Did Yahoo Just Pave Its Way To Finally Buying AOL? - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/05/19/did-yahoo-just-pave-its-way-to-finally-buying-aol/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web%29 <comment><USER2> Visions of Frankenstein buying 'the mummy'.

Of all takeover targets that Yahoo! could look at _why_ AOL?

There have to be companies out there with a bit more promise. If their traffic continues to decline at the current rate in 4 years they'll be gone.</comment>


AT&T IoT Starter Kit – Get Your Free Kit Through Monday - <AUTHOR> http://developerboards.att.lithium.com/t5/AT-T-Developer-Program-Blogs/AT-amp-T-IoT-Starter-Kit-Reducing-Barriers-for-IoT-Development/ba-p/40106

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting direction for AT&T.

I see that the normal cost for this developer pack is $11, which seems very reasonable. What's the expected retail or wholesale cost of the similar service? That is, if I were to develop a product that made use of this service, what would be the approximate cost to me per product for the same data package included with each SIM? Is it priced per-SIM, or is it based the total amount of data used by the all the products together?

At a low enough price, there would seem to be lots of interesting things that one could do.</comment>


Ask HN: Synectics - <AUTHOR>

Is anyone using this technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synectics for creative problem solving? I just liked this principle: "Trust things that are alien, and alienate things that are trusted." <comment><AUTHOR> The link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synectics></comment>


How the Camera Doomed Google Glass - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/how-the-camera-doomed-google-glass/384570/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> The smartphone requires awkwardly peering at a glass rectangle, yet it effortlessly reorganized social norms, because it's so damn useful and interesting. So why didn't Glass do the same thing?

> I found that it was not very useful for very much

That's it. That's the real issue, not the camera.

<comment><USER4> Yep. Plus incredibly uncool looking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A large % of the population these days participate in social media and seem to have no qualms about putting all their personal / private details online, despite that that might mean massive backlash if it goes viral, or at the very least a permanent record of any mistakes made (the internet doesn't forget).

To me, Glass got the backlash it did because there are still a lot of people who think that way of living is stupid. People are getting sick of 24/7 surveillance, and Glass was merely a great poster boy for that push.

It's also just dehumanizing to talk to someone with that on. They have a big camera / computer strapped onto their face. It's almost like trying to talk to someone when they've got their phone held up and are only half paying attention to you while recording. It just comes across as really rude to a lot of folks.

<comment><USER6> People are comfortable with things that they choose to do. People put up statuses, pictures, and all sorts of private info on social media of their own choosing. If someone else wears Google Glass and decides when, where, and if to take your photo, your choice of what to share and store is taken away. As another example: people are fine with group photos taken with their knowledge and uncomfortable with strangers taking their photo without asking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the article's conclusion, that a camera should not have been included, is naive.

Smart glasses with no way to get visual input from the environment would be a much less useful product. So, that means having a camera, and if you have a camera you can record the input from it. I'll be very surprised if anyone ever releases smart glasses with no camera.

Having said that, I'm not surprised Glass isn't doing so well. I think our culture isn't quite at the point where an always-on wearable video camera is socially acceptable. Give it a couple of years, and it probably will be.

<comment><USER8> > Smart glasses with no way to get visual input from the environment would be > a much less useful product.

The only real use for Glass was a HUD + low quality camera, considering the positioning of the actual display. You don't need a camera for a HUD. Now if Glass went after augmented reality, then I'd totally agree with you.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. The camera never had any truly compelling use case - even the most basic one, taking a picture, was not actually a UX improvement over taking out your phone and doing it, especially considering the leaps and bounds by which phone camera (both hardware software) has improved.

There were some cool _tech demos_ that exploited the camera rather impressively - facial recognition for one, but all of these are technological curiosities rather than mass-market useful. There was never a use case that seemed relevant to the everyday user where the camera was really all that useful.

I do think the camera contributed substantially to the failure of the product. More than the _existence_ of the camera was how it was handled - <USER2> record/activity light as has been customary on many such devices, and the design of it felt viscerally like a hidden camera.

Which isn't to say Google intended to create a hidden camera, but in trying to make it blend and look like normal glasses it made the camera seem less upfront, more dishonest, and more intrusive than, say, a guy who is literally wearing a camera on his head.

<comment><USER10> I own a Glass, and I have to disagree, the camera was a very large improvement over using your phone. Hands free use and no lag between wanting to take a picture and taking a picture (winking to take a pic) make a huge difference in utility. I got some great photos that I couldn't have gotten otherwise while traveling with it.

Too bad it didn't have many other uses, and made being out in public kind of awkward.

The press made a big deal of the camera creeping people out, but in practice, the reaction was much more curiosity and interest than fear. I think the press just wanted something to write about, and in the absence of revolutionary abilities and interesting use cases, they wrote about its perceived flaws and did a bit of fear mongering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Including a camera also made it hard to see past the camera. The only think people would ever talk about is the camera, and argue about whether people should have a camera on their heads, wonder if they would want to use a camera that way, tell people to take it off because of the camera. If there was no camera, I wonder what aspects of it's technology would have been the focus of discussion. Then again if there was no camera, would it have even appealed to people in the first place?

<comment><USER12> One of the early big interviews about Glass featured Brin or Page (not exactly sure who of the two) telling that Glass is for taking POV pictures. And he talked about nothing else. While all tech guys (like me) where dreaming about augmented reality, or even just having some Android apps of choice in my view all the time while being able to walk around, all he focused on (and everyone since) was taking pictures. So it was intentional to not look past the camera I guess.

<comment><USER13> Are you talking about this TED "presentation"? [http://www.ted.com/talks/sergey_brin_why_google_glass?langua...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sergey_brin_why_google_glass?language=en)

Don't bother watching it. TLDR; Sergey stands awkwardly on stage for 5 minutes, telling you how isolating it is to whip out your cellphone. With Glass you can keep your head up, something he cannot seem to demonstrate himself - choosing instead to come across as isolated from the audience, distracted, and unprepared. 2 million people have watched this for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What am I going to use to do my life doccing and interfacing with Second Life while I'm zooming around on my Segway?

</comment><comment><USER15> IMO... Design of the thing only took into account the technical side. If they're going to push new social norms... they should go full futurist. Maybe try redesigning the social cues... In lieu of a red camera light maybe some electrochromic lenses or mirror, and build social trust that way.

<comment><USER16> Paul Graham once wrote an article on the curse of implementing an idea when you had enough money: [http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They could have mitigated this trust issue by requiring people to hold a button on the side of the device to enable the camera. That would be a socially acceptable enough gesture that would signal: "FYI, I'm recording." just like holding up your phone to take a picture does.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is why I wasn't interested in one. It's like the Glass team simply couldn't comprehend or bother to care why someone wouldn't want to have their camera pointed at people _all the time_.

<comment><USER19> Except that you _already_ have cameras pointed at you 100% of the time.

If people are this uncomfortable about Google Glass, they had better start tuning in on the implications of everybody uploading selfies and videos on Facebook, YouTube, etc.

<comment><USER18> Hogwash. The number of times I see people actively aiming their lens at me is quite small despite the large number of smartphones and the like around me everyday.

If you can't determine the difference in social expectation from a watch that is literally pointed all the time vs your occasional "selfie" \-- well, keep guessing as to why others were pissed to feel "potentially" recorded without consent.

<comment><USER20> Nearly everywhere in public (at least in a decent-sized city) you are highly likely to be captured on CCTV.

<comment><USER21> That is not globally true.

Here in Sweden for instance, public space can't legally be covered by CCTV without a permit. That means private entities can't just throw up cameras at random. Of course it happens anyway, but it's not "nearly everywhere".

<comment><USER22> And that's true in many other Europeans countries as well. And at least here in Portugal those permits only allow you to store those records for a specific purpose (security), for a limited time period (30 days) and can't be shared with third-parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As someone who has actually used Google Glass, the camera/videocamera was the very best part about it. The killer app for me (and others that I knew) was taking photos/videos of their kids. My daughter knew what I was doing when I pulled out my phone (and often wanted to take it from me), but she didn't know what to make of Glass and so I got a ton of great candid photos/videos of her.

That said, I was always VERY self-conscious wearing Glass, which doomed the experience for me for the most part.

</comment><comment><USER24> Camera issue is easily solvable by visible LED activated when camera is recording. Phones are also capable of hidden video/voice recording, but nobody cares.

Usability is what killed Google Glass. Voice recognition does not really cut it. Joystick in ring on finger would be great. Or perhaps muscle sensor on neck to capture silent speaking. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_speech_interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_speech_interface)

<comment><USER25> > Phones are also capable of hidden video/voice recording, but nobody cares.

At least with phones it's clearly visible when someone is pointing a phone to something in order to make a recording or picture, which is not the case in glass.

The point about silent voice recording is valid, but, in general, people are much less sensitive about voice recording than video or picture. Maybe because identification using voice only is much less accurate and privacy obtrusive.

I don't have problems giving honest opinion anonymously to radio stations, but would never even talk to a tv guys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Google glass "utterly improbable", "too smooth" and "a fantacy" according to Alex Feyerke who compares Microsoft visions and Google glass promos to an old vision video of the British postal office that include normal problems an realism in this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPz_5-MEvcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPz_5-MEvcg)

<comment><USER27> I think you linked to the wrong video.

<comment><USER28> No, it's the right video. Jump to 1m56s for the first (microsoft) video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm not going to cry over glass, I just hope it hasn't doomed similar products.

I'm affected by prosapagnosia; When I first heard of glass the possibility that it could be used to provide facial recognition to aid my own shitty facial recognition seemed wonderful.

But then I read that google wouldn't allow facial recognition anyway. Until I read that I was prepared to get in as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why didn't they just add a red LED to the front that turns on when recording video, and blinks after a photo is taken?

<comment><USER31> I'm going to presume this is sarcasm because that is literally exactly what they did.

<comment><USER9> What? I've used Glass, there is no "record light". It is perfectly possible, without hacks or nefarious programming, to take pictures and record video without any outward indication of activity.

Savvy people could try to spot Glass being used by looking for the subtle glow when the HUD screen turns on, but that's a _very_ far cry from an actual "activity light".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Or maybe it was Magic Leap, which they invested in, and will probably be the next "Google Glass".

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree that the camera has a serious social impact and it was one of the cause for this initial failure.

Unfortunately, I think we will also get used to this.

</comment><comment><USER34> I like how technology like this self regulates.

</comment><comment><USER35> amazing how mountable and wearable camera is ok with gopro and other similar solution but not ok with google glass...

I believe its not camera but elite and exclusiveness it created got backfired... (though typically it has worked well for other products launches like gmail etc.)

also 1500$ tag is bit over priced for a tech gadget..

Nash, [http://joday.com](http://joday.com)

<comment><USER36> It is OK with Google Glass, just not all the time - gopros are mainly used by narcissistic adrenaline junkies who want to record themselves doing awesome stuff like jumping out of an airplane. Usually not when walking down the street having a coffee. That would be weird.</comment></comment>


The discovery of artemisinin (qinghaosu) and gifts from Chinese medicine (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v17/n10/full/nm.2471.html <comment><USER2> Arsenic is an effective and relatively safe substance? That's very strange since it's used as a poison. That's the thing with herbal medicine, Chinese or otherwise, the matter of toxicity.

Also, there isn't a lot of research into traditional medicine. The ones I can find often have conflicting results or simply state something along the lines of "shows promise". I wish there were more reliable studies to prove or debunk the stories we always hear about people who recovered from incurable and/or terminal diseases using traditional medicine. I guess there's isn't enough money to be generated from it.

I took an interest in medicinal herbs after using ginger tea to overcome nausea, a side effect of a drug i was taking at the time. The doctor wasn't very helpful, it worked very nicely. But my programmer-mind has trouble believing the folklore-ish stories about these herbs.

<comment><USER3> There is a lot of research into traditional medicine. It's just that when any form is found effective it becomes just medicine. Uneffective ones stay in the realm of traditional medicine.

There was a quite nice editorial on the subject in Nature a while back [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7150/full/448106a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7150/full/448106a.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately, current formulations are not shelf stable. [http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/212](http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/212)</comment>


Show HN: CloudLists.me - Create Lists from the Artists You Follow On SoundCloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudlists.me/

<comment><AUTHOR> For any situation or mood, you can create a list to listen to which has only the artists that the moment calls for, rather than every artist you follow.

The site utilizes a SQL storage layer, C# and MVC 3 server layer, and JavaScript (using AngularJS, AngularStrap, & CrossFilter) client layer.

I've been working on this site to try out some libraries / frameworks I've never used before... Let me know if you have any thoughts, thanks!</comment>


Common Lisp, Clojure, and seriousness (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://3ofcoins.net/2009/01/30/common-lisp-clojure-and-seriousness/

<comment><USER2> His definition of "serious languages" pretty much precludes the post from taken seriously.

There are some CL folks that are real bitter about the success of Clojure.</comment>


Millenial Men Aren't the Dads They Thought They'd Be - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/upshot/millennial-men-find-work-and-family-hard-to-balance.html?smid=tw-share <comment><USER2> I think they're reading too much into the data.

The inferences they're drawing assume that the populations of "millenial men without kids" and "millenial men with kids" are part of an otherwise uniform group of millenial men, with attitudes changing as men go from one population into the other showing that pre-kid egalitarian attitudes couldn't stand up to reality.

But this seems like an oversimplified model. There is a big selection bias when passing to the "men with children" group. It's likely that men who get married and have children at a younger age probably tend to be from more religious backgrounds, for example.

To reliably make the kind of inferences the paper is making, you would need to survey men without children, wait a few years, then survey the same men after they had had children, and ignore the original interviews of men who still haven't had children by the time of the second set of surveys.

Edit: I'm trying to track down the sources for this story, and it's even more confusing, as from what I can tell they're comparing numbers from different studies with different samples and methodologies. I really wish they would more concretely quote exactly which numbers were coming from which source.

<comment><USER3> I am shocked - a published social science study with poor methodology and dubious analysis that fits the authors political biases. It is a good thing that this almost never happens.

<comment><USER2> I haven't read the cited studies in detail, and I wouldn't say the studies themselves have poor methodology or dubious analysis until I've looked at them.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the original studies made limited, well- qualified claims which were then exaggerated or taken out of context by the journalist.

The main linked sources seem to be: [http://asr.sagepub.com/content/80/1/116.abstract](http://asr.sagepub.com/content/80/1/116.abstract) (paywalled) and [http://www.familiesandwork.org/times-are-changing-gender- and...](http://www.familiesandwork.org/times-are-changing-gender-and- generation-at-work-and-at-home/)

The second of those seems to mostly just report the data they found, without much editorializing. I'm slightly skeptical about the multiple regression at the end, but the rest of the findings are straight-forward to interpret.

Other studies central to the article's title argument are cited but not directly linked by the NYT as far as I can tell. I can't find the mentioned surveys by the Center for Talent Innovation online anywhere; perhaps it's pre- published data they discussed with the NYT journalist.

<comment><USER3> I am even more shocked - you are telling me that journalists exaggerate! Next you will be telling me that they just make up stuff and pass it off as accurate and unbiased reporting.

More seriously I have been an eyewitness to a number of events reported on by journalists over the years. Not a single one of these reports had any resemblance to what actually happened - I guess that is why they are called news stories and reporters hacks.

Edit. Thanks for taking the time to track down the original papers.

I should not be so harsh on social scientists as it is incredible hard to do any real science in this area. I could not design and run a social science study that had any scientific robustness or validity. There are just too many confounding variables and biases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Yet those who had children had different attitudes. Of millennial men who > were already fathers, 53 percent said it was better for mothers and fathers > to take on traditional roles.

Is this because (by definition) those millennials who've already had children must then have had them at a relatively young age? That might be indicative of a more traditional attitude towards adulthood and, by extension, towards gender roles.

<comment><USER5> I'm 32 and technically right on the oldest edge of the "millenial" generation, and have 3 kids (7, 4, and 1); it doesn't necessarily mean "people born in the mid-90s".

<comment><USER6> You're at the oldest edge, and you were 25 when you had your first child.

If the oldest of the group had to have children under the median, then only those who had children young have them already.

Looking at millenials with children is a huge selection bias:

> Mothers of newborns are older now than their counterparts were two decades > ago. In 1990, teens had a higher share of all births (13%) than did women > ages 35 and older (9%). In 2008, the reverse was true — 10% of births were > to teens, compared with 14% to women ages 35 and older. Each race and ethnic > group had a higher share of mothers of newborns in 2008 who are ages 35 and > older, and a lower share who are teens, than in 1990.

[http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/05/06/the-new- demography...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/05/06/the-new-demography- of-american-motherhood/)

<comment> jon-wood I'm at the oldest edge and had my first a little over a year ago - 30 doesn't seem very much over the median.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TL;DR: Article says we're not as good/egalitarian as we'd _like_ to be. Sure, but the data shows that we've come a long way. And things are getting better even faster, because technology increases productivity.

I recently saw a more current version of the graph from this NYTimes article ([http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/us/17kids.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/us/17kids.html)), but the data indicates that both mothers and fathers in the U.S. are actually spending more time on childcare than they used to. Both. The biggest difference was in housework, which I believe has dropped quite a bit further in the past decade.

What seems relevant here (and not addressed in this article) is the extent to which technology powers social change like this. Social attitudes (the 'ideals') change because productivity gains due to technology means that household chores no longer take 40 hours+ per week.

I'm pretty sure the data from the 2010's doesn't take Instacart and other on- demand-everything into account because it has yet to be everywhere, but just think how awesome everything will be in this coming decade!

</comment><comment><USER8> Millennial families also have to deal with the stigma of 24/7 supervision of their children. A few generations ago, kids roamed the streets until supper time. Now if you let your kid walk to the park, you get arrested for negligence. We're obsessed with work, we're obsessed with being over- protective, and we're entitled to everything.

And let's be honest - men are in no hurry to pick up a second job when they can reluctantly blame the office's policies for why they can't pitch in more.

And how exactly is family leave or flexible work hours explained to single workers? Assuming married couples got policies changed so they could somehow both split their time between child-rearing and office work, single people will probably have to make up whatever time is lost. Because the question isn't "Do I have time to both work and raise this child", it's "How can I be at the office and dropping Timmy off at soccer practice at the same time?"

To make everything fair between single workers and working families you'd have to allow a workforce-wide reduction in hours, possibly accompanied by hiring more. Why do I get the feeling that might not happen?

The compromise here that would keep workplaces fair, is to not compromise for families, and force everyone to work the same hours. Which would require either that families get part-time jobs, or that one of them be 'the breadwinner'.

This also assumes the 2-parent model will remain the exclusive model this century. The next big fight might be over polycules for the right to co-parent if they're not a biological parent. Which would actually make time-sharing much easier, as it splits the work up amongst more people. But that's probably a good 50 years out.

<comment><USER9> You make good points and I agree with your reluctance to assume that employers will do much that doesn't suit them, but I think you'd obviously see a change in pay for any reduced work.

Of course, whether a breadwinning parent can resist $x for 5 days over $0.8x for 4 days equivalent to spend more time with their family is another issue. The rat race means people constantly want more, usually at any cost. If you work fewer 9-5 hours, I imagine you have to endure more time resisting out of office work, rogue calls, etc.

Perhaps once AR/VR offices are more common and companies are more comfortable with teleworkers, we could see people do full-time equivalent but with a couple of hours from 8-10pm to make up for being home from 3-5pm for after- school family time.

We also currently waste a significant amount of time commuting...

<comment><USER8> If the 'making up work later' example weren't exclusive to white collar workers who already have the flexibility to take their work home it might make sense, but i'm fairly certain that's a small percentage. The public sector, blue collar jobs, service jobs... these would be difficult to impossible to do remote, and on one's own time. We are the very lucky small minority who are not location- or shift-constrained.

The article is addressing millennials at large who all want to share the responsibilities of child-rearing and bread-winning. I think this is an incredibly difficult change to make for the majority of millennials and their employers - without screwing somebody over, that is. I'm pretty sure if it does get implemented it'll be at the expense of singles.

<comment><USER9> Good points.

Though I think we may eventually see some service workers operate remotely via video or similar. That won't cover everything, but at least some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of it is that parenting isn't always as much fun as you dream it will be. It's easy to idealize before you have kids. I love mine and am as dedicated a dad as I can be, but I'm also glad I get to go to work every day.

For a nuanced look at the complex emotions of parenting, I highly recommend Jennifer Senior's book "All Joy and No Fun" ([http://www.amazon.com/All-Joy- No-Fun-Parenthood/dp/006207224...](http://www.amazon.com/All-Joy-No-Fun- Parenthood/dp/0062072242)). There's a condensed version here: [http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/](http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/)

<comment><USER11> I've always found that piece to be interesting in that it spends the majority of the article citing studies and illustrating examples for how difficult child rearing is and how unhappy parents are. In the process the author raises the disconnect between that reality versus the contradictory feelings parents espouse... How they can be so much less happy yet will claim the opposite.

And then right at the end the author makes an about face and goes out of their way to defend parenthood... Seeming to inadvertently demonstrate that very delusion.

Of course, the author is a parent.

<comment><USER12> Have you ever been obsessed with a hobby, past the point that it is really fun? Spent all night debugging a program? Kids are like that. How we find meaning and what we find fun aren't always the same.

<comment><USER11> I think you miss my point.

Taking no position on the topic, what I find fascinating is how the author seems to inadvertently be displaying the very behaviour the article is describing, even though with all their research you'd expect they'd be best equipped not to.

There's something very... Meta... About that, I think.

<comment><USER13> > what I find fascinating is how the author seems to inadvertently be > displaying the very behaviour the article is describing, even though with > all their research you'd expect they'd be best equipped not to.

The article is about how parenting is stressful but (ultimately) rewarding, and you're surprised that the author of it finds parenting stressful but (ultimately) rewarding? Did you expect she'd find it not stressful, or that she'd find it not rewarding?

<comment><USER11> No that's the point.

The article is almost _entirely_ about the fact that parenting is terribly stressfulamd parents are actually far less happy than they seem to be able to admit to themselves.

The only bit that attempts to redeem parenting is right near the end, in a way that always to me felt like rationalization, in the way a parent might rationalize their choice just as previously described in the article.

This meta nature to me, given it was written by a parent, seems to highlight that very conflict: its a written embodiment of the mental contradiction parents experience.

<comment><USER13> I guess I don't see the contradiction you see. Parenting is stressful, and definitely can cause unhappiness. But it _is_ rewarding. That's not a contradiction; they're separate axes. (The author discusses this when making the square of rewarding-vs-enjoyable).

I guess you can claim that the feeling that it's rewarding is a false rationalization, but... I'm not really sure how you'd argue that. "You only think it's rewarding, but it's not!". I'm not sure how you could demonstrate something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can very much relate to this. I'm 31 years old and have two kids, and my attitude was and is quite egalitarian.

Yet it's my wife who works part time, and I do full time. Mostly because my baseline salary is much higher than hers, and doing it the other way around would hurt our financial situation severely. And kids are expensive too.

I try to make it up by not working crazy hours, playing with / taking care of the kids (and laundry) when I get home etc., but it's tough. There's only so much energy left after an intense day of work (even if it's "just" eight hours), and between that and the kids, time and energy for anything else is very scarce. It leaves me with the feeling of living only for work and the family, not much left for myself.

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one that thought the link for this headline would go to The Onion, not The Grey Lady?

</comment><comment><USER16> Short-term waves ride on top of long-term waves, but if we want an accurate picture of reality, we need to simultaneously remember the short-term and long-term waves. The trough of one wave can mitigate the peak of another wave, should their frequency be off in such a way that they interfere with each other. Likewise, with social trends. Any article about what men think about marriage and fatherhood should be juxtaposed with the facts about the rise of single-parenting (and the fact that the majority of single parents are women).

There are a variety of sources that can be quoted on this issue, and depending which source you look at, you will see different numbers. However, my point is not about any particular set of numbers, but only about the need to remember the underlying trend. Just for the sake of having an example, I'll post one set of numbers, but no one should treat these numbers as being especially accurate:

"About 4 out 10 children were born to unwed mothers. Nearly two-thirds are born to mothers under the age of 30. ...According to U.S. Census Bureau, out of about 12 million single parent families in 2014, more than 80% were headed by single mothers."

[https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother- statistics/](https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics/)

Although any particular set of numbers can be questioned, the trend is beyond all doubt: the number of single-parents in the USA (and much of Europe) is increasing.

This trend overlaps with another trend, which is the big increase in divorce in the USA, which occurred between 1900 and 1970. The book by Carter and Glick (1976) looked at this data in great detail. In 1900 the USA had a divorce rate of 5%, whereas by 1970 the rate was close to 50%.

Since 1980 the divorce rate in the USA has declined slightly, but it remains high compared to earlier eras. More than 35% of all marriages end before their 20th anniversary.

When you combine the 40% single-parenthood statistic with the 35% divorce rate of 20 years, you end up with a figure of almost 75% of all children being born into unions that do not last during the years the child is growing up. However, it is worth noting, the 40% and the 35% are not mutually exclusive groups, so the rate is not actually 75%. Some people become parents while they are single, but they later get married. But this number doesn't dramatically shift the reality: the vast majority of kids come from romantic unions which are over before the child reaches their 18th birthday.

The people most likely to remain single while parenting fall into 2 groups: the very poor and those who are culturally non-conformists. A side-effect of the above trends is that the men who do get married tend to be more traditional than the average. Whereas 50 years ago there was no political division regarding marriage, in the future we can expect considerable political differences between those who have kids inside of marriage, versus those who have kids outside of marriage.

Some people regard the advent of single parenting as a radically modern phenomenon but it is worth considering it in light of the Grandmother Hypothesis, which explains menopause in women partly as a way of funneling needed resources to grandchildren. This theory is highly controversial. An early study concluded that in the Hazda tribe, the majority of all calories going to children came from the child's grandmother, although recent studies have disputed that, and it seems clear that the majority of protein comes from men who go hunting:

"On the whole, [men] contribute 43% of all daily kilocalories arriving in camp, but 50% among married couples, and 69% among those with nursing infants (Marlowe 2003a)"

[http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/ppoint/menopause- short.pdf](http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/ppoint/menopause-short.pdf)

That evidence can be read either way, but if you are traditionalist, and you believe women with young children are typically dependent on men, I think the surprising thing about this research was how many calories are brought in by the grandmothers. Whether that figure is 40% or 60% seems to me a minor point, the larger point is that is an important percentage. More so, I would guess that if a man went missing (died in war, died of disease, etc) the grandmother might then step up her efforts to bring in more calories for the children. So at least some aspects of single-parenthood have ancient roots (indeed, men have always died in war).

Those are the long-term trends.

There are medium-term trends, such as the decline of male wages since 1973, which forces men to work longer hours. Whereas in 1973 the typical American worker had more vacation time than the typical European worker, the situation has now dramatically reversed. The German worker regards 8 weeks of vacation as their sacred right, whereas most American workers can hardly dream of getting so much vacation time. This reality limits the amount of time that men can spend with their kids.

Then there are the short-term trends, such as the high levels of unemployment brought about by the Great Recession of 2008. Whatever ideals a young man might have about marriage and child rearing, the economic environment has been challenging for all but a privileged few.

I don't mean to imply that any of these trends are necessarily The Absolute Truth about fatherhood circa 2015, I only mean that to have an accurate read on the situation, one has to remember all of the trends, and how they happen to conjunct at the current moment.

</comment><comment><USER17> Extremely summarised (and cynical) form of the story: twentysomething idealism meets life experience :)

In order to meet the requirements to fulfill the lifestyle desired in the article, it's more than just "workplaces must modernise". It's a societal shift. People have to be prepared for 'work hours' to shorten or move around... from a _customer_ point of view, for example. It's not as simple as waggling a finger at employers - expectations have to be managed at all points in the chain.

<comment><USER18> Funny and accurate summary.

I'm 25 (and planning to marry and have children) but I'm realistic about what child-raising will be like, and don't entertain egalitarian fantasies. This is partly because I went through two divorces in my childhood (mum & dad, then mum & stepfather); and also because my parents were quite liberal.

People who've had traditional upbringings can daydream about bringing up their own children in a more liberal way, but having lived it from the inside -- it does have advantages but there are also glaring flaws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The problem is that you can't be both the bread winner and give equal time to your kids. One will always suffer over the other.

It's much better to have one bread winner and one care giver. It's been like this for most of human history and it has worked very well. I'm not sure why these new-age articles and psychologists think that they can somehow change it.

<comment><USER20> "Because that's how it's always been" is rarely a sound argument.

<comment><USER21> Actually, it is a pretty sound argument when it comes to describing human behaviour.

Things are often they way they are because it works on a macro and micro level. Sure, some things get into weird feedback loops and drift to silliness, but for the most part, if you see something working for a lot of people, they're not doing it just because of tradition.

The OP is absolutely correct in that many people will find it better to specialise in child-rearing and income-generation for a two-parent family. That doesn't mean one doesn't do child rearing and the other never works, but the primary responsibilities will fall down that way.

That's how it has been for a millennia or three, and that's likely how it will stay. Behaviours like this are all about reproductive success so that's why they the way they are.

<comment><USER12> Have you not noticed that a few centuries ago society and technology made evolutionary instincts for reproductive success mostly obsolete? Do you think that a boy with a stay at home dad will fail to impregnate a woman before be dies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It must be late, because I looked in the comments section on the article and to my surprise I found interesting ideas and view points. I'll look again tomorrow.</comment>


Time Cube is gone - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9247913/time-cube-is-gone

<comment><USER2> Last snapshot in Internet Archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20150818094035/http://www.timecu...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150818094035/http://www.timecube.com/)</comment>


ARE OCTOPUSES FROM OUTER SPACE - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/alien-octopuses-outer-space-930942 <comment><USER2> They are majestic, smart and caring and cunning creatures. They're my favorite animal in the animal kingdom. I'll never forget the clip I saw of David Attenborough narrating how a female octopus holed up in a save cavern rarely sleeping and slowly dying to ensure that her young were birthed safely only to die as they were born. It was so sad yet so humbling. I also love hearing about times when they escape from aquariums or fishers' ships. Also isn't the plural Octopi not as it is in the title?

<comment><USER3> >Also isn't the plural Octopi not as it is in the title?

Octopuses is the standard English pluralization, while Octopi and Octopodes are acceptable variants.</comment></comment>


Twitch Plays Pokemon Go - <AUTHOR> https://www.twitch.tv/twitchpokemongo <comment><AUTHOR> A group of hackNY fellows built this over the weekend :) It's pretty fun so far! Hopefully the account they made doesn't get immediately banned.</comment>


Transdep: Find single points of failure in DNS dependency graphs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/transdep <comment><USER2> I don't find the complaints about noncompliance to rfc8020, a 2016 rfc altogether convincing. Yes, it might have been nice if everybody complied, but changing the rules 30 years in and expecting people to change right away is a bit uh optimistic.

<comment><USER3> > ...when a DNS resolver receives a response with a response code of NXDOMAIN, > it means that the domain name which is thus denied AND ALL THE NAMES UNDER > IT do not exist.

Good lord, TIL

While I agree that it would be better for everyone if dnssec and edns was universally adopted, I can't shake the feeling that DNS Flag day, the state of the surrounding tools they put out and the sponsors of it are pushing the hard stance for reasons other than internet security.</comment></comment>


Atomic Pioneers Gather Again to Recall Manhattan Project (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06project.html

<comment><USER2> "I wish I could tell young people today how naïve they are," Mr. Gates said. "We were like that, too, young and naïve. We truly believed that by building that bomb there'd never be another war."

All of you out there who think that _any_ hostile action can resolve _any other_ hostile action would be well served by ruminating on that statement for the rest of your lives. (preferably to the extent that you don't get around to participating in any hostile actions).

Hostility, almost by definition, is only successfully defeated by tolerance. This will involve sacrifice, and a huge measure of "being the better human".

Just remember that "being the better human" only puts you into comparison with the _leaders_ of any conflict. The _general population_ of conflict ridden areas should, like all humans, be treated as innocent until proven guilty.

I know these sound like trite, overly simplistic conclusions, but that's only because we're somewhat "programmed" by evolution to be hostile, and non- hostile solutions have only been consciously recognized as a viable option fairly recently in human history.

<comment><USER3> We should admit that since then there's not been another war by major powers, this list is instructive: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll)

Worst of that sort since then has been the great power proxy Korean and Vietnam Wars, which were very bad, but no on the scale of WWII, WWI, the Napoleonic Wars and the Thirty Years' War.

The flip side is of course our reasonable expectation that eventually there will be one or more massively deadly nuclear wars.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, unfortunately your expectation of a low chance of another WWII scale war, and the eventual occurrence of "one or more massively deadly nuclear wars" is in complete alignment with my own.

I don't know whether to cheer or cry.</comment></comment></comment>


Support MediaGoblin for a decentralized web - <AUTHOR> http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html <comment><USER2> The various goals look really nice and useful, I like the direction this project is taking :) And they have shown that they are able to deliver already, quite an active community it seems.</comment>


USPTO Contest: Patents for Humanity  - <AUTHOR> http://patentsforhumanity.challenge.gov/

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm curious who wins. And why they had to extend the submission deadline by several months.

for the record, the patent system is broken and i doubt humanity benefits as much as in a system with more cooperation.</comment>


HTML5 and the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/05/05/HTML5-and-the-Web <comment><USER2> Really good read, i think i can agree to every point.

However, the most interesting sentence for me was "In fact, compared to the level of support and tooling you get from XCode on the Apple side or the various pieces of Android IDE-ware, HTML5 development is a major pain in the ass.".

This is exactly my experience, too, and it's why i find it sad to see that Air won't be supported on the iPad. Basically developers have the choice between developing for HTML5 and target a lot of platforms, which is a pain in the ass nowadays even if you are only targeting Desktops. The other choice is to develop almost painlessly but only target one platform and having to duplicate work for every platform. Air is for developing for every platform with presumably less pain then HTML. It's a way with its own drawbacks but also with benefits. Developers (and in the end also users and the market) should be able to decide what is the best for them on their own.

Nevertheless, i really hope that the situation with HTML will resolve in the near future, but it will certainly not this year.

Also, i am wondering, why we don't start targeting specific browsers.. i mean, of course i know. Because websites have to run on every browser, yes yes. But: We install Flash to have Flash Apps, we install the Java VM for Java, .Net, Silverlight, a pdf reader to look at documents. Why don't websites say "The website was developed and tested for browser XXX. Please download browser XXX _here_ or continue on your own risk". Websites are developed for the least common denominator of a big variety of browsers which will only lead us to where we are now, although so much more could be possible.. Chrome has the option to add a website as programm link to your operating system. Taking this thought further, i could imagine to have Gmail as a full fledged replacement for Outlook/Thunderbird in my start menu, with all the latest and greatest that HTML5/Chrome has to offer. Gmail (or some other mail service) could provide a nearly 1:1 copy of a desktop mail client. Offline Storage, Web Notifications, Drag-n-Drop between browser and filesystem, etc. It's all there. And none of it will be used until every browser supports every feature :(

People will call me crazy now and this will most probably never happen, i know, but why not dream? ;)

<comment><USER3> It is easier for a user to push a button to install a plugin than to install a new browser, update the profile with bookmarks and so forth, and learn the new interface. We can trivialize these things, but I am sure we also have as many stories of trying to get someone to use Firefox (with noscript!) instead of IE and meeting significant resistance or eye rolling.

A plugin has the disadvantage and the advantage of supporting users' browser choices.

So basically, it looks petty and unprofessional to say on some minority of websites, "This website is developed and tested for" or "This website will only run on". In contrast, I have seen "Click here to upgrade your Flash Player", and moments later, things just work.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could have an HTML renderer plugin? And some kind of system where you could -- with some clear and dumbed-down descriptions of the differences/advantages -- choose between alternatives? And get upgrades?

<comment><USER2> Yes, i can see some problems:

\- First, in the worst case users will switch between browsers all the time, but users only want one place to store their bookmarks and cookies

\- Second, even worse, if this would become a common practice, every browser manufacturer (especially MS) would just develop their own HTML "extensions", the standard would drift apart even more and the ultimate goal to achieve 100% standard compliant browsers would be out of reach. I can see how MS would implement new HTML and Javascript functionality to offer developers new features and in the end tie them to their browser

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a long time i've tried to understand this paragraph

'building a really hot HTML5 application that takes advantage of the nice new features is not exactly easy. Even assuming that you're using one of the dozens of clever toolkits, it's still not a slam-dunk. In fact, compared to the level of support and tooling you get from XCode on the Apple side or the various pieces of Android IDE-ware, HTML5 development is a major pain in the ass.'

What is it that people are finding so difficult to do in HTML(5 or otherwise)?

I've looked through a ton of apps, and with the exception of games and access to API's (which can be done with things like phonegap), what is so challenging to do efficiently in html and javascript?

<comment><USER5> Performance is generally much slower. This isn't a problem for most apps, but it is for CPU-intensive apps. That includes anything with substantial rendering or computation. The latest HTML5 features like local storage, sockets, and cross-window messaging go a long way to make many more apps feasible, those features aren't available in all browsers.

Even writing native Cocoa apps on the iPhone requires lots of optimization in loading and rendering content. JavaScript is even more intensive, making it more difficult to create fluid interfaces that rival the native experience.

I suspect that if mobile performance was comparable to desktop performance, Javascript would win out for a lot more use cases than it does right now.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do we need Google captcha? - <AUTHOR> Many of us remember the early batches of captchas. Annoying and sometimes next to impossible to get right. Googles "one click" captcha was a fresh breeze when it came. I'm not so sure anymore though. Now instead we have to use brain power to press 2-4 images in an AI quiz or said differently "help Google improve their ML data-set for free" which I'm not at all comfortable with. Isn't there a better way to fight bots? Could not the community make a FOSS alternative? How hard is this really? <comment><USER2> Two weeks ago my website [0] got hit by a botnet attack. These bots were submitting 2 POST requests to /login, followed by 2 POST requests to /signup, and since there were no checks in place, they were getting in quite easily. All their requests originated from residential IP addresses (probably hacked IoT devices) so IP blocking seemed impossible. I knew I needed to do something, but didn't want to send my users' data to Google.

I settled on implementing a honeypot technique using invisible_captcha gem [1]. It uses multiple techniques to detect bot activity, such as checking if the form was submitted too fast, hidden form attribute only visible by bots but not humans, etc...

Luckily for me, these bots weren't quite sophisticated so I managed to clamp down on their activity. I still get a couple of bogus signup attempts every day.

Disclosure: I am a contributor to the invisible_captcha gem

[0] [https://tryhexadecimal.com](https://tryhexadecimal.com)

[1] [https://github.com/markets/invisible_captcha](https://github.com/markets/invisible_captcha)

EDIT: grammar and wording

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting idea (the invisible captcha approach)! Since you are a contributer, can you tell us how efficient this strategy is? I mean, do you still experience advanced bots being able to still act as humans?

<comment><USER2> They still try to sign up, but none of them can actually bypass the captcha. I implemented a custom callback that returns a HEAD response with 404 to fool them (because I noticed that attacks intensified when I returned 2xx or 3xx responses).

<comment><AUTHOR> THIS is what I'm talking about :) Great work! Seems to me this is very centered on Rails apps. Would it be possible to do somethink like this for "everyone"? I have nothing agains Rails, but as a js/php/python develper myself, I wouldn't know where to begin with this..

<comment><USER2> The easiest way to start would be introducing an invisible form field [0] and on submission, checking if it is not empty. Give this form field a random name so that it wouldn't be populated by password managers.

You can take it one step further and check how fast the form was submitted. If it is below the predefined threshold, it is probably a bot.

[0] To hide the form field, you can use one of these snippets, interchangeably:

        "display:none;"
        "position:absolute!important;top:-9999px;left:-9999px;"
        "position:absolute!important;height:1px;width:1px;overflow:hidden;"

<comment><USER3> It should be stated that you should either use the first approach (display none) or give a 0 height/width, so that screen readers don't pick up these fake fields and ruin accessibility on your form.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately anything screen readers can recognize as invisible, a more sophisticated bot can too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's worse than that. It fingerprints the browser, the OS, and a ton of other stuff.

I'd love to see a solution that's privacy-friendly.

<comment><USER6> not possible because anything based off computation only wards off denial of service attacks, not bots which usually have too much profit.

the absolute best you could do is track on the site itself without google, but you still need to track user's data.

anything else you can think of can be beaten pretty easily or is going to really hurt your user experience to the point of severe loss of revenue

any CAPTCHA custom to a site will be broken very easily if your business takes off.

<comment><USER7> > any CAPTCHA custom to a site will be broken very easily if your business > takes off.

For me, this is an interesting and open question. I've taken the view that as long as it's easier to come up with new types of challenges than it is to create an automated means to solve those challenges, CAPTCHAs offer some protection. If you're ok with requiring JavaScript, mouse input, and images (e.g. you don't require your site to be accessible by sight-impaired users who cannot use a mouse), I think people can come up with varied enough challenges to present a problem to bots. How long will that be the case? I don't know.

<comment><USER6> The problem is coming up with challenges that are not trivial to automate and not annoyingly hard for users.

Botters aren't just making passive income, they can fix their bot every day as long as it's making them money. Many sites try "random" questions which are really easy to pattern match with a little regex.

The amount of effort that goes into botting generally scales linearly with userbase size (not always). But once you're talking about a botter with a profit motive when your site has hundreds of thousands or millions of MAU, I think trying to come up with challenges to beat botters would be prohibitively time consuming.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if you had a community helping out, somehow gamify making new challenges? I dunno, just have the feeling if there was a proper project with enough bright minds behind it, it should work

<comment><USER8> This sounds like a recipe for disaster when 4chan and friends find out about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My problem with Google Captcha is that I have to solve the "select all" window every time I check the checkbox, even when I'm logged in to Google. Maybe it's because I use Safari, but it's getting really annoying. What's the benefit of Google Captcha if you have to solve the captcha every time?

<comment><USER10> That's what they show if you're not on chrome, especially if you're blocking scripts or on a VPN.

<comment><USER11> In my experience it doesn't work _at all_ if you're blocking scripts.

<comment><USER12> It does not work under Chromium either with cookies disabled either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From a user point of view on Firefox, Google captcha is a an absolute hell.

Every single time I have to pass few batches of captchas. I'm not on a private window and I'm logged in to Google. So I started to blacklist websites that use Google captcha. and forced myself to change reading habits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly what I was thinking when writing this question. Seems to me there really is a big demand for something proper, secure and open source. Kind of like how letsencrypt help secure the net

<comment><USER14> There were a few factors making letsencrypt successful: alternatives were not free, and mainstream browsers were all making attempts to surface unsecured http clearly on address bars.

A free open source alternative for captcha will have a harder time getting traction, mainly since the popular option (Google) is already free; and neither business not customers (who are not privacy sensitive) care about the end result unlike the browser and http case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> CAPTCHA isn't just a matter of protecting your site. One of the most evil attacks nowadays is "Distributed Spam Distraction", where you spam your victim with thousands of emails per second so an important email (e.g., fraudulent purchases) gets lost in the noise.

How do you do this in a world with decent spam filters? By using the victim's email to sign up for real services so they get hit with a welcome email. Because these are real services, spam filter won't catch it. This can only be done with services that have sign up forms that are easily automated.

The most evil thing here is your email is crippled even after the attack is over because these real companies will keep sending you newsletter and it's impossible to unsubscribe to them all.

<comment><USER16> You've just reminded me I really need to use unique email addresses for each service.

<comment><USER17> If you use gmail, you can add a + followed by anything and it goes to the same mailbox.

For example, if signing up to drop, I might use firstname.lastname@example.com

Makes it very easy to see which services are selling the address you provide to advertisers

<comment><USER16> Yeah I know, and you're unfortunately correct that I use Gmail, but it's something I'm planning to change soon.

Also, if someone was targeting you with spam that won't help. They'll just remove the "+..." and you're back to the same problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I didn't even find Google Captcha to be effective, I still got a ton of spam coming through my web contact forms - often advertising software tools to bypass Captcha.

In the end I wrote my own rule based spam filters and that has been significantly more effective without tracking or annoying users.

</comment><comment><USER19> Over the past 2 years or so I've become incredibly skilled at identifying crosswalks, fire hydrants, traffic lights, and bicycles.

I don't necessarily mind contributing to googles car-driving AI, but the services that I've put this captcha infront of have seen a dramatic increase in spam.

I unfortunately don't know what the solution to this problem is but I would gladly contribute to whatever someone smarter than me comes up with!

<comment><USER20> >identifying crosswalks, fire hydrants, traffic lights, and bicycles. I don't necessarily mind contributing to googles car-driving AI

Wow. I just realized that's exactly what they must be doing with the data!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I only know about Buster:

> The difficulty of captchas can be so out of balance, that sometimes they > seem friendlier to bots than they are to humans. The goal of this project is > to improve our experience with captchas, by giving us easy access to > solutions already utilized by automated systems.

[https://github.com/dessant/buster/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/dessant/buster/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER22> Probably not.

A sophisticated attacker will simply use something like Mechanical Turk to get past Google captcha, and Google captcha is incredibly aggravating to a number of marginal users. But it's simple to implement, so that makes it popular.

I'd even say that most services don't need captcha in the first place. Captcha only affects relatively unsophisticated attacks, and if it's just an entry in your database, who cares? If it's sending you spam in an attempt to DDOS your email or customer service platform, use correlation between purchases and accounts to filter out the spam.

So, as with all security related matters, identify your threat model, and use that to figure out what you _actually_ need, not what you think you need.

</comment><comment><USER23> Are bots now advanced enough that transcribing obscured text is no longer a viable solution?

There's dozens of simplistic captcha libraries that serve obscured text. I can would rather transcribe a few letters much than complete a Google Captcha, probably faster, too.

<comment><USER24> They were advanced enough to do that 10 plus years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here was an earlier discussion about it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158386)

</comment><comment><USER26> My general answer is "no". But the question also isn't meaningful unless you define what it is you're trying to protect.

(E.g. maybe it's reasonable to have a captcha of some sort for account creation, with fallback to a human-involved process. But if you're trying to prevent credential-stuffing on a login form, the correct approach is using the Pwned Passwords dataset and/or cooloffs.)

</comment><comment><USER7> To the extent that you'd consider non-Google alternatives, there are multiple different CAPTCHA services, and we at NetToolKit recently launched our own version called Shibboleth: [https://www.nettoolkit.com/shibboleth/about](https://www.nettoolkit.com/shibboleth/about)

You can try out demos at [https://www.nettoolkit.com/shibboleth/demo](https://www.nettoolkit.com/shibboleth/demo)

While not open-source, the service is very affordable ($10 for 100,000 CAPTCHAs), and clients get to review user submissions to see if the CAPTCHAs are reasonable or not.

Would love to get your feedback on the service.

<comment><USER27> Just tried it out.

Clicking on the buttons with a laptop trackpad was tedious and unintuitive.

It would be nice if I could use the arrow keys (or even WASD) on my keyboard.

Other than that it seems preferable to Google's new image captchas.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedback! One thing that is not clear from the demo (and something we should fix) is that you can click on the path CAPTCHA to grant it focus. After that, you can use the arrow keys (although WASD currently does not work).

<comment><USER27> Ah! I tried clicking every except on the path itself!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I started using Buster[1] few months back with Google Speech to Text API. I use Firefox on Linux and I hadn't had to manually fill a captcha in all these months. Highly recommended. :)

I get 60 free minutes/month from Google Speech to text API. So, It's pretty much free to use.

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/buster- captch...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/buster-captcha- solver/)

</comment><comment><USER29> I like captchas that ask a question relevant to the topic of the site. For example, a forum about D&D might ask: "Who created D&D?" and accept all answers that contain "gygax", "arneson", "TSR" or "WotC". Trivial for your target demographic, but at least it requires a very different kind of bot.

Though I suppose if this becomes common, bots might just google that question and try some of the zero-click results as answers.

</comment><comment><USER30> Honest question. What's wrong with Google Recaptcha V3?

No need to select 25 traffic lights. Gives you a score from 0 to 1 so you can decide whether you let them in easily or not.

<comment><USER31> If Google doesn't like a client (e.g. Firefox users) they can just set their score to 0 and break half the internet.

<comment><USER32> You could say that for any captcha library though.

<comment><USER33> But the risk is doubly so for a closed-source codebase maintained by a company with a history of doing this sort of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Add to the problem the complication that you need a replacement for the captcha that is usable by users with disabilities.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hcaptcha will soon be open source.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Isn't there a better way to fight bots?

Don't?

I mean, what _are_ you trying to protect? If it's account registrations, shouldn't an email confirmation be enough?

<comment><USER37> > If it's account registrations, shouldn't an email confirmation be enough?

This won't stop someone with enough sophistication.

<comment><USER36> Not every service will be targeted by sophisticated bots. What kind of service are we talking about? Is it even social? Is it even a service or just a public website?

OP did not provide a threat model or any description of the service really.

Talking about this "in general" is awful and leads to stupid bullshit like endless CloudFlare captchas on literally STATIC blogs.</comment></comment></comment>


Intelligence Squared Debate: Do too many kids go to college? - <AUTHOR> http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-debates/too-many-kids-go-to-college/

<comment><USER2> The problem isn't that too many kids go to college: it's that not enough kids get adequate prenatal care, parenting, preschool and primary and secondary schooling.

In other words, the debate is asking the wrong fucking question.</comment>


Speeding up PHP with the HipHop VM - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/speeding-up-php-based-development-with-hiphop-vm/10151170460698920 <comment><USER2> Does anyone else think this is a tremendous waste of time for Facebook? I mean, obviously PHP powers a lot of stuff at Facebook, I'm sure there are zillions of lines of code they can't just replace today, and now they're forced to make it scale. I don't mean to be negative -- building faster, better systems is inspiring, and the stuff they are doing with PHP is pretty neat, and there are really smart people trying to figure this stuff out. But, you have to ask, why are they still using PHP?? Why not use some of the new stuff that's out there now or heck, why not go with the JVM instead of reinventing the wheel here?

No I'm genuinely asking. Isn't some of the stuff here already being done by other languages, or is Facebook really breaking new ground here? (yes lbrandy I saw your earlier comment)

<comment><USER3> My personal opinion on it is that this is in fact a very efficient way of doing things at Facebook. Facebook probably doesn't hire more than a couple people working on HHVM. Let's say their salaries individually are around $100,000 a year. That's cheap for them versus the value they're getting out of it.

Facebook probably has millions of lines of PHP code, PHP code proven to work. This isn't just Facebook.com, but internal websites, their bug tracker software (that is open source), analytical software for PHP, etc. etc. Rewriting all that would be _expensive_.

Running it on normal Zend PHP, based on the benchmarks they get on HipHop, requires _way_ more hardware at the scale of Facebook, so again, very expensive.

PHP developers are abundant, PHP is a relatively easy language to teach, resources are everywhere. Due to their abundance, PHP developers (even at Facebook quality) are probably less expensive than other languages. Easier hiring and lower cost developers, cheaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> By the way, there is an alternative to HipHop that is actually easier to implement because it makes php extensions.

It's called PHC <http://phpcompiler.org> and it's open source.

It was Paul Biggar's PhD thesis [http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/a-rant- about-php-compiler...](http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/a-rant-about-php- compilers-in-general-and-hiphop-in-particular/)

It just needs some community contributions to catch up.

<comment><USER5> While you are very kind to say so, even the original Hiphop blew past what phc could do. Importantly, phc did not support the full PHP language (we had basic object support, and no support for magic methods).

There were two cool things about phc: that it had a really advanced static analyzer, and that it compiled to modules compatible with zend. However, these are somewhat mutually exclusive, and making them work well together is an open problem (though I had some ideas).

I moved on from phc, and there's no-one left in the community really. I now run <https://circleci.com> (applying my compiler knowledge in a different way). I tried to pass the reigns on, but nobody stepped up. Hard to find people who love PHP but are also able to hack on compilers.

<comment><USER6> Slightly OT, sorry. phc was such a nice project, and vastly unappreciated. Your cleanup of PHP's grammar was a piece of art which I spend a long time perusing through and trying to understand! phc could have largely benefited the PHP community as a whole and it's such a shame it couldn't gain (enough) traction!

Never got a chance to say thx, so THX!

<comment><USER5> I'm glad you liked it. FYI, I cant claim credit for the parser. The front end (indeed it was a work of beauty) was done by phc's founders (Edsko de Vries and John Gilbert) before I got there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is curious. Their trace-based approach looks like Mozilla's Tracemonkey - even using the same terminology like side-exits. Mozilla discontinued Tracemonkey because it was really good for deep loops and not much else. They moved to JaegerMonkey, which is a method-compiled VM like v8 (at the time), and are now moving to IonMonkey, which is a best-of-all-worlds version.

So I'd love to hear why using a circa-2009 technology was the right one? Is PHP sufficiently different from Javascript for this to make sense (as someone who has worked on VMs for both, I think there's a good chance of that)? Why not use a method-compiler instead? Very interested in the answers and comparison to other JITs out there, if any HHVM people are here.

<comment><USER5> One more thing - the use of a stack-based bytecode is also curious. PHP itself (the Zend engine) uses a register-based bytecode (well, it uses a horror-show of an in-memory bytecode-like-thing, which could best be described as a register-based bytecode). The PHP engine details leak into the language a lot, so the difficulties they describe aren't unexpected.

Not only that, but bleeding-edge JITs typically use register-based bytecode. Java's JIT and all the modern versions of Javascript VMs use register-based (in many cases actually translating from stack-based bytecode that the parser outputs, to register-based bytecode consumed by the JIT compilers). Since 2003, when my PhD advisor and his co-authors (Google "David Gregg" and "Anton Ertl") showed register VMs could be much more efficient that stack-based ones, the jury has settled on register-based VMs.

So I'm curious as to why a stack-based instruction set was used in the VM design?

<comment><USER7> As noted elsewhere in this thread, a stack-based design typically produces more compact bytecode. Compactness was a concern for us because of the size of FB's PHP code base. Also, generally speaking a stack-based design tends to be easier to deal with when working to get a prototype VM up and running quickly.

Many of the advantages of register-based designs (ability to optimize by rewriting the program at the bytecode level, ability to write faster interpreters, ability to map bytecode registers to physical registers, etc.) weren't particularly attractive to us because we knew we were going to build an x64 JIT that did its own analysis and optimization to take advantage of type information observed at run time.

Thus, we drafted a stack-based design for HipHop bytecode. It captured PHP's semantics correctly and happened to fit in fairly well with PHP's evaluation order, so we ran with it and here we are.

<comment><USER5> Makes total sense, thanks!

Would using a register-based bytecode not have been useful for the x64 JIT?

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out our HHIR work. It's an SSA-based IR, that gets us most of the advantages of a register representation. But it is at a much lower level than the bytecode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amazed at all the 'engineer X policy or feature request slackers'. Can't say I'm the biggest fan of Facebook as a service but what their engineers are doing in terms of pushing the state of the art is fantastic.

Out of curiosity if there's anyone involved in Facebook on HipHop, has there ever been a discussion about just shifting from PHP to a more performant language, or is a case of still reaping the benefits of PHP in terms of dropping a developer in and not worrying about skill sets?

<comment><USER9> > ...about just shifting from PHP to a more performant language

We already shift lots of things out of PHP into more performant (c++, java, etc) languages when we are building services and/or extensions and/or other computationally intensive things.

But I think more to your point (and if not, let me indulge in the strawman), since this comes up frequently on reddit/hn: php is not somehow -uniquely- broken. While PHP might be uniquely broken as a language (ha ha), it's not -uniquely- broken as a platform/runtime. Everything you think is performant is broken at a large enough scale. Put another way, it's not just about the switching costs of rewriting in some other language. If we could magically snap our fingers and convert the entire codebase from php to some other language, that's just the beginning of understanding, tweaking, and occasionally rebuilding everything about the runtime/libraries/etc to make it work.

At the end of the day the language itself is given way too much attention in discussions like this.

<comment><USER10> So is your argument then that there is so much vested in facebook in dealing with and optimizing for PHP at scale that the real cost would be acquiring that knowledge a second time on a different platform since you _will_ run into scale problems no matter what language you use ?

From my experience in dealing with PHP performance warts. You can make it somewhat fast, but man the insides are so messed up every time I get into the core and try to do anything I want to rip my hair out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious if they were still evolving HPHPc at the same time as they were evolving HHVM: the chart shows HPHPc as having flat performance over time, while HHVM was getting better over a 7-month period. Could HPHPc have achieved the same performance gains if the same effort was expended?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm an HHVM engineer.

We just normalized HPHPc performance to make the graph easier to read. HPHPc actually got considerably faster over the same period as well; since both systems share a runtime, many changes helped both.

HPHPc probably got about 20% faster over 2012, even though nobody was actively working on it, mostly through happy side effects of work that was directed at HHVM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Things make sense now. I remember a while back Facebook invested in an experiment with PHP on PyPy. They didn't pursue it, even though it produced impressive results. It seems their own in-house JIT has better performance?

<comment><AUTHOR> HHVM was pretty far along when we started talking to the PyPy folks; it was already able to run the site, and hosting internal development at Facebook. Our interest in PyPy wasn't an immediate, drop-everything-and-change-to-PyPy kind of interest. It was a research project, which had a positive outcome. Making a production-ready, PyPy-based system for PHP would still be an enormously big undertaking, though.

PyPy is taking a radically different approach from what HHVM is doing (and really from what almost all other dynamic language systems are doing), and it's a fascinating system. Part of what's exciting about it is that it seems like it should be applicable to other languages with less effort than most other JITs, and we wanted to understand its potential for a language like PHP. We asked Maciej Fijalkowski (hi, Maciej, if you're reading!) to help us do a research prototype to see what the first few roadblocks would look like, and Maciej did a great job. Just because we didn't scrap our current project and shift all our resources to PyPy should not be seen as a negative reflection on PyPy at all.

<comment><USER13> I'm kind of surprised you didn't pursue the JVM and InvokeDynamic for this purpose instead of PyPy

<comment><USER14> I think there is a project of that sort going on, there was a guy from Facebook at the jvm language summit this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those who want to get their hands dirty:

CentOS 6.3 x64: [https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki/Building-and- ins...](https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki/Building-and-installing- HHVM-on-CentOS-6.3)

Ubuntu 12.04 x64: [https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki/Building-and- ins...](https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki/Building-and-installing- HHVM-on-Ubuntu-12.04)

<comment><USER15> Instructions for Ubuntu 12.04 x64: <http://pastie.org/5456298>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First off thanks for all the hard work. Do you have a list of the php extensions you support? I'm wondering if things like cURL, memcache, pdo MySQL etc are supported. I found [https://github.com/facebook/hiphop- php/wiki/Extensions-and-m...](https://github.com/facebook/hiphop- php/wiki/Extensions-and-modules-roadmap) but its a bit outdated (last mod 2yrs ago).

Also wondering what APC methods you support.

<comment><USER16> Found ans here: [https://github.com/facebook/hiphop- php/tree/master/src/runti...](https://github.com/facebook/hiphop- php/tree/master/src/runtime/ext)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What version of PHP does HPHP match? 5.3 or 5.4? I ask because I've become very accustomed the short array syntax ([1,2,3]) and other goodies in 5.4.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is closer to 5.3, though we've adopted some 5.4 features: traits, our closures' treatment of $this, and f()[$x] syntax.

Edit: notably not short array syntax, at least yet.

<comment><USER10> This makes me sad. That's one of the nicest features of 5.4 not needing to type array() all over the place.

<comment><USER18> It's a relatively trivial feature to implement (really just syntactical sugar), it probably just wasn't prioritized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "So, when you combine XHP with HipHop PHP you can start to imagine that the performance penalty would be a lot less than 75% and it becomes a viable approach." <http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/54-A-quick-look-at-XHP.html>

<comment><USER18> That's from 2 years ago. What is its relevance now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Will FB ever invest and move off PHP? Hiring talent at FB has to be getting harder and PHP probably isn't helping.

<comment><USER21> I think you underestimate the number of PHP developers out there. There aren't many on Hacker News because we're all _too cool_ for that stuff, but in the developer world in general there are a ton.

<comment><USER22> I think his point is that real top-tier developers are going to despite working with such a grotty language as PHP, so it hurts their hiring process that way. Whereas if they worked in a superior language (an ML, Haskell, a LISP...) they'd attract talent. Who wants to deal with a language such such inane design decisions all day?

I'd imagine people signing up to work at FB do so despite the fact they use PHP, not because of it.

<comment><USER23> I just don't understand the hate. Like any language it has some syntactic quirks and inconsistencies. There's no way to objectively say that one language is superior to another, because there are so many metrics that contribute to superiority and every person in the world is going to weight those various metrics slightly differently.

I imagine it's neither "despite" nor "because" of PHP use; any top-tier developer is going to use the tools available to him/her, rather than pick an employer in order to use a specific set of tools. Lower-quality developers may do so, but that's probably because they're less likely to know the right tool for the job (eg someone may hate functional programming and avoid jobs that use it, but that's because they don't know when FP is the ideal way to solve the problem)

<comment><USER24> You can't objectively say that one language is better than another, but you can't deny that a language such as Haskell has a level of consistency and mathematical rigour that PHP will now never attain. Top developers who Facebook target (normally top CS students from top colleges and PhD programs) strive to be consistent and mathematically rigorous themselves, and poor design and math annoy them.

<comment><USER23> Totally valid point. One of my housemates loves Haskell for very much the same reasons, and all other things being equal I'd prefer that as well (who wouldn't?).

But of course, anyone who's worked on production systems knows that all the mathematical ideals in the world doesn't stop bugfixes from becoming a giant hairy mess. It's more your culture, skill, and process that allow or prevent that from getting refactored into a better solution and how long that takes. Any language can be a part of a clean or messy codebase, although some tend to skew towards one side or another - but I'd wager that's as much a factor of barrier to entry as anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Like putting a rocket on a turd.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why is the blog on facebook?

<comment><AUTHOR> We work for Facebook, and make a lot of announcements on the engineering blog. We also have a group blog on WordPress-in-HHVM running here: <http://www.hiphop-php.com/wp/>

<comment><USER26> Didn't realize that until I actually went to the page. I need to learn to keep my pie hole shut more often.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pulse – Anonymous communication tool for enterprises - <AUTHOR> http://www.pulseapp.co

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, one of the co-founders of Pulse here. We created Pulse in order to change the way we communicate at work. We built it out of frustrations we had as employees at our previous jobs where we didn't feel like we had the right platform to openly speak out. You can read more about what and why we're doing at our blog below and happy to answer any questions!

[https://medium.com/@pulse](https://medium.com/@pulse)</comment>


Paperwork- OpenSource(PHP) Note-taking Similar to Evernote,OneNote and GoogleKeep - <AUTHOR> http://paperwork.rocks

<comment><AUTHOR> It uses Laravel4-PHP, AngularJs, Twitter bootstrap and hosted on popular LAMP stack.</comment>


The Myth of the Rule of Law - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm <comment><USER2> This is brilliant and fascinating until the part where it goes off the rails into the "free markets solve all problems" swamp.</comment>


A set of top Computer Science blogs - <AUTHOR> http://drtomcrick.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/a-set-of-top-computer-science-blogs/ <comment><USER2> A few others:

Machine Learning (Theory), <http://hunch.net/>, is a good place to learn about new machine-learning papers. It doesn't really do research exposition on the blog, but it posts about recent ML conferences, highlighting some of the papers the author finds interesting.

Embedded in Academia, <http://blog.regehr.org/>, is about 50% personal stuff, but 50% posts on John Regehr's work on C-compiler fuzzing, with some interesting examples if you're into compilers or the finer points of C semantics.

Proper Fixation, <http://www.yosefk.com/blog/>, is by an embedded developer (not academic), and not always about research, but it has some good researchy and expository posts. For example, it has the best concise overview I've found of how SIMT/SIMD/SMT relate ([http://www.yosefk.com/blog/simd-simt-smt- parallelism-in-nvid...](http://www.yosefk.com/blog/simd-simt-smt-parallelism- in-nvidia-gpus.html)).

While it's a mathematics blog, Terence Tao's blog, <http://terrytao.wordpress.com/>, has a lot of content likely of interest to computer scientists as well. In particular, his blog-exposition versions of papers are often a better introduction to recent research for nonspecialists than anything in the official published literature is.

Tomasz Malisiewicz's computer-vision blog, <http://quantombone.blogspot.com/>, has intermittent but often quite good posts on object recognition and similar topics.

Of course I can't refrain from mentioning my own quasi-blog, <http://www.kmjn.org/notes/>, though only about 1/4 of it is on computer science (about 4/5 of my day job is computer science, but online essays end up being mainly an outlet for everything else).

</comment><comment><USER3> For anybody looking to overdose on CS topics, you might also enjoy:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/>

and

<http://www.reddit.com/r/compscipapers>

Also, <http://machinelearning.reddit.com> and <http://semanticweb.reddit.com> feature some high quality links and discussion that many HN'ers might find of interest.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately I would recommend against all of these (except /r/compscipapers, only because I've never checked it out).

/r/compsci is, in my experience, mostly lower level undergrads who really want to show how much they know, there's a lot of misinformation in comments that gets voted up, and a lot of missing nuance in any of the discussions.

/r/semanticweb is very inactive, almost no discussion

/r/machinelearning is pretty poor as well, better choices are <http://metaoptimize.com/qa> <http://blog.kaggle.com/category/how-i-did-it/> and following ml topics on quora

<comment><USER3> The value there, IMO, is more the links than the discussion. It's not so much like HN, where the discussion itself is half (or more) of the value. But, for a quick, concise list of new links in those fields, I find those Reddits all very valuable.

 _better choices are<http://metaoptimize.com/qa> <http://blog.kaggle.com/category/how-i-did-it/> and following ml topics on quora_

Yes, those are excellent sites as well. There are also some good StackExchange sites that can help one get their fill of CS'y topics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the CS blogs I read is Embedded in Academia, which has lots of posts on C compilers, what they optimize and where they can break

<http://blog.regehr.org/>

<comment><USER6> I would also add Matt Might's blog <http://matt.might.net/articles/> we see articles from it on HN from time to time so you may already be familiar with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Knowing and Doing, reflections of an academic and computer scientist: <http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> I really enjoy Eli Bendersky's posts: <http://eli.thegreenplace.net/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I must be an idiot. It took me a few Google searches and finally stumbling on it by accident to figure out how to subscribe to the RSS feed for Serious Engineering's dynamic Blogger blog, since the "Subscribe to this page..." option isn't available. In case you too struggle, there's a pop-out menu on the right.

And now back to ramming crayons up my nose.

<comment><USER2> Many RSS readers these days are pretty good at feed discovery if you just give them the blog URL. At least, both Google Reader and Newsblur (<http://www.newsblur.com>) seem to be able to dig up a feed for anything I've thrown at them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "How I did it"[0] section of Kaggle's "No Free Hunch" blog is really great for getting practical insights into solving machine learning problems. All the posts are short, and unless you're an expert in ML, will likely give you leads all a lot of new material to learn. The pragmatic bent is what really makes it such an excellent resource, there's a huge gap between the mathematical foundations of ML and the solving real world problems side of it.

0\. <http://blog.kaggle.com/category/how-i-did-it/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I like Scott Aaronson's blog (<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/>), which has some posts about computational complexity and quantum computing.

</comment><comment><USER11> A good source of NLP goodness is <http://nlpers.blogspot.in/>, written by Hal Daume, a CS prof at UMD. He covers recent NLP conferences and also his own work. Some of it is in the area of domain adaptation which is of interest to anyone trying to bring research papers to real world products.

</comment><comment><USER12> Another:

Math ∩ Programming <http://jeremykun.wordpress.com>

He is at the beginning of his academic career (PhD student), but the posts are especially clear and well-written.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, just yesterday I thought to myself: I should compile a good list of blogs for reference, instead of the usual marketing blogs disguised as Compsi(most of them are really just trying to sell you something, not discuss real CS). Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Theory of Computing blog <http://feedworld.net/toc/> is an aggregator about theoretical CS stuff.

</comment><comment><USER15> Excellent, thanks for the extra blog links!

</comment><comment><USER16> Great resources !! Thanks :)

</comment><comment><USER17> CodeAvengers is an addictive hot new site that teaches novices the computer programming language of the web: Javascript. The site went live last month with 40 interactive lessons and games. The site aims to be the most fun and effective Javascript tutorial on the web. Script your future NOW, With CodeAvengers.com.</comment>


Swarm intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_intelligence

<comment><USER2> [http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Swarm-Understanding-Colonies- Com...](http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Swarm-Understanding-Colonies- Communicating/dp/1583333908)

Great book on animal/insect swarms and how we can learn from them.

<comment><USER3> There's also this[1] which is a great introduction to Swarm Intelligence and it's relationship to Evolutionary Computing, Genetic Programming, Genetic Algorithms, etc.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann- Evolution...](http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolutionary- Computation/dp/1558605959/ref=pd_sim_b_2)

And anybody who's really into this stuff should probably poke around at:

<http://www.swarm.org/index.php/Main_Page>

and

<http://santafe.edu/>

as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Computational Intelligence (Swarm Intelligence, genetic algorithms, wavelets, emergence, etc) seems to be making a resurgence. This is good, there could be a lot more research happening in these topics :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> That article has been there for years. Is there any particular reason why you think its worth posting on HN now? There are thousands of really cool wikipedia articles but HN will be a mess if people just start randomly linking to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Recently there have been articles about "genetic" evolution of cars, "genetic" evolution of robots, optimisation with intelligent water, and more. People seem interested in the subject, so I thought I'd put in a link to an article summarising some of the more interesting techniques, especially since it, in turn, has links to other items on optimization.

In addition, I'm still making observations about what people on HN now want to see. Although this item may yet be flagged to death, it's also getting a lot of up-votes, showing that there's a segment of the current population that finds this sort of thing useful or interesting. I find it rather depressing that stuff I've written and recently submitted [1] has sunk entirely without trace, and yet a hackneyed link like this is doing so well. Clearly I don't know what HN wants. I continue to make observations to try to make more useful contributions.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123469> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126890> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2127187> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2130519>

<comment><USER5> My theory is upvotes are all about the title. People vote things up on the mainpage without looking at the actual article, or the comment section. "Swarm Intelligence" gets voted up because hey, who doesn't like swarm intelligence? If you had called it "Swarm Intelligence Wikipedia Article" I'm willing to wager it would have received less upvotes.

EDIT: This is probably a theory that is somewhat open to testing. Hmm...

<comment><USER6> I upvote first on comments. I often don't even read the linked articles, but I never upvote without either reading comments (or submitting one, if I'm the first) or reading the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my publishers Morgan Kaufmann sent me a free copy of "Swarm Intelligence" (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Evolutionary Computation) about ten years ago. A bit interesting but I didn't see any applicability to any work I do for my customers so I didn't really get into it.</comment>


Show HN: Procedurally generate 2D spaceship sprites through directed evolution - <AUTHOR> http://proceduro.github.io/spaceship-2d <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I've only tested on Firefox and Chrome on desktop. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER2> uncaught typeerror: Cannot read property 'render' of undefined.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - what platform / browser are you on?

<comment><USER3> I get the same in Chrome 45.0.2454.101 m on Win7 32-bit.

(I'm also running Ghostery but I disabled it - not that it found anything to block in the first place - and reloaded and got the same message.)</comment></comment></comment>