Bill Gates recreates high school photo for his AMA identity verification - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/j9j4L7E.jpg <comment><USER2> The two are eerily similar. It's a very artistic effect he achieved. The whimsy seems uncharacteristic for him.

<comment><USER3> Check out the videos he posted after a couple of his previous AMAs for more examples of Gates whimsy:

He posted this thank you video after his second AMA: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynQ5ZhxYAss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynQ5ZhxYAss)

This was after his third AMA: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4bm- RAlLA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4bm-RAlLA)

<comment><USER4> And then there was that time he caught a pie with his face. Funny guy, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It must have taken a fortune and many hours of searching to collect all those items which (almost) look exactly like the originals from 1973.

<comment><USER6> Well, good thing he's rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was funny that he got gilded. Someone actually bought Reddit gold for Bill Gates.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but how many people can say "I bought x for BillG?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bill Gates hired a very good production designer to recreate this photo.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how he found a replacement for that exact same phone fax thing? It looks like an antique piece.

<comment><USER11> Its a teletype machine. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I laughed so hard when I discovered that someone gave him karma gold

</comment><comment><USER13> Either the older he gets, or the older I get, I seem to like him more and more</comment>


The NRO Issues Inspection Request to ICANN Concerning .ORG Sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191231_nro_issues_inspection_request_to_icann_for_dot_org_sale/ <comment><USER2> First comment under the article:

> Good Luck!

> Karl Auerbach – Dec 31, 2019 2:07 PM PST

> I hope they have an easier time then I had when I, as a sitting Director on > ICANN's board, tried to exercise my legal right to take a look at ICANN's > financial records:

> Auerbach v ICANN [https://www.eff.org/cases/auerbach-v- > icann](https://www.eff.org/cases/auerbach-v-icann)

<comment><USER3> Thats depressing... Good luck indeed.

<comment><USER4> Auerbach did win the end though, although it took a 1.5-year legal battle and EFF backing.

<comment><USER3> Just the idea of having to sue the organization your a director of to do your job...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> the downside to ICANN's history of stonewalling (Auerbach v ICANN and the 22.7 bylaw) is that it erodes trust in ICANN as an agency of any value. Eventually it could be that ICANN TLD's are just as untrusted as HTTP without TLS. This is already largely true for .biz and .info. If it gets bad enough, the internet has shown time and time again it is not only willing, but capable of eschewing monolithic and aged appendages in favour of freedom. 'trustless' is exactly the concept that delivered things like DoH, Signal, and the http/2 requirement of TLS.

<comment><USER6> My take (speculation):

Eschewing ICANN would likely not be freedom in any sense, any replacement would not be the work of open and trustless bodies, for any serious replacement would have to come from a swift coup by google, cloudflare and Amazon.

I predict any replacement would likely be open in name only and instead tightly controlled by those three entities at least from the outset. It would be no more "open" than AMP is; even if protocols and specifications are open that's irrelevant if there's a de-facto central source.

It is only by a quirk of history that ISPs not google handle most DNS and DoH "fixes" that.

It would be easy for google to remove ICANN from the loop, it would be almost impossible for anyone else to do so without google's backing. That doesn't lend itself to an open and trustless replacement.

The internet hasn't proven it's "willing or capable" to do anything not delivered via Chrome for a very long time now.

<comment><USER7> > _It would be no more "open" than AMP is; even if protocols and > specifications are open that's irrelevant if there's a de-facto central > source._

I don't understand that definition. Following the logic, Mozilla isn't open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ICANN bylaws[0] 22.7b states

"ICANN may decline an Inspection Request ... relates to documents that are not reasonably related to the purpose specified in the Inspection Request or the Inspecting Decisional Participant's interest as a Decisional Participant in the EC"

This and the overall wording of 22.7 makes it unlikely that they will even get this request granted.

[0] [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/governance/bylaws- en/](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/governance/bylaws-en/)

<comment><USER9> I'm no fan of ICANN in general nor do I agree with their decision to allow price increases for .org registrations which ultimately led to this deal happening but ICANN may be correct if they deny this request under the terms of 22.7.

"Any Inspection Request must be limited to the accounting books and records of ICANN relevant to the operation of ICANN as a whole, and shall not extend to the underlying sources of such accounting books or records or to documents only relevant to a small or isolated aspect of ICANN's operations or that relate to the minutiae of ICANN's financial records or details of its management and administration (the "Permitted Scope")."

This request certainly seems to be one seeking documents relevant to an isolated aspect of ICANN's operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's the original on their web site: [https://www.nro.net/aso-issues- inspection-request-to-icann/](https://www.nro.net/aso-issues-inspection- request-to-icann/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Does this mean that ARIN, lacnic, AFRINIC, RIPE NCC, and APNIC (the members of the NRO per [https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/](https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/)) are behind this? That makes no sense to me, I thought they were highly conservative bureaucracies heavily influenced by national governments. Do China and Russia, for example, want this to go through? Do we have any idea why?

Does anyone know anything about the NRO's goverence, on paper or in practice?

<comment><USER12> > Does this mean that ARIN, lacnic, AFRINIC, RIPE NCC, and APNIC (the members > of the NRO per > [https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/](https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/)) are > behind this?

Yes. They have taken the highly unusual step of expressing an opinion on the DNS system.

> That makes no sense to me, I thought they were highly conservative > bureaucracies heavily influenced by national government

They are extremely conservative, which should add to the weight of this action. However they answer to their respective memberships, not governments - despite being "regional" registries they stay out of geopolitics for the most part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone have any insight into how this relates to the Obama administration's push to relinquish American control over ICANN?

I am starting to get the sense that the sale of the .org TLD is not just coincidental. It's starting to smell like any number of the massively corrupt international organizations like the IOC (Olympics) or FIFA (Soccer/football).

Maybe it's just my cynical side, but all this seems way too convenient and sequentially timed to be coincidental. But please, I welcome anyone to assuage my concerns with rational argument.

<comment><USER14> There is a lot that seems stinky with this deal... but The Register has reported that it was pressure from the US Government that led to ICANN's decision to remove the price caps from .org (without which the sale of PIR likely wouldn't have gone ahead). So it's hard to see how the transition away from US oversight would have been a factor here.

In fact, possibly it's quite the opposite - the NRO only has the power to request this information from ICANN due to additional community powers that were put in place as part of the process to end US oversight. So now the Internet community can steer ICANN in ways it couldn't before this change and (in theory) doesn't have to rely on vague threats from the US Gov to keep ICANN honest.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/01/org_domain_icann/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/01/org_domain_icann/)

>Worse, the decision to push ahead with the contract change and ignore opposition to the price caps appears to have been made solely to appease two of the most powerful internet registries that ICANN is supposed to be overseeing, and in response to subtle pressure from the US government.

[...]

>One of the very few comments in favor of lifting the price caps specifically noted comments from the head of the US Department of Justice's Antitrust Division about how it supported "reducing regulation, by encouraging competitive markets" and then noted in the same paragraph that ICANN "had its contracts reviewed by the DoJ's antitrust division, which concluded that only .com had market power in the domain space."

>It was a clear message that ICANN would be crossing not only its main funders but also its own government (ICANN is based in Los Angeles) if it did not approve the changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who read NRO as National Reconnaissance Office?

<comment><USER16> Same, and I thought that was an odd thing for them to be interested in. They use .gov and .mil.

n.b.: it's "Number Resource Organization".</comment></comment>


Eric Ries, The Lean Startup. 16th January 2012. Attendee List. - <AUTHOR> http://thebln.com/2012/01/eric-ries-the-lean-startup-16th-january-2012-attendee-list/ It's like Will and Kate getting married all over again. Everyone is stopping work to get a look at Eric Ries:<p>http://thebln.com/2012/01/eric-ries-the-lean-startup-16th-january-2012-attendee-list/ <comment><AUTHOR> What? Who changed this submission??

There is no humour left in the world...</comment>


Blood money: Bayer's inventory of HIV-contaminated blood products - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24785997 <comment><AUTHOR> Abstract:

This article presents an overlooked case of research misconduct and violations of basic principles of medical and business ethics. When Bayer's Cutter Laboratories realized that their blood products, Factor VIII and IX or antihemophiliac factor (AHF), were contaminated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the financial investment in the product was considered too high to destroy the inventory. Cutter misrepresented the results of its own research and sold the contaminated AHF to overseas markets in Asia and Latin America without the precaution of heat treating the product recommended for eliminating the risk. As a consequence, hemophiliacs who infused the HIV- contaminated Factor VIII and IX tested positive for HIV and developed AIDS.

Full article: [https://sci- hub.se/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24785...](https://sci- hub.se/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24785997)</comment>


11 Almost Perfect Business Layouts | Smashing Magazine - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/04/26/11-almost-perfect-business-layouts/ <comment><USER2> They look like crap. And they are too focused on business to be interesting.

<comment><USER3> Right. I like the design of <http://www.edgewall.org/>

And they get extra points for being open source!</comment></comment>


In Praise of Boredom - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/xr/in_praise_of_boredom/

<comment><USER2> IMHO, the reason why we do not get bored of breathing is because we can do it without having to devote time to it. Therefore, it does not detract from other activities. Same goes for walking, where as I have read, the coordination happens in the lower back and does not involve the brain, or running where only the base of the brain is involved.

I am easily bored with washing dishes because while I am doing that, I cannot be working on a software project. I am also easily bored with tweaking CSS because I see it as inherently unnecessary: one day IE will die and I won't have to waste time on it. Thus, my definition is that boredom is something that feels like a waste of time, a very unrenewable resource.

<comment><USER3> Not to detract from your point, but it's definitely possible to work on a software project while washing dishes :)

Devoting thought, or focus, might be a better qualifier for boredom than just having to devote time.

<comment><USER2> Oh I definitely do that. But substitute any activity you enjoy and you will see what I mean.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Less Bureaucratic productivity software. Activation Energy, it's a thing - <AUTHOR>

I am sure that everybody has tried at some point to use some sort of productivity software.  A to-do list, project management software, or a personal wiki containing personal wisdom.  I am equally sure that most of them have stopped sometime shortly afterwards.  For all the wisdom that you have, it feels like you will just remember it, and have no need to open a browser, navigate to the wiki, create a new page, and delineate all that you have learned.
Some people must have succeeded though, and some of those people must have been as lazy and dedicated to instant gratification as the rest of us.  I wonder how they did it.
For example, I would love to use a nested to-do list, with the ability to keep notes on things that I have finished.  Unfortunately, if accessing it at any time takes more than a single keystroke, and would take me out of what I am doing, it seems like I probably would not use it.  At any time when I should update it, I will tend to choose to store the information in short term memory out of expediency.  The activation energy is just too high.
Has anybody found a technique for managing themselves that takes very little energy to integrate?  Ideally, so little, that it seems like using it is easier than not using it.
Or did everybody just have to buck up and start making the responsible choice to keep themselves organized?
-Alex <comment><USER2> Hi Alex,

Like you, I've tried using various TODO list applications but got stuck in the same predicament: creating the list, laying out steps, ticking them off when done, setting deadlines is just impossible to integrate into my workflow. Maintaining lists seems often seems irrational and always feels forced to me.

I have taken a different approach: instead of planning my life, I like tracking it. I like writing documentation for my work to be able to come back to it or transfer it to others in my team, I like keeping logs and recording thoughts. I've integrated some high level overviews of what to do into logging what I have already done, or, to put it more simply: I've stopped maintaining a list of TODOs and started maintaining a list of "things to write about as already done".

I guess I am just fooling myself, but it really helps me to realise that by doing this it will help me in the future wheh I have to re-do certain procedures, tell stories to friends, remember my life, and from a professional perspective: hand over parts of tasks that are not interesting to me to somebody else. Keeping a log makes it that much easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't have an answer, but I agree with the idea. Tools are not the key to productivity.</comment>


San Francisco YC donation to defeat homeless prevention measure - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/OurHomeSF/status/1055106263829245952 <comment><USER3> From SF Mayor London Breed: "It does not include a detailed spending plan for the $300M in taxes it seeks to add, nor regular audits of that money, nor adequate public oversight over how it's spent.

Our homelessness spending has increased dramatically in recent years with no discernible improvement in conditions. Before we double the tax bill overnight, San Franciscans deserve accountability for the money they are already paying."

Full text here: [https://medium.com/@LondonBreed/statement-from-mayor- london-...](https://medium.com/@LondonBreed/statement-from-mayor-london-breed- opposing-proposition-c-cb0d17cbb730)

</comment><comment><USER4> "A yes vote is a vote in favor of authorizing the city and county of San Francisco to fund housing and homelessness services by taxing certain businesses at the following rates: 0.175 percent to 0.69 percent on gross receipts for businesses with over $50 million in gross annual receipts, or 1.5 percent of payroll expenses for certain businesses with over $1 billion in gross annual receipts and administrative offices in San Francisco. A no vote is a vote against authorizing the city and county of San Francisco to tax businesses at the above rates to fund housing and homelessness services."

we should at least have the money to address the symptoms if we cannot fix the problem.

it's definitely sad to see paulg's stance on this; it just shows where his values are .

<comment><USER5> > we should at least have the money to address the symptoms if we cannot fix > the problem.

It may be worth mentioning that there's already a budget a at work approximately equal to the $300 million prop C is expected to raise. So while there are many, _many_ problems with this whole scenario, it's possible that there being no money to address the symptoms at hand might not be among them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> before everyone dives on the "PG hates the homeless!" bandwagon - <USER2> that perhaps there are other reasons to oppose this bill? There can be many reasons to oppose a piece of legislation beyond simply being opposed to its stated intent.

<comment><USER7> Sure, they don't hate the idea of helping houseless people, they just hate the idea of that help being legally prioritized over their RoI.

<comment><USER8> That's bullshit criticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This knee jerk reaction of claiming that Paul Graham is somehow greedy or against the homeless is disappointing. That London Breed, who ran for SF mayor on the premise of trying to fix homelessness, is opposed to Prop C is very telling.

Before San Francisco decides to spend more money per homeless person, I think we should figure out why SF is already spending so much more money per homeless person that cities like LA and New York. Just adding more money to the pot with little oversight to how it is spent doesn't seem like a good solution at all.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sensationalist headline linking to a blatantly biased source - how about some fair discussion of the legislation instead?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> saw this tweet this morning.

Text Good morning to everyone except @paulg, co-founder of @ycombinator, who just donated $150K to defeat a measure that will prevent 7,000 households from homelessness through eviction defense services & rental assistance.

</comment><comment><USER10> Disgraceful. I'd like to believe many of Paul Gs opinions go against the incubator he founded but wow.

<comment><USER11> I don't know what I'm voting on this yet, but it's certainly not a simple matter, and there are many smart and compassionate people who don't support the measure. Here are the mayor's thoughts on homelessness ([https://medium.com/@LondonBreed/a-bold-approach-to- homelessn...](https://medium.com/@LondonBreed/a-bold-approach-to- homelessness-a42121dc586c)) and why they oppose the measure ([https://medium.com/@LondonBreed/statement-from-mayor- london-...](https://medium.com/@LondonBreed/statement-from-mayor-london-breed- opposing-proposition-c-cb0d17cbb730)) As I mentioned I don't know which side I'm on yet, but to just lash out at someone who opposes the measure as "disgraceful" means you're either uninformed or unwilling to consider other reasonable perspectives as legitimate. Either way, you can do better</comment></comment>


Magic Leap SDK - <AUTHOR> https://creator.magicleap.com/home <comment><USER2> This is off-topic, but these footers that read "Made with [emoji heart] in [random place]" are such an irritating startup meme.

It makes particularly little sense for Magic Leap: they've got a billion dollars in VC funding, and their product is supposedly "made with heart" like an artisanal Brooklyn cupcake?

<comment><USER3> Is it really that annoying that someone possibly made x thing with love in y location? What does money have to do with that? You can get paid to do something and do it with love.

<comment><USER2> It just sounds weird and fake in a corporate setting. Sort of like "Grandma's Homemade Cookies, by NestléKraftUnilever"

<comment><USER3> True. It's generic and cliche. But, if the cookie package said they were made with love in factory location x, what's so bad about that? They are supposed to be Grandma's cookies :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it possible to see details about the sdk without having to give Magic Leap my email?

<comment><USER5> anonymous@protonmail ?

<comment><USER6> You also have to enter your name, birthdate, sign some agreements, etc.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I lied. It worked. Bob John 02/22/1992 has access now. They get to spam the email I specifically have for useless logins.

Win-win?

<comment><USER6> I suspect by falsifying your information, you violated the agreement. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This requires a account with Magic Leap to even be able to read any content, this has no place on HN...

<comment><USER9> Here's the announcement blog post [https://www.magicleap.com/stories/blog/developer-journey- sta...](https://www.magicleap.com/stories/blog/developer-journey-starts-now)

<comment><USER8> Cool, hopefully mods change the link to this instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lots of interesting details about the hardware in the developer documentation:

* 6-DOF tracked controller

* Eye tracking

* Multiple depth of field display

* Persistent location tracking across multiple rooms

And limitations:

* FOV is going to be rather small

* Variable depth-of-field doesn't work well with objects less than a foot (30 cm) from your face

* Takes a few seconds for the system to adjust when you move real objects around (so if you move your couch, it won't notice instantly)

<comment><USER11> This is huge news for this secretive company so it's unfortunate that this submission got flagged. I don't think they were ever upfront about what their device can really achieve before.

A lot of the stuff you highlighted are especially interesting since other popular HMD don't have them yet (for example eye tracking and of course their lightfield stuff). Even a 6DOF tracked controller was a surprising feature to me since they don't seem to use any extra external sensors like oculus/vive.

<comment><USER12> "I don't think they were ever upfront about what their device can really achieve before."

They've been very upfront about this. The problem is all the noise that's been generated by armchair critics who have spammed every article about them calling them a scam/vaporware/the next Theranos, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those who don't want to log in, here's the snippet of their features from [https://creator.magicleap.com/downloads/lumin- sdk/overview](https://creator.magicleap.com/downloads/lumin-sdk/overview)

      #### C API

      - Audio: Stereo audio output and voice microphone recording are supported.
      - Camera: Capture still images and videos from the color camera.
      - Dispatch: Allows apps to open URLs using the Magic Leap Browser or other apps.
      - Eye Tracking: Ability to retrieve fixation point position and eye centers. Blinks can also be detected.
      - Graphics: OpenGL ES, Desktop, and Vulkan rendering paths.
      - Hand Gestures & Key Point Tracking: Recognize the user's hand poses (gestures) and track the position of identifiable points on hands such as the tip of the index fingers.
      - Head Tracking: Headpose is tracked in full six degrees of freedom (DOF).
      - Image Tracking: Track the position and orientation of specified image targets in the user's environment.
      - Input (Control / MLMA Support): Retrieve either 3 DOF (orientation) or full 6 DOF (position and orientation) from the Magic Leap Control. Detect button and touchpad presses and the analog trigger. Trigger values range from 0 to 1. A range of touchpad gestures are also supported, as are haptic vibration and LED ring feedback. This interface works seamlessly with both physical Magic Leap Controls and the Magic Leap Mobile App.
      - Light Tracking: Provides information (luminance, global color temperature) about the ambient light of the user's environment.
      - Media Codec: Low-level, hardware-accelerated media encoding and decoding.
      - Media Player: Simple, straightforward media playback interface.
      - Meshing: Converts the world's depth data into a connected triangle mesh that can be used for occlusion and physics.
      - Music Service: Supports connecting and listening to a streaming music service.
      - Occlusion: An interface for feeding depth data to the Magic Leap platform for hardware occlusion.
      - Planes: Recognize planar surfaces in the user's environment for placing content. This includes semantic tagging for ceilings, floors, and walls.
      - Raycast: Fire a ray and get the point of intersection with the world's depth data.
      - Secure Storage:Save data from your app to the device's encrypted storage.

      #### Magic Leap Remote

      - Supported ML Remote APIs:
          - Head pose
          - Eye tracking
          - Hand Gestures and Keypoint tracking
          - Control Input
          - World Raycast
          - World Meshing
          - World Planes
          - Image Tracking (Simulator only)
          - Graphics API (OpenGL)

      - Properties panel in the GUI lets you manually set the state of API data such as head pose, detected gestures, and so on.
      - Shows the virtual room in a Mini Map as well as an Eye view that depicts your application content composited over the virtual room.
      - Supports gamepad, keyboard, and mouse bindings. Use a gamepad to drive head position, define keys to trigger detected gestures, and more.
      - The bundled virtual room generator app procedurally generates random rooms that you can customize even further to test your game logic in the Simulator.
      - Experimental support for faster graphics rendering in ML Remote can be enabled by setting the environment variable ML_REMOTE_ENABLE_GPU_SHARING = 1. This feature is experimental, because it has not yet gone through rigorous testing and might lead to a crash or visual artifacts under some circumstances.</comment>


The Chrome Javascript editor can do hot swapping - <AUTHOR> http://smotko.si/using-chrome-as-a-javascript-editor/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of using swank-js with Emacs, as demonstrated in a short Emacs Rocks! screencast[1].

[1]: <http://emacsrocks.com/e11.html>

Basically, you can hook Emacs up to the browser and interact with the page directly without having to refresh it. You can do some really cool stuff as shown at the end of the screencast.

All this without having to sacrifice the inherent editing and programming power of Emacs.

In the screencast, code gets reevaluated using a key command (C-x C-e), just like Emacs does for lisp. However, since Emacs is extremely programmable, it would be pretty easy to set it up to run any new code as soon as you finished modifying it, or on a timer, or however you like.

As an aside, the rest of the Emacs Rocks! videos are also worth watching--they make it very clear why people really like Emacs. For example, episode 12 (about editing HTML with Emacs) not only shows how powerful some of the default modes are, but also how easy it is to customize commands.

<comment><USER3> Shameless plug, my toy project is integrating the WebKit debugger with Emacs: <https://github.com/jscheid/kite>

Live editing (or "hot swapping" as it's called in the article) is my main, long-term objective. I can only devote so much time to it, and it's not as far along as I would like it to be. But, getting there... do take a look at the other branch if you're curious.

<comment><USER4> Hot swapping is a prerequisite, but not sufficient for live editing (or live programming as I call it). You also need to ensure that you can have responsive feedback about your edit via framework or programming model affordances.

This is just hot swapping (as they claim), it's been around since before smalltalk.

<comment><USER3> Good point, I shouldn't have lumped together the two concepts. Thanks for clarifying.

I would add that this all seems to be in pretty early stages on the WebKit side, too. For example, I had hoped that when the debugger hits a breakpoint, and you hot-swap code in the current call frame and restart the frame, what would happen is what you'd expect to happen, alas--at least with Chome Canary --this doesn't seem to work yet.

So yes, you're right that true live editing is not around the corner, with or without Kite. I'm just aiming to get as close as possible.

<comment><USER4> This is stated most eloquently in Christopher Hancock's dissertation [1]:

> And yet, if making a live programming environment were simply a matter of > adding "continuous feedback," there would surely be many more live > programming languages than we now have. As a thought experiment, imagine > taking Logo (or Java, or BASIC, or LISP) as is, and attempting to build a > live programming environment around it. Some parts of the problem are hard > but solvable, e.g. keeping track of which pieces of code have been > successfully parsed and are ready to run, and which ones haven't. Others > just don't make sense: what does it mean for a line of Java or C, say a = a > + 1, to start working as soon as I put it in? Perhaps I could test the line > right away—many programming environments allow that. But the line doesn't > make much sense in isolation, and in the context of the whole program, it > probably isn't time to run it. [end quote]

Light Table is interesting in this regards, though I'm not sure what they are claiming yet. I (and others like Jonathan Edwards) think we'll have to accept significant changes in our programming models to achieve true live programming, that we can't just tack it on transparently to our existing stack, e.g. by snapping back a few stack frames on an edit.

[1] <http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/ch-phd.pdf>, page 56 bottom

<comment><USER3> Highly interesting, thanks for sharing your thoughts and the link to that paper.

Really I'm just trying to improve turnaround time when developing Web apps. I think that between full-page reloads and research into better programming models, there's some middle ground worth exploring. I guess I shouldn't be using the term "live editing" for that, though.

<comment><USER4> Surely it is worth exploring. There are many points on the "make programming more interactive" spectrum, and hot swapping is something that we still can't get right in our mainstream programming environments! But live programming is something much more ambitious (and much more difficult to achieve) than hot swapping. Its basically what we eventually want even if we have to make many smaller steps (hot swapping) to get there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A bit off-topic, but I'm somewhat surprised that this is news. Not because it's not awesome, but that so many people seem to have been unaware of this feature. It makes me wonder how many things I know that I take for granted. How many simple things that I do, that I use, that others would find amazing.

Like CTRL-A in bash (I'd mentioned it in passing, and someone was excited to find out about it); ESC-. in bash as well to insert the last argument, incredibly handy for quickly injecting long paths. I did a talk on tmux at work, and it went over extremely well with those who attended, much beter then expected.

I guess the reason I think this way is I imagine I'm the dumbest person around, so I assume if I know something, everyone else must. And if I mention it, a part of me feels like I'll be exposing some weakness. It's stupid of me to think that way. It's a personal failing, I know. Even knowing it though won't change my way of thinking.

Sorry for hijacking.

</comment><comment><USER6> When using this feature, be aware that the saved changes stick around indefinitely and can override updated JS being served by the host. I've had this one bite me repeatedly even though I never use the live editing feature due to the thoroughly broken keyboard focus implementation in Chrome. :/

IIRC if you do a force reload (right click the reload button with the inspector open) that bypasses cache, that should reliably destroy any local edits.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is also an option to disable cache in the settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be even better if it worked the other way around. Tell Chrome where my files are and it would watch them for changes. That way I can use my favourite editor/IDE and get the features you described.

<comment><USER8> I wrote an extension that does both live reload and saving from devtools: <http://tin.cr>. To address the comment below with regard to extensions not working, it's Chrome's fault. It will fail to hotswap JavaScript occasionally and it doesn't communicate the reason to the user or extensions built on top of it.

Speaking from experience, hot swapping JS sounds much better than it actually is in practice. First, as mentioned above it randomly fails with no explanation from Chrome. Also, I find a lot of code I want to hotswap runs on DOM ready and assumes that the page has just been loaded.

On the other hand, CSS hotswapping in Chrome works really well.

<comment><USER9> _"I find a lot of code I want to hotswap runs on DOM ready and assumes that the page has just been loaded."_

Maybe it would be possible to put all your "setup" code into a single myscript.load() function and then when you've edited your js in chrome devtools, then call myscript.load() in the console to reboot all your DOM events and so on.

Just an idea, completely not tested.

P.S. Just tried your extension using vim to edit a Sass file, while compass watch is running, and your extension is watching my CSS output directory. Awesome to see changes in vim almost immediately appear in my browser!

EDIT: Formatting. Adding P.S.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Keep in mind that if you use Chrome's feature of reformatting minified JavaScript, it will not let you edit it. You can only edit the JavaScript in it's "natural" state.

</comment><comment><USER10> This isn't news.. Chrome Developer Tools has been able to do this for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true it isn't proper news. But it still seems there are a lot of developers out there that didn't know about this feature and this is definitely news to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pressing Control+S is not the immediate-update mechanism Bret Victor uses as a foundation to his sophisticated ideas about Learnable Programming:

<http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/>

I don't understand how someone can link to his 'Inventing on Principle" video in the second paragraph of their web page and fail to comprehend the material it covers in just the first 6 minutes of its running time. Note, that Bret Victor despises the term 'live-coding' as a description of this work.

</comment><comment><USER12> Brackets takes advantage of this already, right? <http://brackets.io/>

</comment><comment><USER13> The one flaw is lack of a persistent, multiple-line JS editor in the Console. I will boot FireBug just to use that.

<comment><USER14> Huh? I'm a little confused. I thought you could do multi-line with the Chrome JS Console by hitting Shift-Enter?

<comment><USER13> A notepad will persist your code and allow you to edit it easily, including newlines and tabs. It will also allow you to undo/redo. Try FireBug to see what I mean.

Yes, in Chrome you can technically hit "Shift+Enter" anytime you want a line break, but you cannot tab. Regardless your script will disappear after you execute it. Yes, you can make what you just typed reappear by hitting the up arrow, but then it's again difficult to edit it. It also does not support undo/redo.

<comment><USER14> Ah I see what you mean, thanks!

That'd a fantastic feature to have in Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now we just need a way to connect sublime text 2 or 3 directly to the chrome- console, so that when you edit files in sublime, they are magically used instantly without page refresh - now that would be bliss....

</comment><comment><USER16> The files in the Sources tab do not appear to be editable for me. How do I make them editable?

I can edit stuff in the Elements tab, but the article suggests it's possible to do so in the Sources tab...?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are editable for me. I tried it in Google Chrome 24.0.1312.69 and Chromium 24.0.1312.5. Both on Linux.

Which version do you have?

<comment><USER16> Running Chrome 24.0.1312.57 (stable channel) on OS X.

The files in Sources tab become editable if I turn "pretty print" option on and then immediately off. But afterwards, whatever changes I make have no effect on what's displayed. Even if I right click and "save" my changes, the original unmodified source is saved (despite there being something edited in the Sources tab)...

So strange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How about over the wire as part of a debugger protocol? Would love to see this in IDEs.

<comment><USER18> This would be more easily possible when this[1] issue is fixed. At the moment only one debugger client can be connected at a time. So only one of chrome devtools, or a third party client can be connected.

This is a problem because your IDE/text editor could have support(native or via a plugin) for the chrome debugger protocol[2] and update the js as you edit it, but you can't have the debugger open at the same time.

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=129539>

[2] [https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer- tools/docs/de...](https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer- tools/docs/debugger-protocol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would really like to see hotswap in Firefox also.

<comment><USER20> I wonder if the Firefox architecture would allow for hot swapping. V8 throws everything away after compiling - it goes all the way back and reparses the source if it needs to recompile anything. So I'm guessing it's already relatively well prepared for human-edited source code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's good. Iteration cycles drop like mad when you can do hot-swapping.

Now of course Lisp dialects had that 50 years ago or so and... Any modern which can run JavaScript can run ClojureScript and hence already had hot- swapping ; )

But it's good to see non-Lispers getting there eventually ; )

</comment><comment><USER22> And recently from the settings menu (low right corner) it also can change the user agent, reported resolution, the geo-location and emulate touch events. Chrome inspector is really something else.

<comment><AUTHOR> What amazes me is that it became a full blown editor and it seems like almost nobody noticed...</comment></comment>


Growing a Social Proof Marketing Platform to $88k/mo in Revenue - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/fomo-05b996966c <comment><AUTHOR> I am not affiliated with them, I just found it a cool story. I am currently devouring all kinds of Indie Hacker Stories. There are many cool stories, but I chose to submit this one because of two reasons:

1) It is _way more highly upvoted_ on Indie Hackers than other submissions.

2) It mentions the effect of competition on their team/company which I think more Indie Hackers submissions should do.</comment>


Introducting go-pipeline - <AUTHOR> https://whiskybadger.io/post/introducing-go-pipeline/ <comment><USER2> Speaking from painful experience, channels are not a good building block for general-purpose pipelines. They're definitely a decent mechanism for communicating between concurrent processes, which is what they should be used for — but only that, generally speaking. (Sorry to be a wet blanket!)

For example, you'll run into things like channel buffering (I see that our "operator" creates an unbuffered channel, so you already have a potential performance issue there), an aspect which is opaque to both sender and receiver (unless they explicitly check the capacity), and can result in surprising blocking issues. You'll also need to deal with channel ownership (the producer is, in most situations, effectively the only one who can close a channel). Usually one channel is not enough; in order to propagate errors and be able to cancel an arbitrary graph of pipes, you'll likely need 2-3. And regarding performance, all channels are protected by internal mutexes to make them thread-safe, so by using channels to pipe data, all your code will be slowed down by mutexes, even the parts that don't need to be thread-safe.

I recommend writing a dedicated iterator-style pipe interface type instead. Channels can then be used carefully for parallelization, fan-out and such, but direct data exchanges (e.g. transforming tuples) can be single-threaded and fast.

Lastly, I recommend annotating channels with arrows to make them read/write- only for the callee. You have "in chan interface{}", which should probably be "in <-chan interface{}."

<comment><USER3> I think the performance issue is addressed, in the second paragraph, because you're quite right that it would create a slowdown. This library is quite simple, and it's mostly an exploration of a potential design pattern, not intended, nor recommended, as a generic solution.

The channel ownership isn't so much of an issue, at least the way I understand the question, since currently each Operator creates its own "output" channel, and is effectively the producer for that channel. The way this works in practice is that you instantiate an input channel, combine multiple operators together, and when your input is done, you close that input channel, which closes all of the subsequent channels in turn (because of the for ... range ch being used). That said, in practice I have used a separate channel for error reporting, which is lightly addressed near the end of the article.

The point about annotating channels is very good, I'll probably be making a change to incorporate that here soon.

Thanks for reading, and I appreciate the good feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure why I should use this and give up typed channels when I could easily implement the same logic on my own?

<comment><USER3> I would say that as long as you have a small enough number of types where implementing this for each of them (and each combination of them) is manageable... you should. The absolute worst thing about this is losing type safety (and I helped write it). The time to use this is IF this kind of design could simplify your code overall AND the number of types and their combinations is simply too much to code. Say you have four input types, two intermediary types, and one output type, and more than one step in between them, then you'd be writing about 15 times the code. We actually had a situation like this, which is why it came in handy. If you're not in this situation though, I would always advocate retaining type safety.</comment></comment>


"I wish systemd would get over its thing about syslog" - <AUTHOR> http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/SystemdAndSyslog <comment> vezzy-fnord I think journald is by far the buggiest component systemd has. Log corruptions, the dubious Forward Secure Sealing mechanism, journal file fragmentation, the gateway daemon, coredump hooks. There's been several CVEs for it, too. Of course, you cannot disable it without source code modification.

Quoting from the systemd wiki [1]:

       Note that it is now the journal that listens on /dev/log,
       no longer the BSD syslog daemon directly. If your logging
       daemon wants to get access to all logging data then it
       should listen on /run/systemd/journal/log instead via
       the syslog.socket unit file that is shipped along with
       systemd. On a systemd system it is no longer OK to listen
       on /dev/log directly, and your daemon may not bind to the
       /run/systemd/journal/syslog socket on its own. If you do
       that then you will lose logging from STDOUT/STDERR of
       services (as well as other stuff).

       ...unless your syslog implementation is socket
       activatable many services will not be able to log to your
       syslog implementation and early boot messages are lost
       entirely to your syslog implementation.

So the fact that keeping your regular syslogd wasn't as simple as merely symlinking syslog.service was publicly known, but often overlooked by proponents during discussions.

[1] [https://wiki.freedesktop.org/www/Software/systemd/syslog/](https://wiki.freedesktop.org/www/Software/systemd/syslog/)

<comment><USER2> That's just bad, this is breaking API's ... suddenly other logging deamons need to change their code because systemd is squatting the log file ?!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> SystemD makes me feel weird.

When I boot Debian 8 (which has systemd) I'm amazed how quickly it boots. Systemd units are nice. SysVinit was a mess.

I wish I could interrupt stuck processes when booting / shutting down: [http://i.imgur.com/a4ImjAk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/a4ImjAk.jpg)

When someone comments about how overly complex and controlling systemd is for an init system, I think of all the hideous shell scripts that don't talk to their neighbors which end up forming most the sysvinit boot process on many distros (in the past?).

I wish there was something [lighter|simpler|more portable| _more unix_ ] than systemd.

Every time I seed something [good|bad] about systemd it makes me want to [comment|upvote|walk away].

<comment><USER4> > SysVinit was a mess.

Not just SysV - every attempt to move beyond BSD-style init has been a mess.

> I wish there was something [lighter|simpler|more portable|more unix] than > systemd.

I think the trick with systemd is to realise that it's not unix. But it's something else that's really interesting in its own right.

Init/scheduling is a much more difficult problem than it first appears, and it has always and everywhere been tacked on to its host OS as an afterthought: init scripts, cron, windows services, system v init. All are poor, partial solutions. Yuck.

To fill the void, there has been a proliferation of application containers, each of which does a different 70% of the general problem. All of this stuff could just be done in the platform. And that's what systemd is.

There's going to be two separate camps at the end of this: a group led by the BSD platforms will stick to convenitional unix goals. On the other side, the linux kernel plays second-fiddle to systemd. The systemd service graph is a new operating system tradition.

[New, but not without precedent: in the debian world, the 'apt' package management system has become more significant than the kernel. You can create things that are not linux, but which are still debian. Both systemd and apt use a sophisticated data-graph to contain a difficult problem.]

There are exciting opportunities for developers on a systemd operating system: you'll be able to quickly put together application stacks using microservices in a way that hasn't been practical until now. It /is/ unixy in the sense that it gives the console operator a powerful new general-purpose tool.

<comment><USER5> _I think the trick with systemd is to realise that it 's not unix._

I keep coming back to that. It seems to me that there is a tension in the Linux world about people who want an open source UNIX and people who want an open source Windows. Systemd is much more a "Windows" approach to system configuration management than a "UNIX" approach.

That isn't "bad" per se but it makes for some confusing things. I would be ok if Linux became the open source windows flavored OS and Freebsd became the open source unix flavored OS. I believe such an explicit step would help folks move forward with "where" a certain idiom of OS management should land in the open source world. Of course I don't expect that to happen :-).

<comment><USER6>
       I would be ok if Linux became the open source windows flavored OS and Freebsd became the open source unix flavored OS.

This mindset should terrify everyone in the GNU foundation. systemd is the begining of the march away from both the GNU and GPL principles, into an incompatible fork of POSIX that uses RPC backdoors in order to circumvent GPL protections.

why doesn't anyone else view systemd as the direct assault on GNU that it is?

<comment><USER7> RPC Backdoors? Care to elaborate on this for me?

<comment><USER6> Perhaps you could ask yourself "how, as a non-free software developer, could I use systemd's RPC system to bypass the LGPL and GPL's requirements that all related software and derivative software must be licensed under the same license?"

The answer will come quickly, I bet. it's how you figure out magic tricks, as well. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can sub syslog with any component systemd has cannibalized and write the exact same article.

That's what the whole argument was all about.

<comment><USER9> The people who say "it's not that bad" are those who haven't interacted with these extremely reliable and integral parts of a Unix system for years and years and understand the ramifications of bad behavior.

<comment><USER10> The author of this article has done so, and seems to think that until this syslog interaction it hasn't been too bad:

> _One of systemd 's strengths until now has been that it played relatively > well (sometimes extremely well) with existing systems, warts and all._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So systemd has a few bugs that affects its interaction with syslog. I see nothing to indicate this is specifically because of some ill will towards it.

Is there a bug report with a dismissive reply? Or one being ignored?

(I do agree that it shows that systemd is too immature for critical production environments)

<comment><USER12> > Is there a bug report with a dismissive reply? Or one being ignored?

That's always my reaction to blog posts like this as well. A blog post is not a bug report. Given the mentioned bug in the systemd/syslog interaction that made it into RHEL, there should be a bug in the RHEL bug-tracker, and I'd hope it'd be a high priority one.

<comment><USER13> I think the issue is just stability in general. I just moved to a new server recently, and I decided to go with CentOS 6 instead of 7, as people were reporting that CentOS 7 is just a little less stable in general than 6. (Although systemd probably isn't _entirely_ responsible for the lower stability in CentOS 7, it probably is one of the major changes in CentOS 7 so it likely takes a good share of the blame).

You always end up with bugs in released software, even CentOS. Some bugs only show up in certain situations, and might be difficult to track down. The only way to give a good guarantee of stability is for a large number of people to use the damn thing for years on end!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So this means any logging/auditing software that requires the data to be sourced from syslog is unreliable. This kind of behavior would make an auditor's head spin.

<comment><USER14> If you are auditing systems based on systemd (or sysvinit or makefiles or upstart or launchd) then you are probably doing it wrong anyway

<comment><USER15> If you build a custom logger into a startup/scheduler instead of using the existing logging component, you're doing it wrong.

Really, if you're not using the logging mechanism to check a system, what are you using?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I only watched part of the systemd wars from the side line and to this day I haven't come up with a reasonable solution. Both sides have reasonable arguments.

Saying that a tool is unsupportive towards another tool because in the interaction two irregular bugs happen sounds like a weak claim though. Don't all tools have bugs? What makes these two special?

</comment><comment><USER17> And the PR division is already in action in the comments...

<comment><USER18> The PR division is the entire userbase of Fedora, Arch and a few other distributions who have been using it for years without any issues.

<comment><USER19> I use arch and still despise it. The reduced boot time isn't worth the headache the overly complex systemd suit of tools has introduced. BSD might have some issues, but it worked very well for my use-cases.

<comment><USER20> To me systemd is not the reduced boot time but the simplified service management.

<comment><USER21> To me, as an Arch user, sytemd has been responsible for a series of btrfs kernel panics. I'll probably switch to Gentoo just to not have to deal with working around journald the next time I have a choice of distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While I agree that systemd does not play nicely with syslog, you quickly realize that journald can be exported as JSON, filtered, described as time ranges, chunked and easily imported into ELK. My users (mainly developers) with less sed/awk fu have come to rely on these features heavily. I'm not really sure what there is to miss about syslog or syslog-ng when you have a robust ELK+journald system.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately it's also very slow. Text files don't have the many advantages you outline, but in everyday use they are much faster than the C journal API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The whole blog is interesting to read. Thanks OP.</comment>


Designing usable hypertext documents in Mosaic (1994) - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/196355.196438 <comment><AUTHOR> Archived version is here; snapshot taken before the ACM's COVID-era relaxation of its paywall policy expired:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200630042233/https://dl.acm.or...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200630042233/https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/196355.196438?download=true)</comment>


Genetics- A python library for genetic algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Lucretiel/genetics <comment><USER2> Interesting - looks like it would pair well with [http://www.deskgen.com/](http://www.deskgen.com/) which allows teams to share resources and DNA sequences, sync that to an inventory of existing plasmids, proteins and enzymes and helps teams be more efficient in producing DNA. Love seeing the places biotech is going.</comment>


The Awk Programming Language (1988) [DJVU] - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/download/pdfy-MgN0H1joIoDVoIC7/The_AWK_Programming_Language.djvu <comment><USER2> The awk is a great tool and TAPL one of the best technical books. Besides its manual-like introductory chapters, it shows how to use Awk for data processing, generating reports from data and implementing other languages. Generally it shows how to use awk for text processing which is the area that it excels. Two interesting examples it provides are (a) a text-based relational database and (b) a make-like file updating program.</comment>


Dragon now docking with the International Space Station - <AUTHOR> http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/005/status.html

<comment><USER2> Well, the docking event is over but I saw a live stream of someone playing guitar in space. Happy sunday !

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like they just confirmed the capture with the robotic arm.

<comment><USER4> > All 16 bolts in the common berthing mechanism have driven to create a firm > connection between Dragon and the Harmony module. The commercial spacecraft > is now part of the International Space Station.

> Final berthing occurred at 8:56 a.m. EST (1356 GMT) as the space station > flew about 253 miles over the Arabian Sea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pictures of the docking are on the SpaceX website. <http://www.spacex.com/webcast/>

</comment><comment><USER6> FYI, despite the livestream player clearly saying "LIVE" this event is no longer live. Dragon was captured and docked by 9AM ET</comment>


Weighing the Good and the Bad of Autonomous Killer Robots in Battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/04/28/476055707/weighing-the-good-and-the-bad-of-autonomous-killer-robots-in-battle <comment><USER2> Overheated hype. There are already over 100 million land mines deployed around the world. Pretty stupid as robots go; but the same heartless automated indiscriminate killing. Been going on since World War I. So yes we'll get used to it, since we already have.</comment>


The largest and most effective bicycle registry ever - <AUTHOR> https://bikeindex.org/blogs/providing-the-largest-and-most-effective-bicycle-registry---ever <comment><USER2> My bike was just stolen yesterday. I never wrote down the serial number, and now I'm part of the problem.

Next time I'll be doing that, and registering with this service. Thanks for fighting the good fight.

<comment><USER3> If you bought it from a store they should have it on file connected to your personal info. My bike was just stolen on Friday as well and that is what I did to register it on this site.

<comment><USER4> My week old bike was stolen from secure locked shed. Unfortunately I learned that not every shop keeps serial numbers on the record the hard way. Now hoping for impossible that police might find the culprit. This time around I'm recording serial number, doing multiple customizations to the bike and just received specialized GPS device to be hidden in the bike itself. And the insurance of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Holland, there's a national stolen bike registry too, and an ecosystem with bike dealers and police participating in it.

\- It's hosted by the government - the equivalent of the DMV [1]

\- It's based on RFID tags placed INSIDE the frame, so serial numbers can't be filed or welded off. You have to physically destroy part of the frame to get to the tag.

\- Tags are installed by bike manufacturers on the more expensive theft-prone bikes, and registered by the bike dealer, so you yourself don't have to do any registering.

\- Police have scanners that they use to scan public bike parking lots randomly [2]. Try google image search for 'amsterdam centraal fietsenstalling' for a picture of a parking lot.

[1] [https://fdr.rdw.nl/](https://fdr.rdw.nl/) [2] [https://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=...](https://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.security.nl%2Fposting%2F28287%2FOverheid%2Bscant%2BRFID- chips%2Bin%2Bgestolen%2Bfietsen&edit-text=)

<comment><USER6> That sounds very cool. I think in Germany if your bike is stolen you are simply out of look. Hope they'll take a page out of Holland's book soon.

<comment><USER7> Not necessarily. I had my bike stolen in Germany and reported the serial # to the police. A few years later they called me to return me my bike. So they obviously have some sort of database. I don't know if it's just for the town or country wide...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great looking site but what makes this "The largest and most effective bicycle registry ever"? There seem to be dozens of bike registries. It would be nice to see some sort of data sharing between them.

<comment><USER9> > "The largest and most effective bicycle registry ever"

I guess an average Dutch cities municipal "registry" has more bikes than this entire Database at this moment. Though certainly not as "effective" in the sense of being userfriendly. But seeing as that in the Netherlands the police estimates just under one million stolen bikes annually, there is a great opportunity for bikeindex.org in the Netherlands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my country, registering your bike gives you a huge discount on the insurance. Is it common other places, and will a bike registered through this site be eligible for a similar type of discount?

I'd wish more listing sites would have mandatory fields for a bikes serial number, and that people would actually bother to check the registry when buying a bike. Unfortunately, a cheap bike makes many people blind to it probably being stolen.

<comment><USER11> It's not very common for bicycle riders in the US to explicitly carry insurance. Your homeowner's or automobile insurance would typically cover the value of the bike and any damage you might cause in an accident.

<comment><USER12> If you are banking on your homeowner's policy you should check the small print. Many (most?) have a relatively low cap (say, $1500) with a deductible of $500+ you don't have much coverage. My insurer requires a specific extended policy that at $3 per 100 makes it very expensive for higher-end bikes.

<comment><USER13> Pay attention to this if you have really nice bike(s),. They aren't going to be covered under your homeowners in the U.S.. Just like jewelry, expensive camera equipment, etc, you'll have to get a specific insurance rider to establish value, etc. and they'll charge you a nice premium for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The police SHOULD be able to catch bike thieves like shooting fish in a barrel. If the same person on craigslist is selling more than 5 bikes and they are selling them off racks at colleges and train stations, they probably have a pickup truck with out of state plates full of stolen bikes stashed nearby. It's appalling that such a dead simple MO can't be crushed in a week.

</comment><comment><USER15> the folks at [http://project529.com](http://project529.com) are getting started in the bike registry space as well. I like their push for online bike sales to list serial numbers to lower the chances of stolen bikes from being sold easily. but getting the number of registries to fewer (ideally 1) is a really good thing.

<comment><USER16> Seems like they're trying to hop on what SBR has been doing for over a decade?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've had bikes stolen from me. I know lots of people who have had bikes stolen from them. I have never heard of anyone who had a bike stolen and the gotten it back. Do such things happen in the real world?

<comment><USER18> Sometimes, but mainly when the bike is recognizable and the owner is well known in a cycling community. More than a few times I've seen stolen bikes show up to the park or the race track.

More often than not, they're gone. This is why I ride beaters on my commute or to the store. The good bikes in my fleet never leave my sight when they're off my property.

<comment><USER19> I agree, they nearly never come back. When my bike is out of the house, it stays within a few feet of me. This means it goes in to the grocery store or restaurant with me. People stare, but that's a much smaller price than a bike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The creators clearly got sick of their bikes being stolen. Good to see people doing something about it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Bryan Hance has been doing great work on this front for a long time. When I was making software to monitor CL, he recommended the free version to his users that needed to be alerted when their bikes went on sale. I was glad to be able to help.

Too bad CL doesn't like people using tools like that to find their stolen bikes, tools, etc...

</comment><comment><USER22> What prevents someone from registering someone else's bike and then claiming it was stolen from them?

I suppose one way would be to require a photo of the bike and only consider photos of a bike without a lock to be valid.

<comment><USER23> I just signed up, and my post-registration call to actions includes "Visit where to register to find the closest shop to register your bikes."

Looks like you can't just register a bike on your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This looks like a really cool project.

You can also contribute code here [https://github.com/bikeindex/bike_index](https://github.com/bikeindex/bike_index)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know I'm late to the comments party. Though, here in Latvia we have a bicycle registry maintained by our local government organisation (which is more or less like DMV in US I think). It has enough resources and will to occasionaly promote this service and after few years of operation people here are aware of it and actually use it.

</comment><comment><USER26> How do these registries pay the bills?

</comment><comment><USER27> What I'm most curious about is WTF happens to the bikes that are stolen? Are they just resold locally or is there some sort of international bike theft and transportation ring sending high dollar bikes to Guatemala?

</comment><comment><USER28> I see why I might register my bike - in case its lost or stolen. But why would anyone look up a bike in there? Either its not in there - time wasted. Or it is - there goes your sale. Net value: zero or negative.

<comment><USER29> Well, for a potential _buyer_ of a bike the value is much larger than zero. After all, who would like to buy a stolen bike?

Registering your bike and possibly mentioning that fact on your bike using a sticker might even help as a deterrent.

<comment><USER11> >who would like to buy a stolen bike?

Someone looking for a good deal on a used bike? You can likely assume that most of the bikes sold in certain venues are stolen, but that doesn't deter the customers.

<comment><USER30> Price is irrelevant in the case of theft. I consider purchasing stolen goods to be immoral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What is the purpose of a bike registry?

<comment><USER32> Some people own bikes that have value... and would like to track them in case they get stolen. Be it for insurance purposes, trying to recover it, or as a buyer to not buy a stolen bike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Going home to register my bike today</comment>


Structure-Based ASCII Art Generation [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ttwong/papers/asciiart/asciiart.pdf <comment><USER2> Related website [1] to this paper.

Also, I would suggest looking into Tien-Tsin Wong's other works [2] as well. A lot of great ideas and papers there.

[1] [https://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ttwong/papers/asciiart/ascii...](https://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ttwong/papers/asciiart/asciiart.html) [2] [https://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ttwong/publication- favorite....](https://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ttwong/publication- favorite.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Is there a reference implementation for this? I think it'd be really cool to try to run a complex game like Super Mario or Doom entirely in the terminal using version of this algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER4> A lot of the Aasci generators seems to try and reproduce the color gradients - would a similar effect to this not happen of we try to reduce the image to line-art first?

</comment><comment><USER5> I will look intothis pdf later, but for now I like to share ASCII based porn movie with everyone here if anyone is interested.

debbie does ascii (an ascii pr0n from a 1981 bbs)

[https://vimeo.com/2752500](https://vimeo.com/2752500)

Does anyone have package for it?

Please do share if you anything CLI based fun stuff.

<comment><USER6> Here is a processing program to do ASCII art that has depth info, color, and is animated - [http://pastebin.com/bz1pKAKQ](http://pastebin.com/bz1pKAKQ)

The logic is pretty simple to translate to other languages. This doesn't do the boundary or structural stuff as described in the paper but is a reasonable start for someone interested. Personally I don't like that sparse looking style of ascii art.</comment></comment>


No surprise in the numbers: Tablets are 'wants,' smartphones are 'needs' - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2458376/opensource-subnet/no-surprise-in-the-numbers-tablets-are-wants-smartphones-are-needs.html#linkedin

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone would return home for a forgotten smartphone or notebook en route to work, but few would go back for a tablet.</comment>


We have renamed Gittip to Gratipay - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/gratipay-blog/gratitude-gratipay-ef24ad5e41f9

<comment><USER2> I think this is a good move for Gittip, to get away from the notion that it's a model just meant to support software development.

The central idea of Gratipay is to support good people doing good work, through recurring donations. That's a model I'd like to see take off, in many fields.

</comment><comment><USER3> the new brand allows them to introduce the idea to more than just supporting software development; however i still find it's hard to pronounce the new name (english is not my first language). i much prefer 2 syllables domain than 3.</comment>


Recompiling the Lost Vikings - <AUTHOR> https://ryiron.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/recompiling-the-lost-vikings/ <comment><USER2> Cool! Back in 2001 I had the domain TheLostVikings.com

Wow, it's still on the ISP hosting. I haven't seen this in years: [http://homepage.eircom.net/~lostvikings/](http://homepage.eircom.net/~lostvikings/) The download links are broken but lots of animated gifs are still there.

<comment><USER3> I miss the internet where you could find stuff like this.

<comment><USER4> This should prove, that you can still find stuff like this.

<comment><USER3> There's old stuff still kicking around, but it's all 15-20 years old. Nobody makes new personal homepages like this anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> FYI, Blizzard has a modern-PC-friendly free download up, along with Blackthorne, Rock'n'Roll Racing, and Diablo II (!): [https://us.battle.net/account/download/?show=classic](https://us.battle.net/account/download/?show=classic)

<comment><USER5> I don't see D2 :(

Could it be that they have country-based restrictions?

<comment><USER6> They are selling Diablo 2 and it's a relatively modern game supporting latest Windows/macOS, you have to buy it and then you can download it.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I thought it was too good to be true.

I mean, I do have my original D2 1.0 disc... but I'm not sure it works on Windows 7 or not. I just thought this could be a re-release of sorts.

Now that I think of it... Blizzard is still patching D2 apparently. No reason to give it away for free I guess.

"Diablo II v1.14b Patch Notes (April 7, 2016)"

[https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20742964214](https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20742964214)

<comment><USER7> You can register your CD key with Battle.Net which puts Diablo II in your "library" for download in fully-patched installer form. It was handy for a LAN night with friends because sharing the installer around was easier and quicker than swapping discs.

<comment><USER5> Aha!

This I did not know.

Thank!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really neat project! The tools are released under CC-0 on Github.

The HN thread [1] on Part 1 went into discussion about how platform differences and the prospect of more rapid iteration meant that several early games were written with VMs. It's amusing that when we resurrect these games today, we are often running a VM that emulates an old architecture that then runs the original game's VM in turn.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694524)

<comment><USER9> But it also means that sometimes someone reimplements the actual VM! :) [https://www.scummvm.org/](https://www.scummvm.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Lost Vikings was a favorite of mine growing up. I remember jumping amd yelling at the screen while playing it with my sister.

I have always had a passion to hack and mod anything and everything. I think I'm going to make some time this weekend to see what I can do with The Lost Vikings.

Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks like Game Maker (a tool for creating video games using scripting). Very interesting stuff. Anyone knows if other ports of TLV, e.g. SNES, use the same virtual machine?

<comment><USER12> One would think so but I went and checked. In a Lost Vikings SNES ROM image, search for a sequence of VM opcodes. The turret program shown has a bit that goes 97 00 01 00 9C 18 08 2F 00, doesn't seem to contain any addresses and is long enough to not just appear at random. It shows up in the ROM image so it looks like yes, the VM was used in the SNES version too.

<comment><USER13> Cool. Is the data not compressed in the SNES ROMs or were you reading the data directly from memory? In the DOS version the DATA.DAT file contains a bunch of chunks, most of which (including the vm programs) are compressed using an LZSS type compression.

<comment><USER12> The image seemed to be uncompressed, or at least, the relevant parts of it were uncompressed. I'd guess they had to be much pickier how what and where to compress, given the constraints of the system.

<comment><USER14> Accessing the cart was as fast as accessing RAM, and you didn't have much RAM to go around, so I imagine there just wasn't much advantage to it.

<comment><USER12> No, compression was used extensively. Just often hand-rolled and for specific things. [https://multimedia.cx/eggs/nes- compression/](https://multimedia.cx/eggs/nes-compression/) has a link to an RLE implementation used in some Zelda game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The way each object is implemented in the VM reminds me a lot of the way you wrote objects in ZZT ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZZT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZZT)).

</comment><comment><USER16> > The Lost Vikings Virtual Machine however does not have a stack. It has a > single temporary register, object fields and globals.

The technical term for this architecture is an "accumulator machine"?

</comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for good blog post, this just goes better and better.

I wonder what Blizzard thinks/would think of this effort ?</comment>


Introductory course on Unix sysadminning (includes notes, slides, homework, and labs) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/sysadmin-class/2008-spring/

<comment><USER2> I don't know if this is a good thing but on the 2nd slide of the first lecture it says the grading is P/NP (pass and no pass), for a minute I was trying to figure out why algorithmic complexity has anything to do with grading.

<comment><USER3> the same thing occurred to me after reading the first half of your comment..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the most important things about being an admin (that being my nominal career) is the human factor, and this is addressed in only a couple of books.

As a sysadmin, you are responsible for keeping the show going for a big pile of people, and so you need to make sure that you are _visible_ to those people; that you are more than just a name tagged to an email regarding an outage.

I made it a habit of introducing myself to new users, and of taking a few minutes every day to walk around in a different area of the company, just to see how things were going. On a couple of occasions, this helped me identify a problem _before_ it got big enough to tip off the monitoring software.

</comment><comment><USER5> In an interesting side note, this class is taught by the Berkeley open computing facility (OCF) that Hans Reiser co-founded.</comment>


New mobile phone accessory will allow people to "speak" through their ear - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,22948527-5014109,00.html

<comment><USER2> It would be gratuitous to mention what orifice the internet allows people to speak out of.</comment>


Ask HN: What to Choose for a side project? Vue, React, Angular? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If your goal is to just make something, choose the one with the best documentation and community.

If your goal is to boost your skills and resume, pick the one with the most entrenched legacy code.

<comment><USER3> Also, if you already know at least one, choose the one you know best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Choose the one you can learn the fastest and be most productive. This is a flame war waiting to happen.

</comment><comment><USER5> React, it works well with Typescript and hooks are interesting to work with.

</comment><comment><USER6> Vue</comment>


An updated analysis of the "Giving up on Julia" post - <AUTHOR> https://tk3369.wordpress.com/2018/02/04/an-updated-analysis-for-the-giving-up-on-julia-blog-post/amp/?__twitter_impression=true <comment><USER2> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16300978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16300978)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really nice update! A lot of work has gone into Julia the last few years.</comment>


'McMillions': ex-cop orchestrated $24M McDonald's Monopoly scam - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2020/02/01/mcmillions-how-ex-cop-orchestrated-24-million-mcdonalds-monopoly-scam/ <comment><USER2> I read this story not too long ago. It's a pretty amazing story, honestly like something from a movie. Though, it did make me think back to being a kid at that time being hopeful we might win. Get that boardwalk and park place. Now I know it was never possible to win in Canada at that time it does kind of bring this feeling of being cheated. My dad always said conspiratorially that the game was a scam and you could never win. It's funny to think he was right, though not for the reasons he thought.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a great story so reposts aren't that frustrating, but the Daily Beast reporting in 2018 is better researched and wildly entertaining: [https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged- mcdonalds...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds- monopoly-game-and-stole-millions)

<comment><USER4> I don't believe Jacobson's connection to Columbo was a complete random happening at an airport.

More realistically, at least one of Jacobson's friends or family couldn't keep their mouth shut that Jacbson worked for the promotion. An associate of theirs was connected to Columbo and decided to extort Jacobson.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Taking the stand in a Jacksonville, Fla., courthouse, he admitted: "All I can tell you is I made the biggest mistake of my life."

More like "the biggest protracted series of mistakes". Or perhaps "the most mistakey criminal enterprise I have ever devoted 12 years of my life to".

</comment><comment><USER6> McDo: Here we're putting you in charge of placing the $1Million prize pieces.

Employee: Okey-dokes.

McDo: [Thinks] Hey that employee is getting really rich, must be completely unrelated. Lets not bother to check up on them.

???

Was someone higher up in on the deal?

<comment><USER7> I'm surprised at the lack of checks and balances in place. That one person had unchecked control of the game.

<comment><USER8> Along these lines... I once saw a movie in which, during a small town election, a character commented "You know who decides elections? The ballot counter."

<comment><USER9> Contested elections have ballots counted in the presence of witnesses from each side.

<comment><USER10> All vote counting is made with the presence of people from multiple parties. Everywhere I've voted in, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud)

The reason why this incident isn't more widely known is that the trial commenced on September 10, 2001. Needless to say, coverage of it was quickly eclipsed by more serious events.

<comment><USER12> I wonder what other happenings in the U.S. were eclipsed by 9/11.

<comment><USER13> Donnie Darko's release in October 2001 was very quiet after they pulled all advertising because a plane crash plays a prominent role in the plot.

<comment><USER14> The ending of the MGS2 video game (released in November of 2001) was butchered, since it involved a massive submarine crashing into New York City and Konami feared the game could be seen as a criticism of America. In the cutscenes that survived the butchering, you can see vestigial remnants of the original; most notably flagpoles without American flags on them. The ending of the game has the "villain" explain his desire to free America from the AI that personified of the military industrial complex. When he died, an American flag was meant to symbolically fall on his body.

<comment><USER15> Is that a regional change or a global change? Did the Japanese release retain the original ending?

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately it was a global change. MGS2 released in the US first, Japan a few weeks later. I'm not sure if that played a roll in any way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting how quickly people are tempted by money. I worked for a store that decided that they needed to reduce staff so they got rid of the supervisors that supervised the cashiers when they cashed out. They figured the cashiers had been there for so many years so they were trustworthy. Almost immediately the cashiers started to cheat by skimming a bit of cash and within a few months, most of them were replaced because they had been caught cheating in some way.

The temptation is too great for many people. Checks and balances always need to be put in place no matter how trustworthy the person is.

This case is a prime example of that.

<comment><USER17> > Almost immediately the cashiers started to cheat by skimming a bit of cash > and within a few months, most of them were replaced because they had been > caught cheating in some way.

Who caught them and how if they stopped counting the drawers?

<comment><USER18> A security camera on the register seems like the easiest way. If the cashier's count doesn't match the sum of customer transaction then watch the footage until you see them pocket the money.

<comment><USER19> Thus proving you don't need the manager oversight ?

<comment><USER18> Monitoring with cameras seems like an advance in technology that lowers the need for managers in the room. But it's still a check as advocated earlier in the thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some previous articles:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17638677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17638677)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10643160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10643160)

</comment><comment><USER21> Were there bad publicity for Mc Donald after that in the US ?

After all, they made 40% raise in sales for a prize that was not possible.

<comment><USER22> As I recall they ran a new promotion after this all came out with even bigger prizes (and more of them) as an apology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So he sold $1 Million tickets to the mob for $50K and the mobster got half of the prize from people. And those people got (stuck with paying taxes on the hole $1 Million.)

He got too little but then it was just a "day's work" and after a while you cannot launder them yourself.

<comment><USER24> If the prize "winners" came ahead with a dollar more than taxes they came out ahead.

He was smart, he took a decent amount of money but didn't risk his banker questioning where millions of dollars in his bank account came from.

<comment><USER23> Not if they spent the money before paying the taxes. You know how it goes when you get a bunch of money all of the sudden

<comment><USER25> Hell, you'll be relatively lucky if taxes are all that gets you: [https://abcnews.go.com/US/lottery-jackpot-winners-lost- big/s...](https://abcnews.go.com/US/lottery-jackpot-winners-lost- big/story?id=36313525)

As pleasurable as it is to imagine myself winning huge sums of cash it's also almost a sort of fire drill for in case it ever actually happens.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Self-Healing Transistors for Chip-Scale Starships - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/selfhealing-transistors-for-chipscale-starships <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161879)

</comment><comment><USER3> > "the craft could accelerate to one-fifth the speed of light"

At that speed, wouldn't this little device be ripped to shreds by dust, radiation, and loose atoms or ions?

<comment><USER4> Not sure if space has that much stuff in it outside the heliosphere...

Some numbers here: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_medium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_medium)

<comment><USER5> It will still be travelling at that speed when entering the corresponding area of the target system. If it could survive, it would be interesting to know what kind of observations could be made by a single-chip sensor travelling at that speed. No planetary close-ups surely.

<comment><USER4> This is a fascinating read: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0610030.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0610030.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even assuming you can slow down the chip once it gets to the solar system, do we even have a way to send a signal back?

<comment><USER7> Perhaps, the sail could modulate the reflected beam? That way, all of the heavy communications gear can stay in our own solar system.

Instead of trying to stop at the destination, you could instead send a stream of these tiny expendable probes past the target. Each one would get, say, a microsecond to take a snapshot, and then it would spend the short remainder of its life relaying the raw data.

To do a chemical analysis, some probes could be sent on relativistic collision course with the subject planet, and other probes could watch the impact. It would be a scale-up of NASA's Deep Impact mission from 2005.

<comment><USER8> A relativistic impact sufficient to allow chemical analysis from space is probably sufficient to kill creatures that may live on the planet. I'm not entirely comfortable with this.

<comment><USER7> I don't think a 0.1g probe would make it through an atmosphere at any speed. The targets I had in mind, were moons, rings, asteroids, much like Deep Impact; I used the term "planet" as a catch-all.

Nevertheless, your point stands, if we consider technologically advanced life a possibility. It would be real shame to clobber someone's moon colony. Perhaps, these impactor missions should not be considered on the first expedition.

<comment><USER9> Not only would it be rude to pelt someone's colony (or planet) like that, but if they were sufficiently advanced to recognize what's happening, they would likely consider it an attack. Not a great way to make friends.

<comment><USER10> Anything living on stellar bodies without an atmosphere should be prepared for micrometeorite impacts.

Of course this is a somewhat strange micrometeorite, but it shouldn't be too far from the standard set of space debris.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I presume this is a part of/sponsored by/ or something related to the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative[0]? It is not mentioned in the article.

[0] [https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3](https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3)

</comment><comment><USER12> Solar sail technology seems so promising as a means of allowing our species to take our first steps into space. It's a shame that more isn't being put into it, as far as I am aware, the first test on it was done just two years ago.

<comment><USER13> No, there was testing earlier than that. In particular, a Japanese test in Venus transfer orbit starting in 2010:

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

The one 2 years ago was the Planetary Society's Lightsail, which had a big crowdfunding campaign. The next iteration of Lightsail is launching on the 2nd Falcon Heavy flight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is prob a silly idea but is there any way to harness this cosmic radiation that is bombarding the chip? Cosmic rays are high energy particles. Surely we can do something with that right?

<comment><USER15> It's enough to fry your hardware but not enough to drive your vehicle with. A bit like a bullet hitting a driving car. If it hits in the right place it would kill the car (or it's occupant(s)), but you can't really propel your car with bullets, not only because there are too few bullets to start counting on but also because they can hit you from any angle when they do hit.

<comment><USER16> I interpreted that as a question about energy harvesting, not propulsion.

Sounds plausible to me. A sort of, cosmic ray greenhouse effect working on a dense insulated target, producing a heat gradient to a (cosmic ray transparent) radiator.

I'm not sure if the material requirements work out, or if it's worth it's mass to bring along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This means that here on earth, our new terrestrial robot overlords will be invulnerable to tempest and EMP attacks, after they take our jobs.

<comment><USER18> But will they be immune to bullet?

<comment><USER17> The ones controlling advanced aircraft will, in some cases, fly faster than most bullets.

<comment><USER19> Advanced aircraft fly faster than mountains too, but somehow those mountains manage to hit them.

<comment><USER17> Yes, and flying as fast as a bullet directly into another bullet travelling in the opposite direction means an impact at twice the speed of each.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mike Maples: "You Have to Be Willing to Throw it all away" [video] - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/22/mike-maples-you-have-to-be-willing-to-throw-it-all-away-video/ <comment><USER2> So I've been marginally involved with a couple of Mike Maple's less successful ventures. At digg, his involvement was basically put money on the table in one round, and (apparently) take money off the table at a higher valuation in a later round (not exactly "willing to throw it all away"). I've also been a customer of Egnyte.com, which seems starved for funds.

So in a world, where "entrepreneurs have all the power," what exactly does he bring to the table?

Apparently he impresses investors, but so did Bernie Madoff.

<comment><USER3> great point.

personally, am sick and tired of VCs pretend they know stuff and that they care about entrepreneurs.

If they care that much why don't they just give away money for free to the startups they think are promising.</comment></comment>


What's Next? - <AUTHOR> http://flingmedia.com/articles/whats-next/

<comment><USER2> _I want to work on what is next, to help people take those next steps into the unknown. I have no interest in taking anyones money for something I don't truly believe in, and the problem is I'm finding less and less to believe in._

This is the pernicious downside of taking hype seriously. Yeah, the highs are great, but the lows are really, really low. This poor guy has inhaled so much of the Web 2.0 smoke that he's having withdrawal symptoms.

Software engineering is a _craft_ , like carpentry, or knitting, or writing, or composing. You need to practice it for years to get good at it. You need to learn to love the calm moments, the practice sessions, the details, the act of fixing little things, or you'll never attain the skill or sustain the long- term exertion that is needed for great work.

Not everything you write will be a work of genius, and not everything you do will change the world -- nor should it. There is a time to be bold and flashy, and a time to buckle down and solve people's old-fashioned but real (and occasionally renumerative) problems.

And there's a time to go on vacation. _This_ is what a guy who has burned out is like: The wonders of everyday life all seem stale and unprofitable to him. He needs to take up a hobby. He needs a housecall from Tim Ferriss, stat.

From the bottom of the page:

 _As well as providing web and mobile design services, they are currently endeavoring to create six products in one year._

Yeah, that might explain the burnout. How about trying to create _one_ decent product over _six_ years? What is this guy trying to prove with this senseless sprint?</comment>