Myanmar group questions Zuckerberg's claim on Facebook hate speech prevention - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/06/myanmar-group-blasts-zuckerbergs-claim-on-facebook-hate-speech-prevention/ <comment><USER2> "In response to critics Facebook vows to do more to monitor its users' messages" \- future TechCrunch headline. People might want to think about the unintended consequences of their criticism a bit more.

<comment><USER3> According to reports, invitations to lynchings of Rohingya are shared on Messenger. If you say freedom of speech, I say Facebook and all of it's evil is banned.

I think I have the better case.

<comment><USER4> So if it's shared over SMS, we should ban the mobile network?

<comment><USER5> In most Western countries this would be a crime and the mobile network would be obliged to provide an intercept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Facebook is not equipped to respond to hate speech in international markets since it relied entirely on information from the ground, where Facebook does not have an office, in order to learn of the issue.

It seems to me that rather than hire a bunch of people in California to try and understand local feuds all over the planet they should have a gamified system a bit more like stackoverflow where if you get enough karma you can restrict posts, promote peaceful messages and so on.

In fact someone could offer the anti-hate thing as a service. There's a hackathon/startup project for someone.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is not a non-story. This is Mark Zuckerberg either lying or not knowing anything about current issues on Facebook. This is not a pile-on or beating a dead horse like all the comments in other Facebook threads are saying about this rash of Facebook stories. Mark Zuckerberg's false confidence/lies about how Facebook is handling the issue of user's private data is sufficient story in an of itself.

<comment><USER8> These people are lying like their jobs depend upon it, because they do. Here's Sheryl Sandberg today:

> I don't think that's true and I don't think that's fair. Facebook at its > core is a sharing service. We are not sweeping up data. People are inputting > data. People are sharing data with Facebook.

\-- [https://www.marketwatch.com/Story/facebook-coo-sheryl- sandbe...](https://www.marketwatch.com/Story/facebook-coo-sheryl-sandberg-we- are-not-sweeping-up-data-2018-04-05)

Where have I heard the word "sharing" before? If they accomplish nothing else, these companies will have killed a word that used to mean an act of generosity.

<comment><USER9> I think 'the sharing economy' already did that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do not see the issue with this letter to Zuckerberg as suggested by some of the comments here.

I see the issue as one of Zuckerbergs _choice of words_ , how he is portraying the facts.

It was _his words in the interview_ that triggered the letter.

FB has now apologised for Zuckerbergs comment:

[https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2018-04-06-faceb...](https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2018-04-06-facebook- apologises-after-myanmar-groups-blast-mark-zuckerberg/)

Facebook users and others are paying very careful attention to what Zuckerberg says.

Here is a piece that discusses why choice of words can be important, for example when giving testimony before US Congress. There are some provocative examples from past CEOs who have appeared to testify.

[https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2018/04/06/what- to-...](https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2018/04/06/what-to-watch-for- when-facebooks-zuckerberg-appears-before-us-congress.html)

Whether "trust" matters to FB business (selling ads) is another question.

Poll: Does FB need to have trust to succeed in the future?

<comment><USER11> Yes. But people need to understand why trust matters to them, or they won't care about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FB people, if this isn't your canary, than what is?</comment>


Ask HN: How do I get my first 100 users for a dating app - <AUTHOR> I am a few months away from releasing my dating app built for south asians living in the USA. This is a niche community and I wanted to know what I could do to get my first 100 users ? I am running a few ads right now, but wanted to know other suggestions you guys have.<p>Thank you ! <comment><USER2> If by south asian you mean Indian (and neighbouring), perhaps forums such as /r/India are an option. You could also find student association Facebook groups for some target universities to advertise/post. It's locked down but after that you can also try the snapchat/tinder approach of advertising in parties!

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you !</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the simplest way to plan your day? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Don't. Don't plan anything unless you absolutely have to. It's OK to not always be under a timetable.

</comment><comment><USER3> A bullet journal to review previous day and overall goals.

</comment><comment><USER4> calendar</comment>


Make SSL boring again - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/make-ssl-boring-again/ <comment><USER2> Why did Cloudflare choose BoringSSL over LibreSSL?

[https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/](https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/)

> _BoringSSL is a fork of OpenSSL that is designed to meet Google 's needs._

> _Although BoringSSL is an open source project, it is not intended for > general use, as OpenSSL is. We don 't recommend that third parties depend > upon it. Doing so is likely to be frustrating because there are no > guarantees of API or ABI stability._

<comment><USER3> Because after Heartbleed we started to look for a performant alternative to OpenSSL that we felt would be safe for us to use.

<comment><USER2> But why not LibreSSL?

<comment><USER3> LibreSSL doesn't provide the features of BoringSSL that we use so would have required a huge amount of work to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TLDR: cloudflare switched from openssl to the Google fork BoringSSL.

They now have out of the box some features they maintained themselves, and have a more stable and maintainable stack.

<comment><USER5> But they also seem to be supporting some features they previously had out of the box?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why are we still calling it SSL? It's like saying Telnet whenever you refer to SSH.

Also: it seems like there's no release or commit signing, unless I missed it? So couldn't you just compromise one user, or commit bot, or git repo location, and basically own all TLS that Cloudflare uses, effectively owning like half of the internet?</comment>


Russian hackers stole NSA tools using Kaspersky antivirus - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/354068-russian-hackers-stole-nsa-hacking-tools-using-kaspersky-antivirus-report <comment><USER2> Is it bad thing ? Why would I want nsa to spy me ??

<comment><AUTHOR> I find it unsurprising that once again AV software itself has been exploited. AV is by nature complex and highly privileged. AV has been regarded by many in the security community as a net negative.

In this case it's unclear whether the software was running on an endpoint or if it was some kind of middle box. It would be interesting to see technical details. It seems the politics here is to spin it as some bad Russian software, but I'm not sure other vendors are any safer.</comment></comment>


Genachowski announces new FCC website  - <AUTHOR> http://www.openinternet.gov/

<comment><USER2> nice. they're not using realmedia/realplayer to stream their webcasts anymore.

<http://www.openinternet.gov/join-discussion.html></comment>


Generalizing the inverse FFT off the unit circle - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50234-9 <comment><USER2> Very cool. This should have a great deal of application in many signal processing tasks.</comment>


Quantum teleportation achieved over record distances - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-teleportation-achieved-over-record-distances-1.11163

<comment><USER2> If you can't retrieve the information "quantum teleported" until something else bridges the gap afterwards, then how can you say that anything was teleported at all?

There would have to be a qualitative or quantitative difference between what was supposedly teleported and the "key" that must be transfered afterwards. Either you can teleport a gigabyte of information and retrieve it with a kilobyte key, or you can teleport a material thing with a "key" comprised of less information needed to encode its molecular structure.

Otherwise, teleportation seems to be a misnomer.

<comment><USER3> The point is that you can exactly recreate a particle including its entire quantum wave function (preserving uncertainties) from one place to another without "existing" in between. That's why it counts as teleportation: you get the same object, not a similar object but _the same_ object all they way down to quantum fluctuations, at a distance.

<comment><USER4> That actually isn't how this works. Yes, you do have two objects with entangled wavefunctions but that isn't remarkable at all. And the entanglement occurs when the objects are created at the same place, and then they proceed to the measurement points using entirely conventional slower-than-light means.

Its only a single bit, the polarization of the photon, that is found to have been determined in both places simultaneously. Its true that this is a new piece of information that arises in both locations simultaneously, but since this is a thing that appears in two places rather than something that moves from place A to place B I'd argue that the term "teleportation" is pretty misleading here. After the measurement the measured particle is hopelessly entangled with the measurement apparatus and through that with the surrounding universe, so the unique link between the two particle is hopelessly broken at that point.

<comment><USER3> _found to have been determined in both places simultaneously._

That's not true. You measure one of the qubits, and its state is destroyed, randomly scrambled. When you transmit the information and apply it to the other qubit, it now has the same polarization as the first one _had_ , before. You still don't know what the polarization is though! The entanglement is still intact, and you haven't made a measurement of the system (as a whole) so the wavefunction has not collapsed. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation#Remarks>

<comment><USER4> Oh, huh, the process described there is distinct from the sort of "Quantum Teleportation" that I was used to. Using an entangled pair and some transmission of classical bits to transmit a qubit across a distance is pretty neat, and this "quantum teleportation" really is quantum teleportation. It's only sort of related to the cryptogrpahic technique I'd previously heard described as "quantum teleportation", but in the absence of evidence as to who grabbed that pair of words first I won't complain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Often "why"-questions are interpreted as criticism. I would like to ask one, just because I am curious: why are people interested in this for communication? With current technology we can communicate with within the limits of the speed of light. We can also encrypt communication. So, what makes this technology so interesting, that people may want to use it in the future? Will it be cheaper? Faster? More secure/better encrypted?

<comment><USER6> From the article:

Teleportation can also securely transmit quantum information even when Alice does not know where Bob is. Bob can take his entangled particle wherever he pleases, and Alice can broadcast her instructions for how to ungarble the teleported state over whatever conventional channels — radio waves, the Internet — she pleases. That information would be useless to an eavesdropper without an entangled link to Alice.

<comment><USER7> As far as I can tell, this just seems like an obscenely overcomplicated one time pad. Instead of Alice giving Bob a string of bits that are known in advance, she gives Bob an entangled particle that can be collapsed to determine a string of bits at a later date. I can't see any security benefit.

This is very neat from a purely scientific perspective. It seems pointless and misleading to try to present it as having direct practical value.

<comment><USER8> For one thing, AFAIK, Alice can be sure that Bob's 'pad' is the only copy in existence because no one can copy Bob's 'pad' without destroying the entanglement.

For a 'regular' one time pad this is not the case. Someone could have copied it and both Alice and Bob would be none the wiser until it's too late.

One-time pad based encryption schemes are theoretically unbreakable - one of the things ( _the_ thing?) holding back wide spread adoption is the difficulty of proper key management. This has the potential to solve that issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know this is a long long time away but .. Could this be used to communicate faster with stuff like the Curiosity rover ? I mean, once it becomes easier to reproduce without big laboratories to actually read the quantum state of the photons.

<comment><USER10> _And although part of the transfer happens instantaneously, the steps required to read out the teleported quantum state ensure that no information can be communicated faster than the speed of light._

Seems not.

<comment><USER11> It might increase bandwidth, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This phenomenon is explained by many-worlds: The two photons have both polarization orientations in the multiverse. We are limited to a single instance of the multiverse, and any interaction whatsoever between the photons and our universe will force them into a single instance of polarization orientation, as this is all we can experience, being interacting beings ourselves.

Reality is really an immense interconnected binary tree, and we must always travel along a single path. It has the property that reconciling paths (paths that diverged but met up again with no interaction in our universe) will again be accessible to us.

As Galileo was prosecuted for supporting Copernicus' heliocentric theory (more specifically for championing reason over faith), the Church's default stance was that the planets moved around the sky 'as if' they orbited the Sun. We are in a similar position now with many-worlds vs. 'as if' many-worlds, based on experimental evidence such as the Mach-Zehnder interferometer results.

<comment><USER13> Regarding: "As Galileo was prosecuted for supporting Copernicus' heliocentric theory (more specifically for championing reason over faith)"

Nothing could be further from the truth. The first proponents of the scientific method saw the process of describing the known universe as possible only because of their faith in a rational Creator, their definition of the word "faith" meaning "conviction backed by reason" (Hebrews 11). Their hypothesis was that the creation of such a rational Creator would necessarily be ordered, not chaotic as the pagans of the day believed, and that it would be possible to seek to describe the creation in terms of scientific laws and principles. By faith they understood that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. This was the basis for the birth of the scientific method.

In the days of Galileo, the Church as you refer to, was nothing more than a political militant state, opposed to the theology of the early Christians of the 1st century, and opposed to the Scriptures which exposed its hegemony. Indeed the Church would have mothers and fathers burnt at the stake for teaching children the ten commandments and the Lord's prayer. People like William Tyndale, and many other brilliant Oxford and Cambridge scholars were hounded and martyred by the Church for translating the Bible into English and circulating and discussing it in the 1500s.

While the Church may have opposed heliocentrism, Galileo defended heliocentrism, and understood correctly that it was not contrary to the Scriptures.

For people like Galileo and Kepler, faith and reason were the same thing. By definition, it's impossible to have faith that is not based on reason, nor is it possible to hold reason without faith. To do so is historical revisionism. If you have a bone to pick with faith, then the best place to start is with the life and death and resurrection of Christ in history. Did it happen? How soon after the events were the eye witness accounts recorded? At what cost? Independent? Do we read them as they were written? This is a matter of historicity: did it happen? Not of philosophical possibility (naturalism), or statistical possibility (frequentism).

<comment><USER14> Can you recommend any good literature discussing Galileo and Kepler and their "faith and reason" view of the cosmos? I do not ask contentiously but with genuine curiosity. In the (post) modern era there seems to be much noise about faith (Christianity in particular) and science being irreconcilable.

What little I do know about many founders of the major fields of science seems to indicate that the founding men and women saw no such dichotomy. Or at the least were willing to struggle with the questions rather than throw the entire matter out as "unscientific."

Lord Kelvin and Michael Faraday seem to have both Christians and creationists. Newton was a Christian and claimed that "all my discoveries have been made in answer to prayer." Joule (the unit's namesake) was at least a theist. Then we have Louis Pasteur, Christopher Columbus, George Washington Carver, Samuel Morse, and Blaise Pascal - each "men of faith."

Not that the above list should be taken as an argument by authority for faith. Certainly not. However, it does leave me wondering how these great thinkers saw the world so differently.

<comment><USER13> See:

David Seccombe, King of God's Kingdom, 280.

R. Hooykaas, Christian Faith and the Freedom of Science, 17. Encyclopedia Brittanica article: Kepler, Johannes.

Further, it's interesting that Kepler was schooled by a protege of Melanchthon, who was himself a key reformer with Luther and a contemporary of Tyndale. These men, together with Erasmus, were of the finest minds of their day, giants of the past, and giants still today.

"What little I do know about many founders of the major fields of science seems to indicate that the founding men and women saw no such dichotomy."

Yes, certainly "blind faith" and science are irreconcilable. Blind faith is a straw man. Men have wasted breath on it for years. Faith is quite different from blind faith. The two (faith and blind faith) are equally irreconcilable. Faith is simply acting today in the light of that which by reason one is fully persuaded of. It need not surprise that great men of reason and action are also men of deep, often Christian convictions about God.

"However, it does leave me wondering how these great thinkers saw the world so differently."

As John Newton wrote, "I once was blind but now I see". As Philip said to Nathanael, "come and see".

The Christian of the 1st century would convert from Judaism either after seeing the risen Jesus, as at least five hundred on one occasion in Jerusalem did at the time, or after hearing of him from those who had. Their witness, at pain of death, was based on what they had seen and heard. Former persecutors such as Saul of Tarsus, a protege of Gamaliel, converted after seeing the risen Christ for themselves. [1][2][3][4]

It is notable that at least two members of the Jewish ruling council, which tried Jesus, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, did not consent to the actions of the council and followed Christ. These men had education and wealth. They had access to Jesus and they believed, at great personal cost. Proclaiming a crucified criminal as Sovereign King, "God with us", would have been unthinkable for men such as these, were they not fully persuaded of God's raising him up, and of the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures, one example being Isaiah 53, which pointed to a suffering and triumphant Messiah. "Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?" To a naturalistic worldview which claims the name of science whilst being far from it, the gospel is hard to accept. Is it true? Did it happen? In our ignorance, we think of God as silent, unyielding. God is not silent, he has spoken and revealed himself in history. Those with ears to hear, let them hear.

Today we see the Lord through the eyes of history, through the accounts of those who saw him. Our distance from the events need not be a hindrance, only the distance of the accounts from the events, and that is, in terms of history, a comparatively short span of only 20 to 60 years at most for the various accounts, today collectively known as the New Testament, the letters of Luke (a physician and meticulous historian in his own right by standards of ancient history), Peter, Paul, John, Matthew, Mark, James and Jude (brothers of Jesus) and outside of that, Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, Clement, Polycarp etc.

Concerning textual criticism of the New Testament documents, see:

F.F. Bruce, various works. Paul Barnett, various works. Sir Frederic Kenyon, director of the British Museum for 22 years, various works.

Note that the Wikipedia pages on these subjects are for once a poor source, they suffer from speculation, superstition, tradition, "sainthood", and the old school of form criticism ("Today it is no exaggeration to claim that a whole spectrum of main assumptions underlying Bultmann's Synoptic Tradition must be considered suspect." - Kelber, W.H.).

It is interesting that polemicists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens tend to avoid confronting the historicity of Christ, and Christ himself head on. They refuse to get into the ring, preferring easier prey. It is ironic that the brother of Christopher Hitchens, Peter Hitchens, a renowned journalist, would be an atheist who converted to Christ and has since written on the subject of "the rage against God".

[1] - "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught." - Luke, Luke 1

[2] - "I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him. For I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I'm not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God's church." - Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:3-9

[3] - "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. […] But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep." - Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:20

[4] - "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word [the Logos, light, reason] of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete." - John, 1 John 1

<comment><USER14> Though it is a small thing, I offer my deepest thanks for such a reply.

<comment><USER13> With pleasure, your comment showed great insight.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Github has changed the open source world - <AUTHOR> http://honza.ca/2011/03/7-ways-github-has-changed-the-open-source-world/

<comment><USER2> An item that is not in the list of 7 and of vital importance to open source projects is the "ease of forking".

I've spoken to a couple different Open Source app maintainers who have basically said: GitHub made our community of contributors better by making it so easy to fork smaller portions of the codebase.

Where before they would basically just take abuse about issue/features (Why don't you support Markdown instead of direct HTML entry in your CMS, or whatever). Now they can just say "fork off" and have whoever complains maintain a separate codebase with their custom additions.

</comment><comment><USER3> With github, it generally feels like the focus is on a developer, whereas with something like sourceforge the focus is on the project/code. I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing either - I think it's generally been a positive shift.

<comment><USER4> The same is true of BitBucket, and kinda Google Code as well, you know.

<comment><USER5> I'd agree about BitBucket, but Google Code doesn't nearly focus on the developer like the other two. It's not really made for/with the general sense of community and conversation.

<comment><USER4> I hesitated before including Google Code. I believe that it technically meets the qualifications of the features mentioned in the _7 ways_ list, but it really falls short of both BitBucket and GitHub in terms of its feeling of being a social code site. I guess Google Code is more optimized for searching, rather than sharing -- which makes a certain amount of sense, given its creation by the king of search, but results in a site that simply doesn't draw my interest as much as BitBucket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 8\. Get people using Git (and more generally, get more people using version control for their projects)

9\. Made it popular to post more than just projects (off hand I'm thinking about dot/config files)

10\. Make it easier to actually provide patches to open source projects

</comment><comment><USER7> As a Ruby developer its sometimes hard to know if a particular Gem is still being actively maintained or if there is a better, more recent alternative. I find that Github does an outstanding job solving both problems. If there haven't been commits in the last year (6 months?) I'll generally look elsewhere. That elsewhere is generally the "Network" page. :)

<comment><USER4> Y'know, there _are_ some projects that haven't had commits for a while because they do exactly what they're supposed to do, and don't _need_ a bunch of commits. I consider it a good thing when a project gets to the point where nobody can find any bugs and they stop adding features because it has enough of them already. I sure as hell don't want my quick, clean, elegant, productivity enhancing window manager to turn into a featuritis infected monstrosity like OpenOffice.org, after all.

\---

edit: Actually, my window manager of choice has basically been abandoned by its developer several years ago, and it's _still_ bug-free, stable, and lacking basically nothing. I finally came up with a feature enhancement I'd like it to have today, after using it for five years with no complaints or wants -- and that enhancement is really just an improvement of an existing feature.

More to the point, it's an enhancement that _no_ window manager has, so I'm likely to need to write the code for this feature enhancement myself if I want it badly enough. I may pick up maintainership for the project to do just that.

Think about that a moment: one feature enhancement requested in have a decade, merely an extension of an already existing feature, and it's something entirely new to window managers as far as I'm aware. This thing has had no need for additional code in all that time, and it has been better as a result of all that.

<comment><USER8> As a ruby dev, this happens to work (for better or worse) because if you're not updating, it may not work with the latest version of ruby/rails/whatever. If I see a rails-related gem that had its last commit in 2009, I know some work probably needs to be done to make it work with rails 3.

Perhaps a better metric is the most recent commit combined with the number of open issues. Or maybe just the number of open issues, judged by their severity.

<comment><USER9> > _If you're not updating, it may not work with the latest version of > ruby/rails/whatever_.

Do Ruby/Rails/whoever often have releases that break backwards compatibility?

<comment><USER10> Some gems don't function correctly with Ruby 1.9.1, and a lot have minor issues with Rails 3.

Although sometimes it's more an issue with the documentation as opposed to code issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From what I've seen, a Github profile now influences the hiring process too.

<comment><USER12> This is definitely true. I'll often check to see if a candidate has a github account when making a hiring decision. Having some interesting/good code up there can definitely move the needle a bit on a hire/no hire decision.

<comment><USER13> When looking into a candidates work do any of the other platforms or services come to mind at all or is it solely Github that you check?

<comment><USER14> Their personal website + public projects?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Force projects to include a good README

As much as we would like to believe code can be self-documenting, in most cases it is not. Having no README file can make your project more opaque. I probably shouldn't mention this in these parts, but one example of an active project without any README at all is PG's Arc. <https://github.com/nex3/arc>

I will concede that the Arc project does have a website that covers install instructions, but for new languages where nearly all users are newbies, having no README on GitHub can be an inconvenience.

<comment><USER4> The complete lack of licensing information on many projects is something that Google Code tends to "fix" much better than GitHub, though -- even if Google Code is a little inferior in some other ways. It would be nice if sites like BitBucket and GitHub would do something to encourage people more strongly to actually tell us about the licenses used in their projects.

</comment></comment><comment> X-Istence I have only recently become a major convert into the DCVS world coming from Subversion and CVS before it. When I first started going I found that git was rather hard to for me to wrap my brain around, especially since it so radically changed the way certain commands worked. So I looked at Mercurial and felt much more at home as it felt like Subversion.

Since then I've wrapped my brain around Git and absolutely love it. I now have accounts on both Bitbucket and Github and both work equally well for what I want. The only feature that I feel is missing from Github is the ability to create unlimited private repositories for free, if not at least, on their lowest paid tier.

I tend to create random projects haphazardly, and while I like to have it versioned and "backed up" somewhere where I can invite friends to collaborate with me, I don't want some of these projects out in the open. Some of them are research projects for new products I am developing, others are projects I am working on with friends that could potentially be monetized.

Don't get me wrong, I understand where Github is coming from, and being familiar with both Git and Hg is not going to hurt, it is annoying on a context switching level to have to remember how to do something in hg and then in git when switching between projects.

At the point where I am in my career I don't yet make enough money (after paying student loans, car insurance, etc...) to spend money on monthly billing paid services.

<comment><USER16> * When I first started going I found that git was rather hard to for me to wrap my brain around, especially since it so radically changed the way certain commands worked.*

I've found Git really easy to use coming from SVN. My main problem has just been the Windows tools haven't been as intuitive as Tortoise. What issues did you first have with Git?

<comment> X-Istence git revert did not do the same thing as svn revert, that was the first major issue I had and I put git on the shelf because of it. Only in the past year or so have I started using a DCVS. For the most part I was definitely a subversion fan boy ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> True, but isn't Git the initial game changer?

</comment><comment><USER18> I would agree with the author, but I am still wondering why other platforms do not win. I mean, for example, SourceForge or code.google.com. Except for the first point, most hosting sites provide exactly same functionalities. Then, I guess, the point is 'easiness' or fancy/cool user interface.

<comment><USER4> BitBucket actually does _everything_ GitHub does on that list of ways that GitHub supposedly changed the world. In fact, I find the BitBucket interface generally easier to use and easier on the eyes -- and, my God, the colors on the GitHub issue tracker pages are fucking _awful_.

. . . but somehow GitHub gets so much attention that many people think it's the only code hosting site in the world, just like so many idiots think that Ubuntu is the only open source operating system in the world.

<comment><USER19> Bitbucket has public, discussable Pull Requests? I'd love to see them.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what's so difficult about publicly discussing pull requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love github as much as anyone. However, why is it that Git still drives non- technical people crazy? Why do those people prefer dropbox over Git?

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm intrigued that no-one mentions launchpad yet, it has roughly the same feature set, but doesn't put the code on the front page.</comment>


12 ways to spot a liar - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2012/04/11/12-ways-to-spot-a-liar-at-work/

<comment><USER2> I wonder how medication changes the signs of a liar? More so focused on the idea of ADD / Focus medicines. Combine this article with what "Robot's See", can we create a lie detecting robot on the visual cues?</comment>


A new computer chip mimics the neurocircuitry of our noses to smell - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615366/ai-intel-neuromorphic-chip-mimics-brain-to-smell/ <comment><AUTHOR> Paper: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-020-0159-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-020-0159-4)</comment>


Divide and Concur - testing code at etsy - <AUTHOR> http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/04/20/divide-and-concur/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like you've developed a great system/process here. Are you a developer or QA? Are there two groups or even just a person with testing as their responsibility?

Have you ever had people mark tests @flaky just so they could deploy (and that later caused grief)?

I would love to hear more.

<comment><USER3> Both of the authors are Web developers with a deep interest in software quality and automated testing. Etsy has followed the same software quality model as Facebook: a dedicated testing team, but no dedicated manual QA team. See also <http://b.qr.ae/hJVb4W>

Etsy's engineering culture puts great emphasis on personal responsibility and taking pride in the quality of one's work. Because of that, no, there has never yet been a problem with people taking tests offline simply so they could deploy. The issue is more that tests "wear out" over time and need to be either rewritten, replaced or discarded (for more on this phenomenon see Boris Beizer and his "pesticide paradox").

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> sounds cool, though, with 25 deployments a day, it seems like you're just deploying quick fixes. How involved could changes be with such small time intervals? I applaud the approach though. Also, could you also talk about how you track all the end-user impact, given the very frequent changes? How does this feed back into the analytics (is change A causing rise/fall in conversion, or change B)?

<comment><USER3> Yes, most deployments contain only a couple of changesets -- ideally no more than a few dozen lines of code per push. And even these small changes are deployed behind config flags. Flickr has a similar continuous deploy strategy, see <http://bit.ly/esoXiX>

There is intended to be no end user impact whatsoever. Releasing behind config flags means that feature rollouts are decoupled from deploying code. New code runs "dark" for a long time in production. There we can log and graph and adjust its performance before it is ever visible to the user.

And of course, _we_ can see dark features in production before they're released or even complete. This means that at Etsy we've been using and tweaking our features long before they are made public.

Since we've been closely monitoring and recording the performance of each new feature since its inception, we are highly aware of how that changes once the code is live to a known, small number of our users. Gather data, make adjustments, rinse and repeat until eventually the feature is live to 100% of users.

See also

[http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/04/how-does-etsy- manage-...](http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/04/how-does-etsy-manage- development-and-operations/)

<http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2010/12/08/track-every-release/>

[http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything- meas...](http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure- everything/)</comment></comment>


Supreme Court of the United States to Live Stream Oral Arguments - <AUTHOR> https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/press/pressreleases/pr_04-30-20 <comment><USER2> I follow SCOTUS news pretty closely; the discussions below are a bit misguided. Audio transcripts of oral arguments are already widely available--- you can even subscribe to the Oyez podcast feed and find them in your podcast queue a few days after the court hears the case. The new thing here is "live", so as a practical matter, it probably doesn't constitute a huge change. If there were an incentive for the justices to produce "sound bites", it would already exist. C-SPAN coverage will probably increase the visibility a little, but, having listened to many of the arguments this term, I'd say that most cases are too technical to be of much general interest.

A second point: oral arguments are performative. The cases are argued via written briefs and oral arguments provide a venue for the justices to question the petitioners about their arguments and air their responses to what the believe the other justices are thinking. Streaming the arguments, as opposed to making available courtroom audio after the fact, doesn't seem to change the dynamic much.

Many court watchers have taken this as an optimistic sign that perhaps the court will allow video. However, this is one thing that the court has strongly resisted. Some of the justices are known to prize their relatively low public profile and there's been speculation that maintaining that pseudo-anonymity is perhaps a reason for the hesitance.

<comment><USER3> I read and listen to Oyez a lot. From my persona experience, laymen might not get the things they are talking when they cite previous cases, some legal words might not easy to catch, and the judges most likely is questioning the briefs which won't be available. Live audio might open interests to public when working from home, but nothing beats oyez's synced transcript with audio. It will be interesting to listen to whether judges will change their way to question cases. Or more interestingly, when Thomas will say something

<comment><USER4> He asked questions on the first audio call, linked above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm hesitant about this. Separating the drama of a case from the logic of the opinion helps keep justices from becoming politicians. We don't want justices incentivised to work sound bites into their courtroom discourse.

On the other hand, most reporting on SCOTUS rulings is terrible. It focusses on the implications of the ruling and almost to zero degree on its legal logic. That makes the court feel like a political body.

<comment><USER6> >That makes the court feel like a political body.

Is it not? From the method that I've seen legal logic applied, it feels heavily political. What counts as a loophole that will be struck down and what counts as a loophole that will be allowed often doesn't have any core logical justification that isn't political. There are a bunch of rules, but even more exceptions. There is a bunch of consistency, but not on the level that you find in actual logic, math, or computational science (like with Turing machines). This has long led me to view it like a bunch of political entities playing pretend at being logical. Pretty decent pretend, better than most other systems, but when compared to truly logical systems, still clearly pretend.

You can also see this at macro scale application of the law. For example look at how the law is applied when you break it down by class, race, and sex. It clearly is done so unfairly, which leads on to conclude that either the unfairness is logical, or that the system isn't logical at the core.

Jury nullification is another example where it breaks down, as to say it doesn't exist when the things that logically give rise to it must exist is a contradiction.

<comment><USER5> > _it feels heavily political_

SCOTUS is not apolitical. (No human institution is.) That doesn't make it a political body.

I've found helpful to read the official opinion of decisions I disagree with. Start to finish, including the dissent. With respect to modern rulings, I have yet to walk away finding the arguments abysmal. In almost every case, I disagree with the law, not the court.

When I disagree, it's because the law--as you say--had holes. The court fills these in, by necessity. On this, it's fair to find disagreement. But the degree to which these holes are filled is usually impressively restrained. There are very few modern case where, given the facts and circumstances of the case or controversy, and within the context of the surrounding law, I found the interpolation obscene.

> _not on the level that you find in actual logic, math, or computational > science_

Courts aren't deterministic. That doesn't make them a political body.

It's an open debate as to whether we _want_ the law to parse like code. I don't. As long as lawmaking is under human control, the law is comprehensible to humans and humans remain free agents, the law--and thus courts--will have a degree of unpredictability to them.

<comment><USER7> > I've found helpful to read the official opinion of opinions I disagree with. > Start to finish, including the dissent. With respect to modern rulings, I > have yet to walk away finding the arguments abysmal. In almost every case, I > disagree with the law, not the court.

My impressions from the podcasts of actual law professors and lawyers is that there are various interpretations of the law that trend towards liberal or conservative values, and the strategic dressing of how the law is read is itself a political strategy to legitimize a political reasoning as an apolitical law analysis.

For example, the choice of a judge to read only the text and law as it is written (textualism) without caring about the general context as to why it exists or the effects of the law in modern day can often be used to ignore the actual injustice occurring as a result of a law that doesn't actually produce just outcomes even when the supposed intention is such. It's arguably pedantry.

But when the same purely text-based reading is applied for progressive arguments, as in the hearings for sex-based discrimination, the conservative justices have abruptly shifted their questions to be concerned about the societal effects (bathrooms) or the original intention of the law (originalism). This sort of flip-flopping of evaluation strategies is often used as a basis of argument that while there are multiple reading frameworks of law, the actual frameworks used are often for political/personal purposes and judges are proposed based off their conservative or liberal bent in analysis.

<comment><USER8> As a scientist, this is how scientists also behave when there is disagreement. Humans will be human.

As long as courts remain within reasonable bounds of "filling in the holes", that is good enough. And we can think about improving the process.

<comment><USER9> We are lucky that fundamental disagreements, for the most part, don't happen in pure mathematics.

<comment><USER8> Yes. But I think this is because, any area of study in which such disagreements can happen are, are by definition excluded from pure mathematics.

What is surprising is that what remains to be studied is vast and beautiful and highly effective when borrowed by other disciplines.

<comment><USER9> I don't particularly think it's surprising that results from the study of structure end up applying to other disciplines. The wonder of the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" is really that we've managed to find those bits that line up the best between mathematics and other fields.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think live streaming is terrible for supreme court. Especially since the oral arguments are the least important part. It's good for them just to release everything at the end of year in June.

If anything this will encourage lawyers and justices to get in interesting tidbits so it can be part of the shit 24 hour news cycle...

I can see no benefit coming from this.

<comment><USER11> Oral arguments are pretty important. The questions the judges ask (minus Thomas because he never speaks) shed a light on how they case will be judged.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but you seemed to hit on an important point - the questions inform how the case will be judged. The questions themselves, not the answers.

Generally speaking, it seems that the outcome of a case is pretty much decided before oral arguments are even presented. They seem to be treated as an opportunity for the Justices to fill in any unanswered questions and check their assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's also worth noting that the format of oral arguments has changed for this period. Instead of a free-for-all questioning section, each justice will have a chance for N minutes to question the counsel (without interruption by other justices), proceeding in order of seniority. I can't say I'm a fan of this change.

<comment><USER14> So I'll preface this by saying I've never heard supreme court oral arguments before, so i don't know how they "normally" work, but yesterday I listened in on the first streamed oral arguments, and this change stuck out to me too.

Several times the counsel was kind of interrupted to move the questions on to the next justice in line, and the rate at which they moved through them seemed extremely fast compared to what I expected.

This is the highest court in the country, adding what feel like artificial time restrictions into the ability for the counsel to properly explain their reasoning and points seems like a really bad idea. (obviously within reason, you shouldn't have a lawyer that can talk for 20 hours to delay a case, but it seemed like during the "United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V." part they were moving from justice to justice in what felt like under a minute or 2, cutting the counsel off every time.)

Again, I'm far from an expert here, so can any actual experts (or people with more knowledge of this world) offer some clarity on if this is "normal", and perhaps why it's like this?

<comment><USER15> They get to argue their case extensively in written form. The oral arguments are really for the justices to get to ask questions.

Even before this change, there were very tight time limits on lawyers for oral arguments.

There are also far, far more cases asking to be heard by the Supreme Court than they can actually hear, so they need to keep the time limits short.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Most Supreme Court cases can be observed, which is part of how we hear about them. In this day and age, it just so happens that observing them can now be opened up to everyone.

And yeah, like any new thing I expect there to be a few missteps at first but this is ultimately a good thing if it convinces Americans to be more aware and involved with Supreme Court picks going forward.

</comment><comment><USER17> Many of the comments suggest there's a problem with Supreme Court live streaming due to soundbyte media coverage. If you take a step back, the problem isn't the Supreme Court, but the regulation of media. From 1949-1987, the FCC's Fairness Doctrine [0] assured broadcasters present issues in a balanced, equitable manner. Instead of holding back the oral arguments, we ought to consider how we discuss topics presented to SCOTUS in a fair and equitable manner.

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

<comment><USER18> The already dubious legal rationale for the fairness doctrine disappeared with cable and satellite television. The internet danced on the rationale's grave. The limited broadcast spectrum that is theoretically regulated to benefit the public rather than licensees no longer meaningfully limits the diversity of views and the ability to propagate them in audio/visual media.

<comment><USER17> A sizable portion of the Boomer generation gets the majority of their news from cable television. The generation has outsized influence on policies enacted and election results due to their presence in Congress and proportionate share of the electorate. The fairness doctrine, if it still existed, would positively impact the functioning of our democracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those who want to watch on their TV but don't have cable or a streaming service that includes C-SPAN, it's also on Court TV's broadcast network [1]. I stumbled across it yesterday on channel 13.2 in the Seattle region. (It looks like Court TV also does a free live stream of the channel on their website). I don't know if they cover the whole session or not, as I only watched for a bit.

[1] [https://www.courttv.com/where-to-watch/](https://www.courttv.com/where- to-watch/)

<comment><USER20> Or you could just watch it on C-SPAN: [https://www.c-span.org/video/?471619-1/supreme-court-oral- ar...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?471619-1/supreme-court-oral-argument- usaid-v-alliance-open-society-international-inc&live)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My fav (Heller 2008):

Justice Antonin Scalia reads Heller(2008)[1] for the majority: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/oyez.case- media.ogg/case_data/2007/...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/oyez.case- media.ogg/case_data/2007/07-290/20080626o_07-290.ogg)

[1] [https://www.oyez.org/cases/2007/07-290](https://www.oyez.org/cases/2007/07-290)

</comment><comment><USER22> For context this is a _major_ about-face for the court. They have had the option to do this for decades now and have explicitly refused.

</comment><comment><USER23> More wasteful spending for no real benefit to taxpayers.</comment>


US Senate moves to criminalize non-disclosure of cryptocurrency holdings - <AUTHOR> https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-senate-moves-to-criminalize-non-disclosure-of-cryptocurrency-ownership <comment><AUTHOR> What's even more surprising is the position of Coinbase:

"Given how useful it is for criminals to have financial accounts that are seemingly unconnected to them, I view this feature of the legislation as an important next step in the fight against global money laundering."

Ms. Kathryn Haun Rodriguez of Coinbase</comment>


Show HN: Fuzzy finder for Chrome tabs and windows - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/siadat/chrome-ff <comment><USER2> Orthogonal: I want Chrome to have fuzzy searching for history and bookmarks, like Firefox does. As it is, if I don't either type in the first part of a website's actual URL or some unpredictable magic string into the omnibox, I just get search suggestions instead of useful autocompletes from my history. In Firefox it works perfectly.

<comment><USER3> I really don't want that to happen, because I have, um, embarrassing things bookmarked. Typing things into the url bar with other people around is already somewhat of a risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 'chromium' plugin has some fuzzy tab searching. From any page, tap `b` and type in a substring of a page title to match. It's quite nice.

I always liked the model of browser tabs as buffers rather than tabs. It reminds me of the philosophy difference between vim and emacs: since accessing a certain tab is O(N), Vim gets unwieldy if I have more tabs open than I have horizontal screen space. On the other hand, I have more than 500 Emacs buffers open and never have to worry when I switch between them. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to use Chrome that way too!

<comment><USER5> Just FYI Vim is buffer-based too [1], windows (tabs) are a layer on top. There's also a nice plugin called fzf [2] for fuzzy searching open buffers or tabs.

[1]: [http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Easier_buffer_switching](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Easier_buffer_switching)

[2]: [https://github.com/junegunn/fzf](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Apps extensions and user scripts cannot be added from this website."

Is there any way around this? Is it possible to jailbreak Chrome?

<comment><USER6> open the extensions tab, and drag the crx link from github into the extensions tab

continue button appears bottom left

<comment><USER3> That worked, but when I restarted chrome, it was automatically disabled: [https://i.imgur.com/zDEdoeK.png](https://i.imgur.com/zDEdoeK.png)

The button to enable it on the extensions page is greyed out with a warning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you in developer mode? If not, enable "Developer mode" and try again. It's at the top of the chrome://extensions/ tab.

<comment><USER3> I am in developer mode. It still doesn't let me use third party extensions. Here's a screenshot [http://i.imgur.com/d5y8icz.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/d5y8icz.png?1)

Doing some more research, it looks like Chrome started doing this awhile ago to prevent malware, supposedly. You can now only get extensions through the Chrome web store.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. I'm not sure what is wrong. I don't have a Google store developer account, otherwise I would have published it there.

Try this as a workaround:

      - clone the repo
      - go to chrome://extensions/
      - enable "Developer mode"
      - Click on "Load unpacked extension..." and select the cloned directory

The advantage of this method is that you will be able to upgrade the extension in the future with a git-pull!

<comment><USER3> This may only be an issue on windows. I will try your method, but I think extensions installed this way are also automatically disabled on restart.

I'm not asking you to publish it on the store just for me. I think the store is bullshit. They charge money from publishers, let in tons of malware, have automatic updates, and don't let people inspect the source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Heh, I made one of these a while back :)

[https://github.com/benvan/mercury](https://github.com/benvan/mercury)</comment>


Wind-powered ships are making a comeback - <AUTHOR> https://amp.economist.com/business/2018/10/06/wind-powered-ships-are-making-a-comeback <comment><USER3> This idea was already broached at HN in

 _Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17885284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17885284)

But a question arises as to practicality of this configuration in extreme weather at sea. That's a lot of wind swept area aloft abovedeck. In extreme weather conditions with rolling seas, an elongated cargo vessel such as a tanker will be subject to _sagging_ (central portion suspended in space between two wave crests). Given strong head or tail wind force imposed on tall rotor shafts it would seem that extra torque would be imparted on the central section increasing the liklihood of hull failure under full cargo load.

<comment><USER4> You quit spinning the rotors and they stop acting like a sail.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if they have enough rotational inertia to cause gyroscopic effects while they're spinning. I wonder if it could be used to stabilize the ship. Or it causes more issues than it solves you can just stop spinning it, just like you can stop it to stop it acting like a sail.

<comment><USER6> Without running the numbers, just looking at the mass of the sail vs. the mass of the ship, is say the effect is neglible.

<comment><USER7> I know of a company that makes these as retractable spinning cylinders

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some more info on the actual tech: [https://www.norsepower.com/technology](https://www.norsepower.com/technology) and [https://www.norsepower.com/rotor-sail- solution](https://www.norsepower.com/rotor-sail-solution)

Obligatory wikipedia entry: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship)

</comment><comment><USER9> A different but interesting concept: [https://www.skysails.info/skysails- marine/skysails-antrieb-f...](https://www.skysails.info/skysails- marine/skysails-antrieb-fuer-frachtschiffe/vorteile/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Good demonstration of the Magnus effect: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtP_bh2lMXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtP_bh2lMXc)

<comment><USER11> This is the video they reference at the end that elaborates and shows off the use in ships, as well as some planes that have spinning cylinders instead of wings: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSrvzNW9FE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSrvzNW9FE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If petrol for ships was taxed like petrol for cars, this would have already been common place.

Hell if petrol for planes was taxed like car-petrol they bring back zeppelins!

<comment><USER13> oh the humanity

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For some actual numbers from a real freighter with four Magnus effect columns on it, check out this pdf [https://www.ship- efficiency.org/onTEAM/pdf/06-STG_Ship_Effic...](https://www.ship- efficiency.org/onTEAM/pdf/06-STG_Ship_Efficiency_2013_100913_Paper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> This article is a bit lacking in the visual imagery department (that picture in the article is super old) - here's a youtube link from Norsepower (the article says they're the manufacturer):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUCShEXkpL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUCShEXkpL8)

</comment><comment><USER16> Current location and some before and after pictures - [https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:73...](https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:730851/mmsi:565686000/vessel:MAERSK%20PELICAN)

</comment><comment><USER17> I recall back in the 80's someone made a freighter with a computer controlled sail on it. It was written up in Popular Science (?) as the future of freighters and tankers. Never heard about it again.

<comment><USER18> IIRC it turned out to be impractical and was shelved after the test runs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I question whether the cost of doing this in new novel naval architecture isn't excessive. You can have a green ship without installing Magnus effect rotor sails:

A) install a massive ground mount photovoltaic system

Or massive wind farm on land.

B) use the kWh from it to crack water into pressurized tanks of hydrogen

C) transport the hydrogen to the ship, store it onboard, and run it through fuel cells to drive electric azipods.

This require the engineering resources for on board hydrogen tank system, fueling system and fuel cells. Less mechanically complex than massive rotor sails, and something that all of the subcomponents exist for "off the shelf".

This lets you use otherwise useless, non arable land for the energy generation. Even if the electricity to hydrogen process is extremely inefficient. At a certain point if you plot the ongoing price drops for massive grid scale PV, when PV panels hit $0.20/watt, it will be economical.

<comment><USER20> Hydrogen plumbing is not really a solved problem so I challenge the "less mechanically complex". Those hydrogen atoms are really small!

The margin on shipping is low enough that I suspect they looked at everything they could get off the shelf before settling on this one, which I agree is complex. It will be interesting to see the long time life of these sails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Magnus effect is pretty cool. I firs came across it when watching this video which shows how effective it is by dropping a ball from a height while spinning it. [https://youtu.be/QtP_bh2lMXc](https://youtu.be/QtP_bh2lMXc)

</comment><comment><USER22> Would wind turbines make more sense? It seems like they'd be catching a larger cross section of wind.

<comment><USER23> I believe its possible, with stability being the big problem. Self stabilized, floating, tethered and large scale wind turbines are already being built[1] - so its something to look out for in the future.

[1][https://www.equinor.com/en/news/hywindscotland.html](https://www.equinor.com/en/news/hywindscotland.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> On the flip side could these replace conventional wind turbines to generate electricity?

<comment><USER24> Hard to imagine how. They use wind to generate a linear force. We like to have rotational forces to feed generators.

<comment><USER22> We have lots of ways to turn linear force into rotational. My car engine would like to have a word with you.

Off the top of my head. Hook it up to a crankshaft. On the push stroke turn the motor on and capture the wind. On the pull stroke turn off the spinning and let it return to vertical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interestingly the problem tends to be economical rather than technological. A 5 years ROI would normally be sufficient to get traction. Apparently the current system of charterers is holding it back.

</comment><comment><USER26> What about populating building tops with these ?

<comment><USER6> Are your buildings moving around and eating each other like that recent dystopian SF work, a la _Mortal Engines_?

<comment><USER26> It would require quite long devices to move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems prudent to invest in some low-tech solutions, just in case resource- intensive high-tech solutions fail us in the long run.

<comment><USER28> Rotor sails aren't really low-tech though, the original pre-WWII attempts failed because the sails were too heavy and the engines (to rotate the "sails") not efficient enough, so the rotor sails were a net energy loss (aka using the engines to power regular screws was more efficient even in best-case scenarios).

The new attempts (since the mid-augths) use advanced modern material science to build the sails, no way you can replicate that in a low-tech non-industrial context. It's way more complex than an ICE (and in fact requires one to power the rotors themselves).

</comment></comment><comment> your-nanny why use the amp link? Firefox on Android won't open

</comment><comment><USER29> And again, they try to be cheaper by manufacturing in China. When do we realize that this is a trap we created for ourselves...?

<comment><USER30> Why wouldnt we want to manufacture everything for less?

<comment><USER31> Supply-chain control. Technical knowledge. Innovation capacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really want this to be a thing, but my rough calculations given the total cross section area of the sail and the average wind conditions on shipping routes come out to as close to nil as makes any difference for ships these size.

I posted a very rough calculation on the last HN post about this and got downvoted for some reason. I guess everyone else wants this to be a thing so much they are happy to set aside physics through sheer force of will. HN people and the investors / instigators of this project.

This is one time I'm desperately wanting to find out I'm completely wrong.

My last post in a nutshell - these things are order of magnitude the same size as the sail on my own sail boat. Forget about the type of sail. Even if 100% of that wind energy was converted to forward motion it's going to do essentially nothing in the context of a big ship.

<comment><USER33> You were downvoted because your calculations were for regular sails, and sailboats, instead of for Magnus effect.

Wikipedia says:

        F = L*rho*v*2*pi*r^2*omega

where L is the length of the cylinder, rho is the fluid density, v is the fluid velocity, r is the cylinder radius, and omega is the cylinder angular velocity.

What angular velocity are you assuming in your calculations?

<comment><USER32> My back of the napkin assumed all energy from the wind over the entire cross sectional area.

Magnus effect or not, i'm just dealing in orders of magnitude and for the average wind speeds on shipping routes, I just don't understand how this works even if 100% of the wind energy is extracted from the cross sectional area of the sail.

<comment><USER34> [Snipped after looking at how it works again]

<comment><USER14> No, I don't think that's what it's doing. It's actually powered - <USER2> electricity to make it spin. As a result of the spin, it creates vortexes that push 90 degrees to the wind.

<comment><USER34> Yeah I think I was still confused about how it works, but I've just decided to snip out my comment instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> These green-washed headlines are getting absurd.

Wind-powered suggests there's no fossil fuel based propulsion, when these rotors are _driven_ by the same propulsion system as the ship's propellors: diesel.

<comment><USER28> Wind-powered suggests that motile power is provided by the wind, which is the case here.

Surely a sailboat with electrically controlled surfaces is still wind-powered?

<comment><USER13> There is still a diesel engine in the loop, which if turned off makes the ship not move.

These are like electric hybrid cars which are sometimes thought* of more valuable than increased efficiency of burning gas (which is all they boil down to)

*at least I used to think that. Maybe I'm the only one.

<comment><USER28> > There is still a diesel engine in the loop, which if turned off makes the > ship not move.

So it is with my sailboat example?

> These are like electric hybrid cars which are sometimes thought* of more > valuable than increased efficiency of burning gas (which is all they boil > down to)

Most hybrid cars are plug-in, you can charge the battery directly and use mixed-electric mode or even exclusively electric mode for short distances.

<comment><USER13> Most sailboats operate fine if the engine is off.

It may be that plugin hybrids are more numerous now, but for a very long time most hybrids did not have the plug in option.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Back to the Future - <AUTHOR> http://irinawerning.com/back-to-the-fut/back-to-the-future

<comment><USER2> The Ato guy in the white top hat looks _exactly_ the same.

Pretty cool.</comment>


First Apple Silicon Benchmarks Destroy Surface Pro X - <AUTHOR> https://www.thurrott.com/apple/237225/first-apple-silicon-benchmarks-destroy-surface-pro-x# <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that this is comparing the Apple Developer Transition Kit (with the A12Z SoC from the March 2020 iPad Pro) to the Surface Pro X (with the MS/Qualcomm SQ1 from October 2019).

It'll be interesting to see what Apple actually ships in production hardware.</comment>


Design call for 'solar sentinel' mission - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42922898 <comment><USER2> I would guess that the particles of a mass ejection/flare are travelling sufficiently below the speed of light to make a warning system worth while.

Also - How much debris has collected at Lagrange points over the millennia? Would it be a danger to a spacecraft parked there?

<comment><USER3> L1, L2 and L3 are unstable - if you start to drift away even a tiny bit, that drift gets amplified over time. Staying at one of these points requires at least some station-keeping.

L4 and L5, by contrast, are stable - even if you're not perfectly on the dot, you'll kind of "orbit" around the point if you're close enough. See [1].

These L4 and L5 points have, over the eons, collected many natural satellites (ie. asteroids) which are commonly called Trojans[2].

However, space is really, really big[3] so this isn't of too much concern to spacecraft.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_orbit#Tadpole_orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_orbit#Tadpole_orbit)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_(astronomy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_\(astronomy\))

[3] Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Edit: better link for [1]</comment></comment>


How Toy Story can be explained by the Psychology of Slavery - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Toy-Story/At-the-end-of-Toy-Story-the-toys-come-to-life-and-scare-Sid-But-I-thought-they-werent-allowed-to-move-and-be-themselves-in-front-of-humans-How-does-this-work-in-the-story-What-can-toys-do-and-what-cant-they-do

<comment><USER2> The idea of sentient toys becomes horrifying in all sorts of ways if you take it seriously. How many of your once-loved childhood toys have now been sealed in cold dark boxes for years? How many have been ripped to pieces or discarded in garbage dumps?

On the other hand, another thing that bugs me about many American writers about slavery is that they only consider it in the context of 19th-century America, rather than as something that occurred in nearly all parts of the world for nearly all of history.

<comment><AUTHOR> There needs to be a dark and gritty Toy Story retelling in the same spirit as "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"

<comment><USER2> The Chuckie movies?

<comment><AUTHOR> Aha I didn't even think of that. Chuckie was just insane though. I'm thinking of a Matrix Revolutions for Toy Story.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spooky Apollo: Apollo 8 and the CIA - <AUTHOR> http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3617/1 <comment><USER2> Cool comment at the end:

 _I helped take that Proton photo, or one EXACTLY like it, on KH8 mission 4351 (launched 1981-02-28). I was a NCOIC, Satellite Operations, working on the GAMBIT program in SAFSP /OD-4 at Sunnyvale at the time. In those days, NPIC would send us a selection of some of the very best photos taken on each mission after the film was returned and processed. One of the "beauty shots" we received after that mission was identical to this one--a Proton booster, sans payload, being transported by rail at TT. In fact, I think it most likely that the photo I saw is the very same one pictured here. I remember being very excited to see it, as I had never seen the first stage of a Proton vehicle before. And, outside of the intelligence community, no one in the West would see a complete Proton until December 1984, when the Soviet Vega probes were launched._

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing I've found facinating was, after the USSR launched the first satelite, and put the first man in space, the USA managed to redefine "win" as being "the moon".

<comment><USER4> So goes the world of propaganda. Another interesting spin is how we frame ourselves as being the anti-imperial liberators of the world and praising ourselves for workers' rights, anti-child labor and pro-living wage. It was actually the soviets who were anti-imperial and pro workers rights. It's why they initially won so many fans in china, india, africa, vietnam, etc. Didn't someone say history is a lie we tell ourselves over and over again until we forget it is a lie?

Now in defense of the US, the soviets did put a satellite up first, but we were more than capable of doing so at the same time or even before. We sent up a satellite 2 months after the soviets. Contrast that with the moon landing. The soviets never sent a man to the moon even decades after we did. So in that light, I think the moon landing was far more impressive and representative of "victory" for a lack of a better word.

Perhaps we can say the soviets won the first space battle, but we won the space war? Without a doubt, we won the PR war as the moon landing and armstrong's "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" will be the iconic and defining moment of the space race for the rest of history.

<comment><USER5> > Another interesting spin is how we frame ourselves as being the anti- > imperial liberators of the world and praising ourselves for workers' rights, > anti-child labor and pro-living wage. It was actually the soviets who were > anti-imperial and pro workers rights.

Isn't there like a subreddit or website called like r/ShitHNSays?

<comment><USER6> I know of a Twitter account[1]

1 - [https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says](https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A phenomenal movie on the Apollo program and our lead up to is "The Right Stuff" [1]. It's a 1983 film that I only ran into by complete coincidence. It holds up extremely well and is loaded with fun symbolism, real footage, and other stuff making it a multi-watcher. It also gets into the CIAs involvement and the dangerous relationship between visible progress and program/pilot safety.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_%28film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_%28film%29)

<comment><USER8> The Right Stuff is about Mercury, not Apollo. Great movie though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The best and most comprehensive historical account of the Apollo 8 lunar > decision is contained in Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox's 1989 book > Apollo: the Race to the Moon. Murray and Cox devoted ten pages to the > subject. They clearly stated that the decision to send Apollo 8 on a > circumlunar mission was overwhelmingly determined by Apollo's aggressive > schedule and not Cold War competition.

1) The book is terrific, well worth the time for anyone interested in these matters.

2) I didn't see anything in the article that contradicts the idea that the decision was made based on schedule rather than competition. Did I miss something?

</comment><comment><USER10> > Even if the CIA did provide extensive information to NASA about Soviet > circumlunar plans, that does not necessarily mean that, as the memo > indicates, the NASA decision was a "result" of CIA information. Only the > NASA officials who made the Apollo 8 decision knew what factors influenced > them most. That was primarily George Low, whose records point to the Apollo > schedule being the primary influence.

The drive to get Apollo 8 up and around the moon (as well as the intentions of the rest of the Apollo flights) may not have been explicitly called out in mission documents as having the purpose of directly competing with Russia, but I'm not sure that really matters in the grand scheme of things. Even if the intentions of the program managers and engineers that put Apollo in space really were just sticking to their planned schedule without concern of the other side's progress, the funding, fast track bureaucracy, and schedule timeline that allowed NASA to do the things they did certainly was motivated by political interests. That, to me, makes the issue of whether or not they based it on CIA info less profound, if not moot.

</comment><comment><USER11> A good read, but the title is a pure click-bait.

<comment><USER12> Yes - no need for "Spooky"

<comment><USER13> I think it's intended as a pun. Spies are sometimes referred to as spooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> great story, thanks for posting!</comment>


Ask HN: I'm being left out of SRE and DevOps by my manager. Should I be worried? - <AUTHOR> I am a web developer working on react and backend REST APIs. I have the skills and want to be closer to the deployed product working as SRE and DevOps. Writing anisble scripts and maintaining production instances.
It's a small team. I'm not allowed to do Devops things because 'me being a developer is worth more'. I think that's a terrible idea. I can only become a better developer by working close to the deployed product.
Having less SREs and shared devops knowledge can only hurt things. The team rationale is computers fail all the time. We should have SRE scripts that recover things. I hate that idea. I want to know why servers failed. My belief is if you don't understand the root cause it'll just keep happening.
Is this a naieve belief? Am I in the wrong here? <comment><USER2> > 'me being a developer is worth more'

See things from your manager's perspective. They have work they need accomplished. They have a small team - maybe not big enough for the work they need to accomplish - and of that work, some will directly create profit for the company and some will cut/ control costs, and still other work will be "stuff".

Your manager is telling you that they need your skills in a particular area, like due to staff shortages, skill shortages, or more specifically the _value_ of the work. Take this as a sign that your skills set and labor are valued, just not perhaps in the way you prefer.

If developing skills in other areas (IE: SRE, devops, etc) is important to you, consider ongoing conversations where you make it clear you want to build this skills, and partner with your manager to do so. If that just isn't going to happen in this team, then consider your career path elsewhere if this is really important to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of developers have a cowboy coder mentality that causes problems when they are given access to production instances. That's caused many organizations to establish a wall between development teams and operations.

Learn to work with your devops team to get the information you need. Developers should not need direct production access.

<comment><USER4> > Developers should not need direct production access.

Then stop telling me I need years of experience with Docker, K8s, AWS, etc. on dev job listings.

<comment><USER3> The architect who designed my house does not need access to come inside my house anytime they feel like it.

<comment><USER4> If in order to get a job as a senior architect I have to have experience that I can only get by having access to come inside your house, then yeah I kind of do.

<comment><USER3> Nope. Developers can get all the experience they need in a dev sandbox environment with all the same tools and infra. They do not need access to the production environment.

<comment><USER2> It's a responsibility / authority issue, generally brought on by poor management. I get what you are saying, and I suspect many in this thread agree with your sentiments. Frankly, when I'm wearing the developer hat I'd rather _not_ have production access, because then I can tell management / the business that I can't fix their production issue. But, often management is going to cajole, yell, scream, etc at whomever they think can fix the problem, and that often ends up with a developer _who doesn 't even want to be there_ having production access in order to fight yet another fire. Shouldn't be that way, but there it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The team rationale is computers fail all the time. We should have SRE > scripts that recover things.

This is a potentially very risky approach. I was given the task of having my org stand up a large, complicated system. My engineering team built a system that was failing 2% here, 10% there, 5% somewhere, etc. They built recovery and retry mechanisms for every failure scenario. We ended up with a combined failure rate of 40% that was masking the failures but basically doubled our execution time for the service. I locked down all new development and directed all of our effort toward driving accumulated failures below 5%. They completely disagreed with me (because they'd gotten used to the life of being firefighters). Once we got to below 5% their opinion changed completely. They're very proud of how they were able to drive down the error rate.

Watch out for accumulated error (or even worse--compounded error)!

On the other hand, you can expect that any network based service will fail and need to retry. It's especially important to make software that relies on cloud-based services resilient in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Not being allowed to do DevOps things" is best practice, and sometimes mandated by law or policy ("zero developer access to production.")

Some possibilities for doing DevOps things again are:

* request a "glass break" account for emergencies. You'll need to meet with someone senior to get that signed off on, and then someone needs to write some automation for that.

* Ask to move to a DevOps role instead of back end web dev.

Some possibilities for better visibility, which is a better goal if you ask me:

* set up a status meeting that's once every week or two weeks or month with the DevOps/SRE team or person(s)

* ask to be part of the monitoring setup, or set up your own monitoring that you can then share.

</comment><comment><USER7> If we transcend the holy war of dev vs ops, practically speaking this is likely a team culture and skill set question.

If you being a dev is worth more, the team either has the ops under control, or you need to demonstrate why you being closer to the ops provides business value.

</comment><comment><USER8> If your org treats dev as more valuable than SRE you likely aren't doing SRE correctly. It should be a fairly high status role. Your org likely just has an old fashioned ops team that has rebranded.

In any case you definitely don't want to move from a high status position to a low status one in your organization. Switch orgs to one that treats what you want to do as high status.

For what it's worth, I agree that your manager is wrong but there are lots of ways to skin a cat and a dev/op split is a very traditional route that lots of teams are successful at.

</comment><comment><USER9> > We should have SRE scripts that recover things. I hate that idea. I want to > know why servers failed. My belief is if you don't understand the root cause > it'll just keep happening.

It sounds like you are not only worried about you being involved, but also about the current state of your team's DevOps / SRE practices. Hopefully you can still push for higher standards in that space even if you are not directly involved day to day.

> It's a small team. I'm not allowed to do Devops things because 'me being a > developer is worth more'. I think that's a terrible idea. I can only become > a better developer by working close to the deployed product.

By the same token, it is not good for you to be the expert on everything. With a small team it's easy for one person to become the go-to SME for everything. This is just as dangerous as having faulty DevOps and SRE practices. The company has little ability to prevent you from leaving, getting sick, forgetting things that only you touched, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it's pretty common, as a developer, to be told, effectively, "Get back in the corner and do what you were hired to do -- not think -- just code -- leave the grown-up things to the grown-ups."

This is just an extension of Taylorism -- early assembly-line thinking -- where each human becomes like a very simple machine -- and therefore stupid, dull-minded, unquestioning.

That said, I think you are conflating several different issues here.

But just sticking to your first question in the title -- no, you do not need to be worried.

Unless you decide you want to be more than a coder/developer. In that case, start looking for a new job.

</comment><comment><USER11> > me being a developer is worth more

so a salary increase is justified, then, eh?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm having the opposite problem. My organization (Fortune 500 company) has decided to fire almost all of the sys admins and say that developers are responsible for their full stack. My company usually has teams of 1 developer each, and each developer has several projects. Given this arrangement I have to not only write all of the code (mostly scientific computing and statistics) and mange the servers (OS updates, deployments, etc).

</comment><comment><USER13> What were the responsibilities listed in the job you applied for?

>Writing anisble scripts

Skunkworks an effort on this in your downtime and in doing so prove your capabilities, would be my suggestion.

>maintaining production instances.

If you're deploying to AWS or another cloud provider it's more than rational that it's locked down to a certain set of people (devops/SRE) made responsible for that infrastructure.

>I want to know why servers failed.

Ask for read access to your logging infrastructure?

</comment><comment><USER14> You're not wrong. You're just working with the wrong people. If you want to be a part of the full system including SRE and DevOps tasks start looking for a new place to work. If you expect this group to change you're probably setting yourself up for failure.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for this reminder.</comment></comment>


xkcd: No, the 9V battery hack is not a hoax. I just tried it -- here are my notes - <AUTHOR> http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/08/20/testing-the-9v-battery-hack-or-assault-on-battery/

<comment><USER2> This is only a good deal/hack if you need AAAA batteries; these are artificially expensive because of price fixing in the retail battery industry.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you choose programming language for codebase? - <AUTHOR> I have an idea for an enterprise cloud based solution. Since I'm not technical I will have to outsource development. How do I decide which programming language to get it built in? What are the pros and cons of what you suggest? <comment><USER2> Reliability of the language and tool sets is a big one. Availability of coders in the language is another, there's an over abundance of C++/Java coders looking for work, but finding a team of Rust developers is a bit trickier.

Also in general, I would start with a list of languages that are built-for, or can easily support, what your product is. For instance, I love Go but wouldn't use it for a GUI application.

And in honesty, managed languages are a bit better in my opinion for projects that will require many devs to work on it. As much as this statement might catch flack, C++ is wonderful and powerful and I trust my ability to use it; but do I trust the workforce to? It's very easy for a dev to write a patch fix that also manages to introduce a memory leak or null pointer and crash the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on the problem you want to solve and product requirements. Often it is better to let the technical person choose.

Unless you have tons of money you should avoid niche technologies/frameworks/languages. Solid choices include Ruby, Elixir, Python, Kotlin, Java. On frontend Typescript with React/Angular/Vue.

Technology is a secondary choice anyway. Most important is to find great engineers. These would naturally gravitate towards better tools anyway.</comment>