perhaps because they are now considered _exploitative_?

> That doesn't mean anyone doing them is being "exploited". And if that is > your definition of exploitation, you've reduced the word to be effectively > meaningless.

It sounds to me like you don't even have "exploitation" in your vocabulary, as your bar is so low, you wouldn't consider anything exploitative.

Literally multi-nationals exploit labor law differences to extract cost savings, and obfuscated supply chains to launder the blood off the raw materials they put into products. This is exploitative. Perhaps you should just come to terms with the fact that you are OK with it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introduction to Epidemiology - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section11.html <comment><USER2> I also got emails from MOOC Platforms notifying about epidemiology classes

</comment><comment><USER3> One single concept is needed to the general public to try and understand why all the fuss from governments worldwide: the Basic Reproduction Number must be lowered to < 1 to contain the disease and the Covid-19 Number is estimated at about 2.5 right now, which poses a risk because no vaccine still exists and health services may collapse under the strain of increasing people requesting intensive care. More about the Number here: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number)

<comment><USER4> I believe the point of this submission, and it's a good one, is that a little bit of knowledge does not make one an epidemiologist.

I see folks who couldn't define PCR tossing around R0 with the confidence of someone who's been working in wet labs their entire career.

Most people are ignorant, true. But that doesn't mean a little knowledge is all it takes to be an expert.

<comment><USER5> 100% agree. I'm trained as an epidemiologist, and this coronavirus talk gets so frustrating. The problem doesn't just boil down to R0 and CFR, but also considerations like how reliable is the data you're receiving.

In grad school, our professors often commented that the unfortunate aspect of public health is that everyone views themselves as an expert (since we are all alive and have been sick at some point). This leads to a lot of overconfidence and incorrect statements/beliefs propagating.

I'm glad folks are interested in this - I just wish that interest would translate to academic pursuit and not armchair experts that have read a few blog posts.

<comment><USER6> Part of it might be that when the experts try to lay it out for us laypeople, their explanations are sometimes simplified to a point where they clearly make no sense, which creates concern. When an expert says that "it is the case that A because of B" but we already know that B is false or impossible, what are we supposed to believe?

For example, when China changed the definition of a confirmed case, the new definition caused a big spike in the numbers. Later they changed back to the old definition (lower numbers) and the new number of old-definition cases was still higher than the new-definition peak, but with a lower rate of growth. The WHO called this an "encouraging trend", which was very confusing. The trend would look encouraging if you didn't know about the change in definition, but with the change in definition in mind it didn't look encouraging at all. Were they operating on a level beyond that where it _does_ look encouraging again?

It would put many people's minds at rest, I think, if the experts would explain their reasoning better. "It looks encouraging. Now, I'm not talking about the superficial encouraging look of this graph here, which is just an illusion because ..., but if you look _deeper still_ it surprisingly turns out to be encouraging nevertheless because ...".

<comment><USER7> That's predicated on things actually looking encouraging if you scratch the layers deeper than what the graph is indicating.

There are few actually-qualified folks talking openly about this kind of stuff (See [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg)) which is as close as I've been able to find to an unbiased, qualified interpreter for the information coming out.

The overall impression I get is 'this thing is pretty bad, there are prudent measures that can and should be taken to limit spread and slow rates of infection to prevent services becoming overwhelmed. So far measures have been inadequate leaving us facing into a worse situation than could have been'.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Telsa Driver Caught Napping *While Driving* – Presumably Using Autopilot - <AUTHOR> http://www.autoblog.com/2016/05/24/tesla-model-s-driver-asleep-autopilot/ <comment><USER2> Typical car companies will find out that adding all these "lane assist" and "auto-stop" features will actually make us less safe.. That's why Google is going for 100% self-driving, even removing the steering wheel.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, this was inevitable given that the car can apparently steer, accelerate, and brake itself. How long could you stay alert in a traffic jam if you didn't have to control anything at all?

<comment><USER4> And this is probably still significantly safer than your typical commuter.

<comment><USER3> You could certainly make a strong devil's advocate case for that. That guy came out of that traffic jam rested, instead of annoyed and fatigued.

<comment><USER5> Not only that, but I doubt his car was particularly tired. Something that probably isn't true about most of the people driving in the traffic jam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Change up some config files and this could be a marketed as feature. Plug in you destination and once you merge onto the highway it cruises at the speed limit or less (in the right most lane) following traffic until you're 1/4mi from the exit and then it plays some alarm clock tone on the speakers...

</comment><comment><USER7> Semi-related question: how much extra battery would you save by letting autopilot drive? Is it less likely than a human to speed, to accelerate and brake suddenly?

I don't think this is part of the Tesla sales pitch. Is that because there's no saving? Or does no one care?

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't wait until this is completely commonplace on the 405.

</comment><comment><USER9> Alternate headline: Driver Falls Asleep, Car Refuses to Crash

</comment><comment><USER10> I mean he's clearly in bumper to bumper traffic, there's little danger in the event of an accident and I doubt the Tesla would actually hit anybody either..

<comment><USER11> Was "hoping" for a response like yours; it's that the general public will have shock reaction to this technology + situation. At some point it will reach normalcy..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> just need to install a bed, bathroom and breakfast table and commuting won't be so bad afterall!

In the UK you could sell the house and live on the M25

<comment><USER13> You can't be talking about programming because we can already telecommute. And bathing? What's that ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A good number of people fall asleep while driving anyways. This guy was lucky that his car didn't crash when it happened...</comment>


How can there possibly be this much salt in my fast food salad? - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/how-can-there-possibly-be-this-much-salt-in-my-fast-food-salad <comment><USER2> Salt and sugar are very effective flavor enhancers that cost pennies compared to higher quality food preparation. It is good to think of restaurants more in terms of entertainment than nutrition because they want customers to come back for portion size and taste. With salt there is a kind of bliss point that you want to get to without stepping over. At that stepover point the food is revolting. But near that point is where the food is the most appetizing. I am not suprised to find a lot of salt in the meat. Chicken breast meat doesnt have a lot of flavor. A ballenced seasoning approach with spices is trickier on mass appeal than just the cheapest route, salt. And sugar is really the only macronuetrient or psuedomacronuetrient that tastes good alone. Salt is revolting by itself.</comment>


Updated 5G Hype vs. Reality - <AUTHOR> http://5ggui.de/ <comment><USER2> Awful site.

Very little content, thinly divided so the ads get more page views.

Skip this one and go read about 5G on Wikipedia, you will learn more.</comment>


How to Read Mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://web.stonehill.edu/compsci/History_Math/math-read.htm# <comment><USER2> " Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis? "

-Paul Halmos, inventor of "iff" and the ∎ symbol ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Halmos> )

<comment><USER3> Interesting:

> _Halmos argued that mathematics is a creative art, and that mathematicians > should be seen as artists, not number crunchers. He discussed the division > of the field into mathology and mathophysics, further_ arguing that > mathematicians and painters think and work in related ways.

<comment><USER4> The great G.H. Hardy felt similar:

 _A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas._

as did Bertrand Russell (one of my favorite quotes):

 _Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show._

I suspect many mathematicians view themselves, at least to some extent, as creative types similar to poets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While it may be a bit pretentious to quote oneself, I'll go ahead and do just that from another post similar to this topic:

"When I come across some academic mathematics paper, even if I'm somewhat familiar with the field, I generally find other things far more interesting, like the coffee stain on the floor. Effectively reading a mathematics paper requires a print out (not just of the paper itself but also many of the papers cited) and a pencil to work through some of the definitions and take notes for yourself, and maintaining laser-like focus for a sustained period of time."

I think that capture the gist of that article. Basically, it can be an exhausting and draining affair, especially for someone with my cognitive capacity.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just had a reviewer criticize a report I wrote for containing "sentence fragments". The paper says things like, "Then x = y/2", which my reviewer interpreted as a one-word sentence ("Then"), followed by an equation. It made me realize how unnatural it is for some people to actively read mathematics-- for example, turning "=" into the verb "equals".

<comment><USER7> What kind of reviewer, for what kind of paper? Any paper in which I wrote "Then x = y/2" would almost certainly be a math (or computer science) paper, so the reviewer would know what I was saying. If it was for a more general audience, I would probably find a better way to state my point.

<comment><USER6> It's about modeling specific physical processes in buildings. It's computer science in the sense that the paper focuses on efficient implementation. However, the audience is the indoor environment community.

The reviewer is a skilled experimenter, whom I enlisted to check my understanding of the physical processes. (By the way, this person knew what I was saying, just didn't like the way I said it. For our internal reviews, we tend to get pretty picky.)

It's definitely not for a general audience-- there'll probably be five people in the world who can use the paper directly (once the results are embedded in software, there'll probably be several hundred who will use it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My secret for reading difficult math and physics texts: write out, by hand, every equation as you encounter it. Firstly, it slows me down so I'm not tempted to skim it like a novel. More importantly, my standards for what I write are much higher than my standards for what I read; if I see something I'm not completely convinced of, I may shrug and move on, but I'm not willing to write something down unless I really understand it.

<comment><USER9> This is what I also do, any step in a derivation I would glance over when read must be fully understood and proved whenever I write it down. Every non- trivial result in my math books is written down so I can fully comprehend what's going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1576969>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85743>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=583977>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1509758>

<comment><AUTHOR> Of those, only the most recent one has any substantial comments, and even that is now 10 months old and can no longer be commented on:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1576969>

<comment><USER11> I enjoyed the Calculus for fools link :)

<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I understand math, but I can't read mathematical symbols. Does anyone know a good website/book for applying and understanding mathematical symbols?

<comment><USER13> Sorry, what exactly does that mean? Can you give some examples?

<comment><USER12> Well I learned to read math the 'computer' way. So here two examples of 'Math' vs 'Computer'

      ≠ -> !=
      √ -> sqrt

<comment><USER13> Ah. Well, its not like your missing or unable to follow a fundamental concept, you just use different symbols. A bit of practice with reading things the "math way" and you'll be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The most irritating trope of math and CS literature has to be whenever something interesting or useful is "left as an exercise to the reader." I always felt that phrase has no place in the internet age, where the concept of a "page limit" is laughable and a simple hyperlink can point me to chapters upon chapters of appendices. Calling something "trivial" is swallowable, and perhaps this article's example of "it easily follows that..." is the mathematician's secret handshake that the steps in between are boring, but pointing out an interesting conclusion and then saying the reader deserves an _exercise_ to actually make sense of it, I mean... isn't the point of academic writing to communicate research and results already performed? Wouldn't it be better to show the work for your assertion so that others could critique it or offer even better solutions?

I know somebody is about to point out to me that I'm being "lazy" and should enjoy doing more work to learn so and so, but being asked regularly in the literature to reinvent somebody else's wheel seems to run counter to everything we do in CS (and academia in general, I would think). This article aside, I do sometimes feel that academic writing in the math/CS realm occasionally reeks a little bit of snobbery, where communication is held secondary to keeping up appearances.

<comment><AUTHOR> The most irritating thing to me is when someone says they want to understand something, but then they are unwilling to put in any real effort. It is a misapprehension, misunderstanding and misrepresentation to say:

        ... reinventing the wheel runs counter
        to everything we do in CS.

You can read all you like about how to juggle - if you don't put in the hours, you won't be able to do it.

You can read all you like about how to unicycle - if you don't put in the hours, you won't be able to do it.

You can read all you like about how to program - if you don't put in the hours, you won't be able to do it.

Skills require practice. These instances of "left as an exercise for the interested reader" are to help you really learn and properly understand the material. And if you don't care, don't bother. If you are unwilling to put in the time then the chances are that you would end up thinking you understand an explanation, whereas in fact you don't.

The above is only for good writing, of course. There are plenty of instances of bad writing, but that's not then a complaint about the subject, it's a complaint about the writer.

Someone once said of Feynman that his lectures were beautifully clear, and that those who listened gained real insight and understanding. Until they had to use it. Then they realised that they didn't really understand it at all.

If you want understanding, do the exercises.

So there you are, I've done as you predicted and pointed out that you're just being lazy, and that if you really want to learn then you have to put in the work. Just because you preempted it, doesn't mean it's wrong. It's right, you already know it. Complaining won't help you.

Put in the time.

<comment><USER14> You must have only seen this phrase in places where it was used in the bright, sparkling, professorial manner assumed by your comment. I take no offense when it appears in a textbook, where the intent is to have me practice a skill. I do object to its appearance in a journal article, however; that is a context where you are supposed to _communicate findings_ as clearly and concisely as possible. In particular, I've come across its use more and more often where one of the following likely applies:

1\. it is doubtful that the author has actually done the work to prove his own assertion, and uses the phrase to cast his own burden on the reader,

2\. the author has possibly done the work, but can't be bothered to condense it to the quality required for publication,

3\. showing the work would clearly be useful for the target audience, but the author is more concerned with making the material appear difficult, or

4\. the author is being ironic, because the assertion is either superfluous, outright incorrect, or known to be unprovable.

In fact, all these bad use-cases are common sources of humor among math nerds (<http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/e/exerciseleftasan.html>), (<http://abstrusegoose.com/12>), ([http://fasterdonuts.tumblr.com/post/4516834904/the-proof- is-...](http://fasterdonuts.tumblr.com/post/4516834904/the-proof-is-left-as- an-exercise-for-the)) ... so I think I'm being fair in calling this phrase a trope. As in, its overuse is well-known, tolerated, and occasionally ridiculed.

tldr: I am indeed complaining about bad writing, not the subject--specifically that "left as an exercise" has become a common idiom behind which bad writers in math and CS hide, and its inappropriate use is now all too common.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's used too often. Yes, it's used sometimes when it's inappropriate. Yes, sometimes I suspect that the author doesn't really know the answer. I'm less sure that the author uses it it all seriousness when the know the result is unproven or unprovable.

But it is a phrase that has its place, there are times when it's exactly right to use it. Don't reject it outright. I've used it in publication where the editor actually asked me to remove details and put the phrase in its place.

It's not always the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember back in school that doing the math was not really a problem, but actually reading the textbooks was. I was the same way with programming when I started, where I could write but not read the language, but I'm suprised that I got through 4 years of university math without really being able to read the proofs that explained it.

<comment><USER16> That's natural, since mathematical notation is heavily slanted towards writing on paper and symbol manipulation. Use of one-letter variable names and highly context-sensitive notation reduces the number of pen strokes, but doesn't help the reader.

Modern programming languages and conventions are quite a bit better in that respect, since people design them to be maintainable. A program using one- letter variable names for everything and a set of similar macros meaning entirely different things in different files would be considered unreadable by pretty much any programmer.

IMO, the world would immensely benefit from another version of mathematical notation designed specifically for explaining things, rather than doing calculations on paper.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that the mathematical notation, while not perfect, works really well for those adept with its use. It's an efficient shorthand. For explaining things in depth we have pictures and and natural language. I fail to see how creating a new set of symbols would do anything but hinder communication within the math community. If you have any deeper argument to support your position, I'd be interested to hear it.

<comment><USER18> >I fail to see how creating a new set of symbols would do anything but hinder communication within the math community.

I don't think this is just about the math community. The problem - at least as I see it, as a student myself - is that Math is a required part of many fields of studies. Fields which not necessarily have much to do with Math. And that's a problem for many of the students. I won't say that Math is entirely unneeded and should be completely abolished, but what I am saying is that many of these students (including myself) don't want to be part of said "math community".

We don't want to have to learn the arcane notations and "math language" just to be able to use some of the tools we might indeed need. Yes, I might sound like a whiny student who's butthurt over having to actually study for something. I may be. However, seeing as /so many/ other students (who, for the most part, are competent in their own chosen field) are in danger of failing their studies or struggle heavily with their math lectures simply because they are /not/ competent at getting into the "math community" is ridiculous to say the least.

For the record, I study Informatics at a university in Germany, so the situation might be different elsewhere, but I've read about similar issues at American colleges and universities, and every now and then, related articles pop up here at HN.

<comment><USER4> As a math major, my view is probably biased, but I feel like one of the reasons mathematics is so widely used and applied in other fields such as physics, CS, and even biology these days is that they express or model, to a high degree of accuracy, patterns that recur in all these fields. The mathematical notation is the most general and abstract form of expressing these patterns. My feeling is that to not learn the language of math dooms one to reinvent the wheel because they don't realize that the problem she is working on has been solved before in a more general case by some one else. In those cases where the problem hasn't been solved before, the solution leads to new areas or notation which can show up in unexpected ways in different branches of science.

Without this common language, we would have a specialized language for every field, allowing little "cross-pollination". As an example, in evolutionary biology, take the NK model of epistatic interactions which models gene interactions. It just so happens that this model is extremely similar to a thing in statistical physics called a spin-glass. Without mathematics the biologist would have to sit and work out all the details of these epistatic interactions before getting to actually _do_ biology. So in short, mathematics saves you time by expressing common patterns or ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> There was an example not so long ago of a paper published in, I think, biology, where the author had invented a wonderful new technique for more accurate estimates of the area under a curve.

It was Simpson's rule.

CORRECTION:

It was worse than that. It was the trapezoidal rule:

<http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract>

The author named it after themselves:

        ... The Tai model allows flexibility
        in experimental conditions ...

and got 75 citations ...

[http://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical- researche...](http://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical-researcher- discovers-integration-gets-75-citations/)

Unbelievable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's a very elegant way of saying: "Communication in math is just as fucked up as you'd think."

As an outsider who only ever needs to use maths as a "tool" for very specific things, maths books and general attitude by professors and teachers is just nightmarish. Somewhere behind that curtain of inaccessibility, it _has_ to be their fault. Especially, since once you actually _do_ understand certain mathematical concepts you suddenly realize they're easily explainable with a few words of plain text or --gasp-- a "childish" drawing to illustrate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on something at the moment to try to explain exactly why what you've said here is, to a large extent, simply wrong. It's too long to include here, and it's not yet ready to "publish". You're about two weeks too early.

But let me ask you this. It's easy to cut a square into identical pieces so that all the pieces touch the center point.

In slightly more detail, the pieces are disjoint sets such that their union is the whole square. The pieces are identical except perhaps for details as to the boundaries. To say that they all "touch" the center point means that every non-zero radius disk centered at the center contains some points from each piece.

So now, how many ways can this be done? No, it's not five. And no, it's not six either.

When you start trying to work it out you find that the details matter, and they _can't_ just be covered by a "childish" drawing to illustrate.

Details matter, and some of them are _hard._

Yes, most math teaching is atrocious. We all know that. But it's not always just the teacher's fault. Sometimes it's at least partly the fault of the readers expecting everything to be made simple and immediately accessible with neither work nor effort.

<comment><USER20> _So now, how many ways can this be done? No, it's not five. And no, it's not six either._

An infinite number of ways this can be done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but there's more that you can say. In particular, there is more than one infinite family. How many are there? And do all solutions belong to an infinite family? Or are there isolates/sporadics?

Can you characterise the solutions? How many pieces do they contain? Some solutions have two pieces. Some have four. Are there other possibilities?

<comment><USER20> I don't know what an infinite family, isolate, or sporadic is. A quick Google search didn't make it obvious.

I think 8 pieces also works, but I think that may be it.

<comment><USER17> An infinite family seems to refer to an infinite collection of solutions that are all related in some sense. An isolate or sporadic solution is a solution that is unique and unrelated to other solutions. They are both terms used to categorize solutions.

<comment><USER20> Thanks nocipher for the definitions. From this I see no sporadics. And two infinite families, at least how I'd classify a family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had never really thought of mathematics having its own language, but the parallels to learning a second language (after childhood) are interesting.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was just looking at this the other day. It reminded me of this:

"What readability-per-line does mean, to the user encountering the language for the first time, is that source code will _look unthreatening_. So readability-per-line could be a good marketing decision, even if it is a bad design decision...The math paper is hard to read because the ideas are hard."

</comment><comment><USER23> The big ones: Watch out for proof by contrapositive and contradiction. Until you really get used to proving things by assuming bits of them are false it throws you off to see it used in textbooks and papers because most papers do not tell you they are using them.

<comment><USER10> Could you cite an example?

<comment><USER24> Look at this proof of Fermat's Little Theorem [0], can you spot the indirect bit of the proof?

By the way, when you construct a proof you almost always have some leeway in how big your indirect section are. E.g. variant A: Assume X, do bits Y, Z, then contradiction. Variant B: Do bits Y', Z', assume X, then contradiction. In the second variant Y' and Z' could be useful on their own, and might be easier to understand without the inversion. For that reason, I often try to keep the contra-factual parts of the proof as small as possible. Though as with writing any code, clear writing trumps general rules.

[0] <http://primes.utm.edu/notes/proofs/FermatsLittleTheorem.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I expect you mean this bit:

        Suppose that ra and sa are the same modulo p,
        then we have r = s (mod p), so the p-1 multiples
        of a above are distinct and nonzero ...

More completely, I expect you want them to say:

        Consider the (p-1) multiples of a given by:

            a, 2a, 3a, ... (p-1)a.  (mod p)

        These are all distinct.  To see this, consider
        otherwise, and suppose ra=sa (mod p)

... and so on.

Is that what you meant?

The point is that all writing is aimed at an audience. I wouldn't expect someone with no experience of Science Fiction to be able to read "Quantum Thief," and I wouldn't expect anyone with a reading age of 6 to be able to read "Lord of the Rings." Similarly, that proof requires some degree of familiarity with the structure of proofs. This is not an especially difficult.

I've always found that indirect proofs, or proofs by contradiction, or proofs by the contrapositive, are _mostly_ obvious as to what they are doing, although not always.

In short, I agree with what you say, don't think the problem is as bad as you are portraying, think the example you have given is not especially good, but I'd be hard pressed to find a better one.

And finally, it's possible to come up with bad writing in every context. Some proofs are badly written, badly expressed, and badly explained. I know - I've not only read many of them, I've written some as well.

No surprise there.

Addendum: Sometimes the proofs that gave me the greatest understanding were the ones that were the most badly written, forcing me to work through the material on my own terms and understand it in my own way. Perhaps well- written, well-expressed and well-explained proofs are actually a bad thing.

<comment><USER24> Yes, I just went for something really basic to give an example of a semi- implicit indirect proof.

I spent years of my life reading mathematics, so I do not trust myself to judge how hard a piece of mathematics is for outsiders. I find the proof cited is easy to read.

About your addendum: You could have a look at Alexander Schrijver's "Combinatorial Optimization: Polyhedra and Efficiency". The interesting thing about its style is, that the author manages to make all lines require constant thought, while in most books there are really hard and really easy parts.

<comment><USER25> Maybe I am too well-trained in this, but I think using 'Suppose' (or "assume") is a dead giveaway for a proof by contradiction.

The only semi-implicit ways to start a proof by contradiction I can think of are the phrases "if x is..." or (less implicit) "if x were...".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Line by line carefully. Never skip anything in hopes it will clear up later.

You may allow to yourself not to know with what intention author wrote the line but you should never allow yourself not to know why the author could write this line.

<comment><USER24> You can skip on first reading to get an overview of where the author wants to take you, but don't expect it will clear up later on its own. Read and re- read. Fill in all the little gaps, especially when a sentence begins with "Clearly" or "As we can easily see".

<comment><USER27> "As we can easily see" == doesn't seem implausible after you read the paper countless times, re-work all the derivations from scratch at least 7 times, read the cited docs, get out your old analysis texts to look up some theorem you'd forgotten existed, and sacrifice a chicken.

I must say, there's nothing like reading a math paper to remind me that there's no shortage of people in the world that are way smarter than me.</comment></comment></comment>


A medieval English poet exposes the country's most corrupt industry: wool - <AUTHOR> http://laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/fleeced

<comment><USER2> Wool was so important at that time that the Lord Chancellor had to sit on the "woolsack" \- a woolbale and war was fought to protect trade routes.

> In the 14th century King Edward III (1327-1377) commanded that his Lord > Chancellor whilst in council should sit on a wool bale, now known as "The > Woolsack", in order to symbolise the central nature and huge importance of > the wool trade to the economy of England in the Middle Ages.[1][2] Indeed, > it was largely to protect the vital English wool trade routes with > continental Europe that the Battle of Crécy was fought with the French in > 1346.[3] From the Middle Ages until 2006, the presiding officer in the House > of Lords was the Lord Chancellor and the Woolsack was usually mentioned in > association with the office of Lord Chancellor. In July 2006, the function > of Lord Speaker was split from that of Lord Chancellor pursuant to the > Constitutional Reform Act 2005.[4]

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Unrelated to this particular article, you should all consider subscribing to Lapham's print edition. Wonderful quarterly magazine that has exposed me to a huge amount of history and confirmed my belief that the past holds the answers to many problems today — or at the very least, had similar problems.

Apropos of that, there's a Mother's Day sale going on right now until the end of May - enter J87MOM to get 20% off any back issues and boxed sets (they're all good).</comment>


What All Social Networks Got Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://atthy.com/what-all-social-networks-got-wrong/

<comment><USER2> Recognizing levels of interaction is one step. But human relationships are not so one-dimensional. Guy I work with, person from Bible group, AA sponsor, girl I snogged once, sister I send cards to once a year but avoid otherwise because we disagree strongly over politics, boss I trust implicitly but don't want to show my off-hour shenanigans to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Any system which adequately models real relationships will be too complex for usability and any system which is simple enough to have decent usability will only approximate real relationships.

</comment><comment><USER3> Easy to implement, but

After reading <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2795966>, i highly doubt that "normal" users want another level of complexity.

And, after all, it can easily be replaced with Circles/Lists :

\- Work

\- Family

\- Golf

\- Will Trust for life

\- Good friend

\- Acquaintances

If you really want to share something with acqaintance from the Golf Club, maybe you just want to email them. Or make more circles/lists :

\- Golf : Will Trust for life

\- Golf : Good friend

\- Golf : Acquaintances

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, your suggestion is true, But, Most people are not that organized, and to do the different level of separation, they must know that there are different level of trust, which most users won't know.

My suggestion was to bake it into product, not leaving it upto users to learn a new things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I'm sure social networks like Facebook have already an internal "how good a friend is this person to you?" index for each of your friends, based on how much you interact with them (private messages, invites to events, wall posts, likes, etc.) So adding an extra step to the friend organization process is probably too much work for most people, specially considering people are lazy to even put the context of a friend to begin with (remember that friend lists have kind of failed in terms of user adoption).</comment>


Dogs' Eyes Have Changed Since Humans Befriended Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/article/591868/ <comment><USER3> This is a good opportunity to educate the general [HN] community about dogs:

1\. They can only see blue/yellow. Not like humans' RGB.

2\. They are short sighted. For far away objects, their sight is like a T-Rex, they can see moving objects, not stationary objects. Remain still, and they can't see you. Then again, they can smell you, especially if it's downwind.

3\. Their flicker fusion threshold is higher than humans. If you show them a cute mobile picture of a baby, they'll see a lot of flickering. As well, did you know lights have a flicker? If you think it's bad, it's even worse for dogs which can lead to stress.

More:

[https://dog-vision.com/](https://dog-vision.com/)

[https://www.dogwalkersmelbourne.com.au/articles-dog- walking-...](https://www.dogwalkersmelbourne.com.au/articles-dog-walking-pet- sitting/66-dog-canine-vision-seeing-compare-human.html)

<comment><USER4> 3\. The flicker fusion issue mostly applies to cathode ray displays and moving pictures. Many LCDs use flickering light (PWM) for backlight, but usually at more than 200Hz. Better LCDs use linear current sources for backlight, so there's no flicker at all. An LCD should be fine even for dogs when static images are displayed.

<comment><USER5> Cheap LED bulbs actually flicker significantly, which I realized when I filmed using my camera's "slow motion" capture at 240 frames per second.

In our bedroom, I put in some LEDs, not realizing there could possibly be a difference between cheap and expensive ones. One night I filmed my cat doing something dumb in slow motion, and when I looked at the playback the whole room was strobing.

It was pretty wild. I might even still have the video, and could see about posting it somewhere.

<comment><USER6> You don't need slow motion camera, it's enough with most normal catch the worst offenders in the store if they have those led display sets where you can see the lightbulb lit. Just shove the camera real close to the lightbulb and watch the stripes. If no stripes, put it even closer (almost touching) and if it's still ok, buy it :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article (and others at e.g. the BBC) seem to say dogs "evolved" this capability in "a remarkably short time".

Is it not fairer to suggest that this is not evolution/natural selection at work here, but rather just selective breeding? I can't think of another species of animal that has been so widely twisted and manipulated in appearance by human's selective breeding than dogs.

Seems odd to suggest that _this_ part of a dogs' body was due to evolution, but that rest of the crazy variety in dogs' body is not? A trait like this that humans like seems like is an obvious thing to get selected surely?

Or is there some strong evidence to suggest that this was really was nothing to do with selective breeding?

<comment><USER8> I'm mostly comfortable with thinking it's evolution as crazy variety and selective breeding came very late to the party. Most in the last few hundred years - lots of the breeds we know are from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

I would guess that for most of our co-existence breeding was up to the dog to figure out, which might explain the oldest breeds being of a particular region. Task breeds came very much later.

Edit: Also, how do you selectively breed for muscles that didn't previously exist?

<comment><USER9> > selective breeding came very late to the party

I think that breeding before 17th century was focused on the dogs job such as hunting wolves (Wolfhounds), sheep herding (Border Collies), watch dogs.

When you don't breed for apperance and only have a low number of different kinds of jobs for dogs, then you only need very few breeds.

The Irish Wolfhounds were out of jobs in 1786 (no more wolves in Ireland) and the breed practically died out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't be surprised if humans haven't changed too since dogs befriended them. I imagine it's really a symbiotic relationship in the wild.

Both are social animals. Dogs have the speed and the teeth. Humans have the brain power, stone throwing and cooking. Dogs can mind the human young to a large extent and humans can feed the baby dogs cooked food. It's win win and a fearsome combination.

<comment><USER11> It would be interesting to look for genetic differences between human populations with a history of intensive domestication like the Maasai and populations that have no or only recent domestication like aboriginal Australians.

<comment><USER12> Adults that can digest lactose is one trait obviously related to animal husbandry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In my experience, the dogs ive been around dont generally look sad. The totality of their facial expressions show their emotion.

Ive a one year old pup, border collie/labrador mix. I can take a quick glance at his face and know exactly how he's feeling. Probably 80% of the time, its pure joy. Happy to run around, chew on toys, jump on the furniture and try and play (unrequitedly) with our cats. About another 10%, he's scared of other animals he can see out of the Windows of our townhouse and barks incessantly. The other 10%, I have no idea.

Eyes on a dog don't tell the whole story. Need to look at eyes, ears, back position, tail and legs to tell.

As I write this, my dog is laying against me, calm amd near sleep. Depending on perspective, I could see his face as seeming sad, but I know he's just sleepy. He's only awake because I am and I've not put him to bed yet. But his face says to me he's calm and content. His breathing is also slowing. His favorite chew toy is inches from his mouth and against my arm and he's content to let it stay there; that's how I know he's tired. If you were to just look at a photo of my dogs face right now, he might appear sad, but I know hes just calm and sleepy.

<comment><USER14> Damn, I cannot wait to have a dog.

<comment><USER15> Getting a dog should not be an emotional decision. I have a dog and sometimes it's a lot of work. Feeding, pooping, pissing, neverending fur in the house and on my clothes, vet, constant attention seeking etc. Just to mention a few things. And if you need to travel you need a babysitter for your dog. It's easier if you have a backyard where the dog can chill.

<comment><USER16> Can confirm. I am sitting here with a 9 week old puppy that I've had since Friday. It's relentless at first.

<comment><USER13> I feel you. When we got our rescue puppy, we were told he was around 8-9 weeks, but turned out he eas about 6 weeks old when we took him home. He was transferred to a no kill shelter outside of Chicago from a kill shelter in Kentucky. We took him home the day he was transferred. We had to bottle feed for a few weeks with formula before he was able to transition to wet food and them a few weeks later gradually transitioned him to dry food.

I spent about the first week sleeping on the floor next to him to make sure he was comfortable and to take him out if he started whining.

We were also told to expect him to top out around 35 lbs. We had him neutered on Black Friday last year. Figured he was born about May 1st last year. When he got fixed he was already 45 lean pounds. A year after bringing home, he seems to have peaked at 60 pounds, nearly twice what we told to expect. He definitely has tons of energy and is very athletic (he can easily jump entirely over our couch). He could easily clear the baby gates we have to keep him in the living room/kitchen in our townhouse. He did it once without thinking, chasing one our cats upstairs.

First 3 months or so, there were a lot of accidents with urinating and defecating in the house. And he had worms when we first brought him home. I had to carry him up and down the stairs for that period, as well. At firat because he just couldn't get up and down the stairs on his own, and then later to prevent him having an accident before getting outside (never had an accident while I was carrying him).

A year in, he's fairly well trained, but we still have some problem areas like barking and jumping on people. He's crate trained. He sleeps in his crate overnight and when we're away from home for a bit. My wife works from home and sleeps in a bit and he's gotten used to me taking him out early in the morning to do his business and goes right back into his crate on his own after having a bit of food and water until my wife wakes up an hour or so later.

<comment><USER16> Yeah the stairs was something I wasn't quite prepared for - I live on the 4th floor and have 60 steps to my garden, I have to carry our pup up and down every 2 hours at the moment (or less if she's eaten recently). She's never peed in her crate or on either of us, which is great but she has done so in the house a few times when we're ever so slightly distracted, but we're getting slightly better at it.

Glad to hear things are working out for you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dogs' eyes _don 't_ generally look sad, especially if they're quizzically raising _one_ eyebrow. Why change the title from the much more interesting, and accurate original?

"Dogs' Eyes Have Changed Since Humans Befriended Them"

I was actually expecting a dire clickbait sort of article, when it actually turns out to be substantive and interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> [poster here]: Interesting find - my phone showed the title as 'Why Do Dogs Look So Sad?', where the actual article's title is different. Looking at the page's source code under the <title> tag shows these are different. I chose the shorter version (nevermind dropping the 'so' in 'so sad' cause that's really click-bait-y). My assumption was that readers would know that the source (the Atlantic) is a reputable publication and assume the article is of substance. It's interesting that even the Atlantic needs to resort to changing the title to get those coveted clicks. In the future, i'll strictly post the _actual title_ over to HN submission.

<comment><USER8> Hm, never knew Atlantic played that game too. I know Ars A/B tests titles, and that a few of the buzzfeed type publications put a social title (ie clickbait fest) for the first day or two while a piece does the rounds of Facebook and Twitter, and replace with a sane "forever" search engine title later.

At the other extreme there's the odd dry-as-dust titled technical article that really needs some editorialising or at least posting on sub-head to have any chance of interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of my favorite factoids is that the human-dog symbiosis evolved _twice_ , in two unrelated corners of the world, at around the same time. It was meant to be.

<comment><USER18> Got a source on that? Seems like an interesting read.

<comment><USER17> [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6290/1228](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6290/1228)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They're talking a lot about the LAOM muscle which raises the eyebrow - <USER2> always thought it made dogs look more anxious than sad when they tense it - but they don't really talk about the RAOL muscle much.

> With dogs, Horowitz points out, we're so driven to connect that we often > search for "smiles" in the shapes of dogs' mouths.

I think a lot of the "smile" facial expression you see on dogs is produced, not by the mouth, but by the RAOL muscle pulling the corners of the eyes out slightly to mimic the way humans' eyes squint slightly when we smile.

In any case, it'd be surprising if dogs _didn 't_ have some behavioural / communicative adaptations, given that their role in our lives has historically been a collaborative one. Look at all of the dramatic cosmetic changes we've made in selecting different breeds of dog. Surely selecting for increased utility as a hunting or farming animal would exert even more pressure?

</comment><comment><USER20> I wish this article included photos comparing the look of a dog face when using vs not using the cited muscles.

</comment><comment><USER21> As first reading the title I thought: "Really, that's very interesting" Then I realized that almost everything about dogs have changed since humans befriended them. They literally went from wolves to pugs. Taking that into consideration it's not at all surprising that the eyes changed too. Of cause it's still interesting to dive in exactly how they've changed.

</comment><comment><USER22> > By evolutionary standards, the time since this split [from wolves] has been > remarkably short for two new facial muscles to have developed.

2 facial muscles? What about Chihuahuas to Great Danes, is that not a more impressive evolution than 2 facial muscles?

<comment><USER23> I think it's because chihuahuas and great danes have all the same bits, just with different scales/shapes. Where as entirely new muscles take a lot more work to evolve.

<comment> barry-cotter I'd be very surprised if Chihuahuas and Great Danes literally have all the same bits. Canines are the most morphologically diverse animal, surpassing even humans. If there aren't dog breeds that all have or lack a particular muscle, type of hair or bone I'll be very surprised. Poodles have webbed feet for one, or just consider how some breeds have floppy and others pointed ears.

It's reasonably likely the muscles that are universal among dogs existed among wolves at very low frequency and just exploded in frequency once they started hanging around humans. These kinds of hard sweeps happen when there's either a very useful _de novo_ mutation or a new environment makes a previously irrelevant or disadvantageous allele or trait beneficial. In humans think lactase persistence which was pretty much nonexistent 5,000 years ago or the Tibetan altitude adaptations which derive from the Denisovans who were living on the Tibetan plateau over a million years ago.

<comment><USER24> Did a cursory search and it seems to be common wisdom that all dog breeds have the same number of bones and muscles.

 _While there are many differences between breeds and individual dogs, there are also common factors that link them together. For example, all breeds have an excellent sense of smell and hearing and have the same number of bones which are tied together by the same number of muscles, tendons and ligaments._

[https://breedingbetterdogs.com/article/structure-and- movemen...](https://breedingbetterdogs.com/article/structure-and-movement- pt-1)

<comment><USER25> > same number of bones

This seems wrong. What about breeds with significantly different tail lengths?

<comment><USER26> Think about this: all mammals have the same number of neck vertebrae, 7, from giraffes to humans to mice, with the exception of (some)sloths and manatees.

That being said, dogs will have between 6 and 23 bones in their tails depending on length.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I always found dog eyes interesting. Some dogs have eyes that very animal like. I grew up around Miniature Schnauzers and their eyes are eerily human. The biggest difference is that the iris is a little too big. Were it not for that, I'd have a hard time distinguishing their eyes from ours.

I find that to be rather astounding actually. Given the wide variety of expressions Schnauzers at least are capable of emoting, it's pretty amazing how easy it is for two unrelated species to communicate on such a level. They speak a lot with their eyes. Look closely, you'll be amazed.

</comment><comment><USER28> > It's the first biological evidence scientists have found that domesticated > dogs might have evolved a specialized ability used expressly to communicate > better with humans.

It could be the other way around: when that kind of ability appeared humans have very selectively decided to prefer dogs that had that trait. Dogs are pretty much a human creation (through centuries of selective breeding) so it's not really evolution rather selection when it comes to this particular example.

</comment><comment><USER29> I swear this article was timed perfectly with a top reddit /r/aww post earlier today. Being able to deduce intent and an expression from a dog's glance.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/c1qt1x/doggos_polite_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/c1qt1x/doggos_polite_and_subtle_implication_that_he_is/)

[https://gfycat.com/healthyfaintbilby](https://gfycat.com/healthyfaintbilby)

</comment><comment><USER30> Direct link to the study referenced: [https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/06/11/1820653116](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/06/11/1820653116)

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/wolves](https://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/wolves)

</comment><comment><USER32> Isn't this better described as selective breeding, rather than evolution?

Maybe we haven't consciously bred the trait into dogs, but we might have selected such dogs for breeding, over litter mates that never made eye contact.

<comment><USER33> For the dog, it's just evolution under some environmental factors. One of the factors just happens to be human behavior.

(But it's typical and common human hubris to not call nature nature when it includes us.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > objectively cuter

For sure.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Financial Advice Posts? - <AUTHOR>

Recently there were 2 good posts from accomplished businessmen on how to get rich:
Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. Barnum (1880): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310056
And
Mark Cuban on How to Get Rich: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=323540
Can anyone recommend any other sites/books that are as good as these? Thanks! <comment><USER2> There's "How to Get Rich" by Felix Dennis - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283983>

There was some discussion on investment books too - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=248469>

</comment><comment><USER3> Benjamin Graham and David Dodd's Security Analysis is not exactly on getting rich in the sense of the two works presented in the above question, but it is certainly a book on returning to the basics in the markets, which is exactly what needs to happen now.

</comment><comment><USER4> billcara.com</comment>


Ask HN: What antihuman design have you seen in a computer? - github-cat

While I was reading a post about anti-human keyboard design at http://www.pixelstech.net/topic/128-What-antihuman-design-have-you-seen-in-a-keyboard, I was thinking a more broader question. What anti-human computer design have you seen? Here for computer design I mean hardware design, interface design, peripheral design etc. <comment> github-cat First I share one story heard from my friend.

He was working for UBS at the moment where the employee needs to insert a security card into the laptop in order to login to the computer. But unfortunately the card reader was put just under the CD drive. And there are two slots: one for CD drive and the other for the card reader.

Frequently employees insert the card into the slot where usually a CD should be inserted and the employee has no choice but to call the IT help desk.

Luckily we don't have CD drive any more in many laptops.</comment>


Presenting a genomic encyclopedia of bacteria (and archaea) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/12/presenting-a-genomic-encyclopedia-of-bacteria-and-archaea.ars

<comment><USER2> Actually the paper, or at least the abstract, argues for the need for such an encyclopedia:

"Our results strongly support the need for systematic 'phylogenomic' efforts to compile a phylogeny-driven 'Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea' in order to derive maximum knowledge from existing microbial genome data as well as from genome sequences to come."</comment>


How Lockheed Martin's 'Kill Chain' Stopped SecurID Attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkreading.com/authentication/167901072/security/attacks-breaches/240148399/how-lockheed-martin-s-kill-chain-stopped-securid-attack.html

<comment><USER2> That article was one big euphemism, and I am no closer to knowing what a "Kill Chain" is or how it could stop an attack than I was 30 minutes ago.

<comment><USER3> Yea it's obviously a fluff piece. At the same time, what kind of details would you expect? As with any anti-fraud it's going to contain a lot of heuristics and stuff that needs to stay secret in order to be effective. So they could probably provide details about how all access is audited, but the real neat parts of what makes it work wouldn't be disclosed anyways.

It's also not clear how Kill Chain helped at all. If they discovered the user, then they could have deactivated his credentials, right? Or are they alluding to that they use live user activity as a sorta honeypot to see if there are other compromised users?

This quote was pretty funny: "An attacker only has one time to be right to get that information out of the network" -- really? Cause I thought usually we think of it the other way around: the defenders have to only mess up once to lose.

<comment><USER4> The way they described it, they used user auditing to track what the user was doing on the network and where, and compared it against the user's role.

There's lots of commercial software that will help you do this. First you have network appliances throughout your network that monitor traffic. Then you create rules and policies on the device that tracks the user, its defined role, what it should have access to, and what it is attempting to access. Then you define actions (logging, dropping the packet, ignoring it, etc) based on the rules/policies.

You can do this using open source software, too, but it takes a bit more glue code usually. A long set of iptables rules (along with free tools like Snort) could tag traffic based on the user, layer 7 protocol, and network access, and alerts could be mailed to the admins when a user over-reaches in their access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been out of the security space for a while but what I would love to see (and perhaps it already exists) is a threat "counter" for every authenticated user on my network. Data could be fed from various sources IDS and audit logs and actions like simultaneous logins, port scans or attempts to access files and apps that the user doesn't have access to would increase their threat counter. You could add weight to events e.g someone from marketing tryign to access a SQL server, router, or RDP to an accounting server, etc. Unauthenticated hits could be associated with an anonymous user. Once the entity has reached a certain threshold an analyst is alerted to investigate. You could even tie this to the support center - "Hello Mr. Rogers, I see you're having trouble logging on to the reporting site, would you like us to reset your password?"

<comment><USER6> I forget the term, but there is a similar value assigned to users for marketing purposes which is sourced from a variety of systems. The higher the value, the more likely the person would be interested in converting/making a purchase. Something similar surely exists for security purposes. With that said, the last thing you mentioned must be used with great caution, as it could easily be exploited.

<comment><USER7> 'Lead Score'?

<comment><USER6> Yep, that's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's too bad that RSA was hacked but what was inexcusable was how they responded. Basically they wouldn't tell anyone what happened unless you signed some NDA or something. Then they said they'd replace your current one's with new free one's. Yea the keys to the kingdom were stolen, let me get some more of that please!

</comment><comment><USER9> It reminds me of a high tech version of "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll. In his case, he shorted out wires to cause transmission errors and made up fake data for the cracker to download.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article barely explains anything about the "Kill Chain" which to me sounds like part firewall, part network monitoring software and part credit card fraud detection algorithm. From what I know and took from the article, the "Kill Chain" is nothing more than a software perhaps even hardware layer that can detect suspicious activity and throw up restrictions without actually alerting the user they're detected but rather make them leave out of frustration once they work out they're not getting anything.

One part of the article in which they reveal that the system can detect attackers using legitimate authentication details basically only when they are trying to access data that they're not entitled too makes me wonder if an attacker were to get the credentials of someone higher up with more access to a wider set of data than a regular employee, would they be able to detect that? Seems like the chink in the armour if you ask me.

Interesting, but I would have loved a bit more detail and explanation about this heavily over-glorified firewall and humanised monitoring network.

</comment><comment><USER11> Using an IPS to identify users accessing information inconsistent with their role in the organization is better than doing nothing, I guess, by why did those credentials access network shares or databases the intended user wasn't supposed to access in the first place?

If their detection system is useful at all, then the principle of least privilege is definitely not being followed.

</comment><comment><USER12> There was very little "How" in that article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of trying to fix the key system, or implement extra methods of authentication, they decided to distrust _authenticated_ users if their accounts were acting suspiciously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who was the adversary that broke into their network?

</comment><comment><USER14> why is this article pulled to the left</comment>


Ask HN: How pyramids are made - <AUTHOR> Given that these structures are made by lime stones and granite, each block weighed approximately 2.2 tons, how did Egyptians made pyramids with just copper tools and slides. The concept of slaves or wheels were not been there at that point of time. <comment><USER2> Jean Pierre Houdin's theory : an internal ramp was used.

The main website has very interesting video links. [http://pyramidales.blogspot.fr/](http://pyramidales.blogspot.fr/)</comment>


Jean-Louis Gassée: Nokia should fire Elop and the board should go too - <AUTHOR> http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2188976/nokia-elop-board-jean-louis-gassee <comment><AUTHOR> My favorite part is that Nokia didn't want to go with Android because they would have to depend on someone else, and yet they've completely given up control to Microsoft. At least with Android they would've had some control of what they put on their devices and how different they look from the competition's devices, in both hardware and software.

<comment><USER2> With Microsoft they only have one other party to depend on, and they know they are a big deal to that party. Heck the rumour is that Microsoft pays Nokia $200 per Windows phone shipped. The reality is that the success of Windows phone is tied to the success of Nokia.

If using Android Google wouldn't have been able to play favourites much with Nokia. (See how they treat Motorola who they own.) If Nokia was on Android, the success of the platform wouldn't be that relevant to the success of Nokia.

So do you want to be a big fish in a little pond where the success of the pond depends on your success, or a small fish in a large pond where you are mostly irrelevant, but have more "control"?

Nokia's fundamental problem is that they have difficulty executing on software development. Getting someone else to do substantial chunks of development helps, but I've never seen anything indicating they have figured out development yet. So even if they had gone Android, what evidence is there they would have done it well?

<comment> muuh-gnu > So do you want to be a big fish in a little pond

But how is this a little pond? Basically every other big player offering Android phones also offer Windows Phones. If Nokia starts making money with windows Phones, everybody else will also start making money with windows phones. If the pond grows, all other fish will also grow and consume the growing pond, so Nokias share will remain the same. The pond is only little as there is no money in it.

From all the other big players, only Nokia for some reason limited itself to offering only Windows phones. If they think their Android phones couldn't beat other Android phones, how exactly are their Windows phones supposed to beat other Windows phones? If they somehow can apply a magic formula to make Windows Phones a success, what hinders them from applying that same formula to Android?

Nokia didnt want to become just another Android manufacturer and get a small piece of the big Android pie, instead they've become just another Windows Phone manufacturer and will get a small piece of the small Windows Phone pie.

<comment><USER3> My interpretation as to why they went with Windows Phone:

1\. The $$$, it's hard to turn down more than $1 billion dollars in a year (and probably more per device sold). Just makes the stupid gamble harder to turn down. 2\. Nokia can still go with Android at anytime (and maybe they will once their exclusivity contract ends with Microsoft).

<comment><USER4> But $1 billion isn't really that much money for a company of Nokia's size (122,148 employees) when the company goes into a tailspin.

It's $8,187 per employee. That's 1-2 months of wages!

<comment><USER5> Yes, but if all things are equal, it's still enough money to fund the development of a new phone. Now, the question is all things are equal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having done a freelance gig at Nokia, working on some Windows Phone stuff pre- Mango, I can say that Nokia is, and always has been, fully aware of the WP roadmap. The Lumias were brought out quickly, but have never been representative of what Nokia is capable of.

Don't fire Elop, retain the board as-is, deal with the fact that there will be incompatibilities. And wait for a Nokia running Windows Phone 8 and a Pureview camera. This strategy has legs.

<comment><USER7> Completely agree. Like Elop said, it has become a battle of eco-systems. Sticking to Symbian would have meant being where Blackberry is now; where except the delusional CEO no one cares about version 10 whenever it comes out.

Early reviews of Windows Phone 8 have been uniformly positive. And given Elop's background, he must have known this way back. This is all according to plan, and like you said a device with Pureview could turn this around.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. They had the N9 which was/is a superb device. If they had refocused on migrating their Symbian existing ecosystem around that platform then I think they would been in a much better place today than they are.

The risk Nokia has with Windows Phone is it ends up being one vendor of many and doesn't control the software. It means that they can't amortize their costs across the ecosystem as full stack vendors can which makes them very vulnerable to other vendors bleeding them on the hardware margins.

It also risks that Microsoft might Surface them with their own device leaving them ultimately with nothing.

<comment><USER7> For the ordinary user, the N9 doesn't have any of the niceties that you see on iPhone or Android. It was going to remain that way; there was no way Nokia would have convinced people to write software for it. Also, the tooling around Maemo/Meego+ and Symbian doesn't compare to what iOS, Android or even what Windows Phone has.

I have owned half a dozen Nokia devices, and really I want them to succeed. They really didn't have a choice.

<comment><USER9> I have to partly disagree with you about N9.

True, it's unfinished and the recent update for PR 1.3 is probably its last. The development environment is not as mature as iOS, since the Qt SDK didn't have as many years of use.

On the other hand Qt and QML are in a completely different league compared to the primitive way of building UIs in Android or iOS. Nokia hit the jackpot with declarative UIs, and then completely failed to build and support a product around them.

e.g: Think about iOS - you either code your UI in Objective-C or use a designer. Borland was doing this with its C++ Builder and Delphi lines in 1996. On Android you had to edit XML files by hand for the longest time. WP tooling is the most modern of the three you've mentioned. C# is much nicer that the aged Obj-C and XAML is also a declarative language, but the XML format is bloated and completely uneditable outside of specialized design tools.

<comment><USER10> I completely agree here about QML. While Visual Studio allows to make drag- and-drop development what is very nice for beginners but you should support your apps as well and QML wins here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The more time goes by, the better Elops bet on windows phone looks to me. Now that Google owns a device maker, developing for android is less attractive as you'll always be dealing, in part, with Googles hardware divisions priorities. On the other hand, Nokia is, more-or-less, Microsoft's hardware division. Other people make windows phones, but Nokia is the biggest player and their best bet. That's a pretty good place to be in if you're not going to make your own OS.

Of course, maybe windows phone will be a total failure, but given the alternative is being a "me too" Android developer I think it's a reasonable strategy.

<comment><USER12> Google has shown nothing that indicates they will favor Motorola over anyone else. Furthermore, the point of open source is that you can always fork the software if you do not like the way the main branch is going. Forking Android would not be easy but it is a possibility and it forces Google to play nice.

I do not know what is the big problem with being a "me too Android developer". If you are going to use someone else's OS, might as well use one that is wildly successful already. So no it is a terrible decision and it continues to be a terrible decision as Windows phone market share languishes.

<comment><USER8> First up outside of Samsung and HTC none of the other Android vendors were as of Q1 2012 operating at a profit. Everybody else is bleeding red ink. I would expect that several of the second tier Android vendors to throw in the towel over the next few years as their losses become unsustainable.

Secondly margins in the Android world are going to get much tighter. Google has essentially slit other the Android tablet makers throats by selling the Nexus 7 at cost. Effectively this gives the vendors the choice of competing with the Nexus 7 and Kindle (both of which are sold with little or no margin in hope to recoup via the app and content ecosystem) in the 7" space or the take on the iPad in the 10" space. Essentially the way the market is heading unless you control the whole stack, your margins will be impossible to sustain against those that do.

While Google has not yet favored Motorola, I'm sure Samsung is watching very closely especially after the release of the Nexus 7. I would not be at all surprised if Samsung forks Android to become a full stack vendor. I believe that they have the Cyanogen developers on staff already so it wouldn't be a huge hardship for them to do that providing they could get a content ecosystem off the ground.

<comment><USER12> I do not know if you have noticed but Nokia is also bleeding red ink. This whole idea of the Android market being too competitive is wrong, because it mistakenly segregates the Android market from the WP one.

There is no such separation. At least not on the WP side. In the real world, in almost every wireless store in America there is a stand with a bunch of phones where Android phones sit next to Windows Phones, Blackberry's and sometimes iPhones. A shopper comes in and looks at them all and decides which one he wants. So Android are in the same market as the Windows Phone and the iPhone.

Yes there is high competition in Android. Which means that there is high competition in smart phones period. Nokia are feeling and will feel the competition and the pressure for low margins regardless of whether they make Windows Phones or Android phones.

<comment><USER13> They sell WP phones in stores?? (Half joking here)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I had Gassee's track record I would refrain from criticizing.

1981-90 - Exited when Apple was on a downward spiral.

1991-02 - BeOS, didn't get anywhere.

2004- - Palm, didn't get anywhere either.

Come on.

<comment><USER14> BeOS was a great product. Apple almost bought it. Part of their problem was that Microsoft was charging people for DOS on every PC that shipped, regardless of whether it actually shipped with DOS. Once Microsoft did that, it pretty much killed a other PC operating systems. The Microsoft of the 90's was lethal. Nothing compares to them today.

<comment><USER15> BeOS was a great technical experiment and a terrible product.

It had no drivers, no printing support, no decent SDK and was generally immature across the board. It would have been a disaster for Apple to use it who actually had real customers to support. I really wonder whether BeOS was ever a serious consideration over NeXT.

<comment><USER16> The talent who made it ended up managing the creation and development of the iPod though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ... and replace them with who?

... and the new regime will do what?

... so Elop can't do X,Y,Z but why not ask him to hire the right people to do X,Y,Z?

How fast can Nokia turn Symbian around into some sort of magical software that can please developers and users all-around the world?

Going with Windows Phone may be the not-so-bad alternative for short-term while stabilizing the company (i.e.: moving from old regime to a new regime is very very very tough, if you know what I mean).

Once the company has stabilized (if they can...), even though you get a hit by siding with Microsoft, start your plan B: build your own ecosystems.

You don't bulldoze your way out of mountain of problems. You come up with a step-by-step plans.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find these sorts of things (chewing over previous decisions) to be rather painful and less than productive. I'd much rather talk about solutions moving forward since really, that is all you can do. I'm all in favor of figuring out what information or skill might have given you better insight in the past but that's really as far as I would go there.

Nokia's bread and butter has always been 'feature' phones, and that is something they really can't afford to give away. One strategy I could certainly see them taking would be to start with Android, replace the user land part with an application to run a feature phone, and push the footprint of that software down to allow for the least expensive hardware to run it.

Then leverage the core competence in the Android kernel to create the best of class kernel for a Nokia branded 'smart' phone.

I do wonder however if Elop is the guy to push such a strategy.

<comment><USER13> And do what with it? The transition is happening too fast for that. Nokia was always the one to push features down the stack (S60 to S40) but ZTE can do that cheaper with Android. The reality Nokia never saw was that Android is two systems, 2.x is S40 and 4.x+ is S60. Both run on a Linux kernel and run basically the same apps, with games running better on newer hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nokia had reached the end of the road on Symbian and needed a new direction.

This is a risky thing to do and going with Windows Phone gave Nokia the backing a very large and still influential company. Going with anything else would have meant going in alone. This includes Android which would be going alone into an already crowded market.

The current situation isn't great for Nokia, but they are in a deal that has the potential to help both companies, Nokia with short term financial help and Microsoft with a strong vendor to create showcase phones and the distribution network to get them into consumers hands.

Contrast this to RIM who tried to go in alone.

EDIT: fixed typo

<comment><USER13> Microsoft killed RIM a few years ago, the monster is just taking a while to succumb to it's injuries. Microsoft shipped an update to Exchange that enabled wireless syncing and push to WM5 devices, and licensed to client to Apple for iPhone and some of the Android OEMs, then finally to Google. This killed the need for BES. The carriers opened up real IP0 connectivity for iPhone and Android as well as WM eliminating the need for the BB internet service and email, and the extra fees payed to RIM. That part of the business isn't dead yet, and the BB is still popular in a number of markets, but RIM is unlikely to succeed in the US with a tohc device

<comment><USER19> While that contributed to the fall of RIM, what really did them in was that they didn't have a real operating system that could be leveraged to properly compete with Apple and Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe he knows what he's talking about: Apple was doing great when he was in charge of products, and after Sculley fired him Spindler almost destroyed the company.</comment>