Brotopia: Analysis and Review - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2018/10/12/brotopia-analysis-and-review/ <comment><USER2> Ok, one thing against the 'data analysis' in OP: if Santa Clara is allegedly male-dominated then the better comparison is number of complaints per million women in the local labour force. The other obvious one is that complaints per capital possibly falls with income. Without correction for that, this offhand denial after a casual data browsing is too easy. My personal ethics suggest that any sector where business is done in sex clubs and hot tubs is shady, but who am I? It's like when Heineken had stocked fridges with beer for meetings. It's not directly female-unfriendly but the social dynamics of meetings change after a few beers. They stopped that a decade ago.

<comment><USER3> I was about to post a similar point, that he's possibly comparing unequal demographics, and without controlling for that his numbers are probably not meaningful.

Still, he makes plenty of other good points. And as for meetings in sex clubs, I have no doubt that this still occurs in plenty of other fields, even ones that aren't male dominated.

The fact that Chang's book appears long on rumour and short on data is what should disqualify it from being taken seriously.

<comment><USER4> > Still, he makes plenty of other good points.

Could you summarize, or mention a few? Because I struggle to see much of any merit to the article. It starts out with scare quote even in the first paragraph which is, if not just outright bad, criticized enough to be a faux pas in itself. It continues with rhetorically embellished opinions about the book, which most of us haven't read. Then presents a bunch of numbers that we again don't know if they are particularly relevant. Finally it spends most of the rest of the article discussing other theories that the author prefers.

I would expect an analysis like this at least partly present the theories discussed in the book in a relatively natural light to then discuss those theories.

<comment><USER3> > It starts out with scare quote even in the first paragraph which is, if not > just outright bad, criticized enough to be a faux pas in itself.

I suggest reading the introduction to the book in Amazon. Plenty of "scare quotes" there too, just pushing an opposing narrative. Maybe the tone of the article is reflective of the book rather than a bias people seem all too quick to ascribe to the article's author (although the author is almost certainly biased too -- we all are). I'm not sure the article has embellished much given the introduction.

The article actually points out the book's main bias, "Chang does not consider any alternative theses that might cause gender disparities in occupational sectors." People attempting to analyze an issue with a narrative already firmly in mind is all too common, and the signal to noise ratio on this subject been getting worse. This book appears to be more of the same. I've done a lot of reading on this issue, and the book's intro and this article reflect a common narrative that can explain only some of the data rather than following where the data leads.

The article cites a few books by professional psychologists that discuss gender differences at length. That's where you'll find better data and better theories to explain the data.

As for other good points in the article:

1\. I think the article is correct to point out that tech is getting an unusual amount of attention given the gender disparities in other fields. I think people with a feminist agenda see tech as a big lever for social change because of how pervasive tech is in our lives. Adopting that agenda will have upsides and downsides, but we should always be wary of agendas, because they are by necessity blind to effects outside their narrow scope. This agenda is often couched in phrases like "diverse teams always outperform non-diverse teams". If that were true to any meaningful degree, then there would be no need for any explicit action on our part because compensation for diversity would reflect that.

2\. The article is also correct to point out that redistributing work means taking women out of other sectors and displacing men to other sectors (although obviously hyperbolic in suggesting we just swap with nurses), and this change won't necessarily lead to better outcomes overall.

Finally, consider the obvious question: why is it necessary to "break up" the boy's club in tech when we clearly didn't need any such call to break up the boy's clubs in medicine or law. Arguably, they were far more insular and sexist, but women broke into them anyway and achieved gender parity. But note that while those fields overall are roughly gender equal, the genders have still segregated themselves into various specializations, eg. surgery is still male dominant, pediatrics is female dominant. The sexism narrative can't explain this, but the works by the psychologists the article cites actually can.

This is one among a few data points that tells me who is more closely pursuing the data, and who is pursuing a narrative. Anyway, I could trot out plenty of citations on this, and I have here on HN in the past, but there's little point. It almost always devolves into pointless squabbling.

<comment><USER4> > I suggest reading the introduction to the book in Amazon. Plenty of "scare > quotes" there too, just pushing an opposing narrative.

I don't see the relevance of the tone of the book. Especially not if the author of the article suggest that his own arguments have more merit. Nor does the introduction of the book [0] actually seem to have many scare quotes. A scare quote is when you question something by quoting it, most often without elaborating. That isn't the usage of quotes in the introduction of the book as far as I can tell, it is the usage of quotes in the article though.

> I'm not sure the article has embellished much given the introduction.

Again I don't see why it is relevant what the book does nor that this is actually the case in the book. Things like "colourful mud-slinging on the basis of anecdotes" and "can be dismissed as lurid gossip" is certainly just that and present in the article. If it was true that Brotopia only contains anecdotes that can easily be dismissed then why do we even need the rest of the article?

> The article actually points out the book's main bias, "Chang does not > consider any alternative theses that might cause gender disparities in > occupational sectors."

Since we don't really get to know what the theory of the book is in the article I don't think that is that relevant either. When I read an "analysis and review" I want to know what the theory of the book is and its merits. That the author of the book didn't consider a specific theory might be an argument in the overall discourse, but isn't necessarily relevant for the merit of the book's argument. Unless it can be specifically tied to what the book is actually saying.

> That's where you'll find better data and better theories to explain the > data.

If he wants to discuss the overall issue, and not just the book, there are plenty of other research studies one could and should refer to.

> I think the article is correct to point out that tech is getting an unusual > amount of attention given the gender disparities in other fields.

Again I don't see the relevance since we are talking about a book on this exact issue. How do you correctly measure the amount of attention something should have? I would say it is pretty safe to skip that discussion all together and just argue the issues instead.

The majority of these points have now been about other things than the contents of the book in question.

> The article is also correct to point out that redistributing work means > taking women out of other sectors and displacing men to other sectors > (although obviously hyperbolic in suggesting we just swap with nurses), and > this change won't necessarily lead to better outcomes overall.

Even from the scare quote summary earlier in the article I can guess that the book argues that this should happens because the state of the boys club isn't the natural state, but an injustice. You could certainly argue that that doesn't matter, but then you would also have to argue against being a meritocracy.

> why is it necessary to "break up" the boy's club in tech when we clearly > didn't need any such call to break up the boy's clubs in medicine or law.

Didn't we? In these discussions people tend to argue that medicine and law is much more formalized and that it therefor is easier to effect change from the top. Since the book presumably is about the informal structures in technology that seem like a relevant argument.

> But note that while those fields overall are roughly gender equal, the > genders have still segregated themselves into various specializations, eg. > surgery is still male dominant, pediatrics is female dominant.

Which largely isn't the case in technology i.e. its an overall problem not in specializations.

> The sexism narrative can't explain this, but the works by the psychologists > the article cites actually can.

If you, like the article, dismisses the book in favor of a particular study that might be the case, but that just isn't a very strong argument. To make that a strong argument you would have specifically address the points, and the overall thesis, of the book and then make a counter argument based on that. That is exactly what I would expected and didn't get from the article.

> Anyway, I could trot out plenty of citations on this, and I have here on HN > in the past, but there's little point. It almost always devolves into > pointless squabbling.

I am not asking to write as long as you did. I much prefer one or two points and we could argue. I just don't think there is much support for that in this article which is exactly what I argued in my previous comment.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-01/women- onc...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-01/women-once-ruled- computers-when-did-the-valley-become-brotopia)

<comment><USER3> I'm not going to address all your points since as I said, these discussions tend to go nowhere, so I'll only reply to some specifics about motivation and appropriateness of the author's review:

> If it was true that Brotopia only contains anecdotes that can easily be > dismissed then why do we even need the rest of the article?

Clearly because the viewpoint presented is not going away and is taken quite seriously.

> Since we don't really get to know what the theory of the book is in the > article I don't think that is that relevant either.

I'm not sure why you say this. The article is pretty clear what the book's theory is: sexist, explicitly exclusionary practices are why women are avoiding tech.

> How do you correctly measure the amount of attention something should have?

By consistently applying the principles espoused by the book, in this case, gender parity. Inconsistency entails special pleading or an agenda that isn't necessarily honest, which reveals implicit or explicit bias.

> The majority of these points have now been about other things than the > contents of the book in question.

That's a fair point, but I'm not sure I'd expect anything else considering the subject is a contested social issue and the book is a call for forceful and radical change.

> Which largely isn't the case in technology i.e. its an overall problem not > in specializations. [re: gender dempographics]

That's not actually true. There are plenty more women in project management positions than there are female programmers. Which is tangential to the point that a sexism narrative can't explain such voluntary gender segregation, while alternative theories fair better on this measure.

> To make that a strong argument you would have specifically address the > points, and the overall thesis, of the book and then make a counter argument > based on that.

If the article is accurate that the book did not present any other possible explanations other than overt and implicit sexism, then the article did just that.

<comment><USER5> I abandoned my "mhjas" account, but I'll write a final comment.

My main critic of the article is that it doesn't address the arguments the book is making, but instead dismisses them.

If one person says "chocolate ice cream is the best because it has so much flavor" a merited response isn't "chocolate sucks, vanilla is pure flavor". That is just an opinion. A response containing argument would be "the chocolate flavor overpowers the taste of the cream, vanilla is better since it has a more subtle flavor making it more balanced". Now we as readers can decide among those argument, or make our own.

That is what we should get from the article. He should address the specific points made in the book. If sexism is the main point of the book, he should address that. He can't just dismiss those things by saying "toxic work environment" and "sexism" in quotes.

The entire part of the article addressing the book can be summarized as with this sentence:

"The point is simply that the complaints data does not suggest that Silicon Valley is "rife" with sexual discrimination and harassment or worse than California more generally. On the contrary, Silicon Valley seems better than average."

Not only isn't that very interesting, but as others have pointed out actually misguided. He doesn't perform any sort actual analysis of even the numbers presented, nor does he compare them against other sources. He doesn't explore the demographics, the consequences or the meaning of the data. These number could be explained in many other ways including but not limited to that more men in the workforce leads to less complaints, more white-collar jobs leads to less complaints, more unbalanced gender leads to less complaints, tech companies handle more complaints internally or that there isn't actually less complaints when properly analysed.

There just isn't a strong basis for his claims.

Here is a study finding that sexual harassment is a problem in workplaces and professions similar to those in SV. [https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24994/sexual- harassment-of-women...](https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24994/sexual-harassment- of-women-climate-culture-and-consequences-in-academic)

<comment><USER3> > If one person says "chocolate ice cream is the best because it has so much > flavor" a merited response isn't "chocolate sucks, vanilla is pure flavor". > That is just an opinion.

A flawed analogy. A more faithful analogy would be someone claiming "chocolate ice cream is the most preferred flavour the world over", and the article's response is akin to "they didn't even ask people if they liked vanilla". That _is_ a proper response to the original claim. Even if he were to add a flawed analysis like, "over half of the 50 people in my neighbourhood preferred vanilla", that doesn't change the fact that the core of his rebuttal is still correct.

You are correct that the article's math isn't definitive, but it doesn't need to be (and he should have left it out IMO). The article claims that the book is simply a narrative backed by anecdotes, and if that's the case, then all the reviewer needs to do to undermine it is present an alternative narrative that's equally or more plausible, which he did. This narrative is justified by actual data and so is already more than the book (allegedly) provides.

> These number could be explained in many other ways including but not limited > to that more men in the workforce leads to less complaints, more white- > collar jobs leads to less complaints, more unbalanced gender leads to less > complaints, tech companies handle more complaints internally or that there > isn't actually less complaints when properly analysed.

So it sounds like you have mostly the same qualms with this review as the reviewer has with the book. Except a) the standard for books should be higher than book reviews, and b) if you disliked this analysis, then you won't like the book which the reviewer claims is even sloppier, so he succeeded in conveying that you wouldn't like this book.

> Here is a study finding that sexual harassment is a problem in workplaces > and professions similar to those in SV

No one's denying that women experience sexual harassment. They no doubt experience such harassment in _every_ field. The questions surrounding STEM specifically is whether harassment or other such sexist factors _meaningfully affects female retention_. That is not so clear, and as I mentioned earlier, women have staked their claim in even more competitive and aggressive fields.

We should endeavour to reduce harassment and sexism everywhere as a matter of principle, but the loud saber rattling implying that harassment entails lower engagement, particularly at the levels seen in STEM, is simply unjustified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So this article criticizes a lack of data then only uses a single data source (on complaints) that loops in all housing and employment data into one without separation of type (say, by sexual harassment). That doesn't really show anything beyond the bias of the author. Not to mention the inherent problem with formal complaints vs actual number of incidents that is not discussed at all. As mentioned by others, no accounting for income or any other factors was done either. I wouldn't say any information of value lies in the "analysis" here. Not to say the book is validated, simply that this is clearly hit piece that's trying to disguise itself as a review from any point of neutrality.

<comment><USER7> The author of Brotopia made the claim of a toxic environment without evidence. The burden or proof lies on the person making the claim. The author of the piece questions the claim with a single data source. Attacking his source doesn't somehow validate the author of Brotopia

<comment><USER6> I said exactly that it doesn't validate the book in my post. But showing a single, very irrelevant stat is not a counterargument either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are an awful lot of Harvard educated journalists complaining about male privileged nowadays. Chang probably makes more money than most of the techies she attacks in her book. She has her own national television show and now book that's being promoted in the mainstream media. Business Insider called her one of the top 100 influential people in tech. Pretty good for someone who can't code! It doesn't look like this so called discrimination has had any impact on her career.

<comment><USER6> What does her career have to do with any of this? Would you like to go the anecdota to data route or are you trying to claim that she's clearly just made all this up? Either point doesn't seem very sound, and why be so roundabout with your point? Or are you simply trying to discredit something you disagree with by attacking the author?

<comment><USER8> > _trying to claim that she 's clearly just made all this up?_

Yes. I'm using her own success as a direct refutation of her argument.

<comment><USER9> Your argument is that because one woman has had this level of success then gender bias doesn't exist?

<comment><USER8> My argument is that someone as privileged as Chang ought not sling mud at an entire industry and mark us a "brotopia". I'm actually not ok with someone labeling me like that. Extra galling given that she has succeeded wildly in that very industry.

<comment><USER10> If her arguments are faulty, you ought to focus on the flaws in her arguments, beginning with her strongest. Neither engaging in ad hominem nor making use of ecological fallacies contributes anything.

<comment><USER8> The book is literally titled _Brotopia_ , which is an ad hominem slur against our industry. Chang set the level of discourse.

<comment><USER9> Look at the gender ratio in tech. Look at the survey released yesterday about how many female YC founders have been harassed. You are benefiting from your gender by being in tech. That doesn't mean that there are no successful women in tech or that every man in tech is a bro. Its a macro take on the industry

<comment><USER10> I would be very careful when appealing to gender ratio because the mere presence of a gender disparity does not imply an obvious cause of the gender disparity (nor does it necessarily imply a problem, for that matter). It may very well be the case that women naturally tend to choose different kinds of occupations.

For example, if a bro culture does exist, then it may very well follow from the gender disparity which is itself the result of other factors. This may in turn create an environment that is unappealing to the women who do enter tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Glad to see more work from Quillette, strongly believe they're one of the only strong less-bias sources of objective journalism in our world today.

<comment><USER12> That's like a liberal saying NPR is objective. There is no objective. They might be serious and mostly honest (just like NPR), but Quillette definitely has a bias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Text book example of a well researched and qualified article! A much needed breath of fresh air, thank you...</comment>


US Law Enforcement Sought Mobile User Data More Than 1.3 Million Times in 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/258979/us_law_enforcement_sought_mobile_user_data_more_than_13_million_times_in_2011.html

<comment><USER2> We need more protection from this kind of surveillance.</comment>


Use of free software in Mac OS X over time - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/103674611711666213369/posts/7j1c2bZ7jJb

<comment><USER2> Or the simpler and more reasonable explanation is that they have cleaned up and consolidated. After all OSX and iOS do share a lot of components and someday soon may even be the same code base.</comment>


How Fortnite Revolutionised Game Marketing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nathangrieve.com/how-fortnite-revolutionised-game-marketing/ <comment><USER2> "How Fortnite Revolutionised Game Marketing"

Please use original article titles, unless the title was misleading. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, updated now.</comment></comment>


How Intentional Acoustic Interference Damages Availability and Integrity in HDD [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://spqr.eecs.umich.edu/papers/bolton-blue-note-IEEESSP-2018.pdf <comment><USER2> Fascinating.

My first thought was, is this inspired by the zfs video demo of hard drive throughput disruption caused by yelling at the hard drive? Brendan Gregg's video IIRC. But alas, no mention nor reference of it in the paper.

Then I see in the references that this is a well studied field. However, the idea that one could disable cameras remotely seems new and scary. The threat seems real, albeit perhaps overblown since don't most surveillance cameras have physically separate and isolated (from the camera body) recorders?</comment>


CIA and the perils of overengineering - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4540

<comment><USER2> Wow, that was nothing like what I was expecting from the title.</comment>


Coding on tape – computer science A-level 1970s style - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35890450 <comment><USER2> Sigh! brings back memories.

1979 - Reigate Grammar School. The school didn't offer a comp. sci. exam but we had a computer club (although no computer). I remember using a card punch to write a factorial program. I can't remember the language. The cards were taken to an insurance company down the road who did actually have a computer. A couple of days later you'd get a print-out of the compilation errors, and you'd start again. The future seemed so exiting back then. On this basis, I went to Leeds University to study computing where on the first day, they introduced us (as a prank) ... to the card punch machine.

Now get your new-fangled glass teletypes off my lawn!

<comment><USER3> A computer club, but no computer? OK this is weird. So what did you guys do at the club, then?

<comment><USER4> It's much like an astronomy club without a star or planet. You study the theory and hope to see the practice one day.

My junior high (in Finland) had some programming lessons included in the mathematics classes in circa 1981. Fragments of ALGOL and such. Got the first computers in 1982.

(They were Swedish ABC-80's; Z80, 16 K RAM, black and white displays with block graphics, one machine equipped with a disk drive, others with a "local area network" implemented with the cassette tape interface which was transmitting and receiving an FSK signal at something like 300 bits per second so you could transfer programs between the units. Far more advanced than paper punch tape, which I only learned to use with a telex & encryption machine in the army...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Back in the spring of 1971, thanks to NSF a number of high school students and teachers, I one of the former, got to go for a few weeks to the University of Oklahoma where Dr. Richard V. Andree would lecture us on BASIC programming and the fundamentals of numerical methods on Saturdays and then on other days through the week we each got our hands on an ASR-33 hooked up to a Data General Supernova that could have four people running the BASIC interpreter at a time (!). After that, I kept a notebook that I would write programs in in BASIC with no chance of running them and sucked down the computer-related books in the school and town library, including one English book with such exotica as Extended Mercury Autocode. After a junior year with no computer access, vo-tech school exposed me to unit record machines and an RCA 301 (ended up writing self-modifying code to do a decimal multiply) and eventually RPG on the OKC public school system's 370. On to OU, where the undergraduates all had to use punched cards--it was an IBM shop, so it was the horrors of JCL again, though I hadn't seen anything else but the Data General, so I didn't know any better.

Very different days those were.

</comment><comment><USER6> (Yorkshiremen Moments in 3, 2, 1)

First program: Sieve of Eratosthenes in ALGOL 60, typed onto paper tape on a Friden Flexowriter and run (ran first time too) on an Elliott 803. Year was 1963. I did get to touch the cabinet, but was not allowed to mount the tape.

First computer: 1967, Elliott 4130, from the inside out as commissioning tech employed at Elliott's in Elstree. 1000 cps paper tape readers were quite something. Especially when they failed.

Elliotts computers absorbed into ICL 1968/9\. So any schools using 903's had to be using old refurnbished units. I would have thought.

1968: same time, evening degree at Birkbek College, prepared CS projects on IBM punched cards and handed the stacks to the priesthood via a little hole in a wall for running on the Atlas. 2 day turn-round. A step backwards, for me, after such intimacy wth the 4130. Fun fact: the course was not called CS in those days, not yet. So I got Mathematical Sciences with Physics on my piece of paper.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1979 - We were hand writing Fortran out on cards, there was a two week turn around to find out if we had made any mistakes (or the operator had miss-typed the code). I have no idea where they went to be executed.

We also had an Olivetti machine with very limited (240 bytes) core store, I'm pretty sure it was one of these: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti#/media/File:Olivetti_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti#/media/File:Olivetti_Programma_101-2.jpg)

A couple of us used to go to the computing teaching centre in Oxford University where they let us write BASIC on a system called the mod-one, I've no idea who made it.

</comment><comment><USER8> The legend is that Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote BASIC on a punchtape for the new Altair microcomputer while at Harvard, flew the punchtape to Albuquerque, and had the BASiC running on the first day of debugging. They had written a CPU emulator on a Harvard computer and their BASIC on top of that. So the morale is you didnt need a lot of punchtape iterations if you did it carefully. Todays semi-compilation as you type in the code may contribute to a certain intellectual laziness. It easy to recompile hundreds of times during development.

</comment><comment><USER9> Back in 73/74 we had to send out code off on coding sheets that where processed at the local college.

The first language we learnt was a cut down training assembly language CECIL we moved on to BASIC the next year.

BTW I was the CSE lower stream ie the exams for those leaving at 16.

Funny thing was as computers where the maths department as I only did a CSE I wasn't allowed to do the A level computing in the 6th form - even though I got the highest possible grade in my CSE maths.

</comment><comment><USER10> 1975 - writing as a coursework assignment a keyboard driver in assembly code for a PDP minicomputer. Pressed keys would set up interrupts, be interpreted, and printed back on the teletype. Got the instructions down to the minimal two metres of paper tape, read it in, and it worked! Worth 5% of one module of a computing course :)

The most impressive thing about it all was how fast the paper tape reader has read it in.

</comment><comment><USER11> At least it wasn't just cardboard

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

<comment> vic-traill Not related directly to computers, but related to the use of cardboard representations in learning models:

I took piano lessons on lunch hour once a week in elementary school. For those students without a piano at home, they distributed a fold-out cardboard piano keyboard. The kid was supposed to practice on the cardboard keyboard all week, and then play an actual piano once a week during the lesson.

We were fortunate and had an upright piano at home. I tried out a friend's cardboard keyboard a couple of times out of curiousity - pretty unsatisfactory feedback loop, to say the least.

Looking at the link for CARDIAC provided above, I think that approach might have actually worked not badly. You could learn all the core concepts, hand assemble a program, and then 'execute' it by moving the values through the cells. Not the most glitzy experience, but the fundamentals are there.

I can't say the same for the cardboard keyboard; not hearing what you're 'playing' is a pretty big obstacle.

<comment><USER11> This is a tragic tale. I think I would have enjoyed a Cardiac to learn machine code. I first learned code from copying listings on Teletext, they called it Telesoftware [1] into a book. I had no access to any computers.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> luxury! we had to program our HP in school by colouring in the cards for it to read one by one.. one step up from punch cards as we could re-use them</comment>


Lobste.rs site migration complete - <AUTHOR> https://lobste.rs/index.php <comment><USER2> Sysop here, glad to see folks are getting a kick out of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the internet communication sites I have used the most in history was was on a similar system, VBulletin. To a modern eye, it seems like a poor design, full of clutter and superfluous information. However, after using modern designs like Facebook for years, which are much more sparse, I think the lack of detail harms the goal of getting to know other forum/group members.

On Facebook, all I have at a glance is a name and a tiny profile picture. I have found that when people change their profile pics, I no longer recognize them. Overall the Facebook groups seem much more anonymous and members more disposable due to the lack of personalization of presentation within the group. The typical Phpbb design has so much customizable area for each member on each comment, that i think it works like a visual fingerprint. One's brain has a lot to latch on to consciously and subconsciously to store and recall each person.

One criticism within the lobste.rs comments is that the design puts too much emphasis on who is speaking, rather than what is being said. I think whether that is a valid criticism depends on the goals and philosophy of the community. If your aim is to socialize, that is a good thing. If it is to have relatively sterile discourse, something like HN might be better.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good one!

<comment><USER5> :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brings me back.

</comment><comment><USER7> Off topic. But, what's the point of lobste.rs? It's been part of my RSS capture for awhile but it seems like HN that has very few comments.

</comment><comment><USER8> slow clap</comment>


Doing, Thinking, and Machines. - <AUTHOR> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7741/1/turing.html Here is Turing initial claim: I PROPOSE to consider the question, 'Can machines think?' This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms 'machine 'and 'think'. The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words 'machine' and 'think 'are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, 'Can machines think? <comment><AUTHOR> btw, here is Turing's intial claim: I PROPOSE to consider the question, 'Can machines think?' This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms 'machine 'and 'think'. The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words 'machine' and 'think 'are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, 'Can machines think?' is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.</comment>


Ask HN: Does a master's in CS develop you into a better programmer? - <AUTHOR> I'm not a programmer, just a really curious guy. Does a master's in CS make you a more effective programmer (in the workplace)? Or is it merely the most talented programmer choose to do a MS? <comment><USER2> A masters is not geared towards making you a good programmer. There may certainly be a significant amount of programming involved in completing projects and homework, but they don't translate into being an effective programmer at the workplace. If, like me, you spend all of your masters doing research, you could potentially be programming a lot but the requirements are not the same as the industry, and the skills don't directly map to being good at programming in the workplace. Doing research is geared towards providing you with a framework to ask the right questions and search in a structured manner for possible solutions. It also isn't true that the most talented programmers choose to do a Masters. I've seen programmers of all abilities in these programs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some data says no: [http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in- comput...](http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-computer- science-from-a-m-s-in-computer-science-when-it-comes-to-recruiting/)

Getting a masters in CS is a good way to get a visa to the US though. Most MS CS programs are about ~20% US citizens.

</comment><comment><USER4> Disclaimer: I am a programmer, not a computer scientist.

Computer science is a misnomer because it is a field within mathematics. It's about the abstract, theory of computability rather than actually computing with programs. I think this confusion arises from school curricula blending the two together because both are about "computers". It's really orthogonal to programming and has no bearing on one's effectiveness as a programmer.

<comment><USER5> Disclaimer: I don't have a comp sci degree.

I've found having an understanding of the underlying theories supporting the tools (that includes languages and libraries) I use makes me use them better, understand their strengths, weaknesses, and how to improve them. It also helps me look at problems from various perspectives and see how other solutions may fit, including those that don't already have a tutorial or library.

I suspect that if you're an effective programmer, you're doing more than copying and pasting and growing in experience, and you're actually absorbing and apply more computer science than you realize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No. It's not even that second thing.</comment>


Ask HN: What's best way to show YC Your Idea Is Worth Funding? - <AUTHOR> What's best way to show YC your idea is worth funding? You ever read a news article that totally proves your idea is worth funding? If so, how do you properly convey that to YCombinator?<p>While I'm thinking about it, I have a suggestion for a revision to the YCombinator application.  Add a field asking "Have you read any technical news that proves your industry is headed in this direction?  If so, please paste the url's to the articles in the box below." <comment><USER3> Find a customer that wants your product.

Even better - get them pay for it, scan the receipt and use it instead of the application video.

Even better - get enough receipts so you won't need to prove anything to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER4> Explain how you know people want what you're building.

<comment><AUTHOR> 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Several start-ups all trying to do online video curation. But they all think people want CollegeHumor.com or "skateboarding dogs" (to quote Sal Khan of Khan Academy). [http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/31/video-curation-is- growing-u...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/31/video-curation-is-growing-up- shortform-hits-one-million-visitors/)

<comment><USER5> I think he meant in the application rather than here...

(Also, I'd be careful about using news articles as market validation. When I was doing my startup, casual games were all the rage, and a bunch of articles had just appeared on how casual game _creation_ [the space we were in] would be huge. It never panned out. Not only did we fail, but all of our competitors failed too, and the market just didn't develop. If you look hard enough - <USER2> as a startup founder, you look pretty hard - you can find an article to support just about any position. It doesn't mean that position is right, it just means that somebody bothered to write about it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best way? To show that you are worth funding. Their interest is in funding people before ideas. In fact, they are willing to invest in good people with bad ideas because it's easier to change the idea than to change the people. Most good ideas worth funding are discovered not planned.

</comment><comment><USER7> Journalists are no better at predicting the future then you are.

You need to use the underlying data used in the article such as market growth data, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> To be honest, I think your question should be "how to convey to YC that your TEAM is worth funding"

</comment><comment><USER9> First of all, stop tailoring all your efforts to a single funding source. If you're going to invest the effort of putting together a pitch, make sure it is generic enough to be used on N other funding sources.

You have limited time to bring a product to market. I suggest spending this time developing the product and pursuing funding sources that have far less bubblicious attention than YC.</comment>


Today's xkcd – Rotating world clock - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/1335/

<comment><USER2> As someone who collaborates with people in different time zones, I think it would be nice to have a physical version of this that could hang on the office wall.</comment>


Customs returns seized property - Update to a previous submission. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11172303

<comment><AUTHOR> For anyone that missed the original submission - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6892481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6892481)</comment>


Startpad.org Lessons From Singularity University - Tues, Nov. 3rd in Seattle - <AUTHOR> http://startpad.org/countdown/lessons-singularity-university

<comment><AUTHOR> It's free but I think there is limited seating. Anyone planning on going?</comment>


If Chrome doesn't look native, why does the toolkit matter? - <AUTHOR> http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/does-it-gtkqtwin32-really-matter-for-chrome/

<comment><USER2> _The problem is.... Google's Chrome for Windows doesn't look native._

And which app does? MS Office doesn't look native either. Neither does IE. In fact, very few MS apps actually use their guidelines and default widget sets. Office, for example, has a completely different widget set and even has a different toolbar (ribbon).... not to mention a completely different window chrome and that big round button in top left. And many other Windows apps don't follow the guidelines either.

 _A non-native UI that looks the same on Mac, Windows, and Linux would be the answer to such a browser OS. It would indicate that Chrome is its own product - from the codebase to the user experience - and that to the end user it shouldn't matter what OS you're on._

Except that people today do use different OSes and nativeness does matter! Inconveniencing and annoying your users with an intent to make them aware that your app is somehow different is opposite from what you should be doing: conforming to their learned patterns of how their UI works and making the transition to a new app painless and 'invisible.'

I'm in complete agreement with Goodger on this one: none of the cross platform widget sets feel native on any of the OSes. Firefox still feels awkward on OS X and has a lot of deficiencies in the way the text boxes work, keyboard navigation for assistive devices. In-browser widgets like buttons and drop- down menus are just off when you compare them with native widgets (drop-down in particular) and feel weird.

They invoke that 'the uncanny' feeling: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uncanny> They look like the real thing but aren't and give you that uncomfortable feeling.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh it isn't just look and feel. They are re-discovering everything. Just a week ago they were discussing how to solve the "string" problem. They realize they need a common cross platform string class.

For most C++ developers stuff like this has been solved for a very long time. Even WebKit itself _includes_ a free string class. Why wasn't it used from the start? All this re-solving of old issues is puzzling.

Google talks about how they try to sell their products internally first (says Jeff Huber, the company's senior vice president of engineering),

"For many ideas, Google's first and most important audience is its employees, and it typically tries products internally before releasing them."

Why wasn't Chrome used internally? Google presents itself as a Linux shop, but why didn't Linux developers internally help on Chrome with their 20% time? Chrome isn't a new application, it is two a half years old. That should have been more then enough time to at least discover these basic issues. Why did Ben Goodger allow Chrome to create its interface code in a very non portable and Windows only way? As the "lead Chrome UI developer" he should have brought up these problem years ago.

</comment><comment><USER4> Native-ness isn't just there for look+feel, it usually brings speed. I've used Chrome, it's just incredibly fast. It's not just the Javascript engine. Even on pages without Javascript, it's just the fastest feeling app of any type I've used. (I love Linux, I didn't want to have a reason to be tempted to Windows, but it's that good. (Good job Chrome folks!))

<comment><USER5> Agree - chrome is now my default browser purely because it can bring up a window so fast I can barely see a delay, even if I have bogged down the machine with compiling or other intensive tasks. A couple times I have caught myself firing up Chrome to do a quick check on news or mail _while waiting for FireFox to start!_. It is that fast and pleasurable to use. Frankly, I don't know how Google did it.

I suspect the answer is, as much as anything, that Google simply isn't willing to sacrifice control of any corner of the browser to make the user experience fast and slick and that includes optimizing right down to the fine details of the UI toolkit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I get the feeling that Chrome will look similar on Windows and Linux. This would not come as a shock to Windows or Linux users, as there are no real "standard" user interfaces for those systems. Obviously, on Windows and Linux, there are unspoken guidelines and the usual GUI toolkits, so you have many applications that do look similar and a few that look different, but on Mac OS X, an application that doesn't look like it fits with every other one is simply unattractive, distracting and harder to learn. Of course, that ability to learn quickly is detracted from by the non-standard controls that are already in Chrome.

A great strength of Mac OS X is just that -- that it's UI is consistent.

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course Chrome looks native. On Windows Vista, it emulates the design aspects of Vista. It has its own feel, but by-and-large it's modeled around the design theory of Windows. I'm hoping their Mac program will be very much Mac-focused.

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't follow the Windows design paradigm. One of the examples in the article is the dialog boxes that cannot have their buttons pressed by using the "spacebar" key.

They use their own UI controls & elements that behave similar but not identical to their win32 counterparts... in the way any non-native UI toolkit would.

<comment><USER8> If your point is that the buttons don't _behave_ the way they should on Windows, then clearly this is just a bug, and programs can be successful with bugs. I could make the exact same argument about accessibility "such and such program has no support for accessibility and yet still sells really well, so why do we need accessibility?" The idea is to provide quality beyond the minimum which is necessary to get you to use the thing.

If you could make a toolkit that was non-native, but behaved as if native on all its target platforms then obviously that would be key. Also, Chrome currently only officially exists for Windows, a platform whose users are less picky about native look and feel. You would probably have a harder time getting away with this on Mac OS X. Similarly, you can have a java app that runs pretty well on most mobile phones, but a straight port that didn't include native widgets on the iPhone would probably not be well accepted.

<comment><AUTHOR> My point is that you're using javascript pop-up boxes for the browser itself (like the save password prompt) that don't use the win32 code nor conform to its interface behavior.

<comment><USER8> Again, this is a matter of opinion and platform. Firefox had to do a lot of work to make their widgets much _more_ Mac-like because this was one of the biggest gripes from Mac users, the fact that they just had some generic UI elements in their web pages that didn't conform to what they were used to. This is the sole reason the Mozilla Camino project was even started, and again, one of the main focuses of Firefox 3 for the Mac.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Air France Jet Hit Water Largely Intact, Investigators Say - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124654219866085907.html <comment><USER2> Why are air crash investigations so newsworthy?

People should know by now that air travel is much safer than car travel, so this won't affect their safety in any tangible way.

Perhaps this is more about a fascination with flight? Most people would like to learn to fly if they could?

<comment><USER3> I think it's more about a fascination with a puzzle that is very difficult to solve. 200+ don't normally die at once without any explanation as to root cause.

<comment><USER2> So if a mysterious train accident kills the same number, people would be just as interested in that puzzle?

<comment><USER3> If the train disappeared and most of the bodies could not be found, then yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No mayday call? How weird...

<comment><USER5> Not at all : pilots are so busy trying to get the aircraft under control they may not have had time to issue a Mayday. We don't know the time period between loss of control and impact, we don't know much at all.</comment></comment>


Your iPhone uses more energy than a refrigerator - <AUTHOR> http://theweek.com/article/index/248273/your-iphone-uses-more-energy-than-a-refrigerator <comment><USER2> _your iPhone uses about 361 kW-h if you stack up wireless connections, data usage, and battery charging._

This site says 3.51kWh a year to charge an iPhone. So the original claim seems off by 100 times.

[http://blog.opower.com/2012/09/how-much-does-it-cost-to- char...](http://blog.opower.com/2012/09/how-much-does-it-cost-to-charge-an- iphone-5-a-thought-provokingly-modest-0-41year/)

Also, why would you stack charging and usage? It is the same electricity counted multiple times.

<comment><USER3> Third Para: Allocating pro-rata from data centers

 _The slice right now, according to Mills, is about 10 percent, or 1,500 terawatt hours of power. (For context, one terawatt hours is one trillion watt hours, and one watt terawatt hour can power about 90,000 homes.) Much of that energy is going to server farms, those giant clusters of computer servers that power "the cloud," as well as wireless networks._

In order to use an iPhone, you are consuming power on the other side (send side) of wireless and data networks. While this is true at a Macro level, it is sort of a link-baity title. Because, the remedy is arguably more with the data centers, and base stations etc. The phone is just a gateway device.</comment></comment>


The Case Against Dark Matter - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161129-verlinde-gravity-dark-matter/ <comment><USER2> As a general principle I would advise a grain of salt whenever a physicist claims to have solved an outstanding astrophysical problem. Verlinde is a great physicist --- I remember reading Verlinde's paper on entropic gravity when it came out and I'm still excited about that idea. But someone with a background in pure physics often lacks the background in astronomy to know whether their ideas will work. (I remember hearing a visiting physicist present his ideas about stars producing axions, and having an astronomy professor point out that if he was right, Cepheid variables would not pulsate at the observed frequencies.)

The article mentions the Bullet Cluster as one observation that MOND has difficulty explaining. Another observation that I'm not sure how MOND would explain is the dramatic difference in dynamics between a globular cluster and a dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Globular clusters are observed to have virtually no dark matter, whereas some dwarf spheroidal galaxies have somewhere between 1000 to 10,000 times as much dark matter as ordinary matter [1]. These two kinds of objects have comparable numbers of stars and are roughly the same size (though dwarf spheroidals are admittedly larger by about an order of magnitude). This discrepancy can be explained with cold WIMPs [2], but it's hard to understand how some MOND-like process would produce such incredibly different dynamics between the two kinds of galaxies.

I'll admit that I have not looked very carefully at Verlinde's paper. But the evidence for dark matter is much more than galaxy rotation curves these days. A credible alternative to WIMPs has to explain more than that.

All that aside, from a theoretical perspective the work is very interesting because it provides a much-needed framework to understand why something like MOND could exist. But I don't think that any of the direct detection experiments should pack it in quite yet.

[1]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03856](https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03856)

[2]: Well, sort of. Galaxy formation is still a big open problem, and globular cluster formation is probably even less well understood. But with WIMP dark matter it's very plausible that different formation mechanisms would produce objects with different amounts of dark matter.

<comment><USER3> > Globular clusters are observed to have virtually no dark matter

That's a fascinating angle, first time I've read this.

> But with WIMP dark matter it's very plausible that different formation > mechanisms would produce objects with different amounts of dark matter.

Could you expand a bit how WIMPs can explain that? Do dwarf spheroidals have a strong central black hole while globular clusters haven't? Is the galactic black hole needed to capture WIMPs from cosmic background, sort of like gas giants capture lots of moons?

<comment><USER2> Dwarf spheroidals would form in the process of galaxy/structure formation. In this process, it's really dark matter that drives growth, and ordinary matter is just along for the ride. In the early universe the dark matter is diffusely spread throughout the universe, with slight overdensities in various places. These then collapse under their own gravity and form sheets, then filaments, then finally fragment into different clusters. This would produce dark matter haloes of a variety of sizes, some of which would be dwarf spheroidals. I should note that there are problems with this picture --- the predicted distribution of dark matter halo masses does not match the observed distribution. In particular, standard galaxy formation theory predicts far more dwarf spheroidals than are actually observed.

In the case of globular clusters, the cluster would form independently of dark matter. Just as in an open cluster in the galaxy, you would perhaps have some sort of a gaseous cloud of ordinary matter (mostly hydrogen), which would collapse, fragment, and form stars. There are lots of open questions about how globular clusters form, though, so this is just a very vague sketch.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Physicists do not like magic; when other cosmological observations seemed > far easier to explain with dark matter than with MOND, they left the > approach for dead._

But how is "dark matter" not magic?

To my untrained and pretty ignorant eye, dark matter looks like filler: the observation does not match the theory, and so, instead of looking for a better theory, we decided the observation was wrong and couldn't see what was there (and not just a little bit, but the greatest part of it).

Isn't that the definition of superstition? Invisible forces that explain events, in mysterious ways?

<comment><USER5> > But how is "dark matter" not magic?

Because the theory made predictions that were then checked.

> instead of looking for a better theory, we decided the observation was wrong

Except they didn't. They looked for a better theory. In fact, they considered multiple different theories. And the dark matter theory was the one that fit the observations best.

<comment><USER6> "Because the theory made predictions that were then checked."

? What predictions and made and then tested by 'Dark Matter'?

Dark Matter was conceived of the other way around - it helps confirm predictions that don't actually work properly.

If Dark Matter theory made testable predictions, it would be accepted no? Where are these experiments?

<comment><USER7> It's widely accepted. And I'm also a sceptic. More recently scientists have started actually mapping out regions where dark matter is concentrated than - from gravitic perturbations - and have discovered galaxies which contain more dark matter than others, up to 99% as well as the mentioned globular clusters which contain very little dark matter.

<comment><USER6> "More recently scientists have started actually mapping out regions where dark matter is concentrated than - from gravitic perturbations "

This is not evidence of Dark Matter - it's really just quantifying and classifying the perturbations and anomalies derivations in gravity that we see.

Basically, more detail to the observation that 'galaxies are not rotating the way we think they should'.

That doesn't validate Dark Matter, it just more deeply quantifies the unknown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am not a physicist, in fact, I am a complete dilettante, but can the transition from a power law to an inverse law simply indicate that on large scale the universe has less dimensionality? I mean, if we take a suitable definition of dimension, likely along the lines of Hausdorff dimension ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausdorff_dimension](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausdorff_dimension)) then we can see it as a number that defines how volume/surface changes with changing diamater of an observed "sphere" (I know I oversimplify things here). In other words, as we start to measure cosmic distances on a large enough scale, volumes/surfaces covered don't grow quadratically anymore but with a lower rate. This might be even in line with the assumption of a universe curved into itself, i.e. closed. This would change the gravity power law from having a constant 2 power to having a function as the power.

<comment><USER9> (Constant _negative two_ power to having a function as the power.)

<comment><USER8> It depends on whether you imagine a fraction line there or not: [https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/8c6e...](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/8c6ee5510ba3c7d6664775c0e76b53e72468303a) ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the final paragraph:

"If somebody were to come to you and say, 'The solar system doesn't work on an inverse-square law, really it's an inverse-cube law, but there's dark matter that's arranged just so that it always looks inverse-square,' you would say that person is insane," he said. "But that's basically what we're asking to be the case with dark matter here."

Awesome point.

The McGaugh paper is really problematic for dark matter proponents. Amazing that that work wasn't done earlier.

<comment><USER11> They do state:

"They say the amount of dark matter in a galaxy's halo would have precisely determined the amount of visible matter the galaxy ended up with when it formed".

It's not a far fetched idea, but it is problematic because we know of zero such interactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Rotation speed, rotation speed, rotation speed ... that's always been the poster child for dark matter.

But do we _truly_ understand how galactic rotation speeds should vary with distance? A typical galaxy has a hundred billion stars in it. Given such a complex system, can we truly simplify the expected rotation speed to something like "distance squared from the galactic center"?

The "three-body problem" is difficult enough, do we trust our approximations to properly model the "100,000,000,000 solar system problem"?

<comment><USER13> There's a difference between "complex" and "has no closed-form solution".

It's actually a very simple calculation.

But fwiw, a lot of thought and tests have gone into showing that gravity works the same way with feather and bowling balls. With big masses and many little ones. If you have a reason to think it doesn't, discuss it and propose tests...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So is this really anything except an interesting way of deriving MOND? The article says

> Verlinde thinks his theory will be able to handle the Bullet cluster > observations just fine.

but doesn't actually show it doing that. As that's a major differentiator between his system and MOND, shouldn't that have been looked at? Seems to easy to otherwise dismiss this as a weird way of supporting MOND

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm gonna pull my hair out. I saw this:

>> The researchers analyzed a diverse set of 153 galaxies, and for each one they compared the rotation speed of visible matter at any given distance from the galaxy's center with the amount of visible matter contained within that galactic radius.

That just smelled like they think Keplers law applies (which I've been arguing against for ages) so I googled "radial acceleration relation" and found this paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.05917v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.05917v1.pdf) The opening paragraph is this:

>> The missing mass problem in extragalactic systems is well established. The observed gravitational potential cannot be explained by the stars and gas. A classic ex- ample is that the rotation curves of disk galaxies become approximately at (V=constant) when they should be falling in a Keplerian fashion.

To say the gravitational pull at a given radius depends solely on the amount of matter inside that radius is utterly bogus. It is entirely dependent on the distribution of that matter. It is valid if the distribution is a uniform sphere (or a sphere of concentric layers each of uniform density) but that is not the distribution in a galaxy. Likewise, you can ignore all the matter at a larger radius IF it's distributed as a shell (or series of shells) of uniform density - but that is not the case when dealing with rings instead of shells. In my mind, this whole debate has wreaked of a misapplication of the Divergence Theorem from day one. If you thing galactic dynamics have anything to do with Kepler I have a nice bridge to sell you.

<comment><USER16> The use of Keplerian simply refers to the inverse square law, and if you think the inverse square law isn't involved then maybe I should take that bridge off your hands. You seriously think these guys don't know high school physics?

<comment><USER15> The inverse square law applies to 2-body systems ONLY. I do in fact think they know high school physics and are trying to misapply it. The use of that simple physics can sometimes be used in other systems as a special case of the divergence theorem (third year calculus) IF certain conditions are satisfied. I'm just saying they keep applying by missing a key point in the justification for doing so. Perhaps they're not actually using Kepler, but they sure do keep bringing up his name - and I am correct that it's not OK to use that.

As I sometime say - the only dark matter is between the astrophysicists ears. This assumes they're actually using Kepler as a reference for "expected" behavior - some of those guys are smart beyond my comprehension.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > One problem, said Brian Swingle of Harvard and Brandeis universities, who > also works in holography, is that Verlinde lacks a concrete model universe > like the ones researchers can construct in AdS space, giving him more wiggle > room for making unproven speculations. "To be fair, we've gotten further by > working in a more limited context, one which is less relevant for our own > gravitational universe," Swingle said, referring to work in AdS space. "We > do need to address universes more like our own, so I hold out some hope that > his new paper will provide some additional clues or ideas going forward."

Woah. How can AdS model universes have less "wiggle room for making unproven speculations"? There is no AdS universe to observe or experiment in. How could speculations in such universes be "proven"? Or rather, disproved?

<comment><USER18> I think they're talking about mathematical proofs. AdS models are mathematically simpler than the physical universe containing matter, so it's easier to construct mathematical proofs.

<comment><USER17> OK. But proofs about mathematical objects are entirely distinct from testable hypotheses about the actual universe. So it seems odd to compare them. OTOH, there is much "theoretical physics" that's not much more grounded in reality than AdS models ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Xenon1T's result is much anticipated: [http://www.metaculus.com/questions/199/will-the- xenon1t-expe...](http://www.metaculus.com/questions/199/will-the- xenon1t-experiment-discover-wimp-dark-matter/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Or MiHsC/quantised inertia: [http://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.de/2016/11/critique-of- ve...](http://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.de/2016/11/critique-of-verlindes- gravity-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Relevant recent xkcd comic: [https://xkcd.com/1758/](https://xkcd.com/1758/)

<comment><USER22> I guess the state of the art is more complicated than the Department of Astrophysics in the comic admits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The concept of "Dark Energy" is as nebulous as "Dark Matter"

</comment><comment><USER24> Dark matter and dark energy are ad-hoc adjustments to explain discrepancies between observations and theory. The problem with such adjustments is that, being mostly unobserved, they end up with too many degrees of freedom (e.g. a distribution of invisible stuff where the density can be made "just right" to fit the observations), so they are quite hard to falsify. It's a bit like the "landscape" : when you construct a theory that can predict anything, you end up predicting nothing. In my opinion, we leave "science" as defined by Popper when we start doing that.

There is, however, an underlying assumption in all the existing theories of physics, which I see too rarely challenged, and which is easily falsified. It's the idea that the variable "x" in the theory is independent of the physical measurement process being used. In other words, the "x" in MOND is the same as the "x" in GTR and the "x" in quantum mechanics. The topology of a space-time defined by a solid rod of metal in the Pavillon de Sevres (pre-1960 definition of the metre) is the same as the topology of space-time defined by the movement of light in the vacuum (today's definition). And so on.

I believe that our current understanding of physics now has become so precise that we need to take into account subtle differences between this and that measurement process, and rewrite physics in the context of a "more general" relativity, where the laws of physics are to be described independently not just from, say, the state of movement, but more generally independently of the physical process being used. Just like GTR forced us to deal with quantities such as metrics, this more-general relativity would force us to deal with arbitrary transformations between two methods to measure the same thing.

A simple example is when we relate time as measured by the rotation of the earth (definition of "days"), the rotation of earth around the sun (definition of "years"), the decay of populations of C14 ("radiocarbon dating"), and our current cesium-decay based atomic clocks (the definition of "second"). The four laws are obviously correlated, they all measure time. But the "fit curve" between them is a distribution in itself, similar to the "metric field" in GTR.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that if we introduce this kind of complexity, the problem of "dark matter" will have not one, but multiple solutions, possibly different equations, depending on the measurement you are considering. This does not mean we should not look for equations that predict observations, but rather that we should be cautious when correlating measurements that correspond to different physical processes. It is not obvious to me, for example, that we should take for granted that we can safely deduce the distribution of masses from the distribution of luminosities (even if, I'll admit, I don't see any good alternative...)

In quantum mechanics, we do little else with renormalization. When you shift from one scale to another, you need to renormalize to fit the data, because the raw equations would otherwise yield to infinities or other abnormalities. "Shut up and calculate" is frustrating, but if we rephrase that as "observe the universe, it's the ultimate test", it really means the same thing, but is philosophically more grounded.

In the end, MOND may just be the shape of the relation between two measurements of mass at large scale, and Verlinde's paper one first step in understanding how this relationship emerges.

Or not. There are some interesting objections to "statistical emergence" of gravity, or "entropy-based gravity". One of them is how interference patterns are not destroyed by gravity, at scales where, if we were to trust Verlinde's approach, interactions along different paths would affect probabilities enough to be sensible in interference patterns. I've not done the calculations myself to validate if this objection is solid, though. Intuitively, it seems like there is a flaw (the effect of per-state populations on interference should be at most of the same order as the effect of gravitation itself, which is in the "barely observable" category), but I need to spend more time to understand both sides.

<comment><USER25> 'and our current cesium-decay based atomic clocks (the definition of "second")'

Cs-beam and Cs-fountain frequency standards rely on the transitions between the principal microwave resonances of Cs-133 atoms in their ground state. You pop a gas of Cs-133 atoms prepared in one of the hyperfine states into a tunable microwave cavity coupled to a crystal oscillator in a feedback loop which maximizes the transitions of the Cs-133 atoms to the other hyperfine state. The longer the exposure time to the ~ 3.26 cm microwaves and the colder the gas, the better the signal with which to steer the microwave frequency towards the frequency in the SI second. Ideally you have a gas at 0 kelvins spending an infinitely long time in the microwave cavity, and your feedback loop does careful electronic division or multiplication of the tuned frequency to produce a round output signal, often at 1, 5 or 10 MHz exactly.

Decay has nothing to do with it. Cs-133 is stable.

I'm afraid I don't understand your commentary on General Relativity vs MOND at all, especially not the part about the '"fit curve" between them is a distribution in itself, similar to the "metric field" in GTR'.

<comment><USER24> The phrase "cesium-decay" was a rather inadequate shortcut. I was thinking of the excited state "decaying" back to the ground state, but you are right, it was not the right word.

The metric field in GTR is defined by the distribution of matter. So starting with GTR, to make another shortcut, we had to take the distribution of matter into account when "converting" from one set of coordinates (measurements) to another. In other words, the space of "transfer functions" from one set of measurements to another is already quite rich.

Similarly, when you transfer from one measurement of time to another, the "transfer function" is also quite rich. If you want to convert precisely from atomic clock to earth movements, you have to take into account interaction with many planets and other celestial bodies. So again, this transfer function is rather "arbitrary".

My point here is that the laws of physics are no less good or less precise when expressed in years than they are when expressed in oscillations of Cs-133 atoms. Some physical systems, e.g. atomic interactions, will be easier to describe relative to Cs-133. But others (e.g. meteorology) are expressed much more simply if you base them on celestial movements.

If the transfer function between, say, radiocarbon dating and cesium clocks can be practically anything, what tells us that the transfer function between light densities and matter densities can safely be assumed to be practically an identity?

And if it's not an identity, then why should the laws of gravity as expressed using light distributions match the laws of gravity as expressed using matter distribution? I think this is an oversimplification that we need to get rid of.

Hope I'm making more sense to you ;-)

<comment><USER25> I'm sorry, no, this is even less clear to me.

GR has coordinate freedom built into it; you can apply (almost) any set of coordinates (locally) on spacetime and calculate against them as you wish. The metric, however, is fixed by the geometry itself, and it is the metric that determines the interval in _any_ set of coordinates. That's why you can write down e.g. the Minkowski metric in cartesian or spherical coordinates and come up with the same dS^2 -- the spacetime interval -- or as another example the Schwarzschild metric in Schwarzschild coordinates, in- or outgoing Eddington- Finkelstein coordinates, Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates, etc etc and come up with the same dS^2 even though the line element is written very differently in each case, and even though _coordinate_ singularities appear in some systems of coordinates but not in others. (That they vanish in _any_ valid coordinate system shows that they aren't physical singularities; the singularity in a Schwarzschild black hole that does not vanish under at least valid coordinate system is a strong argument that it _is_ physical, although that remains a subject of research.)

One of the main features of GR is that it gives you a clear and mathematically provable mechanism for translating from one set of valid coordinates to another. That's one of the main reason it's called _General_ : the coordinate systems need not be in uniform motion with respect to one another, and even more crucially, they do not even have to be in the same tangent space. There is nothing at all arbitrary about how one "transfers" from one system of coordinates to another: the Bianchi identities on the Einstein Field Equations give the degrees of freedom necessary for a gauge transformation.

The physicality of singularities in some exact solutions of the Einstein Field Equation (like Schwarzschild's as mentioned above) and the work of Kenneth G Wilson has led most general relativists to think of GR as an effective field theory (EFT) valid everywhere just outside of irremovable singularities. That means GR is accurate even _inside_ the event horizons of black holes. Really only the singularities themselves are the problems with GR -- in particular it's the problem of its canonical quantization, and thus the driver for a theory of quantum gravity that works much closer to the irremovable singularities (or better still, makes them vanish).

But because GR is easy to consider an EFT, it is even easier to treat regions of spacetime that are not exactly flat as if they are exactly flat with some perturbations. So, in fact, I do not at all agree with you that "... you have to take into account interaction with many planets and other celestial bodies ..." since in a perturbative approach, their contributions can be removed as irrelevant. Even _nearby_ celestial bodies can be removed as marginal. Here "marginal" and "irrelevant" are vocabulary right from Wilson, and translate very nicely into a Feynman diagram approach by counting loops of gravitons.

Or alternatively, I could _technically_ agree that you have to take into account those bodies you mention, but since you do so simply by ignoring them explicitly on the grounds that their contributions to the metric provably do not matter for the local system under consideration, that contradicts your assertion in the paragraph "Similarly...".

I don't understand how your fourth last to second last paragraphs inter- relate. The first of those approaches an argument about coordinate freedom; the second I cannot decipher at all (it certainly isn't a General Relativity argument; I think you're looking to argue with the Standard Model instead, and that's defined on flat spacetime, and by the EFT argument above, flat spacetime applies in any radiocarbon dating experiment you choose to do on Earth -- and when you repeat the same experiment, the secular variation in the proximity of the the moon or sun or other planets will make not even a marginal difference). And your second last paragraph is I think a question about multimetric gravity -- we have strong evidence for the universal coupling of everything in the Standard Model to the single metric, and if you want to introduce a second metric for some sector of matter, you have to go beyond the Standard Model, and you have the problem of making the coupling just universal enough that you reproduce GR's matches with observation. There are ways of doing that, but most of them have the extra metrics decay extremely early in the history of the universe so that they do not produce ANY observables. Afshordi and Magueijo's recent paper is interesting because they believe they can produce an observable in spite of a decaying extra metric to which light couples. That comes at a cost though: you would have to introduce a zoo of gauge particles in order to make this work at all, which hardly makes the theory more simple than Cosmic Inflation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the App Store Review System Defective by Design?
 - <AUTHOR> http://www.smartphonetoday.com/articles/2008/8/2008-8-25-Is-the-Apple.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the App Store, but folks who "review" stuff that haven't bought it ("wow, the price is too high, so I'm going to give it 1 star!" or "this app should be free") drives me absolutely insane. In a straight-jacket, on the 13th floor of the nut house, in a padded-room, insane.

<comment><USER2> This is weird, cause I have talked about this (ugh, over twitter) with some developers. I think reviews should be weighted, non-purchasers getting less weight than the purchasers. (Among other improvements, like sorting by date specifically, and by version reviewed, showing whether or not they purchased the app.)

Some comments are approaching inanity, but there are going to be excellent reviewers who didn't purchase it and there are going to be other reviewers pointing out something interesting about the application that other purchasers might want to know before buying.

For example, my boyfriend plays the game de Blob more often than I do, and can write a _way_ better review than I can - personally I can't even be bothered to write a review or play the game for more than 30 minutes total...and it's on my iPhone paid for by me. In fact, he loves all the games on my phone more than I do, and so I basically never have a phone to use when he's over and not actively busy doing something else. That's already one example...I could also be beta testing an app and writing about how some version I tested was awesome. There's also the case where there might be an app that is significantly better than that that other people might compare to.

You might say that doesn't happen often, but the app store organization+search+review sorting and all need a lot of work since applications are different from music. Until Apple makes it easier for shoppers in that regard, reviews regardless of the origin can come in handy.

All that, and that if reviews are only from purchasers, the reviews are going to be extremely skewed. Honestly, have you _seen_ some reviews by so-called purchasers, it's all different depending on what they expect and their familiarity with the application and more. I'll be unhappy at a purchaser-only review limitation, even more than at what's going on right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bring up an interesting point.

With Amazon, you can see a reviewers other reviews. A good thing to do might be to identify those who have purchased the product, even if you don't exclude those that haven't.</comment>


Quora Has The Magic: BenchMark Invests at $86 Million Valuation  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/quora-has-the-magic-benchmark-invests-at-86-million-valuation/ <comment><USER2> One of the Quora folks posted a link here about two weeks ago so HN users can bypass the invite system: <http://quora.com/hackernews>

Original post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146>

<comment><AUTHOR> yes but it doesn't work: 500 Internal Server Error

<comment><USER2> Hmm, trying to send invites from within Quora gives that error right now too, so something might be down/broken?

<comment><USER3> i think this is fixed now, but if anyone sees any 500s again, you can e-mail in a bug report to firstname.lastname@example.com . thanks and sorry for the trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> quora is one of the most impressive sites i've seen in a while. here are a few of the details that really impressed me:

* pretty much everything is real time and extremely fast. even if you have 10+ quora tabs open.

* try logging out and having a friend log in. notice how you can log out all current sessions on remote computers, and how boxes are created for each user that has logged in on that computer. logging in then takes just one click (if it was set to remember).

* have a friend look at your profile. start editing your bio or title. the friend will see these changes in real time.

* start typing a response to a question. everyone can see who is responding to a question in real time. (imagine in HN had this amount of integration of real time data)

* the site search at the top is incredibly responsive and returns results for relevant questions, topics, and people all together in a dropdown

* site notifications additionally appear on the pages to which they are related. for example, if i visit a question where i have 3 outstanding notifications, they will all appear at the top of the page. if i visit a user's profile that has recently started following me, i will see that notification at the top of the user's profile.

* they already have a complete mobile site.

* on the implementation side, the html (html5) is already compacted, the js is combined and minified, and Steve Souders' best practices are already taken into account. this is expected for major web applications, but startups and non web-app sites (like blogs) often ignore it for a very long time or never do it at all.

<comment><USER5> Seems like the last thing they need is to really answer all kinds of questions. Otherwise I just might get an answer somewhere on a good old forum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> brief impressions, last used it a few weeks ago:

\- insanely polished for a private beta. (see treyp)

\- nitpick: no full-text search (no indexed answer content to display when query doesn't match any question content) and/or an easy way to return to a question i recently viewed

\- it is so fast. i didn't even notice at first. i just noticed i was clicking, a lot more than usual.

\- it feels like browsing around silicon valley's water cooler (but tamer.) whether quora can keep the feeling of high-quality insight when it's no longer entirely composed of early adopters is the million-dollar question

\- interesting/unusual content, for now. mark zuckerberg asking what companies facebook should acquire for talent, actually getting some interesting answers...

<comment><USER6> that was a bit vague. here's an example of a quality answer (though the real strength is in the consistency of the quality, for now) in response to the question:

How did Chatroulette become such a global phenomenon so quickly?

21 votes by Anon User, Kevin Li, Marc Bodnick, Dave Hodson, more

Anon user: "Chatroulette is the latest in a long line of lower-effort, higher- interaction social marketplaces. It literally has a higher risk-adjusted social ROI than almost any other site in the history of the Internet, and scales downwards especially well.

Let me explain my terms.

R: The (social) return of Chatroulette is an instant video conversation with another individual, a stranger. This basic return has been available in other venues for a while (see WooMe for a dating-specific version). What makes Chatroulette so different is not the high R, but the incredibly, historically low...

I: Investment. Meaning, the sum of risk taken, effort, financial cost, time cost, and technical skill. Chatroulette is near-zero on all of these. There is no effort, not even a sign up--just allow the flash app to access your camera, and you are done (the anti-eHarmony). There is no special skill required--this isn't like dragging your Mom through the facebook photo uploader. There's no incremental financial cost at all. There's no selection, paradox-of-choice paralysis--click a button, and you are matched (a two-way benefit--there's no waiting to be selected by picky counterparts). And, most importantly, there is no social risk--unlike dating sites, you have no idea who the other user is, and can descend into crazy/exhibitionist behavior with wild-eyed impunity.

As mentioned above, Chatroulette scales downwards especially well. Unlike auction marketplaces (divided by products) or dating/service marketplaces (divided by location), Chatroulette is perfectly usable with tens of individuals spread uniformly across the world, of any age or gender, with almost no common interests.

Every time a site comes out that simplifies an existing, popular use case, it does well--even when it offers far less functionality. It is literally disruptive in the Clayton Christensen sense. Think Twitter against Facebook; or the iPod against the many previous mp3 players; or the iPhone against previous smartphones. In the echo chamber of Silicon Valley, we greatly underestimate how high the 'Investment' (especially skill/effort) of using our products is, and are always surprised when 'dumbed down' products come out and do well. Who needs a Snuggie? Who has trouble wrapping a blanket around themselves properly, or thinks putting on a sweater is a hassle? More people than you think."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It took me a bit of time to see what is the real big difference between Quora and the rest:

IDENTITY.

People on Quora use real names. Presumably this affects greatly the type and quality of the content published.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've seen a couple references to Quora recently and I guessed it was just a StackOverflow/MetaFilter hybrid and as much as that might be a decent description I have to say I'm still impressed. Even little things like the clean design, friendly tone in their About page and their "challenges" (<http://www.quora.com/challenges>) all give me a great impression.

<comment><USER9> But is it worth $86M?

<comment><USER10> if YouTube is worth 1.65 billion, then i'd say yes!

<comment><USER9> Actually, when Youtube sold in 2006 November it was already widely popular. 1650/80 ~ 20. Does this site have Youtube's 2006 November popularity / 20? Or potential? (I don't know, I'm asking...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone have an extra beta invite?

EDIT: Sorry to ask here, but after reading that, I didn't get the impression that they were planning to send out additional invites anytime soon. (I just got one from Paul, thanks!)

<comment><USER12> I tried to invite you (using the e-mail address listed on your blog), but I'm getting a 500 error. Anybody else having this problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Impressively made, but I find the user interface rather confusing:

* Middle clicking a link to open in a new tab does not work.

* Where is the search box?

* How can I find a list of recent questions in a topic?

<comment><USER14> On the links I clicked, middle-click-to-new-tab definitely worked.

Search is atop every page, just to the right of the logo -- and autocomplete is wicked fast.

When you click a topic -- which has a blue-background, rounded-edge 'tag' look -- you get the topic page, with a list of 'open questions', 'best questions', and 'topic activity' (both new questions and answers/comments). Not exactly recent questions, but pretty close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have 10 invites. First 10 emails to p at pstam dot com get them. I only ask that you tell me what you're up to (work/startup/school) as I enjoy meeting new folks.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a few invites if anyone is interested. _fyi: Quora requires FB connect to register._</comment>


TSA Withdraws Subpoenas Against Bloggers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/tsa-withdraws-subpoenas/ <comment><USER2> And if they had done the smart thing and lawyered up instantly, then let the rest of the story play out, there would have still been a media storm, saner heads would have stilled prevailed in 24 hours, and they still would be getting off consequence free. Except they'd have working computers and no data in the hands of possibly vindictive TSA agents.

I love cops. Don't ever talk to them.

<comment><USER3> This is an excellent (Regent Law School) lecture that elucidates exactly why you should _NEVER_ speak to the police: [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865#)

<comment><USER4> Awesome video. But what should you say _exactly_ when asked for a statement? Do you say "I will not talk to you", or do you say "I won't talk to you without my lawyer" or "I won't talk to you without immunity?"

And, when do you use this? If you are at the scene of a crime and they ask you to come over and talk to them, do you just say no?

I've never had to do this so I'd like to do it right if it comes up.

<comment><USER2> The magic words are "Am I free to leave?" -- in which case, you have no particular obligation to tell them anything else (your locality may have a rule where you have to tell them your name on demand).

If you are not free to leave, you are under arrest (whether they tell you so or not). That triggers a bunch of Constitutional protections (whether they tell you so or not). If you are arrested, you only say one thing: "I wish to speak with my attorney, please."

(I have no objection with speaking to the cops to say "He went that way, officer!" or "Why yes, I did see the accident." I'm assuming you take the advice in cases where they express adversarial interest in you personally, or cases in which you are obviously in danger. For example, if I had woken up this morning and there was a dead body next to me, I would have summoned the police and lawyered up as soon as they got in the door.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After they imaged the blogger's hard drive in its entirety and also downloaded the contents of both his phones?

And then intimidated the other by claiming they would get him fired from KLM?

Each of these guys should go after the goons, attaching their personal assets if he wins, using a "Bivens" claim.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure that merely apologizing is good enough. The TSA needs to explain how they're going to ensure that these sort of heavy handed tactics won't be used again and what disciplinary actions the agents involved will be facing.

</comment><comment><USER7> We don't make the rules, but we should play by them. In the USA, there is no good outcome to believing, or cooperating with, any police authority at the federal level. Its not a matter of political views, its just the way the system works. Even at the local level, when in doubt, or if their the slightest bit threatening or intimidating, shut up and lawyer up.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is DAU of Dapps so incredibly low? - <AUTHOR> The decentralized internet seems to be the future, but from both usage and utility standpoint, DAU of dapps are still very low(~10k). Why is that? <comment><USER2> 1\. They're not solving real problems anyone has that don't already have solutions that are good enough in some ways and better in others

2\. Even if they are solving problems people have, people aren't aware that they have those problems

3\. Even if people are aware they have those problems they aren't aware that the apps exist

4\. Even if people are aware of the problems and of the apps, learning about and using them doesn't seem to be worth the effort involved

It's sort of like asking why only a few people commute via unicycle.

</comment><comment><USER3> They're new. Almost all are like brand new, and the whole paradigm is brand new. People haven't figured this out yet.

Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains are Dapp with high DAU rates.

They're of course not as new.</comment>


Design Patterns for Avionics Control Systems (1994) - <AUTHOR> http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/acs/acs/acs.html?1

<comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly, one finds 'reactive' programming in such old systems. What's old is new again!

 _" From a structural perspective, an ACS may be seen as an instance of a Model-View-Controller (MVC) design[7]. An ACS maintains a ``reactive'' model of the world that is controlled via updates in response to new data sources"_

</comment><comment><USER2> It's interesting that the GoF Design Patterns book was already out at this time. I didn't know it was that old. In 1994 I had only a vague idea of what OO design was. I was still mostly designing hardware and in my area of software (embedded systems), there were still lots of arguments over whether C should be used instead of the various Assembly languages!

After having to implement 16-bit long division in assembly on a processor that only had a single 8-bit accumulator I vowed to never again use a CPU that didn't support C very well. One painful experience was enough to cause me to switch.

That MVC was in use for this isn't surprising: by early 1998 I was seeing it being strongly advocated for embedded systems user interfaces.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should also add that this is written by Doug Lea, the same guy behind a lot of java.util.concurrent.</comment>


Ask HN: article about public Geckoboards deleted - <AUTHOR>

There was an article on dashboards from Geckoboard which were 'exposed' through search engines. The submitted story got deleted, as well as the blog article on seogadget. What happened? <comment><USER2> no idea, but the info is still here - [http://www.mydogear.com/articles/52399361a97dca7f9bb1698a](http://www.mydogear.com/articles/52399361a97dca7f9bb1698a) [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ageckoboard.com+-inurl...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ageckoboard.com+-inurl%3Awww+-inurl%3Asupport&oq=site#q=site:geckoboard.com+-inurl:www+-inurl:support&start=10)</comment>


Riley Walz: a 16 year old maker - <AUTHOR> https://enlight.nyc/makers/riley <comment><USER2> I'll have to give Routeshuffle a try. Nice concept.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this. Amazing work, Samay & Riley!</comment>


The Architecture of Open Source Applications: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler - <AUTHOR> http://www.aosabook.org/en/ghc.html

<comment><USER2> I just read it myself and I must say it gave me a very structured overview of the GHC architecture as well as some advice and confirmation when programming in C. Particularly:

(1) "The general principle is: if a program is going to crash, it should crash as soon, as noisily, and as often as possible. (This quote comes from the GHC coding style guidelines, and was originally written by Alastair Reid, who worked on an early version of the RTS.)"

(2) "The code of the RTS is littered with assertions to check these kinds of things. Assertions are our go-to tool for finding bugs before they manifest; in fact, when a new invariant is added, we often add the assertion before writing the code that implements the invariant."

(3) "So, the debug RTS has an optional mode that we call sanity checking. Sanity checking enables all kinds of expensive assertions, and can make the program run many times more slowly. In particular, sanity checking runs a full scan of the heap to check for dangling pointers (amongst other things), before and after every GC. The first job when investigating a runtime crash is to run the program with sanity checking turned on; sometimes this will catch the invariant violation well before the program actually crashes."

This article made me respect the people around Haskell even more.</comment>


With FriendCSV, Data Sneaks Out Facebook's Back Door - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/23/with-friendcsv-data-sneaks-out-facebooks-back-door/ <comment><USER2> Heh. I love how the screenshot poster is glad to show you how many Harvard and Stanford alumni he knows. It reminds me of "The E-List A-List" ([http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/09/13/1999_09_13_050_T...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/09/13/1999_09_13_050_TNY_LIBRY_000019037) summary, but sadly not online -- available in "Fierce Pajamas, I think).

</comment><comment><USER3> Haven't apps just like this gotten banned already?</comment>