How revolving doors are more cost-effective than traditional doors - <AUTHOR> http://sustainability.mit.edu/projects/revolving-doors <comment><USER2> This is closely related to my field of work, so I feel the need to be pedantic.

Please note my criticisms should not be taken to knock the thrust of the work itself. The research question had to do with social effects, while I am criticizing the modeling behind the infiltration estimates.

First of all, the "stack effect" is not the most important driver of flow in modern buildings (especially not ones that have revolving doors). Mechanical systems are designed to dominate stack and wind-driven flows, precisely because engineers want to control the flows in the building. The analysis presented on the web page and in the research report discussed only stack and wind effects.

Second, the equations shown in the figure on the web page are from a steady- state "multizone" modeling approach. Steady-state models don't represent swinging doors well, because of several important transient effects: (1) momentum effects associated with the intermittent nature of the flow (makes airflow smaller than a steady-state model would suggest; and (2) active pumping by the door (makes airflow larger than a passive transient model would suggest).

Third, I think the blanket statement that "heating is less efficient than cooling" is just flat-out wrong. Heating is pretty easy-- just plug in a lightbulb, and 100% of the electricity it burns gets converted to heat. For this reason, many buildings have core zones that require cooling year-round.

Fortunately, I don't think any of these criticisms affect the broad validity of the work. Their modeling seems to have been driven largely by experimental studies, not by the material described on their web page and in their paper. Therefore one can assume they got the right order of magnitude (one might also note that the cited papers are from 1958 and 1961-- in other words, the basic technical part here is not new, and it's unlikely they botched it too badly).

One final criticism. MIT has a very good faculty that specializes in building energy issues. Any of them could have pointed out these problems, and helped guide a much stronger technical analysis. Unfortunately, none of that faculty seems to have been consulted for this study (the acknowledgments list a bunch of urban studies and management faculty, plus people from the facilities department). I know this was just a class exercise, but it seems to me representative of the sorts of analyses that can result when management people start mucking about in technical matters...

</comment><comment><USER3> At a number of commerical buildings I frequently, I... frequently see people use the swinging doors located to the side of the revolving door (for ADA compliance, if nothing else). They do this even when there is no traffic at the revolving door.

Often, they will hit the button to automatically open the doors. This is even worse than using the door manually, as the timer that controls the door motion usually leaves the door open for many seconds -- presumably to accommodate a slower user or one with a wider configuration, e.g. a wheelchair -- before beginning to close. Mind you, these are people who appear to be fully mobile and not unduly hindered or handicapped.

Quite often, I'll see people use the swinging doors to exit, where they just hit the crash bar and proceed. Presumably, they find this quicker (by a matter of a second or three) and more convenient.

(The cynic in me says: And after all, if they are even aware of the difference in efficiency, they are not personally paying the heating bill and cooling bills.)

I wonder whether a brief, one page "flyer" version of the linked information could be effective in altering behavior. I wouldn't ask permission to post them; I'd just engage in a guerrilla campaign of slapping them up when and where I can get away with it. Preferably, the flyer would have a professional appearance and the salient information would be encapsulated in an easily scanned sentence or three in large font. There might be more detail below, and hopefully also an eye-catching graphic.

I'm no graphics artist, but maybe I'll give it a go.

<comment><USER3> My (very) first draft ended up being what I stuck with. I was going to position the text, maybe add a border, etc. But when I printed this out, it seemed a good combination of minimal and to the point.

I realize the value I quote is specific to the MIT environment studied, but I'd rather not complicate things. It gets the point across, and the URL is given for those who want to investigate further.

[https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1boia8nkdobOWQzZWEwNTg...](https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1boia8nkdobOWQzZWEwNTgtYTgyYS00OTQ1LWExYjEtYTE2Yjg3NDMzZDgw&hl=en)

(Not that I expect much credit for this simple approach. But now I have something I can put in my bag, ready for the next opportunity.)

EDIT: Also, the term "use" might be considered vague or otherwise non- specific. But it is brief and fits the intended tone of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). In my mind, "use" doesn't create the mental 'stutter' that "consume" or another verb might. And perhaps its repetition in the second sentence provides a subliminal reinforcement. (While the use of "do" avoids repetition within the same sentence to negative effect. Call the literary criticism police; I'm out of control.)

<comment><USER4> I think "Swing doors waste ..." is more accurate. And perhaps easier to grasp. Doors don't _use_ energy, unless they're motorized.

<comment><USER3> I was attempting to address this in my "literary criticism moment". "The average Joe" is, in my thinking, unlikely to be this specific in their analysis. "Use" gets the point across without invoking more complex topics (what does "consume" or "waste" mean) and/or words that may already be politically and emotionally loaded.

As for the "Please consider" part (responding to the other response in this branch of the discussion tree), I didn't want to be "telling" anyone what to do. I thought it would be more productive / invoke a more positive response to ask them to think things through for themselves. Also, since I'm not the building owner nor manager, it's not really my place to dictate policy. I'm making a suggestion to the individual reading the sign.

I don't go into more detail on the sign, because detail -- or the impression of same -- tends to put people off. If anyone's really interested, the cited URL is pretty simple and "MIT Energy Initiative" is pretty easy to remember and google. (Also/instead, maybe I was just lazy.)

Thanks for the feedback, though. Valid points. I'm just explaining my reasoning, not seeing them as invalid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I never thought of revolving doors as a way to save energy through heating. I wonder if this is due to the fact that revolving doors have significantly larger 'footprint' that means the actual door mechanism doesn't interfere with the natural convection currents of a building.

Simply think about how convection works (in the winter) in a building it circles from 'warm' interior walls to 'cold' external walls (especially if they're glass), which at ground level causes cold air to move along the ground towards the interior of the building. Now what happens when you open a door to the frigid outside? The cold external air will hijack the convection current and be drawn inside. The opposite holds true in summer when the interior is colder than the exterior, however with the convection currents reversed the system is hijacked again and warm air rises from the door and up the interior wall, similarly cooled air from the buildings interior now flows through the open door, further enhancing the cycle.

I've seen these convection patterns many times inside buildings, especially with steam during cooking. For instance, boil a kettle in front of a window (especially a large, or poorly insulated window), if it's summer the steam will roll up the wall and billow across the roof, in winter the steam will get dragged down over any counter tops and to the floor (if you're lucky, you can sometimes see the steam rise in the middle of the room, or conversely in summer it may sink at the centre of the roof).

Incidentally, I never thought being an avid tea drinker would actually contribute to my scientific knowledge.

<comment><USER6> I think you're making the analysis more complicated than it needs to be. Revolving doors are more energy efficient because less inside air is exposed to the outside. Or, from the article:

 _The revolving door stops conditioned air from moving freely. An open swing door is like letting go of a balloon- the air rushes out of the opening. A revolving door is never open- seals remain in contact with the walls of the door at all times. Only the air in the chamber with the person going through the door is transferred._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I often refer to revolving doors as parallel to serial converters. I my last employer's building, when walking out in a group we had to form into a two by two column to get out of the building through the two revolving doors.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder about this every time I go through a revolving door. I'm glad to see a webpage speak to it.

You can also speak to anyone who works near both revolving and regular doors, such as building receptionists. They will quickly tell you the revolving door lets far less cold in, and will probably tell you with a good deal of frustration how much they hate the regular doors.

</comment><comment><USER9> Revolving doors scare me...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACtW09PT7fY>

<comment><USER10> That looks like a fine example of sound safety engineering at work. All doors are risky in highly windy environments. My neighbor is missing several finger tips due to a wind-slammed door. I've also witnessed a sliding door dislodged from its tracks and tumbling down the street. In this video, the safety glass shattered as designed, leaving the man startled, but unharmed.

<comment><USER9> From what I understand, it's actually a safety system malfunctioning. During a fire, the 4 doors are supposed to collapse together, to let people go straight through. For some reason, it tried to switch to fire mode with the guy still inside.

<comment><USER10> Interesting... why would they collapse with that amount of force? It seems like it is collapsing awfully fast to be by design, not wind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A fun thing to do (if you're not inconveniencing anyone) with automated swinging doors (that swing out). Because of the finite state machine in the door controller, if you step on the pad on the outside (where the door swings to), you can block your friend inside.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would save even more energy if they were attached to a generator...

<comment><USER13> You're probably just joking, but in case you aren't, no it would just cause all the users of the door to have to consume that much more in calories.

<comment><USER14> The door must be hinged, it also has a braking system to prevent it from rotating too quickly. Adding resistance to drive a generator in place of heat/sound generation seems not unreasonable. In cars I think they call it regenerative braking.

Of course an analysis of the heat loss path will help to determine if this is worthwhile or if the heat can be used more directly to aid heating the building.

<comment><USER13> A regenerative system on a door that has brushes that cause friction with the sides isn't going to make more power than it will cost to create a regenerative braking system in the first place. It adds a whole layer of complexity that will affect reliability and in the end it's going to 'save' piddly little bits of power.

If you take the cost of an energy storage system you have to divide the price of the unit by the amount of power that you can buy for that money discounted with what you think power will cost over the lifetime of the unit.

This will most likely come out negative.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bstreet.io Beta: A fun Cryptocurrency Wiki for beginners to understand any coin - <AUTHOR> https://bstreet.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Guys,

My friend and I are creating a Crypto Wiki to explain all coins in simple to understand language. We feel that there are too many coins and many of them are difficult to understand.

We are currently still in Beta and still building out the site. Would love any feedback or thoughts from the community.</comment>


Is Nvidia abandoning OpenCL? - <AUTHOR> http://forums.developer.nvidia.com/devforum/discussion/9851/opencl-and-nvidia-something-without-a-future-

<comment><USER2> The conditions for OpenCL adoptions just aren't there yet. There were just two major players and nVIDIA didn't regarded itself as obliged to comply with external (neutral) specs. Now when Intel is planning to get in with it's on processing array, it might get different at some point in the future. A standard is usually adopted to solve a mess. The current state in the field is not messy enough right now.</comment>


The Problem with Job Titles - <AUTHOR> http://blog.workshape.io/the-problem-with-job-titles/ <comment><USER2> So instead of the ambiguous text 'Software Engineer' we now have 10 ambiguous texts ranging from 'Analysis' to 'Data Science'. I don't really see how that solves a problem, since these underlying concepts are also quite hard to define consistently.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your comments. Whilst we cannot remove ambiguity completely from our solution - we can minimise it. The ambiguity of text really comes into play in CVs and job descriptions. We attempt to minimise the ambiguity by asking software engineers/anyone involved in software development to describe their work in a uniform way and not relying up the traditional artefacts. So whilst the terms have ambiguity to them, companies and people are answering the same question and we are using those answers to match people so that they can begin a conversation.

<comment><USER4> I've got a problem. I've been coding for 12 years, yet have zero professional experience. How does your service rank me?

<comment><USER3> We don't do any ranking per se we just present how you want to spend your time. So it does not factor it in. It is up to you to decide what level of seniority the type of position you would consider going for.

It might be a bit misleading that we use Github for sign up right now, this is mainly just to ensure only developers are signing up - as the service only exists for them currently. We do not use Github for any number crunching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great underlying data, but sad to see it visualized as radar charts.

\- Each category majorly affects the reading of the category next to it, which isn't helpful in non-sequential categorizations

\- The difference between two adjacent categories creates a unique angle and shape that is purely extraneous information

\- The relative sizes are hard to read as the underlying quantities aren't proportional to the displayed areas

Although not the prettiest possibility, a grouped column chart (maybe groups for front-end, back-end, maintenance, culture, etc.) is a simple example that avoids many of these issues and has very good readability at a glance.

<comment><USER3> This is a fair point and something we are actively pursuing. Right now the radar plot represents a trade off between an effective interactive form of visual input that is also compelling and provides an easy mechanism for visual comparison (with the shapes overlapped).

Appreciate the feedback.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, if you can come up with a way to give the viewer a "sense" of the person at a glance it would go a long way. Maybe add colors? Or maybe consider that some metrics are pretty related and could be represented separately. Frontend / backend could be represented as a continuum by itself. UI/UX are sort of tied with front-end, so coming up with a way to link those together might be nice. Perhaps you could use the data you have to see what tends to be linked together and come up with 2-3 representations that communicate what you're going for quickly.

<comment><USER3> An interesting idea - thanks!

As for the trends check out these links to see histograms showing related aspects according to different job titles:

[https://www.workshape.io/infographic/frontendengineer](https://www.workshape.io/infographic/frontendengineer) [https://www.workshape.io/infographic/backendengineer](https://www.workshape.io/infographic/backendengineer) [https://www.workshape.io/infographic/fullstackengineer](https://www.workshape.io/infographic/fullstackengineer)

<comment><USER5> really cool data in those distributions, definitely spent way too much time flipping back and forth from one tab to another. Maybe unsurprisingly, javascript is every groups' most reported skill and full-stack engineers tend to be more senior. It'll be exciting to watch as your data set grows

<comment><USER3> We will continue to share our data set and insights. When we have more resources we will undoubtedly spend more time on analytics and infographics so that we can share back with the community on our findings.

Thanks for the comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the results have to do with your questioning. For example, I don't want to spend my time testing, but I have to do it if I want to write high quality software. So some people give testing a 0, because it's not something you actively _want_ to do. And others give testing a 5, because they know that whatever job they'll take, they probably have to test their code. I don't really see much difference to the classic self-made bullet-point-list of skills.

<comment><USER8> _For example, I don 't want to spend my time testing, but I have to do it if I want to write high quality software._

Why?

 _Someone_ has to do the testing, obviously, but why does it have to be _you_ just because you want to write good quality software? Why can't you work with a brilliant QA[1] team who can generate an awesome set of processes and tests based on your specifications? You don't have to do the bit you find boring if there's someone else around who loves doing it and will do a better job of it because they _don 't_ find it boring.

Giving up parts of the development process is part of being in a team. A _very_ important part.

Using the idea in the article along with good knowledge of what's needed in the particular problem domain, it should be possible to use 'workshapes' to put together a very suitable team of people for a project.

[1] Important note for the unfamiliar: Most QA teams are actually QC teams. QA (quality _assurance_ ) has to happen from the very first stages of a project, putting in processes that assure the right level of quality will be met. QC (quality _checking_ ) happens at the end where someone goes through a project and makes sure it's been done well. If your "QA" only happens at the end then it's QC, and it's probably not helping you build the best product you're capable of building.

<comment><USER9> When you start dividing responsibilities horizontally like this, IME you end up producing worse software. Being responsible for testing drives you to good design. Being responsible for deployment raises considerations you might otherwise miss. When development and QA are separate it's all too common for only one to have an understanding of the actual customer requirements.

Better to slice vertically. Everyone takes responsibility for a small piece of functionality, end-to-end.

<comment><USER10> If you have ever read about Carrot in Pratchett's Discworld series, you may have a new understanding of laziness.

Carrot, you see, is so lazy that he exercises every day, because it is easier to accomplish things in a fit body than in one that is fat and weak.

Testing your own code is that sort of laziness. You write automated unit tests so that you will never have to look at or touch that particular bit of code ever again.

Having that sort of laziness will also make you an expert in design, because good design allows you to write concise, maintainable code, which makes your job easier.

<comment><USER11> That's not Carrot, that's Victor whatsisname from _Moving Pictures_.

<comment><USER10> So it was. Victor Tugelbend. My memory is not what it once was. Or I assume it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a fan of the WorkShape matching algorithm. The form isn't in regards to proficiencies but rather what your ideal job function would be spanning all proficiencies.

Realistically, one's experience isn't likely to match up with their ideal working environment.

Trying to pair an employer's requirements to an applicants ideal job would require an order of magnitude more users on both sides before you see realistic matches.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1) Are people good at evaluating what they want? Its a liberal arts truism that they aren't. Enormous piles of literature about non-technical topics "love" "lifestyle" etc. I'd be shocked if humans are truly excellent at self evaluation uniquely for technical topics.

2) (Only kinda kidding) Where's emergency fire fighting? Escalated customer support?

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting and thought provoking article. I wonder if this could take off as a concept and change the way we define ourselves? I like the concept.

One thing that is lacking however is perhaps an understanding of what job titles are today. I haven't formally been handed a job title in many years, so long in fact that I honestly can't recall which previous employer was the last to grant me a specific pigeon hole at the personnel level. (Yes, I deliberately use the antiquated term for HR to illustrate how long ago this may have been).

In this day and age job titles for me and my peers appear to be ultra concise summaries of what capacity people are most recently working in, as opposed to formally designated titles. Perhaps we're stretching the word title.

Regardless, the fact that these charts better represent the fluid nature of how interests and activities change, this would be a nicer solution. Two thumbs up.

P.S. I say this with no snarkiness, I wish people would proof read articles they publish.

<comment><USER14> P.P.S. I'd love to see the ability to add myself as a remote worker. I had to choose my closest major city, which doesn't accurately reflect how I work.

<comment><USER3> We're in the process of considering a number of new input fields for both organisations and users. This is one that we intend to add in the next few days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A pretty good way to find people that you want to hire. Perhaps if we can add some experience graphs along with these, we can get a good platform up that actually makes head hunting really easy for small companies who do not have the time or the money to do this properly.

<comment><USER16> thanks sparaker - its Hung, CEO of Workshape - thanks for your comment. Time / money is what we want companies to save, not only at point-of-hire but also in terms of hiring the right person for the opportunity. Its a blind match on both sides, so we think both parties are able to trust the match more than they would in traditional job discovery platforms.

As for experience / bio - we're probably pull in social data via an aggregator at some point.

<comment><USER15> I am surely looking forward to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, first things first: Love the software and the concept of visualizing your activity spread in a radar plot. Well done!

Now for the rant: I am an IT architect. There are many architects working in IT but few of them do anything that is related to what I do. I see job postings for Enterprise Sharepoint Architect and I cry a little, others for CTO/Architect/senior developer and I question if they are maybe hiring for 3 positions and are just really bad at writing jobspecs. I often have VPs working under my direction and govern the work of Project Managers and yet people contact me and ask if I'm interested in a devops role.

Recruitment is broken and I hope companies like workshape.io are here to fix it.

<comment><USER18> If you think "architect" is too vague, think of the poor "vice-president" :) As you say yourself, "I often have VPs working under my direction"

<comment><USER17> Good point, people and function managers get called all sorts of job titles, VP, Head of, Team Lead, Manager, etc and its funny to see how multinational (specifically EU/US) companies deal with this since there is a bit of a "dick measuring" competition for nicest sounding titles among peers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, let's plug these shapes into a regressor / ranker / classifier, along with some possible target variables (career path, survival rates, yearly office peer ratings, salary after 5 years,) for as many balanced samples as possible, and see what predictive power these might have!

Or, I guess the graph itself could also be considered a resume differentiator / sales technique.

Edit: Oh, I see. They're heavy on the highly personalized matching angle.

<comment><USER20> Yes, that would be interesting data. Most companies would output reports from their HRIS systems in wildly different formats, and you'd have to adjust for industry, geo/currency, year, gender/ethnicity/language, and all sorts of things. But just getting that data and the sensitivity that goes with it would be near-impossible unless you were a salary survey company. And then, they get job-level data and not per employee. They charge serious money for the services of analyzing this data and do not make their data available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It sucks that we are so three-dimensional in our thinking. This "Workshape" is really a 10-dimensional world where we "wander" in our careers by spending time/energy along some axis. Sometimes we actively pursue a direction, "developing my back-end-skills/archictecture" and sometimes we are more/less forced in a direction "this needs testing/documentation". The result is a traveled path which is "my experience", and a direction which is my "desired trajectory forward".

Matching would then be a spatial questions: Have you been [here]? Where are you heading?

Stupid physical world.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes, job titles an CVs/resumes are out of date. People talk about the future of work but for a lot of us it's already here.

This is great, although I have a different approach, namely [https://www.somewhere.com](https://www.somewhere.com) and specifically [https://www.somewhere.com/what-is-somewhere](https://www.somewhere.com/what- is-somewhere)

<comment><USER23> Just checked them out - but on a first glance I have trouble getting any meaningful data from the first few user profiles I clicked.

Generally what I look for on a CV or whatever a potential applicant sends over:

\- Where have they worked? For how long? And what did they do?

\- What did they study?

That's it - I have about 5-15 seconds to find and read that information. If there's something there that I like, then I dive into the rest of what they've written. Am I still interested? Now I'll start digging through their portfolio, web presence etc.

What I am not interested in (until much later in the hiring process) is the random blurbs / thoughts that make them who they are which I think somewhere.com puts on the forefront. It is something I'd glance at to get a feel for who they are as a person, but it really doesn't solve the "CV" delima (if there is one).

<comment><USER22> Yes, absolutely.

Somewhere has a lot more of the between-the-lines information, and we're getting into some of the more linear data now (see [https://www.somewhere.com/visualcv](https://www.somewhere.com/visualcv)).

So that in that, finding people who fit your work style over matching specific skills and experiences. However, you're spot on as both approaches need to pass the glanceability test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very good idea, and nice front end implementation. However, for the masses to chew it, it has to be properly advertised. Otherwise you shall have to physically wait until all 30-somethings HR managers and recruiting agents will die and take their prejudice to their graves. (This is how process of dissemination of new views on old things usually take place in science).

</comment><comment><USER25> It really was only a matter of time before Hung Lee created something like this. He's one of a very small group of people that truly 'gets' hiring in todays environment and I'm really not surprised to see workshape gaining traction. We're still relatively new users but we have already arranged a handful of interviews via the platform.

<comment><USER16> Thanks Peroni - appreciate your comment. We don't forget your early and continuous support was critical to Workshape.io. Love to see how we can help further - time for us to meet up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> An interesting discussion on /r/AskEngineers:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/2w4q6j/worried...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/2w4q6j/worried_about_job_title/)

This seems to echo what's been said here, for the most part, but the concern of getting through HR is very real.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sigh; the categories make no sense.

Seriously, someone is looking for RabbitMQ-something? I mean, do they _really_ look for someone who deeply understands RabbitMQ or do they look for someone who can administer it or do they look for someone who can use it's language bindings correctly after skimming through docs?

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh now this is cool. I tried to do something similar for designers a while back[0] but this is a much nicer system! Would love if you added a designer version!

[0] [http://codepen.io/jamesdelaneyie/pen/uIdie](http://codepen.io/jamesdelaneyie/pen/uIdie)

<comment><USER3> Like it! We are definitely looking to roll the service out to other verticals. Designers will most likely be next considering the complimentary nature of what you guys do! Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER28> Glad to hear it! Best of luck lads :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This immediately identified a very good match for me. It's brilliantly built, I'm very impressed.

They could do with a little bit of narrative to explain that you're now free to converse with the potential employer, at the point where the conversation thread opens up.

5 thumbs up.

<comment><USER3> Thanks - really glad it found a match for you. I'll note down your comment - we do need to improve the UX in this area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> And yet, all the variety within the given categories will only cover a bunch of web developers. I cannot relate to any of the categories in the article, but yet I think I'm a software engineer.

</comment><comment><USER31> I actually need to update my CV, glad I came across this. Think I'll add one for work experience and another for current perception of 'How do you want to spend your time'.

</comment><comment><USER32> I like their ideas, but the only thing that changed for me with the shapes is, that I have a profile that doesn't match any job offering. So no win for me, lol

<comment><USER16> Hey k_3, its Hung, CEO of Workshape.io here. Thanks for signing up and for your comment. We know that the 'no match' screen feels like failure, even when its anything but!

Its simply a case that no employer has seen the wisdom of designing a job opportunity that meets your interest! And its highly likely to be a question of scale i.e not enough companies on the platform.

In any case, we need to get better at that screen and are aiming to produce analytics to describe job distribution (geography, tech stack etc) so that users who see it will come away with better value.

Ping me if you have any more input!

<comment><USER32> Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't take this personally.

I just wanted to say that this is a bigger problem than you think. The companies have some skills in mind when they want to hire and packing them into a job title with description or a radar chart doesn't change anything.

I think everyone is fully aware that these titles doesn't mean much. I have read so much different descriptions of one title, that I don't read the titles anymore.

<comment><USER3> We aren't completely transfixed by job titles, this was just the blog post headline and one component of current recruitment practices we dislike. Unfortunately recruiters may not be so aware of job titles not meaning much - it is still common practice to perform key word search on other platforms to identify candidates. This is a behaviour we are looking to disrupt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Fascinating approach to the matching.

"No CVs" sounds awesome, but I think companies would ask applicants for their CVs in the end anyway.

Love d3 animations on the landing page.

<comment><USER16> We think so too, and that's ok. Workshape.io is an attempt to bring the 'sentiment match' to the beginning of the hiring process. We think if both parties know that there's compatibility in terms of interest, then they should be good to go further conversation. Its a de-risking tool, I think

[Source: I'm Hung Lee, founder]

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> All eye candies, no insight. It is a good idea to have more accurate match between positions and people, but only if both sides are honest.

</comment><comment> andrey-g That's why we call ourselves back-end/front-end/ui/embedded (software) engineers.

<comment><USER35> One problem I have w/ the back-end/front-end distinction is that at least to me that implies one is working on a web or mobile application.

For instance, the product I work on daily has no UI (ok, it has a 2 page UI used by an ops group) - is that "back end" when there's no "front end"?

<comment><USER36> Your front-end is your 2 page report. It's not about size but separation of concerns, nothing to do specifically with web apps.

<comment><USER35> Right, although to me "back end" implies "feeding the front end" which isn't the case here, rather that 2 page report is more of a side channel and the consumer is another data processing engine.

And apologies - this is a bit OT here and I'm not trying to be difficult nor argumentative, I've just often wondered if the majority of people view backend/frontend as specialized terms like I do or if it's really just a generic term for "works on visualization/UI" and "works on the other stuff"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would love to see potential candidates add this work shape for their CVs

</comment><comment><USER38> Finally, a Rorschach test for developers!

</comment><comment><USER39> Seems like some pretty cool concept. Love the visualisation - quite a different way to think about job descriptions.

<comment><USER16> thanks Coogle! Our entire thing is that job descriptions actually don't do a great job of the describing. Text is not the best way to describe human work - its too ambiguous, too hard to make / read and entirely reliant on subtext / context. We think the radar plot is a better way. Glad you like the product - stay with us, a lot more to come from us</comment></comment>


Best Buy and Verizon Jump Into E-Reader Fray, With iRex  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/technology/internet/23ebooks.html?_r=1&ref=technology <comment><USER2> I really wish someone would essentially take the Kindle DX, strip out all the wireless network stuff, touch screens and everything else not directly connect to displaying pdf, html and txt files, and sell it for $150-200 less than the Kindle.</comment>


Ask HN: While learning to code, should I worry about CS theory? - <AUTHOR>

In addition I would say that I don't want to be a developer. I am a non-tech founder, learning to code only to perform better as a founder. I already outsourced a prototype, so I am learning only what I need to deal with it (front-end, C# and Azure management).<p>My decision for now is to focus only on practical courses (i.e. Treehouse, CodeCademy and Head first! C# book). I am wondering if I should use some of the more academic, theoretical courses, such as CS courses on coursera.org (e.g. Algorithms, Part I, from Princeton). In the future, this is the kind of knowledge that interests me, but for now, I can't afford a slower learning curve. Is it worthy? <comment><USER2> I strongly disagree with stray and edent.

You have already admitted that you do not want to be a developer. I assume you want to be merely _proficient_ in software engineering because that will help you build prototypes/MVPs and will help you outsource work / find a technical co-founder. You've admitted that right now you only want to learn what's essential.

Someone who builds quick prototypes and glues together APIs and frameworks does not need very much knowledge of theoretical CS. Even someone who is technical and builds web and mobile apps full-time only needs a very superficial knowledge of CS theory (data structures / algorithms).

You are on the right _general_ path in terms of learning to code. Understand that Treehouse and Codecademy are _extremely_ basic, to the point where you honestly would not be able to build very much after having gone through them. Head First C# should be more in-depth than both of those. I'm not actually sure what type of programs you want to create (are you building windows apps?). There is no substitute for actually going out and building things.

I can tell you straight up that Algorithms Part I is way overkill right now (red-black trees and heapsort are fascinating and are studied by any college CS freshman, but are really not relevant to you), and you will probably never reach a point in terms of technical proficiency where those topics would be helpful to learn.

Here is some CS-y stuff (really really basic stuff) that might be helpful to learn: the difference between an array, a dictionary, and a set (and the performance differences in terms of insertion and lookup). Knowing what stacks and queues are is also helpful. I've listed topics that you could read up on in about an hour. Honestly, knowing just those topics, you would probably know as much theoretical CS as you'll ever need to know as a jack-of-all-trades founder.

Even if you wanted to one day be a technical co-founder (for web/mobile apps), three or four online classes would just about cover all the theoretical CS you would need to know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, that was really helpful. I already have a MVP, so this is more about iterating it than building new ones. It is a web app, written in C#, running on Azure, that is why these are my focus. I will take a look on the topics you mentioned.

<comment><USER2> Interesting... It's very uncommon for startups to develop web apps using ASP.NET (I'm assuming that's what you're using C# and Azure for). Is there a reason you chose that?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was non-tech founder deciding how to outsource my MVP. RoR was very popular in SV, but there wasn't many developers in Brazil neither for RoR or Python, at least comparing to PHP and .NET. PHP was out because of scaling issues (as I was told at the time), so there was ASP.NET with a significant number of developers and good reviews about scaling and suport. And all bad reviews of .NET had, 99,9% of times, only two topics: "I hate Microsoft" and "You will have to pay a lot of things to develop in it". Well, I don't hate MS and I was applying (and eventually succeed) to its BizSpark program, so I would not pay for anything, including hosting infrastructure. So it seemed a good choice then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes. For some aspects.

At a very basic level, you need to know how and why some algorithms are more efficient than others. Otherwise, you won't know what's possible and what's impossible.

It will also help with your bullshit filter. When your outsource partners try to take advantage of you (and they will) you need to have some idea of what you're talking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> And do you think algorithms is a good subject to start this more theoretical CS learning?

<comment><USER3> Imagine someone came up to you and said "I want to paint a picture as good as the Mona Lisa. What's the minimum I need to know about art?"

Would you say learning to mix paint is as important as understanding perspective?

It rather depends what you're trying to accomplish. For example, if your mockup requires something computationally heavy (or impossible) you're really going to struggle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's worth learning about big O and the basics on certain data structures. They will generally help you on most projects.

The basic statistical information is pretty useful too, even outside of programming. Knowing how to test something properly or how to create meaningful benchmarks is a valuable tool to have in your developer tool belt.

</comment><comment><USER5> My advice is to focus on learning aspects of software engineering at the expense of learning computer science.

Specifically I would focus on: requirements engineering, software architecture, software testing, and software deployment... Working with people (communication, management, working with non-technical customers), processes for developing software, and how to measure and analyze the software product and the software process[1]

[1] <http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~djanzen/secsdiff.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> great link, clarify a lot for me, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It doesn't matter what path you take -- it is a long road to competence in any endeavor.

Without a foundation in CS theory, you are likely to fail to recognize the truly monumental blunders as they're taking shape.</comment>


CRC32 collisions - <AUTHOR>

Hello, First I will apologise for my coding ability.  I am by no means a developer, but am trying - through endless books and web sites - to learn.  What I do have is a good understanding - I believe - of the theory behind CRC32 encryption, and as a result of a bet with a work colleague, have a request for some help :)
He has applied a password to a file, he has then given me the Password Checksum.  The challenge is for me to deliver to him an alternative password.  Now I know this is possible through many third party tools, but the challenge is that I write something to do it.
My understanding is that if I can write something that causes a CRC32 hash collision, I could apply that resultant string as a password, and it would work.
The file is a .PST file, and through reading, I understand that the password protection is very "docile".  While that may be the case, it is smarter than me.  I was hoping someone could help me come up with some code that would at least point me in the right direction :)
Oh lastly, I am focusing my efforts on learning C Sharp currently, but in a hope to get the foundations strong, progress is slow :)
Thank you in advance. <comment><USER3> My first port of call would be to perform a dictionary attack against the hash. Then I'd move on to brute forcing. If there's a cryptographic attack then that would be best, but I don't know enough about crc32 to say whether that's possible.

Would you like some help writing dictionary/brute force code, or did you have in mind an attack against the algorithm itself?

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, any help at all would be HUGELY appreciated. Ideally, I would think an attack against the algorithm itself would be better, but what ever is most efficient would do :) I have seen things like this : <http://www.nirsoft.net/articles/pst_password_bug.html> written, and it makes it sound so very straight forward.

<comment><USER3> It looks like there are a variety of attacks against crc32 - <USER2> <http://skilinium.com/blog/downloads/CRC.pdf>

but that's all a bit above my head, and moreover is designed for attacking very long inputs, eg binary files.

If you know it's a password, then something like this pseudocode should run fast enough:

var crc32 = 'theHashGoesHere';

var wordsArray = readFile('someLargeDictionary.txt');

for(word in wordsArray) {

      if(crc32(word)==crc32) {

        print 'The password is '+word;

        break;

      }

}

Of course that will only work if the hash is a single word that exactly matches one of the words in your dictionary. You can get a bit cleverer by doing things like this:

var crc32 = 'theHashGoesHere';

var wordsArray = readFile('someLargeDictionary.txt');

for(word in wordsArray) {

      if(crc32(word)==crc32) {

        print 'The password is '+word;

        break;

      }

      if(crc32(lowercase(word)) == crc32) {
        print 'The password is '+lowercase(word);
        break;
      }

      if(crc32(uppercase(word)) == crc32) {
        print 'The password is '+uppercase(word);
        break;
      }

      for(num in [00-99]) {

        if(crc32(word+num) == crc32) {

          print 'The password is '+word+num;

        }

      }

}

and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, any help at all would be HUGELY appreciated. I have seen things like this : <http://www.nirsoft.net/articles/pst_password_bug.html> written, and it makes it sound so very straight forward.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe this would be better posted on StackOverflow?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up. I'll sort that out now :)</comment></comment>


Unlock Reliance Jio Sim Card - <AUTHOR> I have got free Jio Sim with LYF handset. Now the problem is that sim only works with LYF handset. How to unlock that sim so that it works with any 4G enabled mobile device. Any trick? <comment><USER2> I don't think this is the right forum to ask for such questions.</comment>


CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they're digitized - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2018/04/19/cbc-is-destroying-its-broadcast-archives-after-theyre-digitized.html <comment><USER2> To play Devil's advocate, keeping the originals isn't just keeping, it means a commitment to maintaining them in an environmentally controlled space, following all fire prevention standards, in an organized fashion. It's easy to see why they would be wanting to cut down those costs to zero, especially due to forthcoming digitization and storage costs.

On the other hand, it's also clearly an issue of controlling who has access to the material - I highly doubt it will be simply dumped online for free. So once you take it out of the live, high maintenance archive, you will not throw it in the rubbish or donate them to a friendly NGO, since that might limit your ability to control it in the future.

<comment><USER3> And why do they want to keep it? Even old film has a low resolution, let alone magnetic media. Do they expect to be able to better digitalise the same media that will be in worse state (more decay) in a distant future?

<comment><USER4> For some media, this is absolutely the case. Particularly films that are slightly damaged, or seriously damaged, it's well worth holding onto the material in order to wait for better techniques to become available.

Case in point, this recent restoration of Morecambe and Wise by BBC R&D: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-12-morecambe-wise-video- fi...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-12-morecambe-wise-video-film-archive- restoration)

They laser cut the film apart, then used X-ray microtomography to scan the film and some very clever software to unwarp layers from the 3D data produced by the X-ray microtomography process. Not exactly something we could've done 5 years ago.

<comment><USER5> Now that was an excellent read, quite astounding.

Please post to HN front page and re-post as updates occur!

<comment><USER6> BBC archivists also figured out how to recover colour information from black- and-white film.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjK-b4x9ZmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjK-b4x9ZmQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [Edit: See comment for correction that explains that Radio-Canada includes TV. I'll leave this here because some of the info is valid]

From the article: _It also questioned why Radio-Canada was preserving its master recordings after making digital copies but CBC had opted to rely only on digital copies_

This statement shows a lack of understanding of the problem. Old audio recordings can still be played. Old video recordings from the early VTRs[1] are going to be unplayable soon: the people who have the skill to refurbish an old VTR are well into retirement age now. There are only a handful of the original VTRs still operating.

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

<comment><USER4> Very old audio equipment is in a similar boat - I know archivists who are prioritizing stuff for digitization based on the number of tape head hours they think they've got left in older machines.

<comment><USER8> Is contact absolutely required in such old machines - I wonder if you could float the tape using, say, air [1], ultrasound, or silicon spray, or even just carefully fitted wheels in order to maximize life of the head itself.

I'm surprised generic non-contact magnetic readers haven't been developed for retro tech given the prevalence of magnetic storage tech for HDDs.

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

<comment><USER9> I'd wonder more if a newer more modern head could also be used on the same tape at the same time (a few inches over on a slightly extended tape path), with the output of the "original" used to train software to interpret the higher resolution data coming from the new head.

Seems to me that might in some ways be similar to some things required for software defined radio signal processing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What was that book where they were digitizing books by shredding them and then vacuuming them up and digitizing all the scraps as they passed through the vacuum hose to reassemble digitally and then OCR?

<comment><USER11> Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

<comment><USER10> That sounds correct, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Destroying program originals or the most recent copy of those program originals is in violation of international archive standards, and is a breach of the Public Trust which had funded CBC to the extent of $50 billion from public purse since exception. These archives are the property of the people of Canada.

</comment><comment><USER12> International Archival Standards call for preservation of analog originals, or the most recent copy of those original programs.CBC's destruction of program archives (following digitization) is a breach of the Public Trust.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of Blade Runner 2049: "We had everything on drives, everything."

<comment><USER14> [https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1akw3o/could_an...](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1akw3o/could_an_emp_wipe_the_data_on_a_hard_drive/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm concerned that the same thing will happen to libraries and books someday. Books are a great technology. I hope we don't throw them out too.

<comment><USER16> I wouldnt be too much. Books are a primary medium, they can be consumed without the need of an interpreter or interface.

They dont face any threat of not beeing readable anymore and therefore storage becoming a waste of money, gradually

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sure somebody would buy at least some of them if they were on offer

<comment><USER18> I think there may be license issues, if the archives are not in the public domains. Other than that, yes, they might as well sell them and "recover" some money.

<comment><USER19> Recordings that are not public domain are sold all the time... is there something that makes these different?

<comment><USER20> Just as with any other recording, I can make a backup copy for archiving purposes, but if I start selling those backup copies then that's a violation of copyright laws.

<comment><USER19> But this would be the copyright owner selling the recordings, just like a commercial album or movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How do they digitize it? 8K RAW and no Compression?

<comment><USER22> There's nothing wrong with compression, data can be lossless and still compressed. That's why a FLAC file can be three times smaller than an otherwise identical WAV file.

<comment><USER23> The problem is that the compression algorithm may disappear or be faulty

<comment><USER24> Not if you store the algorithm alongside the media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Assuming that the digitization is done diligently, committing to long-term maintenance of the originals would be borderline hoarding.

<comment><USER26> If that is the case, lets take a picture of the Mona Lisa and shred the damn thing. All that maintenance and security is just a waste, right?

<comment><USER8> Well, ask the same question about a mediocre portrait picturing someone of no [recorded/remembered] societal note by an artist no-one knows anything else about and I'd say "absolutely". Take pictures, make them available to the public, give the original away - use the remaining 99% of the upkeep costs for something else.

When a robot/printer is able to make a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa down to the brush strokes, and we can experience it in VR without even needing the replica, the answer to your question might change for most works too.

<comment><USER27> High-res scans of sculptures are already a thing [0]. Just send the polygon mesh to a 3d printing and presto, you get your own David by Michelangelo. However, painting would be waay more difficult, especially in cases (such as Van Gogh) where the artist deliberately applies thick layers of paint.

(I find the idea of _intentionally_ destroying the originals to be ludicrous, but hey, more future-proofing is always good)

[0]: [http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/dmich- sig00/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/dmich-sig00/)

<comment><USER8> Polygon printed plastic is nothing like chiselled marble, and that's going to be super hard to replicate because of the random variability.

What is it about original artwork that makes it so important as to need eternal preservation?

<comment><USER27> > What is it about original artwork that makes it so important as to need > eternal preservation?

In David's case, maybe the fact that Michelangelo was able to carve it out of a fragile and partially sculpted block that at least two other great artists refused to use. It's an engineering feat at least as much as an artistic one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >He who controls the past controls the future.

Hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to minimize and erase Canadian culture, such as it is. Nice A / B with the french counterpart, where there is political will to bolster theirs.

<comment><USER29> Probably accurate, given the renaming of the British North America Act to the fraud of a name, "Constitution Act of 1867".</comment></comment>


LLVM 10.0 RC1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2020-January/138806.html <comment><AUTHOR> Release Notes can be found at "release notes" links on [https://prereleases.llvm.org/10.0.0/#rc1](https://prereleases.llvm.org/10.0.0/#rc1).

A few highlights:

> llvm: -mprefer-vector-width=256 is now the default behavior skylake-avx512 > and later Intel CPUs. This tries to limit the use of 512-bit registers which > can cause a decrease in CPU frequency on these CPUs.

This reminds me of all those "don't use AVX512" memes and a good explanation is at [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56852812/simd- instructio...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56852812/simd-instructions- lowering-cpu-frequency/56861355#56861355)

> llvm: Windows Control Flow Guard: the -cfguard option now emits CFG checks > on indirect function calls. The previous behavior is still available with > the -cfguard-nochecks option. Note that this feature should always be used > with optimizations enabled.

A good resource for learning basics of ClangCFI: [https://blog.trailofbits.com/2017/02/20/the-challenges-of- de...](https://blog.trailofbits.com/2017/02/20/the-challenges-of-deploying- security-mitigations/)

> clang/c++: Concepts support. Clang now supports C++2a Concepts under the > -std=c++2a flag.

This finally landed and was considered one of the biggest features of C++23. Visual Studio implemented it in 16.3 released last year: [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/c20-concepts-are- here...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/c20-concepts-are-here-in- visual-studio-2019-version-16-3/)

> clang now defaults to .init_array on Linux. It used to use .ctors if the > found gcc installation is older than 4.7.0. Add -fno-use-init-array to get > the old behavior (.ctors).

That's the pain of relying gcc toolchain in many components to keep backward compatibility. I really wish there could be a "-fbehavior-model=v3" for these kind of subtle changes.</comment>


TechCrunch on Twitter: Translation - <AUTHOR> http://progprog.com/articles/2008/5/23/techcrunch-on-twitter-fixed-that-for-you <comment><USER2> I've been sitting here trying to think of an insightful comment I can add to this post, but I've come to the conclusion that you can't improve on perfection. It's unfortunate that this post won't be read by nearly as many people as it needs to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great post. The original TechCrunch article is another instance of talking about how things fail (miserably), rather than talking about how things can be improved to not fail. Poor journalism.

The real issues about Twitters scalability are best covered in a blog post @ [http://www.hueniverse.com/hueniverse/2008/03/on-scaling-a- mi...](http://www.hueniverse.com/hueniverse/2008/03/on-scaling-a-mi.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Whenever I see these type of analyses I always get to thinking how awesome it would be to make all these "translations" in my head as I read.

They also make me consider how easy it would be for one to come to a conclusion about the "twitter problem" by reading an article like the one on TC even though it goes out of its way to not come to any real conclusions. As in, _"I read on TC that twitter's problem is..."_ and actually believe it.

In essence, he could have written "Twitter went down again two days ago," simply leaving it at that, and it would have essentially provided the same amount of meaningful content.

</comment><comment><USER5> Worth a chuckle. Although most "translations" in this style I have read seem to have at one point: "I am high as a kite" - shame they didn't continue that meme.

<comment><USER6> Yup. Given the omission it's not a proper Fisking. Well done otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is so spot on and hilarious. Funniest thing I've read in a while.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great article, we need people unmasking from time to time articles without any clue that may sound reasonable just because the blog publishing them has N*million users/month.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wikipedia: one of the top 10 web sites by traffic, and run by 15 people, most of them not even technical.

<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff>

<comment><USER10> Craigslist too (as of 2006):

<http://www.craigslist.org/about/pages.and.peeps.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rails does not seem the best language to write essentially a messaging architecture in though. Surely the core of twitter has little to do with the web, and more to do with efficiently passing messages around - something that c or java could do like a walk in the park.

I don't know though, sounds like lots of it isn't in ror already which makes the point a bit moot.

Maybe twitter intentionaly break their system every once in a while now to get some coverage on blogs etc. Much like 'celebrities' release a dirty video or go into rehab.

Oh I'm just kidding :) although...

<comment><USER10> Besides referring to Rails as a language rather than a framework, it's a valid point.

Twitter doesn't seem like it's the kind of thing that fits cleanly into Rails way of doing things.

<comment><USER11> Offtopic, but what's the difference between framework and library?

<comment><USER10> I would say that all frameworks are libraries but not all libraries are frameworks. A library could be a small chunk of code that helps accomplish one little task, or it could be a huge framework. A framework is basically a large library or collection of libraries for building applications on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can we add the keyword "Twitter" to the Hacker News blacklist? This is getting ridiculous.</comment>


Show HN: An open source minimal Svelte pushup tracker I made - z-x http://pushu.ps <comment> z-x Ok, so I know there are a thousands of workout trackers out there, but I highly believe in openness of PWAs so when I wanted to learn Svelte I just decided to create a super minimal tracker for my pushup workout. Most of those trackers are an overkill for me and I had no pleasure using them. To be honest - I was keeping my old iPhone 6 just to be able to use one of the older tracking apps that was not updated for a long time as it was one of those simpler ones.

There are some drawbacks for choosing PWA, especially on iOS (Apple love) but maybe we'll get there eventually.

As for Svelte - I tried it and decided to leave React/Angular/Vue behind. A seriously good call to use preprocessing instead of virtual DOM. Love it.

Since the app was made for learning purposes I also opened the sources at [https://github.com/z-x/pushu.ps](https://github.com/z-x/pushu.ps)</comment>


Great resource to find short quick coding remote jobs - <AUTHOR> https://sprintlist.io/ <comment><USER2> Their promocode to post for free from reddit: iamreddit</comment>


HP's Designjet 3D series start shipping to wealthy European prototypers - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/hps-designjet-3d-series-start-shipping-to-wealthy-european-prot/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys. My startup is in the 3D printing space, and so I'm excited about this news. This deal happened between the largest 3D printing manufacturer, Stratasys, and HP. They're making white-labeled Stratasys machines under the HP names.</comment>


Cindy Wu and Experiment.com (YC W13) - <AUTHOR> http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/07/08/woman-raised-1-2-million-with-a-spirited-3-minute-speech/ <comment><USER2> What we really need to find a way to support long-term, high risk projects driven by young scientists with breakthrough ideas. At the moment all scientists have to live from grant to grant which makes it near impossible to go after the really risky projects. If you try a difficult project and fail then you are out of a job.

We also, because of the wonderful system of peer review, pretty much only give grants to old established researchers with long track records. These scientists are great at running mini-empires, but not so good at coming up with the really novel ideas that we so need.

<comment><USER3> > _What we really need to find a way to support long-term, high risk projects > driven by young scientists with breakthrough ideas._

Fellowships typically fill the roll of paying for long-term, high risk research.

If it needs to be weighted away from established researchers, make it a lottery.

Current funding models are optimised for convergence on leading hypotheses. A lottery would increase coverage.

<comment><USER2> Having a lottery is a good idea and one I support for grants in general. The grant review process should be simply "is this idea viable and worthy of funding - yes or no". If yes put it into the lottery and fund as many good grants as you have resources. Peer review works well for this type of sorting, but it is terrible for trying to pick a top 10% idea from a top 15% idea. It just isn't possible for even the best scientists to be able to do this consistently.

The problem with fellowships is that the longest I know of only go for 5 years and most of the junior ones are only for 3 years. This is just not long enough to take the chance on failure.

If you want to encourage young talented people to tackle really hard and high risk problems you need to provide funding for at least 10 years.

I would go as far as adding a restriction that recipients of these high risk fellowships can't publish in anything but the absolutely top tier journals (Nature, Science, Cell, etc) for the first 7 years so they don't get distracted from the high risk work that other scientists can't afford to do.

<comment><USER4> In my opinion we are missing out on great discoveries because we allow a small number of humans determine if a scientific research question is worthy of funding. If a single scientist thinks an idea is worth doing and can find the resources to support it, she should do it.

We will move to a system where we only ask 'can this question be answered by the scientific method?' If we use the scientific method to answer these questions we will uncover secrets of the universe that would never survive in the current system humans have designed.

The best scientists do not design their experiments with a goal of publishing in top tier journals. And as a community, we should not be encouraging this behavior.

The best scientists investigate questions out of pure curiosity and as a side effect publish the most impactful research.

Young talented people are already tackling really hard and high risk problems. If this is truly what young scientists want to do, they will find a way. 10 years of guaranteed salary is not the solution, but giving everyone the opportunity to be a scientist may be.

<comment><USER2> >Young talented people are already tackling really hard and high risk problems. If this is truly what young scientists want to do, they will find a way. 10 years of guaranteed salary is not the solution, but giving everyone the opportunity to be a scientist may be.

I love your idealism, but having climbed the greasy pole to academic tenure (I have since left science) I can say that you really can't afford to work on the high risk projects. When you are a junior scientist the more senior scientists control what you can work on and they want you generating publications. When you are a post doc you can't afford to not get publications out and hence you have to work in areas which will produce results within 2 years. Once you are a senior scientist you are forced to work on projects that will generate x number of papers within the 3 year grant period or else you wont get any further funding. At every stage of your career you are effectively forced to work on projects that are guaranteed to generate publishable results within the next 2 years.

The reason I suggested that the scientists awarded one of these 10 year fellowships are not allowed to publish in anything but the top journals is to remove the pressure of publishing off the fellows and allow them to concentrate on solving the difficult problems. The only reason I suggested an exception for the top tier journals is in rare case the fellow made a lucky breakthrough - we don't want them sitting on some important result for years just because they not allowed to publish.

I have many high risk/high reward projects that I would have loved to have worked on when I was a professional scientist, but I could not afford to do so. I knew if I failed to produce consistent publishable results I would be out of a job. Even once I had tenure I could not in all honesty ask my students or post docs to work on projects with a significant risk of failure. We have created a system where we have a high probability of making incremental progress, but almost no chance of big breakthroughs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The SF Bay Area community bio labs (BioCurious and Counter Culture Labs [0]) are considering using this platform to try and fund their iGEM team, researching inducing UV resistance in E. Coli and then optimizing it with directed evolution. Community labs have effectively no funding to operate with, so these types of platforms (Experiment, Kickstarter, etc) are incredibly important for them.

If you'd like to support the SF Bay Area community labs and hobbyist biologists trying to do real research without academic and commercial funding, watch the Experiment.com biology section [1] over the next week or two!

[0] [http://biocurious.org/](http://biocurious.org/) and [https://counterculturelabs.org/](https://counterculturelabs.org/) [1] [https://experiment.com/discover](https://experiment.com/discover)

<comment><USER4> andrew, come by our office next week!

<comment><USER5> Sadly I'm not in the Bay Area for the next 3-4 weeks and missed the original message :) Also I'm not really the one organizing the BioCurious funding, so maybe not the right person to speak to on that matter...

Nonetheless I'd be delighted to meet you at some point, Experiment.com sounds like a pretty great organization :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Silly summary; the talk isn't the thing that raised the money.

(I am an investor in Experiment.com)

<comment><USER7> The world wants to belive that YC works like Shark Tank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Experiment.com falls into an awkward area for my fundraising efforts for longevity science projects. The community I raise from has been funding a few n*$10k scientific projects every year or so for a decade now, and the yearly fundraiser I cheerlead brought in $150k last year, and will hopefully do as well this year (halfway there). We're growing slowly in reach, but would greatly benefit from a Kickstarter-like thing that helps us pull in a larger audience and new faces.

That doesn't seem to be experiment.com yet, or indeed any of the organizations trying to crack the same nut of how you make crowdfunding work for research projects. We wouldn't do any better with them than we do with our own hacked- together infrastructure and communication channels. We need the existence of a large successful science crowdfunding community before it is worth our trying to surf on that science crowdfunding community, and I'm sure we're not the only people with that chicken and egg situation.

Some folk in the community have had luck with indiegogo.com for scientific research projects, such as mouse gene therapy or immune transfer treatments in European labs at a few tens of thousands of dollars, but even there I think it is a case that you are buying infrastructure for the audience you bring to the table, not buying fresh faces and new listeners to persuade to your point of view.

I'm vaguely hopeful that among the competitors in this space someone will come up with something that works and scales and pulls in the crowds, the halo of attention. There are some quite different styles of approach floating around, such as labcures.com that implements a "back a team" strategy, or lifespan.io that'll be launching sometime soon. Perhaps one of them will gain more traction. Experimentation is key.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eh, I guess I don't mind. Our lever on the chicken-egg problem is that we'll always go out to find the best and most impactful science, and this type of science will always be funded because this type of science is always growing. We'd rather have 1000 $1k projects than 1 $1M project. The halo of small groups is what will bring meaningful scientific results. Caveat to all of this is that there is one project right now that's so far raised $1.55M ([http://experiment.com/curebatten](http://experiment.com/curebatten)) for orphan disease research.

Researchers who use Indiegogo are only using it because 1) they are locked-in by their institutions (a small number of universities coerce their faculty like this) or 2) they can't yet use Experiment because they are outside of the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't realize Cindy was the driving force behind this. I just need to re-do my video and my project should be ready to launch...

<comment><USER4> 👌🏻

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a great idea. Maybe this is what will keep corporate interests out of scientific research, as there's more transparency and diversity in funding sources. I'm willing to bet the reproducibility rate for these studies will be much higher than the ~30% average.

<comment><USER4> In my opinion reproducibility is a technical problem. Once research is published and peer reviewed in real time, all studies should be reproducible. If they are not reproducible, we should have insight into exactly why they are not and propose a solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Scanning through the website (Experiment.com) I am both surprised and elated at how many projects seem to be 100% funded.

<comment><USER12> Sadly the stats aren't that good. From the article "Two years on and with a smart name change, "Experiment" has launched 5,058 projects and funded 336 of them" so still a long way to go - Kickstarter's success rate I think is around 40%. That's still 336 research projects that wouldn't have been funded otherwise! Go Cindy!

<comment><AUTHOR> The 5,058 projects figure are people who've signed up and started projects. There've actually only been 836 launched projects, with 336 funded and 395 failed. Not sure why that number got reported, perhaps an attempt at "there are 5000+ researchers who've signed up".

[https://experiment.com/stats](https://experiment.com/stats)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I shudder to imagine how much the experiment.com domain must have cost.

<comment><USER14> $54k :) [http://priceonomics.com/how-microryza-acquired-the-domain- ex...](http://priceonomics.com/how-microryza-acquired-the-domain- experimentcom/)

<comment><USER15> Meanwhile, GivingTo.Science is sitting at $75

Is there a reason people would want to avoid newer domains like .science?

<comment><USER16> Branding. .com is the top-domain. It's synonymous with Internet companies. Without a traditional TLD, your domain doesn't even look like a domain. Instead it look s like a bunch of random.words.smashed.into.one. (Which coincidentally, is a valid domain.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like this a lot. Kickstarter for scientists. It would be very welcome if scientists didn't have to come up with military applications of their research in order to get funding.

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems they used to have more employees and 2 other co-founders. Wonder what happened

<comment><USER4> one day we will write about the experiment story. one thing that is true for all startups is things never go the way you expect. 😏

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hah, I went to high school with her. I saw the early Microryza stuff, didn't think much of it. I'm glad it seems to be going well.

</comment><comment><USER20> To tie a funding round to nothing more than a "spirited 3-minute speech" is silly. If I had to guess, Cindy is a fearless founder who has been working hard for a long time to achieve her vision.

This article's title makes it sound like it's as easy as skipping your Starbucks run to found a company and raise $1M+.

<comment><AUTHOR> > If I had to guess, Cindy is a fearless founder who has been working hard for > a long time to achieve her vision.

Yup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A 3-minute speech... at YC Demo Day.</comment>


Virus rebuilds heart's own pacemaker in animal tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20713986

<comment><USER2> Wonder what happens when the patient has multiple pacing nodes - does it organise to make one (correct!) or go back to having ectopic nodes (oh dear). Pretty impressive either way, but the research mountain here must be huge.

<comment><USER3> In theory, whichever node depolarized first would trigger the depolarization of the second node.

So whichever node has a faster intrinsic rate would be the primary node.

<comment><USER2> This reply is addressed to Ars as well as both points are good and similar. I assume you both mean that synchronization occurs across the infected cells? Or do you mean that it occurs across the patient's heart whether or not infected? Ectopic nodes seem to fire randomly or upon certain triggers/stressor and thereby lose synchronization (otherwise how would one a patient be diagnosed). It would be handy if the virus rewired poorly wired hearts to be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shoot, we're getting closer and closer to having in real life Fry's parasitic nematodes who continually _improve_ his body...

<comment><USER5> Futurama?

<comment><USER6> I'm not a Futurama head, so I looked it up:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasites_Lost></comment></comment></comment>


An Introduction to Counterfactual Regret Minimization - <AUTHOR> http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/modelai/2013/cfr/index.html <comment><USER2> A warning to the reader: only a small fraction of the readings are actually available inline as PDFs; the rest seem to come from a handout which is not provided and the textbook _Essentials of Game Theory_.

Otherwise, seems like a cool foray for anyone interested in game theory.

Edit: I take it back! The _Introduction to Counterfactual Regret Minimization_ pdf is actually here: [http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/modelai/2013/cfr/cfr.pdf](http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/modelai/2013/cfr/cfr.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone else read "counterfactual regret" and think "well that pretty much sums up most of why I'm ever anxious"?

<comment><USER4> Maybe you could try the learning program's approach?

Think about the memory that triggers regret/shame, then decide whether and what you should do differently in the future to make better decisions in similar situations.

After that, maybe you you can look back on the event as a "lesson well learned" instead of "ohmygodohmygodohmygod that's so embarassing I can't believe I did that I'll never open my stupid mouth again".

(No idea if this actually works.)

<comment><USER5> well, its healthy to reflect on our past and try to do better in the future; it is not so to reflect on our past and use it as a means to punish us in the now or in the future.

The trouble stems from thinking you should have done something, and did not, and that you are somehow infallible. In truth, there are a lot of things one COULD do, but few are absolute SHOULD's.

My cat died very recently - and I've been working through the thinkings of if I could have been a better owner, if I reciprocated his unwavering love enough, if I could have caught his sickness sooner, if I was "good enough" and so on.

And yes. There ARE things I could have done differently. But I'm also a human being, and am not a saintly creature without fault or error or oversight. So to expect this ideal from myself in response to what I see as a faultless cat, is cruel punishment to dispense to oneself.

<comment><USER6> Oh man, tough luck on losing your cat. My baby's reaching 4 and I can't imagine being without her. Best wishes to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that "regret" is just a different name for an objective/loss function that reflects the merits of an action over many events. It's something that you would consider _anyway_ when designing certain algorithms. If that hunch is correct, I wonder how many people are using "CFR" without being aware of the proprietary name.

<comment><USER8> I've also been struggling with this after reading a little bit about these regret minimisation models.

Can someone explain how there is any difference in these CFR model from a normal reinforcement learning algorithm where you just take your loss function as the "regret" in CFR terms?

<comment><USER9> Sure. Like I mentioned in a later post, I'm an author on several of the CFR papers. It is related to RL, and there are a few ways of interpreting CFR. If you have an RL background, then CFR is kind of "RL using an advantage function, but it converges in adversarial games." If you have a multiarm bandits background, then CFR is kind of "An independent multiarm bandit at each decision point, all learning at the same time."

CFR differs from standard RL in a few ways:

\- Exploring the tree. CFR has many variants, many of which focus on using sampling to trade off between fast, narrow, noisy updates versus slow, broad, precise updates. The most sampling-heavy variant, called Outcome Sampling, traces a single path through the tree, as you would in RL. However, it doesn't converge nearly as quickly as other variants, like Vanilla (explore the whole tree on each iteration) or Chance Sampling (sample the cards, explore the whole action space). Since those variants consider all paths through the tree, you don't have an explore/exploit tradeoff anymore, as you normally would in RL.

\- The "Counterfactual" part. Regret updates are weighted by the other agents' probability of taking you to a decision point. Or, equivalently: updates are weighted by the probability that you reach a decision, _if_ you are trying to reach that decision (and all of your action probabilities along the way are 1). If you use Outcome Sampling (described above) then by sampling all actions that weight becomes 1, and thus less important. But for fast learning, the weighting becomes important.

\- The strategy doesn't converge, but the average strategy does. Even in the limit, in an adversarial setting where all players are learning, the strategy produced from the regret values doesn't converge to Nash. If it was a single- player problem (either no opponents, or static opponents that can be treated as part of the environment), then as in RL, the strategy would converge to an optimal response to the environment. But in an adversarial setting, you also need the average strategy, which is the only part guaranteed to converge to optimal.

<comment><USER10> Is there a version of CFR for differentiable learners like neural networks?

<comment><USER11> The averaging part makes it sound like the usual RL self-play against regular checkpoints of oneself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I read "counterfactual regret minimization", I thought this would be about Kellyanne Conway.

</comment><comment><USER13> I assume this has something to do with an AI beating world class poker champions recently..

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I looked it up and found this source quite useful for getting a high- level idea of what the CMU team accomplished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Darn! I was hoping for some sort of exciting new historiographical technique.

</comment><comment><USER15> This gave and my Buddy a great laugh! Thank you! (were doing min max problems this semester! I will link this to my professor!)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm sorry I read this?

<comment><USER17> Then next time you should skip the technical details and just read Michael Johanson's lay summary, so that you can be less sorry in the future: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-intuitive-explanation-of- co...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-intuitive-explanation-of- counterfactual-regret-minimization/answer/Michael-Johanson-2?share=1)

<comment> semi-extrinsic This was really good, but one detail stood out to me: the average strategy found by a CFR converges to a Nash equilibrium strategy. For a two-player, zero-sum game, we know this is an optimal strategy.

But what about a game that's not two-player and zero-sum? Are CFRs still useful?

<comment><USER18> In multiplayer zero sum game, it still works to Nash.

Intuitively, in a zero sum game, running CFR on one player will find him best responses for the strategies he's playing against. Doing this for multiple players finds corresponding best responses, which is the definition of a Nash Equilibrium.

In non-zero sum game CFR only converges to correlated equilibrium, which is a much weaker equilibrium than a Nash equilibrium.

<comment><USER9> Not quite: it really does only go to Nash in a 2p zero sum game.

In a multiplayer zero-sum game, there's no theoretical proof that it should go to Nash. In the tiny 3p game of 3p Kuhn poker (3 players, 4 card deck, enough chips for one bet) we found that it does go to Nash (here's the paper: [https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/publications/AAM...](https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/publications/AAMAS13-3pkuhn.pdf)). But in a slightly larger toy game, 3p Leduc poker, we empirically found that it does not. Like you suggested, we did this with best response calculations. If you take the strategy profile CFR produces and then compute a best response in each position, those best responses each improve over the strategy profile. If you plot that loss over time while CFR is running, it becomes clear that it does not converge to Nash: it eventually bottoms out and does not improve further.

However - in practice, the strategies produced by CFR for multiplayer games still appear to be quite strong, even if not Nash. This was the approach used by the University of Alberta for years in the Annual Computer Poker Competition, and it crushed the competition there. In 3p Limit Hold'em, the CFR strategies also held up well against human pros in informal testing by the U of A.

Nash equilibrium isn't a compelling goal in a multiplayer game anyways. In a 2p game it theoretically guarantees that you earn at least the game value (i.e., do no worse than tie if you rotate seats every game). In a multiplayer game, even if you could compute one, there's no such theoretical guarantee, when all other players at the table are independently choosing strategies. Even if everyone at the table uses an independently computed Nash equilibrium, that set of strategies is not necessarily itself a Nash equilibrium (in 2p zero sum games, it is).

To summarize - for multiplayer, it doesn't necessarily go to Nash. But you might not care if it does or not, and it works great in practice even though it doesn't go to Nash.

In a non-zero-sum game, you're right that CFR converges to a correlated equilibrium. But we can also theoretically bound how close it gets to a Nash for the non-zero-sum game, and empirically measure how close it gets by using best response analysis. The answer is - if it's only slightly non-zeo-sum (e.g., subtracting the rake in a poker game for negative sum, or pretending to add money to the pot to encourage aggressive play) then CFR still gets very close to Nash.

<comment><USER18> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Updated WebGL Benchmark Results - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/12/15/updated-webgl-benchmark-results/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the packed WebGL file size for a scene with nothing in it comes at ~80mbs which is still way too big to be a reasonable alternative to three.js-based libs.

I hope they'll be able to trim it down in the future because I'd really like to use unity to deploy to WebGL. It just doesn't seem to be something that they can do, for whatever reason.

Edit: The benchmark seems to have a minimalist packed size of just under 10mbs. Cool that they achieved that. I haven't been able to with my project.

<comment><USER3> Right now making a mature Unity3d project that was developed for mobile platforms run on WebGL takes 2-4 weeks of developer time to reach feature- complete, semi-stable state. And still, it runs abysmally slow, and hogging at least 1Gb of memory.

After Unity browser plugin was retired a year ago with the whole Netscape plugin architecture, teams that use Unity just better accept the fact that they can't realistically deploy their projects in the browser anymore.

<comment><USER2> I just spent the last 20 minutes compiling my unity project with 5.3 webgl.

It's a voxel game so it's quite small, asset-wise and fits into under 20mbs! This is a huge leap.

The upstart performance feels a bit like a java applet (freezes for a second... not great) but once it gets started, it's performant for my use case.

In my brief test, I only notice one weird thing (the input sometimes got screwy). This is a huge improvement.

Give it another try?

<comment><USER3> Uhm, is your game a commercial project, with a lot of art, complicated requirements involving SDKs from social networks as well as marketing, analytical and bug report tools, commits and random code from incompetent developers who were fired a year ago, urgent gufixes that were put in as "temporary" and stayed forever?

Because of course it would work nicely with a small hobby project ran by a single programmer of adequate level.

<comment><USER2> Of course this project doesn't have those nasty hooks and a very small art asset collection.

I'd worked on a similar project to yours years ago and we ended up building a separate application for mobile after the web project. They are different form factors even if everything behind the scenes 'just worked'. I think we agree :)

I was just amazed at the progress unity's webgl target has made. You see with my original post that I was pretty dismissive of it until I gave it another try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My understanding is that Unity3d integrates well with asm.js and Mozilla sort of has a head start in that.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, Edge's asm.js implementation is younger than Chrome's but Edge is second fastest in Unity's benchmark while Chrome is third. Chrome's head start hasn't helped it beat Edge in this benchmark.

<comment><USER6> Chrome does not specifically optimize for asm.js.

<comment><USER5> Sure it does. Chrome has been specifically optimizing for asm.js for over two years (see [1]). Google's own Octane browser benchmark has included an asm.js benchmark for over two years (see [2][3][4]). Game developers have been commenting on Chrome's asm.js performance for over two years (see [5]).

Chrome is just slower. Microsoft has done a good job with Edge's JavaScript engine.

[1] [http://blog.chromium.org/2013/05/chrome-28-beta-more- immersi...](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/05/chrome-28-beta-more-immersive- web.html) [2] [http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/announcing- octane-20.html](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/announcing-octane-20.html) [3] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/06/google-updates-its- octane-j...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/06/google-updates-its-octane- javascript-benchmark-adds-asm-js-and-typescript-tests/) [4] [https://developers.google.com/octane/](https://developers.google.com/octane/) [5] [https://www.scirra.com/blog/132/more-about-asmjs-powered- phy...](https://www.scirra.com/blog/132/more-about-asmjs-powered-physics)

<comment><USER6> Let me clarify: Chrome does not to my knowledge contain any special optimizations that are only active in asm.js mode. Firefox does, to the extent of having an entire separate codepath for asm.js AOT compilation.

<comment><USER5> Chrome contains special optimizations that are only active in asm.js mode: [http://blog.chromium.org/2015/07/revving-up-javascript- perfo...](http://blog.chromium.org/2015/07/revving-up-javascript-performance- with.html)

I don't know what you're arguing here. It doesn't matter what approach is taken to optimizing performance, all that matters is the performance achieved. Chrome is simply slower. Microsoft is to open source Edge's JavaScript engine ([https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/12/05/open- source-c...](https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/12/05/open-source- chakra-core/)), so perhaps the Chrome developers can study that for ideas on speeding up Chrome.

<comment><USER6> Huh. Fair enough, cool I guess.

It was my impression that for a long time, Chrome's stance was basically "We aren't gonna bother optimizing specifically for asm.js; instead, we're just gonna make JS faster in general." Which would seem to explain why

> Chrome's head start hasn't helped it beat Edge in this benchmark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unitless scores with no "higher is better" label meant I spent far too long trying to guess what the graphs meant.

</comment><comment><USER8> Amazing to see Firefox Nightly more than double the speed of Safari on my late 2013 i7 mac mini.</comment>


The U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI) - <AUTHOR> https://www.jobqualityindex.com/ <comment><USER2> [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/labour-market/quality- of-e...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/labour-market/quality-of- employment)

[https://www.etui.org/Topics/Labour-market-employment- social-...](https://www.etui.org/Topics/Labour-market-employment-social- policy/Job-quality-index-JQI)

</comment><comment><USER3> So we are back at around the 30-year low, along with a time around 2011.</comment>


Your DNS Provider Should Not Be Your Registrar (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.petekeen.net/your-dns-provider-should-not-be-your-registrar <comment><USER2> I don't mind hosting my DNS at registrar, since they provide the service, but I do want to have secondary DNS servers/provider somewhere else: dns.he.net (free), or paid service elsewhere. But, unfortunately, none of the registrars I tried allow you to have secondary DNS server, ie allow dns AXFR for the zone file. (godaddy, hover, gandi, namecheap and 1and1 -- note, I tried them over the time and asked all of them for AXFR to have secondary zone elsewhere -- all of them declined. Latest and current is Hover).

After long time researching, I've decided to use $2/month plan on cloudns.net for primary DNS, and secondary at dns.he.net.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most domains can have up to 13 name servers assigned at the registry, most domain registrars will let you setup 6 or more (mine does 6). Ideally you'd have your registrars and another source hosting your dns and keep them synced up.

Unless you have a weird edge case most of the time its set it up once and forget it. This way even if you registrar has problems you have another dns that is still up. Do a dig on some popular domains (like google,cnn,etc) and you'll see they have multiple dns entries by different providers.

If your website is important enough to keep up in case your registrar is not, then you need it hosted by multiple providers including your registrar (its usually free, why not right).

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like the author doesn't know how any of this DNS stuff actually works.

The registrar ultimately controls which nameservers are used to lookup your domain. If someone has access to your registrar account then they can change this so it doesn't matter if you have separate services.

Also if your registrar is accessible but your DNS provider is down, you can switch to a different DNS provider at any time, it's not something to "prepare" for like this article says.

<comment><USER5> Author here. At the time the problem was that DNSimple stopped resolving DNS for customers AND their management interface for a long period of time (iirc it was like 12 hours), which was affecting people who had registered domains through DNSimple and used their DNS service. This affected a disproportionate number of my friends and several clients.

You can't change your nameservers if your registrar's management interface isn't resolving.

<comment><USER4> These are separate issues:

1) DNS resolution stops working - use a different provider. 2) Registrar interface stops working - wait till it starts working.

You were trying to solve problem 1 which required problem 2 to be solved first, but there's no way around that. This means that everyone has the same dependency issue with their registrar being a single point of failure. Hosting your actual DNS elsewhere doesn't change anything or prepare for this situation any better.

<comment><USER5> The problems were happening _at the same time_. It's impossible to solve 1 if 2 is happening simultaneously.

Using a registrar that is on separate infrastructure from your DNS host solves both problems.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't matter if the DNS service is up or down - the point is that you cannot change your domain's DNS service without access to your registrar's console.

So effectively, the registrar being up is the only thing that matters and there's nothing you can do about it.

You're betting on the fact that by using 2 services, they won't be down at the same time which might add some reliability, although most registrars aren't hosting their console sites on the same network as their DNS servers anyway so the odds of it happening are about the same. You were just caught in a bad situation.

<comment><USER5> > It doesn't matter if the DNS service is up or down - the point is that you > cannot change your domain's DNS service without access to your registrar's > console.

True!

> most registrars aren't hosting their console sites on the same network as > their DNS servers.

As a customer you have no ability to judge this. DNSimple was either hosting them on the same infrastructure or the DDoS was targeting both. I can't speak to what they do now, since this article is almost two years old.

By using one service for both components you're betting on the fact that they're doing the right things behind the scenes. IMO that is not a safe bet. For zero added monetary cost and effectively zero added management cost you can double your ability to weather that specific type of storm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI, this references the DNSimple outage event on December 1st 2014. The point stands, but the "current" references aren't so current anymore.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google is my DNS provider and registrar. I think I'm okay.</comment>