Yahoo Hires McKinsey to Mull Reorg, as Mayer Demands Exec Pledge to Stay - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/11/09/yahoo-hires-mckinsey-to-mull-reorg-as-mayer-demands-exec-pledge-to-stay/ <comment><USER2> This is what happens when Corporate Strategy = Corporate Development.

All large companies, especially conglomerate tech companies need an active corporate strategy team who monitors divisional progress against strategic goals (i.e. not financial goals).

Of course it's more fun deciding who to buy than actively managing a portfolio of assets/divisions, but if you have no team of strategists working on strategy, then you will inevitably one day find yourself calling: McKinsey, BCG or Bain to come in. And when they do, make no mistake, each firm will be optimizing for short-term wins and commitments for future work--and that's assuming they are provided with deep enough optics to even get that far. Plus, the minute you start seeing well dressed 26 year olds with vendor badges roaming the floors everyone panics and productivity grinds to a halt. Hardly the best way to create value.

There is a better way of doing things Yahoo, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, E-Bay, FB... Any corporate strategist worth his/her salt will tell you that Disney has the dream team. The closest thing closer to tech would be T-Mobile... C-Suite: take notice, look at how Iger and Legere staff their corp strat teams (hint: not everyone comes from I-Banking and Mgmt Consulting), otherwise you may someday find yourself between the same rock and a hard place as Marissa

Disclaimer: I have never worked at Disney or T-Mobile, but am familiar with members of both teams and very familiar with some of the teams in the first list above.</comment>


FTC urged to investigate security of Google services - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/03/18/FTC_urged_to_investigate_security_of_Google_services_1.html

<comment><USER2> I cannot think of a government agency less capable of conducting a proper security audit than the FTC. This is like expecting the Better Business Bureau to do penetration testing.

The widespread use of Google services and the relative lack of vulnerabilities speaks louder than any FTC funded research ever could.</comment>


Click on I am Feeling Lucky with an empty search string - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Happy New Year (- approx. 1551600 seconds)!</comment>


Show HN: Arguman – Argument Analysis Platform - <AUTHOR> http://en.arguman.org/the-universe-is-a-simulation <comment><USER2> I've always wondered if there was a platform where we could have some standardized set of arguments regarding a proposition. Then, one would not need to tolerate repetitive pointless discussion: something that usually arises regarding propositions that require little expertise to discuss.

For instance, nothing would make me happier than to be able to reply to the nth discussion regarding the idea that "the GPL is freer than the BSD licence" with a universal fully-qualified link to every argument for and against the idea. Or "For software engineers, open-plan offices lead to greater productivity than individual offices".

While it may appear that this would lead to some sort of _Futurological Congress_-esque situation where we respond to people in paragraph numbers, it has many advantages:

* No longer will people be misled by a correct statement poorly argued for.

* No longer will message boards be polluted by the nth iteration of the same argument.

* Undiscovered lines of argument will be universally available.

Of course there's the disadvantage that you'll get less participation, and there's value in just having some number of comments even if they're repetitive: at the least, the desire to respond to that may bring people who later on make novel arguments.

This seems like a fine UI to do that. Deep link to the relevant sub-graph, and let the collective intelligence of thousands do your arguing for you. I like it.

<comment><USER3> There is lots of rich ground here to explore, but claims like "the GPL is freer than the BSD licence", will be open to a lot of subjectivity, due to there being no clear (or even given) definition of 'freer'.

I think the biggest challenge is UI and user education (most people don't know what a fallacy is, let alone how many there are and how often they likely make them).

<comment><USER4> The "X is freer than Y" example is only superficially subjective. The issue at hand is that people disagree on what "free" means. This can be resolved in a mutually agreeable way by first clarifying the different possible aspects of freeness and clearly separating them out (in your example, one might state them as: BSD allows you to do more things than GPL with source code you receive under the respective license; GPL makes it likelier for you to receive more source code in the future, hence leading to a larger total number of potential actions you can do with source code over time (a point which requires a sub-tree of arguments)).

Then you further need to relate those back to the original statement by clarifying how different _subjective_ target functions will have you come to a different final conclusion. (Not to mention that the "GPL is freer than BSD" or vice versa discussion is itself merely a sub-part of the larger "GPL is better than BSD (for my purpose)" or vice versa discussion.)

So my point is that it _is_ possible in principle to provide a fully qualified link to a _non-subjective_ presentation of arguments on that particular issue (and any other issue). I agree with you that the real challenge is UI, and probably moderation more than user education.

<comment><USER3> If you get the UI right and have reliably automated (even if user-sourced) tools for qualifying statements and disallowing (or rather, marking) logical fallacies, the users can educate themselves.

I've played around with UI ideas in the past. I think you need a nested structure, which can ideally be generated by the users (but would need to conform to the basic rules of logic [to whatever extent it has been defined]). Any argument will be in some knowledge domain, until you get to some "ultimate high level domain" (which probably doesn't exist -- not sure how you'd represent this in the UI; probably just the superset of all your as-yet- undomained arguments), so the nesting of domains should be reflected in the interface.

I think the UI problem is related to the data modeling problem. In my view, it seems like the UI should directly expose the data model. If that is the case, then the question is, "What is the right data model?".

For that, I think it's primarily directed graphs showing the relationship between the arguments. Of course there is more needed, as you'd need to annotate the arguments with various meta-arguments (eg. argument's conclusion is assumed as premise).

I do agree that one can probably come up with solutions for handling subjective arguments relatively well, I just think it might be difficult to come to a "this will handle all cases" solution. If someone says a particular argument is fallacious, why should we believe them? What happens when your database gets spammed with tons of bogus info? How do you make sure it stays out (or at least, can somehow be "excluded" from what you normally see)?

<comment><USER5> Now think about finding a way to have some machine learning sytem learn out of this... that would be interesting...

<comment><USER3> I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. If you could get arguments reduced to individual propositions, you could begin to run the resolution algorithm to find new conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this!!! I wish it gets pushed forward! I wish a lot of people would use this! I think it is a great platform!

I worked on something very similar as one of my very first projects which got me into programming. I wanted there to be a debate website where anything could be debated using arguments. I've found that the debates I would see on TV or in everyday discussions would not be good enough, because:

\- There was space for people to diverge off of the discussion

\- When the discussion would fork, the participants might forget some previous arguments that were made

\- It would be difficult to come back to a previous point.

\- People would have a bias towards the arguments made by the most prestigious side of the sides discussion a certain matter.

\- It was possible to make some claims without backing up proofs/sources.

\- Emotions could become a factor. The discussion can heat up.

I thus wrote a small website where one could post an idea as a node, and others could reply in favor of, against the idea or under a neutral position. The users could also vote for some nodes. The website would then become a collection of trees. As I see it, it could be used to discuss any matters! However, I've never really pushed the idea forward.

I've always thought about picking the project back up as I was passionate about the idea. I've never really got around doing so (I would love to discuss on how to get projects pushed forward). Through the years, I thought about this website, and I've found some problems that could arise:

\- There would have to be a good user base. My perception was that people would have less incentive to discuss where no one would listen.

\- How do you simplify ideas as much as possible? Some texts can be summarized or shortened (and some connections like relationships to other nodes could be added) and still have the same idea. I'm guessing this would be done using moderation. I think this is somewhat relevant because if you're browsing a tree of ideas, you want to do so seamlessly such that you do not lose interest in providing your input.

\- For some, it is tiring to undergo a proper debate where the claims made need to be backed up. A lot of people like to discuss freely, in a comfortable setting. The usual reply system works for that.

\- How do you report an improper report?

\- I have found that many people like to stick with their beliefs more than with research. (This point applies to debates which need evidence. Many philosophical debates would be fine without the need for evidence.)

\- It would make sense to have some nodes point to many parent nodes. How is that managed?

\- The users need to learn about the possible relationships between the nodes.

\- If a node would get too big, it would contain more than one idea. There has to be a system to split nodes apart.

\- How do you deal with merging nodes?

\- How do you manage spam and moderate node creation? (I did not have a good understanding of how to achieve these)

\- How do you deal with nodes that have been edited? I've found a way to deal with this, but it's not as pretty as I would have liked it.

\- Watching websites like Reddit and Facebook, I realized the reply system was enough as it allowed people as much room as they needed to make their point, using text. The only issue is organizing the ideas properly in this case. Hacker News had the reply system and people were using it to lead great discussions.

I've also thought about extending relationships to not just logical relationships. The reason I was looking to do this was that I wanted to find the simplest and most elegant solution that could apply to many use cases (not ALL the use cases though). It fitted (and still somewhat does fit in) how I think about writing good software (please someone correct me if I am wrong). The relationships would be akin to: Grows from, Follows, Is of type, Contains, etc.

I thought that this would essentially grow into a database of everything, a little bit like Wikipedia. Although Wikipedia does not allow much discussion (As far as I know).

</comment><comment><USER7> But.. however...because.. are too simple. There needs to be weighting. Why not use something like what law folks use to qualify arguments [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_(argumentation_theory...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_\(argumentation_theory\)#Stasis)

Also look into Toulmin - claim, warrant [http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/rgass/toulmin2.htm](http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/rgass/toulmin2.htm)

<comment><USER8> i built a ui mockup of something like this a long time ago.

[http://s3.neyer.me/consensus/](http://s3.neyer.me/consensus/)

makes me think i should dust it off..

<comment><USER7> Might as well throw in upvotes too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is an interesting turn of events that Arguman can be used to improve the design of Arguman.

[1] [http://en.arguman.org/there-should-be-inbuilt-definitions- fo...](http://en.arguman.org/there-should-be-inbuilt-definitions-for-logical- fallacies-in-arguman)

</comment><comment><USER10> I love the ideea of this!

I have a question: When using because/but/however, do they apply to the hypothesis or to the premise? It would seem logical that they apply to the premise, however the count on the homepage is slightly misleading. I thought some people were "becausing" a lot to a subject, when in fact it counted the becauses on the "buts," too.

Also, the design could be improved, but it's usable as it is.

P.S: Gosh, my sentence is confusing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Love this.

Is there already a community/location for meta discussions? Maybe a Slack/Discord/Discourse/irc something or other.

E.g. I would like the ability to say 'I need more evidence to accept this premise', but I wouldn't want to just make a pull request if it's not something the community wants.

The fallacies reported should all be linked to a thorough discussion of each, and it should be possible to contest a fallacy report.

<comment><USER12> Maybe like this: [http://en.arguman.org/we-need-a-need-more-evidence-for- this-...](http://en.arguman.org/we-need-a-need-more-evidence-for-this-premise- option)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love argument maps, they work much better than an essay form at trying to capture the complex aspects of an argument. But, an additional editorial aspect would be nice.

One problem I see here is people wrapping too many ideas into a single premise, which then makes arguing for or against it too difficult. Each should really be as small and isolated as possible.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Argument mapping is producing "boxes and arrows" diagrams of reasoning, especially complex arguments and debates. Argument mapping improves our ability to articulate, comprehend and communicate reasoning, thereby promoting critical thinking.

You can think argument mappings as visual hierarchy mappings.

Arguman.org's aim is arguments to be mapped successfully by many users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also arguman's source code is available on github:

[http://github.com/arguman/arguman.org](http://github.com/arguman/arguman.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do perfectly rational highly intelligent agents argue or is it our imperfection that needs such a tool? If yes then can people really change their minds after discussing like this?

(I do think its a great platform)

<comment><USER15> I think that the answer to the first part of your question is 'yes'. Just imagine two (perfectly rational and highly intelligent) mathematicians debating the truth of an unknown result—say, the Riemann hypothesis. I suppose if you add the caveat 'omniscient', then the need to argue goes away.

<comment><USER16> They argue, but they agree surely and quickly. (See "Are Disagreements Honest?" [https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/deceive.pdf](https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/deceive.pdf))

<comment><USER14> thank you for posting these links. they have provided me with mind expanding knowledge

<comment><USER14> I published this blog post after reading maybe you would find it interesting to disagree about :)

<comment><USER16> Which blog post? Perhaps you want to post a link to it?

<comment><USER14> [https://medium.com/@arisAlexis/pragmatic-problems-with- disag...](https://medium.com/@arisAlexis/pragmatic-problems-with- disagreements-8dcf89c4b925#.5gs298pkp)

sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> graphql-tlc When will the arguments be formally-verified from sets of axioms rather than just human-verified (which is prone to error, politics and groupthink).

<comment><USER17> We will never agree on the set of axioms.

<comment><USER12> You can still verify deductions, even if you disagree with the axioms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fine example of the platform's weakness: [http://en.arguman.org/there-is-no- such-thing-as-global-warmi...](http://en.arguman.org/there-is-no-such-thing- as-global-warming)

Inject enough irrelevant counterarguments and you get the same quasi- controversy with the same amount of confusion for the layman.

<comment><USER19> That's a strength. I didn't know about the Plasma argument and it looks like a good one.

Someone is yet to post a good refutation to it there.

The weakness is in allowing those who disagree to throw a tantrum, be impolite, use curse words, and attack other participants, such as this post:

"What the fuck has this to do with global warming?? electric currents and your shitty plasma have nothing to do with this, literally 99% of your spam quotes are irrelevant quotes"

When it's obvious from the "spam" arguments posted that the Earth sits within a system that is 99% plasma.

The problem with this system is that you will get many participants Skissor (author of the above-quoted pearl) asking for arguments to be censored or removed. This is the major problem that forums everywhere have yet to solve - when enough of the majority deem the minority's point of view as "trolling" as asks that it be censored, there is no real debate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This really looks interesting, I really like its simplicity. However it feels like that the arguments should either support the given statement or its converse. I think there should be other options too. As a physicist I would argue that the very statement "The universe is a simulation." is non- falsifiable, therefore it's not something we should argue about. There could be other problems with statements too, like "the GPL is freer than the BSD licence" where there is no consensus on the definition of free.

It would be nice if one could source other statements, it could integrate with it quite well.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great project.

A UI suggestion: how about make the list view in HN nested comment style? If an argument gets too much items (like this one: [http://en.arguman.org/there- is-no-such-thing-as-global-warmi...](http://en.arguman.org/there-is-no-such- thing-as-global-warming)), it's a little mess in tree view. The list view style is more clear, but you have to click each item to see the sub-item. How aout make them nested with indentations? So one can see all items in one place.

</comment><comment><USER21> When will different branches get merged? ;) It is great to build the mind map and log the history just like `git` does. But people still need rooms to discuss more.

<comment><USER22> We discussed about rooms, or maybe a structure like sub-arguments. it's in our roadmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I built something like this back in the day. It looks like it's lacking a weighing mechanism. This ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_logic)) is a good formalized framework to use for that, if the authors are here reading along.

</comment><comment><USER24> Self-referential argument can be found here [1].

[1] [http://en.arguman.org/this-argument-has-the-same-total- count...](http://en.arguman.org/this-argument-has-the-same-total-count-for- each-premise-type-however-but-and-because)

</comment><comment><USER25> Any chance of releasing the source? I'd love to be able to self-host this...

<comment><USER26> Looks like it's up here: [https://github.com/arguman/arguman.org](https://github.com/arguman/arguman.org)

No idea how to install it, but take a look :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Enterprise Edition? How would something like this go down at work?

</comment><comment><USER28> I've meant to do something like this for a long time.

<comment><USER11> Me too. It's always a mix of feelings when you see a project that you wanted to do. The truth is though, I was probably never going to get to it...

I like this implementation though. Really cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> [http://en.arguman.org/your-argument-is-invalid](http://en.arguman.org/your- argument-is-invalid)

</comment><comment><USER30> There should be a wikipedia for these. Argupedia.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think there might be a market for a "Stackoverflow for opinions".

<comment><USER31> Isn't that Quora?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think this idea is a great in the nerd-good sense, as in I've thought of this myself many times...

But ultimately I wonder if it will be useful or really gain traction.

Maybe you can see it with really popular, hot questions, and get some social media buzz.</comment>


50% of GitHub/trending are non-english repositories - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/humphd/status/1122951720684937216 <comment><USER2> GitHub's trending page is trash. Vue.js has been trending for a year straight. So have other repositories.

If it uses Stars as the only metric then it's never going to be accurate. It would definitely be nice to have the algorithm tuned so that there is a clear overview of what is trending on a daily basis.</comment>


The Fail Safe Guide to Overcoming Procrastination - <AUTHOR> http://writetodone.com/2010/09/16/the-fail-safe-guide-to-overcoming-procrastination/

<comment><USER2> I thought this link might just lead me to a page that said, "Stop reading this and get back to what you're supposed to be doing!," but I was wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you may be on your coffee break ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A little to "captain-obvious"-esk for me, take a look:

"The antidote to boredom is involvement. If you realize you are procrastinating because you are bored, try these:

\- Reconnect with your excitement about the project you are working on. \- Work on something else that engages you more."

The first one is not easy and the second one is actually procrastinating on the project.

</comment><comment><USER4> Marked "read later". ;)</comment>


We already know blockchain's killer apps - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/we-already-know-blockchains-killer-apps-f2d443eba35 <comment><USER2> they are great for ponzi schemes. still remains to be seen if they are good for anything else.</comment>


Ian Goodfellow, Inventor of GANs Joins Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/12671-ian-goodfellow-joins-apple.html <comment><USER2> > As a summer intern at Google in 2013 he helped create a deep deep neural > network capable of reading address numbers from Street View imagery

Are deep deep neural networks a thing or is this a typo?</comment>


Lytro - coming shortly. - <AUTHOR> http://www.lytro.com/?19th <comment><USER2> Can you please hint what it will be?

<comment><USER3> From their Twitter feed, I found this AllThingsD article: [http://allthingsd.com/20111003/camera-start-up-lytro- fueling...](http://allthingsd.com/20111003/camera-start-up-lytro-fueling-up- for-launch/)</comment></comment>


Making "switch" Cool Again - <AUTHOR> https://elliot.land/making-switch-cool-again <comment><USER2> This is basically how it works in VB as well, and I agree it is way better than the c-style default.

<comment><USER3> Coffeescript has a good implementation.

> The switch statement is seldom used in most applications

I must be the odd one that uses it often, when it is needed. When needed any alternative sucks.</comment></comment>


Stop Using Your Inbox as a To-Do List - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/03/stop-using-your-inbox-as-a-to-do-list/ <comment><USER2> "Stop Using Something Which Works Perfectly Fine For Millions Of People Because We Have Compiled A Few Obscure Alternatives You Should Use Instead"

<comment><USER3> Excactly my thought.

Most of these command-like "advice" posts here lack a real reason why I should stop doing what I do. I have the feeling the author just writes down a piece of text about some tools and than adds some gerenic reasons on top to justify the rest.

<comment><USER4> Somebody will respond with a "Start using your inbox like a to-do list" as a retort in order to promote their gmail extension that turns your inbox into a to-do list. And so will continue the never-ending cycle of advice as self- promotion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \- I use Thunderbird. \- I created a folder in my Gmail Inbox named after me (Jugurtha). \- I created a filter that puts any e-mail I send to myself in that folder. \- I just e-mail myself, and the mail gets to Jugurtha. \- A specific thing gets a thread I add to as I go. Ideas, websites specific to that topic, etc.

I also used to have a "Next" spreadsheet on Google Drive with coding colors. Green is done. Red is not done. Orange is halfway (with a remark in a third column saying why exactly it's not done yet, so these are next tasks).

</comment><comment><USER6> Inbox is a crappy todo list I will agree but it's not without utility. I keep my inbox as an incoming queue for my todo list. Sort of like a backlog. Everything gets deleted, replied to and deleted or promote into a ticket (billable). If its an order confirmation it just sits in there, flagged.

I use Apple Mail for mail and Trac for tickets and have a hack job of an automator action to move mail to tickets.

</comment><comment><USER7> I completely agree.

I like to think of it like the ED at a hospital. Anyone can walk in the front door (send you an email), but you need a triage nurse to organize patients, figure out what each one actually needs, and prioritize them appropriately. Otherwise, you'd just be picking the patient that _looks_ the worst (most urgent) to treat at any given moment, which is not the most effective way to treat patients (the most efficient way to conduct business).

Email is a LIFO stack (perhaps a FIFO queue for some clients), but neither of these is inherently a reasonable way to prioritize the patients who need care, or tasks you actually want to do today.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think we're all stuck with using the inbox as a place for todo/tasks. But it isn't as gloomy as it sounds. The real power of email lies in it's ability to push/pull tasks seamlessly. All you need is an email address. I think I've found a solution that does this very well :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I love using my Gmail inbox as a to-do list, but it could be a better experience.

This thread inspired me to finally give it a shot to see where it goes instead of waiting for somebody else to build it.

Sign up for the beta here: [http://toduh.com](http://toduh.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you keep your folder structure sane, I find email quite brilliant for it.

What I find waste of time is reentering emails into task app or CRM and then hopping back to email, to find the context.

<comment><USER11> Same for me. If a request comes in via email, it stays there - takes more time to copy the request to somewhere else and then find the email again to reply to it.

My (work) inbox consists only of emails that either require me to do something or reply to them. As soon as I reply, it's moved to a different folder.</comment></comment>


Greg's Cable Map - <AUTHOR> http://cablemap.info/ <comment><USER2> The same map in 1901

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_Eas...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_Eastern_Telegraph_cables.png)

Actually, not much changed. There's probably less active cables now.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised at how many cables crossed the Atlantic in 1901. Anyone know how they power the amplifiers under the ocean? (Then and now?).

Edit: It appears that there's a separate wire carrying electricity. I'm no electrician but I was under the impression that power loses it's Voltage (or Amperage?) over distance.

<comment><USER4> See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable#Bandwidth_problems) for a brief overview.

Early submarine cables were literally just wires. To overcome the electrical resistance of a long cable, they simply applied a large voltage on one end, and used sensitive instruments to pick up the tiny signal on the other end.

Interestingly, the early engineers didn't fully understand how the electromagnetic properties of a cable (capacitance and inductance) affect signal propagation over long distances. So they ended up seeing unexpected amounts of distortion that forced them to transmit much more slowly than desired. The theoretical breakthrough that enabled reliably sending signals from one side of an ocean to another was thanks to Oliver Heaviside, who was pretty much the archetype of a misunderstood crackpot/genius.

But yeah, later cables included in-line repeaters, once the technology was sufficiently well developed. Here's a description of some early vacuum-tube amplifiers that were designed for extreme reliability: [http://www.ase- museoedelpro.org/Museo_Edelpro/Catalogo/tubes...](http://www.ase- museoedelpro.org/Museo_Edelpro/Catalogo/tubes/records_nw/175HQ/175HQ_rec.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google Cache for those in the "connecting" state. [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_BoKori...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_BoKorikQCsJ:www.cablemap.info/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER6> I was in Hawaii this weekend and explaining this to my girlfriend who is not at all a "techy". I explained to her, how odd it is, that the internet works here because there's literally a giant cord from the island back to California laying on the ground in the ocean.

Seems rather primitive when you stop and think about it.

<comment><USER7> what are the options? Satellite transmission certainly is one but it is bandwidth limited and it imposes delays due to the distance involved. Microwave radio won't work because it's line-of-sight. HF or VHF radio has atmospheric effects and noise issues and is even more bandwidth constrained. So, really, cable is the best option giving the lowest price per bit. Fiber, these days, is approaching 100 Gbps with the ability to multiplex multiple bit streams onto different wavelengths to allow transmission of insane amounts of data. Hardly primitive when you do think about it.

<comment><USER6> There hasn't been any other option. However, I think we could launch a low orbit satellite constellation, now. It will be exciting to see how well it will actually work.

<comment><USER7> You still have limited bandwidth and latency. Just because you break the distance up into smaller hops, the total distance to travel remains the same. Maybe scientists should focus on increasing the speed of light. LEOs also have short orbital lifetimes meaning the constellation needs to constantly be refreshed which isn't cheap.

<comment><USER8> The total distance to travel going via GSO or LEO is not at all the same; in particular, there's a fairly wide range of positions that an LEO satellite can be in where it has LOS to both Hawaii and the mainland.

That being said, once you've laid the cable, fiber optic is fast, they typically over-provide the cables when they lay them, and they can often increase capacity by improvements at the endpoints. Radio to LEO seems unlikely to compete with that, but for less-populous and/or poorer islands it might make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone is interested in making a fancier version of this, it would be very cool to add infrastructure on land, too. EG, Level 3 has a map at [http://news.level3.com/network-map](http://news.level3.com/network-map), or Allstream's at [http://www.allstream.com/about- us/ipnetwork/](http://www.allstream.com/about-us/ipnetwork/)

I've always thought it would be cool to use large area traceroutes and BGP dumps to automatically infer some topology data too, automatically creating such a map.

<comment><USER10> Trouble with trying to map traceroutes is so many long distance runs are in mpls that you can get 1 hop from Europe to Japan!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems very similar to [https://www.submarinecablemap.com/](https://www.submarinecablemap.com/).

<comment><USER12> I found this to be a fun reference when reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No mention of submarine cables is complete without reference to Neal Stephenson's excellent feature for Wired [0] - 'Mother Earth, Mother Board' in which he tags along as an intercontinental cable is laid down.

Also, Discovery Networks did an episode of its 'Mighty Ships' series on a Tyco Reliance class cable ship - quite interesting if you can find it, although a bit short on nerdy detail, as one would expect.)

[0] [https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

</comment><comment><USER14> The site looks down. Probably because womble.ddns.info is down:

dig result:

        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        cablemap.info.          578     IN      CNAME   womble.ddns.info.
        womble.ddns.info.       29      IN      A       18.104.22.168

<comment><USER15> Archive.org link from 2017-08-30:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170830051926/http://cablemap.i...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170830051926/http://cablemap.info/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looking at the map I suspect it's still the case a good many of the these cables end up trunking into the same building / using the same power and can be described as very much being in a "shared risk group".

You think you're buying a backup link resilience and you're paying lots of money to a different carrier, but one proverbial backhoe or one block looses power and oops you end up with a network partition.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that there are no current transpacific cables at all landing in western Canada. Makes the area very dependent on the neighbour to the south (which is an earthquake risk, as well as a political risk).

<comment><USER18> Ehh, I imagine if things get too bad they can always lay a new one. In the meantime Western Canada could probably be connected to Eastern Canada somehow. Given that people were laying tons of cables 120 years ago, it can't be _that_ difficult for a country as big as Canada in crisis.

<comment><USER19> Canada is well connected internally with Fiber</comment></comment></comment>


Is Facebook Becoming the New AOL? - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2010/11/27/is-facebook-the-new-aol/

<comment><USER2> I think this is a classic example of hacker (or tech-savy types in general) having a very different experience than the rest of the population. For example, do you know when more households had DVD players than had VCRs? If you said Q3 2006, you win! ([http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nielsen- study-shows-...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nielsen-study-shows- dvd-players-surpass-vcrs-57201447.html))

If you're the typical tech-savy type, that fact probably seems rather unbelievable. Almost as unbelievable as the idea that most people _stuck_ with AOL precisely _for_ the walled garden. I mean, it make sense...Facebook's rise is because of, not in spite of, AOL's decline. Same as the iTunes App Store is more successful than the Android store (never mind the handsets, the app store contest still seems to be a very one-sided ordeal).

AOL's big flaw was that they _thought_ their major offering was a dial-up internet connection. What they didn't see was that their main product was actually just the walled garden internet experience that _most_ people (i.e. not the tech savvy types) were looking for. If they had realized that, then AOL could have been the Facebook of today. So, in a way...I guess Facebook is becoming the new AOL, but that's probably not a bad thing!

</comment><comment><USER3> "In the end, AOL's walled garden became irrelevant as people discovered the Web had so much more to offer than the limited view offered by AOL."

This analysis is totally off the mark.

What killed AOL largely was its inability to provide broadband to American consumers. The phone and cable companies cut them off. This was before multiple DSL providers were available at a given address.

If AOL had the means to provide broadband nationwide, this could have turned out totally differently.

Obviously, this point in history does not apply to facebook, thus it is harder to imagine such an impetus that would cause users to leave the service in droves.

</comment><comment><USER4> The app store is the new aol</comment>


Ruby on Rails Enthusiasts - <AUTHOR> http://exvocom.jobscore.com/jobs/exvocom/ruby-on-rails-developer/b-xwlWnHCr4AiqeJe4bk1X

<comment><USER2> " And we'd love it if you:

* Have read and understood the pragmatic programmer "

More business should have these kinds of requirements (as long as they live up to them in the actual day-to-day)</comment>


Ask HN: Usability guidelines for smart phone screens? - <AUTHOR>

Where can I find some good usability guidelines for small screens? Any tips, resources, or websites are welcome! <comment><USER2> _Any tips, resources, or websites are welcome!_

Many of the tips (but not all) below relate to building websites that will be used on mobile devices. Some relate more generally to any device with a small screen.

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-sites-apps.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-ux-guidelines.html>

[http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-content- comprehension.h...](http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-content- comprehension.html)

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/screen-space-use.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for visual examples as well if ever!</comment>


The Robots Are Coming, and Sweden Is Fine - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/business/the-robots-are-coming-and-sweden-is-fine.html <comment><USER2> The premise of the article is increasingly untrue. It describes the situation up until roughly ten years ago. Since then there has been an emphasis on easy jobs, privatization and "flexibility". Many people today have huge mortgages, a fairly weak social safety net and are hired as contractors.

<comment><USER3> "We won't protect jobs. But we will protect workers."

This seems really important. The social infrastructure to support education and relearnig will be vital as many jobs are automated away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really surprised this did not get more comments.</comment>


Ask HN: Remote workers. Do you use/need a portable monitor? - <AUTHOR> I have been working remotely for a couple of months now. I have worked from my (Irish) home office so far, using 2 external monitors with my MacBook Pro.<p>I am going to Ecuador in March and want to keep working, but I don't want to loose productivity. I feel going back to one monitor will really slow me down. Does anyone here use portable monitors while working on the road and have any recommendations? <comment><USER2> It will change your workflow and may slow you down to start, but I found reducing from two to one actually helped me focus a little more since the only thing on my screen is the thing I'm supposed to be looking at.

Get familiar with multiple desktops (crtl + <left>/<right>), then group your apps, e.g. 1) editor + term, 2) browser, 3) spotify, 4) email and you'll soon forget about an extra monitor

</comment><comment><USER3> You might checkout out [Duet]([https://www.duetdisplay.com/](https://www.duetdisplay.com/)) which I have used for years (currently on the 12.9 iPad Pro) and really takes the edge off for me. It works perfectly and turn an iPad into a damn good display.

<comment><USER4> I've had amazing luck keeping email and slack separate on my iPad using Duet. It's been a life saver- especially when travelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found the switch back to a single monitor to be pretty painless once I became used to using shortcuts like CMD + ` for switching windows.

Two is definitely better, but for me it wasn't worth the hassle.</comment>


'This airplane is designed by clowns':Boeing employees KNEW about 737 Max issues - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7871923/Emails-reveal-Boeing-employees-knew-737-Max-issues.html <comment><USER2> Just a heads up - the Daily Mail are not a reliable source of news. (for example: Wikipedia have had to ban them from citations due to "the Daily Mail's reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication".)

Whilst this specific report is echoed in other news sources, and therefore probably accurate, I'd avoid using the Daily Mail as a primary source of information.</comment>


How to read 100 books a year (and still have a life) - <AUTHOR> https://forrestbrazeal.com/2017/12/03/how-to-read-100-books-in-a-year-and-still-have-a-life/ <comment><AUTHOR> So, a word of clarification.

Some comments are expressing either disbelief that one can read 100 books in a year, or that one would have to read them so fast that one would get nothing useful from them.

In the post, I talk about the importance of varying the difficulty level of what you read.

Of these 100 books, not every one would meet the standard of this community as "difficult" \- after all, I read five books in the juvenile/YA category, one of which (Stranger at Green Knowe)I consider in the top 10 books I read all year.

Of the really deep, difficult books, I tended to take a longer amount of time and return to them repeatedly.

For example, Russell and Norvig's "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" was assigned in a grad class. I read it over the course of a semester from January to April (and took multiple tests on it).

Did I get every possible insight from every book I read? Of course not.

Did I get more than if I'd not read them at all? Yep.

</comment><comment><USER2> I find that the true challenge is not reading, but internalizing what I have read. I often find that books that I read eventually get summarized to a few pithy statements in my memory (if I am lucky). Most of the body is gone after a few months. I sometimes wonder if there is any point in reading books (particularly non-fiction) if you will eventually lose most of it.

I have tried using Anki to capture my knowledge, but it's not easy to stick to it regularly, and it may even be an overkill. Two of the reading projects that I wish to complete are Campbell's "Biology" and Myers' "Psychology". These are not difficult books, but tax the memory quite heavily. I have covered significant chunks of both books earlier, only to give up in the middle and move on to the next shiny thing. Next year I wish to resume at least one of them and cover them systematically with the help of Anki until I have truly mastered the content. I don't think you can undertake reading 100 books like these if your intention is to truly imbibe the content and make it available to you in an active form.

Also, some books contain not just information, but _skills_. Mathematics and programming are more like swimming or riding a bicycle rather than studying History - you are learning to _do_ stuff, not just absorb data. Readings like these where there is significant amount of doing in addition to the reading itself will also be slower than what the post mentions.

<comment><USER3> I tend to feel the same as you regarding the body of the book being gone after a while. However, I do feel like every book I've read colors in my view of the universe just a bit more. Over time, I think it adds up to more than we might think. Also, I would imagine that our subconscious minds are gobbling up a lot of the major points of these readings, to be used at a later date. It's all going into the intuition mill!

<comment><USER2> I hear you, but I also fear that these sort of intangible benefits that we think ought to exist might not exist after all. When I read a book I definitely feel that I have accomplished something. I even take notes. I certainly acquire bragging rights! But when I actually try to pin down exactly what I have learned from the book after a few months, I am mostly lost except for a grand overview of the subject.

I think I might retain only around 10% (if that) of a good book that I read. I wonder if I might have been better off reading just the 10% in the first place (provided I can get the _right_ 10% somehow). You could cover 10 times the number of books at that pace with nothing lost!

<comment><USER4> I totally agree with you and have been on a similar mental journey on the last few years. I used to read phenomenal amounts.

But I've found myself very disillusioned by the reading of books, to the point that I don't actually do much of it anymore.

I'm too distracted by the fact that it seems pointless. Or I'm dispirited by the thought that to make it not be pointless requires large amounts of school- like study (notes, self testing, regular revision etc.)

I'm not sure what to do about this. I don't think not reading is a viable life strategy, I just don't quite get it right now.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps it might help to deflate your expectations. I look at books, like I look at tv shows or movies. The long term usefulness of consuming might be questionable but that does not make the act of watching / reading any less worthwhile. I actually think that reading less is good if you were reading prodigious amounts. When I read A LOT it's usually an indication of a lack of balance in some aspects of my life that I try to correct. If you want to ease back into reading without taking it too seriously go for the fluffy page turners. There's tons of non-fiction books too which are engaging and quite readable. Anytime somebody tells me they don't read a lot, it's usually because they are not reading anything that interests them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the "Keep track of what you read" section I'm surprised there's no mention of [https://www.goodreads.com/](https://www.goodreads.com/). It's a fantastic webapp for tracking books you've read, along with the ones you want to read, and what your friends are reading. Some of the reviews are very well-written and insightful.

They also have a "reading challenge" where you can set a target number of books to read that year (in this case, you could set it to 100).

<comment><USER7> If you'd rather not provide Amazon with even more of your personal data, LibraryThing ([https://www.librarything.com/](https://www.librarything.com/)) is a great alternative.

I use Goodreads due to the social aspect, but I did try LT a while back and it was pretty good.

<comment><USER8> Argh, didn't know Goodreads was acquired by Amazon :/ thanks for saying so

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I seems that reading 100 books a year as a goal will filter out lot of books that might be too long/difficult. For example. Would you take "Gödel, Escher, Bach" into your reading list when it's obvious that reading this book with some understanding retained will take lot of time? Instead of 100 books a year I would go for some specific author and his works, trying to read everything by them if possible and let these authors lead you to next authors etc. etc.

For example. I was interested in psychology, this led me to Carl G. Jung, this led me to gnosticism, this led me to Philip K. Dick etc. And now I'm mostly reading his fiction.

This seems like an organic path of discovery, instead of constructing artificial list of possible books that might interest you.

<comment><USER10> I would just point out that "Gödel, Escher, Bach" is one of the books he read this year. As is Anna Karenina, which took me several months of devoted attention to read.

<comment><USER11> Those are two of my all time favorite books. I don't know anything about you but I bet you are a great person!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Establishing an evening reading habit and using 1.5x audio books are great tips. I would personally add/tweak:

* Don't try to pick/buy a book during your reading time, otherwise you will spend your time deciding what to read. Have a queue of books already bought and ready to go.

* Don't feel bad about skipping around or stopping a book that you aren't getting anything out of

* Buying books is a very cheap investment so I don't worry about the cost or trying to get things from the library. If you take one key idea away from a $15 book, it is well worth the cost.

* Getting recommendations from people is useful, but often there are books that I really enjoy because of the order I read them in or the melding of ideas in two books I am reading at the same time. Context and background do matter so let your own interests guide you.

(Disclaimer: I only read about 30 books per year)

<comment><USER13> I like your tips, save I don't listen to audio books and I do get most of my reading material from my public library. In my case, I'm fortunate to have a great library with a substantial budget for new books and an easy to use reservation system to request books that aren't available at the time or are on order.

I'd add the following tips

* Don't narrow your focus onto books whose topic you know and are already interested in. If you expand your range to related topics or completely new topics, you'll benefit greatly.

* Don't weigh yourself down with meaty, dense books. Read some lightweight fiction just for the pure enjoyment. I got into reading detective stories a couple years ago and am delighted working my way through authors like Connelly, Grafton, and Parker. There are many more waiting to be explored, as well.

* Make time during your day to do nothing but read. Schedule it like any other activity for which you budget time. Never believe that it is wasted time.

* If you have young children, read to them. I can't stress this enough. Give them a good habit they can follow for the rest of their lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a post, "How to read 1 book a year, work 70 hours a week, and still have a life"? I think I need to read that one. If I'm going to read a book, it's going to be read carefully and contemplatively.

<comment><USER15> One way to help with this is to take reading breaks when stuck on a problem. If I am working on something and I can't seem to figure out the issue I stop and pull out my book or Kindle and read for 5-10 minutes to let my brain ponder. Usually, by the time I get back I have figured out the problem. Works better than just staring at the problem for hours. Gotten through about 30 books this year using that method, while also bootstrapping my business.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anyone interested, the full list of 100 books (actually 101) is here: [https://forrestbrazeal.com/2017/12/03/the-100-books- challeng...](https://forrestbrazeal.com/2017/12/03/the-100-books-challenge- full-reading-list/)

I'd appreciate thoughts and additional recommendations!

<comment><USER16> How much time did you spend on _Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid_? Be honest.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I read about 50 pages a night for a couple of weeks. Definitely a heavy book and difficult at times, but worth taking slowly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" Read before going to bed."_

By doing this you'll train yourself to associate reading with sleep, and it may get harder and harder for you to stay awake for long after cracking open a book at night.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd call this a feature, not a bug. Going to sleep at night is good. If I can come up with a reliable life hack for putting myself to sleep at night, maybe I can start getting up earlier and reading in the morning!

<comment><USER18> Yup! I often have trouble falling asleep, but reading a book before bed has helped tremendously. Clears out all the loose ends and thoughts in my head.

<comment><USER19> Ditto, though I have to mainly read fiction. I've tried reading non-fiction before bed and I think too much about the text which stymies actually falling asleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe we should stop trying to maximise the number of books we read a year and focus on reading, critiquing, and meditating on a few good ones ?

I would be happy to read a single volume from knuths art of computer programming book per year

</comment><comment><USER21> I do something similar... though I haven't had reason to set myself a goal. I usually read 2-3 books per week, though. (I count a re-read, because some stories are mental comfort food.)

Actually I have books that I read in different places. There's a copy of All The Songs (the story of every Beatles song) in the bathroom, for instance. I only read a few pages at a time... which is just fine with me. I wouldn't be inspired to bring that book into the living room. On the other hand, I read cookbooks most often when sitting at the dining room table. (And I read a lot of cookbooks.)

</comment><comment><USER22> This. > Did I have to give things up in order to find 100 books' worth of reading time? Sure – I didn't watch as much sports this year, and I wound up __deleting the Facebook app off my phone. __

</comment><comment><USER23> To meet this quantity you will by definition have to read mediocre / non-new (i.e. _new_ in the Alan Kay sense) stuff. Books that are mind-augmenting require time commitments that make getting to 100 impossible in a year. Any decent math text cannot be read in a week (or month even) and take time from reading other books to get to 100.

<comment><USER24> German philosopher Schopenhauer remarked that it is much better to read less then more exactly for the same reason - quality over quantity.

Apart from this setting such goals as 100 books a year is a real killjoy (as if todo lists had not enough items to check off already).

<comment><USER25> Schopenhauer on Reading: [https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/08/schopenhauer-on- rea...](https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/08/schopenhauer-on-reading/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm just asking and trying to get a better understanding, but how can someone read roughly a book every four days for a solid year? I'm reading one book about every 30 days.

Sure, I can read the 400-page sci-fi novel in about a week, but I recently started to read a history book, and my page reading rate dropped dramatically.

<comment><USER27> For junk reading I often read over 100,000+ words after work. At a casual 400ish wpm that's only ~4h. 8 hour workday and 15 minute commute means I have around 6 hours most evenings.

</comment></comment><comment> trey-jones I'm guessing the author doesn't have children.

I read every day and I get through probably no more than 1 or 2 books per month. Obviously books can have extremely variable lengths and difficulties, and I would say my average book is probably longer than "average".

<comment><AUTHOR> Two kids, actually.

<comment> trey-jones My mistake!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For me, installing the free Overdrive app and linking to my public library account--boom, 60-70 audiobooks listened to in one year:

[https://app.overdrive.com/](https://app.overdrive.com/)

</comment><comment><USER29> I haven't had the time to read that many books a year since high school, but I've also realized that I'm better off reading fewer books more slowly. This sort of arbitrary pace of 100 books a year is probably going to prevent you from really taking the time to digest books that deserve to be read carefully. Case in point, when I read War and Peace in high school I ploughed through the whole thing in two weeks. Can you guess how much of that book I still remember today?

You're better off not worrying about how much you read and worrying more about how _well_ you read.

</comment><comment><USER30> I set a book-a-week goal for myself this year and hit the reading pretty hard up until June-ish. I was able to get though about ~2 books a week reading ~3 hours a day (mostly fiction). I basically afforded myself no free time on the weekdays as I would get home->exercise->eat->read->sleep. On the weekends I rise early, get my reading in, and feel like I still have the whole day ahead of me. Overall, I'd recommend it. An added benefit is that by sticking to such a regimen you're likely to save some money. I know I did.

</comment><comment><USER31> While the list of books is fantastic (I've read many of them) I'm skeptical of reading them all within a year while not having that be the primary focus of your life.

How did you read them? Did you just speed read them all? Some of them (like Anna Karenina) in my opinion deserve months if not years of reflection. It seems like the point was to just get through the books as fast as possible, rather than appreciating the beauty they all offer. But I could be wrong.

<comment><USER32> ...yea if your goal is about a quantity of books and doesn't include some qualitative goal how do you ensure that you are fully absorbing each book and not just racing through them without learning anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I read not more than a book or two a year (but I do read o lot of blogs).

I find it kind of pretentious to claim "I have read X number of books in a year"

Trying to read so many books, leaves very little time to contemplate.

So I'm not sure why is there a craze of reading X number of books, and later bragging about it (either literally or by "book-name dropping" in conversations).

I hope there are more readers out there who enjoy slow reading !!

</comment><comment><USER34> I like reading, so I'd guestimate most years I end up somewhere well north of 100. For me the key has always been in binging. I might read 6-7 books in a week and then not again for 3-4 weeks.

Two caveats being that a) I naturally read pretty fast and b) I'm not trying to reach any given number for the year. I read when I find something interesting

</comment><comment><USER35> Another solution for certain type of books is to have the audio version read at 1.5x speed during your commutes. 100 books in a year is totally feasible (assuming it's not textbooks or anything that would require you to look at illustrations)

I got an Audible subscription 3 years ago and it has been one of the best investments I have ever made.

</comment><comment><USER36> I do 200-600 movies a year, for decades. Lot of fun. My wife goes with me. Cannes, Sundance, Berlinale, Karlovy Vary, ...

</comment><comment><USER37> Lately I've been avoiding reading full books. I do mostly skimming to get information, figure out if something makes sense or not, and cross reference it with other sources of similar information.

Though I don't read fiction this way.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm wondering if there is a different between actually reading a book and listening to a book... I use Audible.com to listen to books commuting to/from work, it's a great way to not care about traffic.

</comment><comment><USER39> I was able to read about 100 books in a year by using "Voice Dream" at 360 words per minute.

I started off with Audible but their selection is a bit limited, especially for technical books.

</comment><comment><USER40> whats the rush?

How much are you absorbing. How do you define "read" .

</comment><comment><USER41> What's the point? There are some 3 page papers out there with ideas that could take years to fully absorb.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder why people refer to listening to audio books as "reading"?

</comment><comment><USER43> As someone who re-reads his books again and again for years, I have never understood this mad rush of reading as many books as possible. The same books mean different things to me at different points in my life. This gamification of how many books a year have you read is so dumb.

<comment><USER5> Not sure of the downvotes but I also agree with this. I find it also helps to really internalize the contents of a book, by reading it multiple times in different contexts and at different time periods. Books which I value highly I tend to purchase a hard copy and put in a visible location to facilitate this. A book has to be really good to be put in this category though.</comment></comment>


Lytro Cinema - <AUTHOR> https://www.lytro.com/cinema <comment><USER2> _Lytro Cinema offers the ability to focus anywhere in your scene. You have the infinite ability to focus and create any aperture or any depth of field. You can shift your camera to the left, you can shift it to the right, as if you had made that exact decision on set, and you can even move your camera in and out._

If I read this correctly, this camera replaces the jobs of multiple full-time professionals. I bet it will revolutionize movie making, especially as the price inevitably goes down over time.</comment>


Comparing Math.floor(), parseInt and a (bitwise) shift in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://arnorhs.com/2012/05/30/comparing-the-performance-of-math-floor-parseint-and-a-bitwise-shift/

<comment><USER2> "x|0" is the preferred idiom for this IMHO; it's one character cheaper than the shift and calls [[ToInt32]] in the same way. IIRC this is what Emscripten uses.

<comment><USER3> Good thing to keep in mind is that Math.floor(-1.1) is -2, whereas -1.1|0 is -1. There is also an issue with x|0 in that you can't use it with values greater than 2^32 (or Math.pow(2, 32)) as those always return a 0 (you get this same issue with the bitwise operation) whereas those values work with Math.floor

<comment><USER4> That's not exactly true; what x|0 essentially does, like x<<0, ~~x and x>>0, is cast x to a signed 32-bit integer, which truncates the fractional part and causes wrap-around for values outside of -2147483648..2147483647. (Math.pow(2,32)+1)|0 is 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A good thing to keep in mind is the behavior at the extremities. If you look at negative numbers (Math.floor(-1.1) == -2, whereas parseInt("-1.1", 10) == -1, and -1.1 << 0 == -1) and numbers greater than 2^32 (Math.floor and parseInt work for those values, but bitwise shifting always returns 0) the behavior is different.

<comment><USER5> Math.floor is the right choice 99% of the time for three reasons:

        1. it will always behave correctly (barring implementation bugs)
        2. readable/mantainable code comes first
        3. leave tricks to the interpreter
        4. you're not gonna do 60 million flooring ops/s
        5. -1.1 is really -2+.9

The author missed the ~~1.1 trick (essentially the same as << 0).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool trick, good to know!

But for practical reasons I'll stick with Math.floor. It makes my code more readable. Plus, Chrome is already faster using Math.floor. I'm sure the other browsers will catch up, or I at least hope they will.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. I don't think I've ever come anywhere near an application which was significantly slowed down because it did too many float-to-int conversions. Thankfully, JSLint will complain about people using the bitshift operators in practice.

Actually, that's a bit of a lie: when I wrote SHA3 candidates in JS, they were bitwise-operation-heavy and they probably did have slow [ToInt32] calls in the middle of performance-critical loops. But you see my point: I've never seen or written code whose performance would be significantly impacted by writing x | 0 in place of Math.floor(x). Maybe the number of _keystrokes_ is saved, that might be a good argument, but the _performance_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A slight variation along the same lines is x >>> 0, which differs in that it yields positive values for values between 2^31 and 2^32-1 inclusive, effectively acting as a C cast to uint32_t instead of int32_t. It runs in roughly the same time as the other bitwise truncation idioms on Firefox 15 alpha, with Math.floor being slightly faster than them.

<comment><USER7> I am impressed. I thought you were surely wrong, then I checked it in Firebug, then I checked it in the ECMA-262 standard, and yes, a >>> b is indeed a uint32 operator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is the shift direction the inverse of C ? Is this an error ? It would be a pretty big mistake.

<comment><USER7> JS defines three bitwise shifts which work the way C works on signed int32's:

        [
            1 << 30 === Math.pow(2, 30),
            1 << 31 === -Math.pow(2, 31),
            0xf0000000 >>> 1 === 0x78000000,
            0xf0000000 >> 1 === 0x78000000 - Math.pow(2, 31)
        ];
        // ==> [true, true, true, true]

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread there is one exception to this rule:

        0xf0000000 >>> 0 === 0xf0000000;
        // ==> true

In other words, right shifting is always unsigned.</comment></comment>


A Map of the World Won Japan's Prestigious Design Award - <AUTHOR> http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2016/10/28/hajime-narukawa-authagraph/ <comment><USER2> The Good Design Award is pretty neat. Years ago when I lived in Japan I bought a mechanical pencil[0] that I absolutely loved. After more than a decade of use, I googled the pencil name and found that it had won a Good Design award. I thought it was great that a sub-$10 pencil could win something like that.

[0] [http://ameblo.jp/staedler- rotring/entry-11510382804.html](http://ameblo.jp/staedler- rotring/entry-11510382804.html)

<comment><USER3> Wow I received this exact pencil two years ago for Christmas and I've used it nearly every day since it was gifted to me. In fact I just put it down to type this. I am not surprised at all that it has won a design award. I was the type of person to misplace pencils like socks out of the laundry, but I treat this pencil as a companion.

<comment><USER2> That's awesome, I didn't expect to hear from someone else who owned one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone working in cartography comment on this?

What is the state of active research in cartography? Map making used to be one of the most prized technical skills and I was wondering where the field is moving.

First thing that came to mind was new d3 transform...

<comment><USER5> I don't work as a cartographer but I studied geography for a Bachelor's and Master's. That being said, my knowledge has atrophied a lot.

I was exposed to hundreds of map projections in school, so I'm still kind of trying to figure out what the novelty is here. It just looks like a Japan- centrerd equal-area projection. The tetrahedron is kind of neat. Projections are generally planar, cylindrical, or conical. By using a mosaic of planes, I imagine the formula for this projection would be unbelievably complex, making it much less general purpose.

When you want to represent a spheroid on a 2d surface, you have to distort one or more of shape, area, direction, distance. The objective when selecting a projection is to understand the intended purpose and audience.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say the relevance here is the exploration of what projections we most commonly use and if they're still the best choices for today's purposes and audiences.

I would love to see what Tissot's indicatrix looks like for this projection.

<comment><USER6> you nailed it. Japan has a huge love for Japan centered maps. if you look at any early nes or Sega games, all the maps are your familiar Cartesian but with Japan in the center, making the jump from ny to London look much longer than la to Tokyo.

<comment><USER7> > Japan has a huge love for Japan centered maps.

You make it sound as if it's unusual. Of course they prefer Japan in the middle, they're in Japan! Just like Brits (I presume) have a huge love for Britain-centered maps. I'll bet not a single world map in British textbooks has the world cut in the Atlantic.

<comment><USER8> It isn't that. Or at least not only that. They are pragmatic nation. They are considering who and why would want to use the map, and then tailor it to meet the needs of an audience.

I am not sure about other countries but European maps are always oriented for north. Which works fine when you read them in book, but not necessarily when you are looking at big guide map on the street. Yes, sure, this map may show red "you are here" mark, but it is still difficult to find out your way as a map itself is always oriented to north, while you may not be.

Japanese street maps are oriented on you (most of them). When you're standing in front of it - "up" on map always means "go forward". Which might be confusing at the beginning, if you came from Europe. But the more you look at them, the more easy it is to find your way.

<comment><USER9> Hollywood Studios in Disney World had a park map where the entrance to the park wasn't at the bottom, I found it really disorienting, I think due to the effect you mentioned, I naturally want to walk 'up' to 'go forward' through the map

[http://www.wdwmagic.com/attractions/disneys-hollywood- studio...](http://www.wdwmagic.com/attractions/disneys-hollywood- studios/gallery/04apr2016-april-2016-disney's-hollywood-studios-guide-map- with-backlot-area-removed/27424.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While interesting, I'm not sure the actual map as pictured is a "good design":

One of the strengths and success criteria of the Mercator projection is that it allows us to largely ignore the vastness of the Pacific Ocean on our maps. Notice how much of this map is taken up by it. While interesting from a planetary perspective, it simply isn't that important to everyday life of most map users.

The proposed design thus has too low a land area to map area ratio to be very useful.

The projection itself would be useful as a digital map (with zooming and panning) or as an icon, though.

<comment><USER11> But map should be accurate in the first place. It's not like you can just ignore things you don't want to see there just because they are naturally to big and take up too much space

<comment><USER12> Actually humans can do that. We orient ourselves using landmarks. If you look at theme park maps, ski resort maps, maps of tourist areas downtown produced by local organizations, subway maps....

All of them are wildly inaccurate in terms of proportions and distances. But notice - almost all are oriented to people not very familiar with that area. Certain big monuments may be left out (the highway that runs by water park, the big electric station across the street etc.

<comment><USER13> Harry Beck invented the schematic map in 1931 for the London Underground (the worlds first underground railway). At first it wasn't widely accepted as a good idea (because it distorted relative distances) but over time has become a design icon and repeated elsewhere.

[http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-the-london- undergr...](http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-the-london-underground- map-the-design-that-shaped-a-city)

[https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and- heritage/...](https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and- heritage/londons-transport-a-history/london-underground/a-brief-history-of- the-underground)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "AuthaGraph... faithfully represents all oceans and continents"

What does this mean? Literally, that is impossible, so what's it _actually_ preserving and distorting?

It looks like angle is distorted. Is that it?

<comment><USER15> For one thing there is massive distortion of relative distances in southern parts... New Zealand or Australia to Antarctica is something like 4 hours flight, not halfway across the planet.

<comment><USER16> Except for the fact that it tessellates so all you need to do is make the map a bit bigger and that distortion goes away (seen in [0]).

0\. [http://www.spoon-tamago.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/autha...](http://www.spoon-tamago.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/authagraph-world-map-2.jpg)

<comment><USER17> A map shouldn't need an infinite series of other maps to be useful.

<comment><USER18> You're looking for a map where a straightish line gives you the direct path between two points? That's completely impossible. Flying from LA to Tokyo will take you over Alaska. Try to work that one out on a map.

(Yeah, you can make a map where straight lines work, but only for a chosen point of origin or antipodes around that point.)

<comment><USER19> Then why are you labeling it "completely impossible"? Here's a perfectly sensible straightish-line path between LAX and NRT, using a polar-aspect orthographic projection:

[http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=LAX- NRT&MS=wls&MP=p&DU=mi](http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=LAX-NRT&MS=wls&MP=p&DU=mi)

<comment><USER18> Yes, if you cherry pick the right projection for a particular route you'll get something like that, which is exactly what I said. But plot Johannesburg to Sydney on the same map.

What I said is impossible is to have a map where all routes between pairs of points look sensible. It gets worse if you optimize for other factors, like making maps equal-area, conformal, rectilinear, etc.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JNB- SYD&MP=polar&DU=mi](http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JNB-SYD&MP=polar&DU=mi) ?

There's an easy way to make all routes between pairs of points look sensible at once: plot them on a 3D globe ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It remind me of Buckminster Fuller map work in the '40 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarion_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarion_map)

<comment><USER21> fixed link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map)

<comment> yc-kraln They were indeed -- [http://www.authagraph.com/projects/description/【作品解説】記事01/?l...](http://www.authagraph.com/projects/description/【作品解説】記事01/?lang=en) (click #3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The only map I can think of from the sphere to the plane (and periodically tiles) uses genus 0 Riemann surfaces and quadratic differentials. And I know he didn't do that.

Nonetheless, there's a fascinating work by Anton Zorich called "Flat Surfaces" (it's a great discussion with lots of pictures)) [https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0609392](https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0609392) The geodesics on a flat plane is the straight line -- while the geodesics on a sphere are the great arcs. So there has to be a fair amount of distortion.

I could imagine just drawing a map of the world on the surface of a cube instead of a sphere. That might come out pretty bad.

</comment><comment><USER23> On a true spherical globe, Brasil does not look as pointy as on the map. So it's still deforming something at least.

Sadly, not a single high resolution image of this to be found on the internet :(

</comment><comment><USER24> The Good Design Award is not prestigious anymore, nowadays they routinely allow about any company to feature a good design logo on all kind of ridiculous items like PET bottles and so on.

<comment><USER25> These don't seem so bad to me: [http://ns3ns.muji.co.jp/store/cmdty/detail/4547315758371?rec...](http://ns3ns.muji.co.jp/store/cmdty/detail/4547315758371?rec=09)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [http://blog.paloo.fr/index.php/posts/la-projection-de- fuller...](http://blog.paloo.fr/index.php/posts/la-projection-de-fuller- dymaxion-map)

<comment><USER27> [http://narukawa-lab.jp/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/3d3ed89938...](http://narukawa-lab.jp/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/3d3ed899386741e60c805518b6919367.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I haven't calculated the distortions yet, nor found anyone who has, but I'm guessing it's inferior to dymaxion or waterman, plus it cuts out a little bit of the map to make it fold right.

However, it's a RECTANGLE, that's huge. that means we can use it on screens and that non-map geeks would be OK with it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Okaaay... I find this map is a _terrible_ design in several obvious ways (obvious as hurting _my_ eyes in a matter of seconds).

* Blue colour for lands. No comment...

* Most space, and especially the main one: center, is occupied by boring useless oceans.

* Then the remaining of the central space is occupied by the largest countries: very little information there.

* The most interesting parts, i.e. where there are plenty of small countries with fancy borders (hence mostly Europe and Africa, followed by Near-East and South America) are rejected to the side.

* To add insult to injury, those parts are the most slanted and twisted.

* Finally, there are no axes clearly remarkable, no North, no South clearly identifiable, which should be the basis of describing a planetary globe. The deformations and transformations discard or at least hide every easy bit of information, no orientation is immediately possible.

<comment><USER30> _Most space, and especially the main one: center, is occupied by boring useless oceans._

Most of the world is, in fact, covered by ocean. This map cleverly is centered on Japan, the country that awarded the design. It appears to be fairly well proportioned and to not weirdly distort land masses that are typically wildly distorted, such as Greenland and Antarctica.

<comment><USER31> > Most of the world is, in fact, covered by ocean

That doesn't mean the ocean has to be given prominence on a map, the same way documentaries are not dominated by silent wide shots "because most of the time nothing interesting is happening".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The point is just that this is a map which faithfully represents relative areas? We've known how to do that for hundreds of years; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equal- area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equal-area).

It's of note that there are some ways in which a flat map can never accurately represent a spherical geometry; for example, not even any small patch of a globe can be represented on a flat map with all distances kept faithful.

ETA: I shouldn't be so quickly dismissive, perhaps; it's also noted that this "AuthaGraph" map has certain tiling properties I'll have to think about further.

<comment><USER33> It tiles, so it can be used for web maps, you can just rotate it slightly and always have it north-pointing, so it can be used for mobile maps, and it shows the world in an equal view. And it doesn't distort the shape of continents either, only the composition.

This is amazing.

<comment><USER34> What do you mean the continents are not distorted. South America looks pretty distorted to me, so does Australia.

<comment><USER33> A lot less than on Mercator, which is the only other projection with the same properties.

<comment><USER34> Mercator is not area-preserving. It's angle preserving. It's perfect for things like Google Maps, because no matter where you zoom in, a small geographical area will not be distorted. It will merely be represented at a different scale. When zoomed in, there are no distortions using Mercator.

<comment><USER33> Correct. Which this one does well enough, too, at the scales required for web maps.

Which makes this very awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cutting the map in the Pacific just makes a lot more sense rather than cutting it in the Atlantic. Do we really need most of the space in the middle of the map to be water?

<comment><USER36> This is a fairly standard practice for maps that are targeted for users in Japan, Korea, and China (perhaps other counties as well).

I'm not sure about the why. Maybe because it puts the target countries more towards the center of the map rather than the periphery?

<comment><USER37> A relatively small circle in SouthEast Asia, with center in North Vietnam will include the majority of the world's population: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/07...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/07/map- more-than-half-of-humanity-lives-within-this-circle/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you want to dynamically see how projection affects shapes, check out the Mercator Puzzle Redux (the original seems to have bitrotted). The object of the puzzle is to match the countries to their real locations, and it demonstrates the distortions as you drag the countries around.

[https://bramus.github.io/mercator-puzzle- redux/](https://bramus.github.io/mercator-puzzle-redux/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Does anybody have a link to a high-quality image?

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm a little late to this post, but found a talk about this projection by the creator (good English subtitles): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsQtLASlDKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsQtLASlDKE)

</comment><comment><USER41> It's delightful to see a world map that doesn't turn Antarctica into some weird sliced-up monster.

</comment><comment><USER42> It might be a good design work, but why does half of Sahalin island and Kuril islands which are the territories owned by Russia are marked as Japanese here. I wonder if this work would win the prize if those territories disputed only by Japan would be marked as Russian.

</comment><comment><USER43> The projection seems closely related to some examples which use a Tetrahedron as projection surface. But according to the description of the process they used some sort of sub-tiled _Triakis tetrahedron_ [1] as intermediate projection surface. This "inflation" process then rounds off the original tetraeders edges and mitigates maximum angle distortion to the four corners of the tetraeder, which can be conveniently placed in places where they are far way from land masses to distort.

To get the rectangular final shape one of the 4 triangular-surfaces is split into two and rotated to the neighboring sides. (Much like that one triangle south of Australia on a _Dymaxion map_ )

Tetrahedric class projections:

conformal:

\- Lee Tetrahedric projection

\-- [http://www.csiss.org/map- projections/Miscellaneous/Lee_Confo...](http://www.csiss.org/map- projections/Miscellaneous/Lee_Conformal_Tetrahedric.pdf)

\- Snyder's Tetrahedron (Conformal)

\-- [http://www.csiss.org/map- projections/Polyhedral_Globes/Tetra...](http://www.csiss.org/map- projections/Polyhedral_Globes/Tetrahedron_Conformal.pdf)

equal-area:

\- Snyder's Tetrahedron (Equal-Area)

\-- [https://www.mapthematics.com/ProjectionsList.php?Projection=...](https://www.mapthematics.com/ProjectionsList.php?Projection=217)

\-- [http://www.csiss.org/map- projections/Polyhedral_Globes/Tetra...](http://www.csiss.org/map- projections/Polyhedral_Globes/Tetrahedron_Equal_area.pdf)

gnomonic:

\- including a primer on _Tetrahedral Pseudoglobes_ by Carlos A. Furuti

\-- on prognos.com (currently unreachable) [http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Foldo...](http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Foldout/Tetrahedron/tetrahedron.html)

\-- cached: [https://web.archive.org/web/20150322140625/http://www.progon...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150322140625/http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Foldout/Tetrahedron/tetrahedron.html)

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

</comment><comment><USER44> There's something interesting about seeing Africa and South America beside Europe/Asia/North America, instead of above them.

</comment><comment><USER45> Um, not such a sensible map for South Americans...

<comment><USER46> Why not?

<comment><USER45> Sorry, I was looking at it improperly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It seems to me that Brazil would not find this to be a good design.

<comment><USER48> Surprised I couldn't find it on Amazon. Any idea if there is a non-Japanese retailer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Reminds of a classic West Wing moment with CJ and maps...

</comment><comment><USER50> Obligatory: [https://xkcd.com/977/](https://xkcd.com/977/)

<comment><USER51> Hopefully one day the creator of xkcd will make a comic strip about how xkcd references are, in fact, not obligatory.

<comment><USER52> If he does, it will only remain amusing for a couple of days...

<comment><USER50> I think it will just become the default reply to someone posting the Obligatory link.

Also, I regret nothing!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Computer Science Circles - <AUTHOR> http://cscircles.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/ <comment><USER2> I tried this few months ago and the tutorials & challenges are somewhat difficult for beginners. This tutorial is challenging as you go through it and shouldn't be followed without proper guidance or research. The terms used in it is not so suitable for newbies as other tutorials available on-line. Though, the tutorial as a whole is a reliable source for learning python 3 and it's core concepts with some enticing problems. Definitely worth a look.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting, I'd never be able to write something like:

 _print is the name of a Python command, which sends messages to output. The parentheses () after the print command are used to contain what you want to print._

I really dislike the idea that programming languages have "commands", so I would have called it a function since that's the actual term used. And that of course would lead to explaining the parentheses as part of _calling_ a function, by enclosing the parameters.

I admit I didn't read far in this tutorial, so perhaps more correct/typical terminology is introduced later.

<comment><USER4> "Specifically, the term command is used in imperative computer languages. These languages are called this, because statements in these languages are usually written in a manner similar to the imperative mood used in many natural languages. If one views a statement in an imperative language as being like a sentence in a natural language, then a command is generally like a verb in such a language."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_\(computing\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        f = open("mainfile")
        print(f.read())

</comment><comment><USER6> > We also will talk about logic errors at the end, which means that your > program runs without crashing, but still produces the wrong result. An > example would be

             Please close the back door so that the bugs don't come in.

> This would be a logic error if the front door is also open: even though the > command makes sense and you can close the back door, this doesn't actually > accomplish the goal of keeping the bugs out since they'll still come in the > front door.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

As someone who also struggles to teach beginners how to program...I've learned that teaching the concept of "error" is extremely difficult. Non-programmers have a much fuzzier concept of what a programming "error" is, and this is a major obstacle.

Right now I'm teaching SQL, which is relatively straightforward as languages go. When a student tells me they ran into an error (and more often than not, doesn't think to include the error message), it can mean any of these things:

1\. There's a syntax error.

2\. The GUI crashed, or was otherwise acting up.

3\. No results were returned.

4\. Nonsensical results were returned (such as when doing an inner join without supplying a constraint).

#3 and #4 are incredibly annoying to deal with...because they _aren 't_ errors, at least on behalf of the interpreter. If your WHERE condition is `NAME = 'Dan' AND NAME = 'Daniel'" \-- and you get exactly 0 results -- that is what is _supposed_ to happen. Some might even argue that it's not really a logical error; it's just a tautology. The problem is with the user's _expectation_ \-- they _think_ they've written something more profound than a tautology, and there's nothing the SQL interpreter can really do to tell them otherwise (short of installing a Clippy-like plugin that pops up and asks, "Did you really mean to ask that?"...which, as we all know, has its own tradeoffs...)

But this isn't even the most frustrating part -- what's frustrating is when beginners don't even know what to expect...so for problems of type #4...when they've done a WHERE conditional like this: `WHERE Name != 'Dan' OR Name != 'Daniel'`...and get _all_ of the results...they think their program "worked"...especially if they hadn't noticed that the number of returned results is, coincidentally, the exact number of results in the entire unfiltered table.

So to go back to the OP's explanation of an error above...it's just _wrong_...because it's not a logical error. And it's not even a real-life "common sense" error -- closing the back door (in a normal scenario) _does_ prevent bugs coming in...at least _from the back door_. The only way you could interpret this as an "error" is to have the expectation that a single sentence/command/statement should be the one-all solution to the problem...and that is an assumption that is profoundly _limited_ in how it implies that there is only one solution, or that solutions don't have tradeoffs (both in real life and in the computational setting)

After all, if the student amends the statement to add "AND the front door"...it's still an error because what about the side doors or windows? And even then, another student could reasonably argue that the "correct" answer is to "take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

So, yeah, explaining computational concepts to people who are used to the fuzzy and beautiful way that humans communicate and miscommunicate is really, really difficult...and I believe that explaining the concept of errors is probably at the top of the difficulty pyramid.

</comment><comment><USER7>
        These lessons teach Python version 3. While our lessons
        aim to be self-contained, if you decide to search online
        for other information about Python, be aware that Python
        version 2 is also commonly used and is incompatible in
        some ways.

:( This is super confusing information for a new programmer.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I feel like there are plenty of other choices to pick from for a beginner's first programming language other than Python. Perhaps SmallBasic ([http://smallbasic.com/](http://smallbasic.com/))?

<comment><USER5> But nobody uses smallbasic, and millions of people use Python.

edit: I'm being hyperbolic here, but I think ubiquity is extremely important. You want people to be able to play.</comment></comment></comment>


Schedule a Python Script to Run Daily - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/PHyrJ3fOmas <comment><USER2> quite awesome! i like writing python but i don't like setting up infra / stuff around it to make it run

will have a look!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome - please feel free to ping me if you have any questions</comment></comment>


Chrome Sync - <AUTHOR> https://textslashplain.com/2018/09/24/chrome-sync/ <comment><USER2> >The old UX was dangerously misleading for people who share computers, a worryingly common practice. The new UX makes it at least a bit more clear that if you're browsing on a borrowed computer, you really should be using a discardable Guest profile.(I think Guest Profiles are one of the coolest little-used features in Chrome).

I preferred the old ui of checking "keep me signed in". The whole "just use private/guest/whatever" annoys me.

In any case, this change reinforces that if you don't like google, then don't use chrome.

>If Extra Evil Google is in your threat model, you shouldn't be using Chrome at all, because obviously Extra Evil Google could just backdoor Chrome before encryption or after decryption.

If you care about privacy, then of course you'll prefer a browser that is private by default, rather than making you run around in settings.</comment>


Magic Leap confirms $502M Series D round - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/17/magic-leap-confirms-502-million-series-d-round/ <comment><USER2> Can someone, anyone try to explain why Magic Leap keeps getting money thrown at them? Series D and not even a whisper of a product. What is going on in the tech industry?

<comment><USER3> There have been several articles over the past months about an upcoming launch and descriptions of the product. It's just that people here only like to discuss the funding articles because it's easier to cast doubt.

<comment><USER4> It seems reasonable to doubt that a company who have never publicly demo'd their product and who are facing an increasingly crowded marketplace with big name competitors (e.g. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, Valve) and who have been in stealth mode for several years, actually have a chance of justifying their valuation...

<comment><USER3> There currently is no AR consumer device. If they launch within the next 6 months, as rumored, they are in a very good position. That being said, I didn't say there isn't reason to be skeptical. Just that most people are oblivious to the leaks because it's easier to talk smack about them getting funding without a public product yet.

<comment><USER4> If they could launch a consumer price level AR device in the next 6 months I would agree with you.

However last I heard on the product front the price point that was being floated was $3000 which is way out of the consumer ballpark and into the business ballpark where hololens is already gaining traction.

The thing that surprises me about Magic leap is investors exuberance. Even if they totally nail the 1st gen. product they've still got a mountain to climb in terms of beating out well funded competition who are ahead of them in terms of shipping product.

Hopefully 2018 will see them finally ship, so people can move off speculation into evaluating what they've got...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> this must be a sign that we are in another tech bubble.</comment>


Show HN: aes.vbs – AES-256-CBC Encrypt and Decrypt Functions in VBScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/susam/aes.vbs <comment><USER2> cool!</comment>


Academia.edu: looking for technical co-founder - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.academia.edu> is a Facebook/MySpace style site for academics. It launched in alpha version last week.

It's a site where academics can create an academic webpage, and upload their papers and research interests. You can see a sample webpage here: <http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice>

We have also built a paper-tracking engine that tracks the latest papers uploaded to the web in a given field. You can see the results for Computer Science here: <http://cs.academia.edu/categories/2/papers>

Academia.edu's founder is Richard Price. Richard's previous ventures include <http://www.liveout.co.uk> and <http://www.peopleradar.com> (the #1 Facebook API application - recent page views per day have been around 1 million).

Richard is looking for a technical co-founder to join Academia.edu. He's looking for someone who:

\- Is super smart - awesome at problem-solving.

\- Is super driven - pushes themselves, and everyone else, to meet high standards.

The site is built in Rails and C#. Knowledge of those is a plus, but not essential.

The team is based in SF. We're offering a significant equity stake, and a competitive salary. We want to be surrounded by super smart people, all of whom are driving each other to create a great product for our users. We'll pay out whatever equity it takes to hire the most brilliant people. If you are interested, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER2> My big question is how did you manage to score a .edu domain?

<comment><AUTHOR> Before 2001, anyone could register a .edu domain; a handful of .edu domains were registered - academia.edu was one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting idea. I wonder how you will grow it? Most University IT departments are understaffed and overworked. Even though they _should_ provide these services, they often can't. Are you planning to charge universities for providing this service?

It seems to me as if academia.edu has plans to provide library services. Personally, I don't like the commercialization of libraries, especially when library scientists are coming up with excellent solutions (like <http://xxx.lanl.gov/> .)

Either way, there are many directions academia.edu can go, must be an exciting time for you. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts - they're extremely interesting and I really appreciate hearing them.

The site will be completely free for universities and academics. Our business model is to sell advertising on the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I go to McGill and our email addresses end with .ca, I think similarly for some other universities in Canada. Interestingly, mcgill.edu does go to mcgill.ca (not emails though, I tried).

<comment><USER5> I think its a cool idea. A long time in coming but just at right time. If nothing, the site name is prime real estate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> are you funded? How to plan on paying a salary?

<comment><USER7> How do the click through numbers work out nowadays. Peopleradar.com had 1m pv/day assuming 1% click-through at 50c per click works out to... $5k per day. That sounds like a lot of money, are my figures way off?

<comment><AUTHOR> PeopleRadar makes about 12 cents CPM with ValueClick - I'm going to try out TribalFusion, as apparently they offer higher CPMs.</comment></comment></comment>


Data Visualization Blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ <comment><USER2> I recommend Information Aesthetics -- <http://infosthetics.com>

<comment><USER3> flowingdata.com FTW. They even have their own data visualization twitter app. Great stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I strongly recommend anything by Edward R. Tufte if you really want to understand the fundamentals and the correct way of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER5> Neoformix is great too - <http://www.neoformix.com/></comment>


Recruiting is a form of Sales - <AUTHOR> http://seanonstartups.co/2014/06/24/recruiting-is-a-form-of-sales/

<comment><USER2> Is it really that recruiting is a form of sale, I was truly unaware about it. You can have a look at [http://camilla.com.au/shop/tops-1.html](http://camilla.com.au/shop/tops-1.html).</comment>


PHP Developer - Come Work in an Incredible Environment - <AUTHOR> https://talentopoly.com/jobs/23

<comment><USER2> Thank you for not requesting a "rockstar" developer.</comment>