Deep learning - <AUTHOR> http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap6.html <comment><USER2> I was really impressed that the author included this caveat:

> A word on procedure: In this section, we've smoothly moved from single > hidden-layer shallow networks to many-layer convolutional networks. It's all > seemed so easy! We make a change and, for the most part, we get an > improvement. If you start experimenting, I can guarantee things won't always > be so smooth. The reason is that I've presented a cleaned-up narrative, > omitting many experiments - including many failed experiments. This cleaned- > up narrative will hopefully help you get clear on the basic ideas. But it > also runs the risk of conveying an incomplete impression. Getting a good, > working network can involve a lot of trial and error, and occasional > frustration. In practice, you should expect to engage in quite a bit of > experimentation.

There is a lot of "magical thinking" amongst people not actively doing research in the area (and maybe a bit within that community too), and I think it at least partly stems from mainly seeing very successful nets, and never seeing the many failed ideas before those network structures and hyperparameters were hit upon - a sampling bias type thing, where you only read about the things that work.

<comment><USER3> Yes, difficulty of finding right hyperparameters is often overlooked. And it is a very frustrating part of creating a model. And methods like grid search just don't work, because of number of parameters to tune and time to train a network.

<comment><USER4> Actually, random search works a lot better than grid search for hyperparameter optimization. Usually, only a small number of hyperparameters actually matter, the trick is figuring out which ones. Grid search wastes time on irrelevant dimensions.

That said, any sort of hyperparameter optimization is extremely computationally intensive so random search is far from a panacea.

<comment><USER5> So when you search randomly and reach up to a set of optimised parameters, how do you know if it can't be optimised any further, since you haven't looked up all possible sets like in a grid?

<comment><USER6> You generally don't know if you've reached a suitable maxima, which is why it is good to run a nondeterministic optimizer a few times (if computation power allows) and see if there are any reliable parameters form there.

There are also somewhat better-than-random strategies such as Bayesian optimization and particle swarm optimization that can help you to search more efficiently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a different chapter, this is not exactly a dupe, but it's not the first time links to parts of this book have been posted. Over the last two years, there have been a lot of HN discussions on the various chapters of this book. Here are the ones with comments:

16 days ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9863832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9863832)

8 months ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8719371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8719371)

a year ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8258652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8258652)

a year ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8120670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8120670)

a year ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7920183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7920183)

a year ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7588158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7588158)

two years ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794308)

<comment><USER8> How did you do that? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER9> HN search: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=neuralnetworksanddeeplearning....](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><USER10> Is there a similar search engine for reddit? I can't access my old reddit posts by search because reddit has a cutoff point at 1000 results.

<comment><USER11> How about "site:reddit.com visarga"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's worth reading Nielsen's essay "Will neural networks and deep learning soon lead to artificial intelligence?" which was added today

[http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap6.html#AI](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap6.html#AI)

<comment><USER13> And his answer is:

 _I believe that we are several decades (at least) from using deep learning to develop general AI._

<comment><USER14> I think this is a better summary of his conclusions from that same paragraph:

 _I conclude that, even rather optimistically, it 's going to take many, many deep ideas to build an AI._

The appendix linked there doesn't seem to be ready yet though. In any case, I like how this is phrased. I'd like to see some of the hype around deep learning calm down.

<comment><USER15> The appendix is at [http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/sai.html](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/sai.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've sort of run adjacent to the field of machine learning in the last few years, but haven't really dove in to the existing literature. This seems to be a pretty interesting overview.

Out of curiosity, do many implementations of convolutional neural networks take advantage of FFT, DCT, or some other fast orthonormal transform to compute the transition between layers, or are the kernel sizes small enough that there isn't a great advantage to that?

<comment><USER17> Facebook actually does something like that: [https://research.facebook.com/blog/879898285375829/fair- open...](https://research.facebook.com/blog/879898285375829/fair-open-sources- deep-learning-modules-for-torch/)

They have a patent on it but did open sourced the code. They claim it's up to 24x faster than standard. But that is only true for an extreme use case, its only 2x faster on average.

<comment><USER18> The bigger the convolution, the faster it gets because a convolution in real space is a multiplication in frequency space.

It breaks even at 5x5 or so and gets dramatically better shortly thereafter. However, most of the convolutional nets in use rely on 3x3 convolutions because I guess reasons:

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.1556.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.1556.pdf) (all 3x3)

[http://www.cs.unc.edu/~wliu/papers/GoogLeNet.pdf](http://www.cs.unc.edu/~wliu/papers/GoogLeNet.pdf) (3x3 and 5x5)

There's probably a new Imagenet winner in this somewhere IMO...

<comment><USER19> One thing I wonder about is whether it is possible to somehow reflect symmetry in the input data in the structure of the neural network?

For example, the usual way to have a DNN learn rotation/scaling/translation is to do data augmentation and simply learn with all the data rotated/translated/shifted.

But there must be a way to have these input space symmetries reflect somehow in the structure of the network?

I tried googling this a bit but wasn't really successful - does anyone know whether this has been done?

<comment><USER20> So, convolution is by itself an attempt to exploit translation-invariance in the visual world, and typical deep convnets end up picking up a certain amount of scaling _tolerance_ (though I would not call it invariance) by having features that are sensitive to larger and larger patches of the input as you go up the hierarchy of features. This is not real scale-invariance, and many people run a laplacian pyramid of some sort at test time to get it real scale- invariance when eking out the best possible numbers.

Rotation-invariance is probably not really a thing you want. The visual world is not, in fact, rotation-invariant, and the "up" direction on Earth-bound, naturally-occurring images has different statistics than the "down" direction, and you'd like to exploit these. Animal visual systems are not rotation- invariant either; an entertainingly powerful demo of this is "the Thatcher Effect" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcher_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcher_effect)).

Reflection across a vertical axis, on the other hand, often is exploitable, at least in image recognition contexts (as opposed to, say, handwriting recognition). If you look at the features image recognition convnets are learning they are often symmetric around some axis or other, or sometimes come in "pairs" of left-hand/right-hand twins. As far as I know nobody has tried to exploit this architecturally in any way other than just data augmentation, but it's a big world out there and people have been trying this stuff for a long time.

<comment><USER19> I was thinking more about a machine vision context with e.g. different parts coming in at any rotation angle.

I know that some translation invariance comes from e.g. the usual conv+maxpool layer structure, but there must still be several representations existing in the first hidden layer of the network stack, for the different translation shifts?

Especially rotation looks like something that should produce a lot of symmetry and shared parameters, but it also looks difficult enough for me that I rather would like to know about someone with mad math/group theory(?) skills who looked at that.

But thank you for the detailed reply anyways!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is the best neural network tutorial out there. I have been waiting for the missing deep learning chapter for so long, and it finally comes!

my reading for today, thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER22> I just wish the code was in Ruby... but having the author released all this material free I don't feel like actually complaining :) it's more of a subtle hint than anything else.. ;)

<comment><USER23> Read the material, skip the code, write your own code in Ruby, that's what I've been doing in Clojure.

<comment><USER22> That would be a highly effective way of learning but not everybody has the time for it... and also it's not just the ready made code that I envy, but also the added value of someone having already picked the relevant, working libraries, tools and so on..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thank you for this, even if it might be a repost, I had missed it, and it's very, very interesting.

<comment><USER25> Not a repost; apparently this chapter was just released.</comment></comment>


Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2011/7/12/matz_joins_heroku/ <comment><USER2> Wow, nice move, guys!

One of the things I always admired about Linus is that he managed to stay _very_ neutral amongst all the Linux vendors. Back in the dot com days, he could have had pretty much anything he wanted from Redhat, VA Linux, Linuxcare, etc... etc.... but he managed to stay with Transmeta, and then go to the Linux Foundation, which is neutral territory. That's allowed him to focus on Linux without having a Corporate Overlord, benign though it may be.

<comment><USER3> I've always dreamed of a world with more things like the Linux Foundation. I'd love to see a Ruby foundation or something like that

<comment><USER4> Ruby Central? <http://rubycentral.org/>

<comment><USER3> Wow, why didn't I know about that already! Anyone know if they have plans to fund developers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting note:

With Rasmus Lerdorf working at WePay, this means the creators of the two most presently popular web programming languages, Ruby and PHP, are now working for YC companies.

(Which is a teency stretch since Heroku is now SalesForce and hence no longer really a YC company, but we'll count them to keep it interesting.)

<comment><USER6> I'd love to know how Ruby is one of the two most popular web programming languages. I love ruby but from what I see here in NYC, I'd say python is more popular. Are we trading anecdotes here? Or is that two most popular based on a metric from somewhere?

<comment><USER7> Based on anecdotal evidence it seems like python is generally much more popular then ruby, being frequently used for just about any general purpose programming (other then some speed sensitive and low level stuff) such as os scripting, application scripting, web programming, number crunching, desktop applications, ect.

While ruby(usually rails) is unfortunately only popular for web programming (probably because python is a very similar language that out-competes it, partially due to specialized libraries and more stable interfaces) where it seems to be more popular then python.

<comment><USER8> I'll throw in my anecdotal evidence as well then. At work use ruby for a lot of configuration management with puppet mainly due to it just being easier to just throw some extra ruby in place than shell out to another script. So ever so slowly we have been getting more and more ruby into our "enterprise".

We also have another more "corporate" type piece of software that uses python that gets... less use, but that is more due to it really being written in java and having performance closer to a glacier. Which is why we have puppet now in the first place.

I've used both ruby and perl for equal amounts of time, and I've recently started to use it at work to replace old perl and shell I have. That and I've switched vm's to rubinius so those old "ruby is slow" gripes to be honest never cause problems. That and having a jit+vm that isn't java on each of our os's is really awesome.

Don't get me wrong, Python is a great language but you are 100% right, there isn't much need for learning both Ruby and Python. They both are roughly equivalent featurewise, but they both take _completely_ different roads about how you approach general purpose programming. That said I know both but rarely use my Python knowledge much. But it does have some great libraries out there for numeric computation/etc... I also know of a few companies that use ruby as their goto language to get failing (java) projects out of the door.

Disclaimer: I never use rails at all, haven't since I looked at it source in the 1.x days. Was REALLY put off with all of the monkey patching they did.

<comment><USER7> Doh I forgot to mention puppet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember when RubyGems got forked as SlimGems, there was a discussion about Rails' importance in the overall Ruby community. patio11 wrote:

 _I use Rails, and love Rails, but back home Rails is not yet the core Ruby use case, not by a long shot. Rails has peculiar needs with regards to typical Ruby applications, and a certain portion of the developer community feels that people who write themselves peculiar needs can write their own solutions to them._ [1]

With Matz working on the most Rails-oriented hosting platform, perhaps this will change.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2621376>

<comment><USER10> I don't think matz was ever unaware of how important rails is. But what I assume patio11 meant is that most of the japanese devs may not have that as a priority, changing the priorities of a single person would not change much.

<comment><USER11> Although it's a pretty important single person, and may bring much greater awareness of the "westerner" ruby community among core developers.

<comment><USER12> Yeah because Matz never really left japan, or spoke to "westerner" developers before. So this will be a HUGE change... seriously?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really great to see. It's so seldom that a company goes from strength to strength post acquisition. With notable exceptions like Android, companies at best hold their trajectory while most disintegrate.

Heroku just keeps getting better though. The releases of things like Cedar and node support are a huge indication of the platform's forward momentum and this news is quite the coup d'etat. Kudos to the Heroku team and Kudos to Salesforce for an acquisition gone right.

<comment><USER14> Completely agree with this. So many mid sized (read::fairly cool) startups are being swallowed by large companies these days, just to be salvo-ed in a basement and eventually lost.

I figured Heroku would have had the same fate, glad they are (without a doubt) blazing on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow.

I like the idea of Heroku going the same way as EngineYard. And investing in technology.

But dreww is correct, he's keeping his other positions so is this merely a marketing and bragging rights thing?

<comment><USER16> 'Marketing and bragging rights' sounds critical to me. In an interview[1][2], Matz describes it this way:

>> He [Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce] said he could provide us some support and that's why I decided to join Salesforce.com through Heroku (Note: Several members of Ruby Core are currently under negotiation to join Heroku).

>> So, the core of our work will not change. Our mission is to develop Ruby Core, to make Ruby more functional and higher quality. Having said that, I am expecting that the job security we are being provided and Ruby usage feedback we get from heavy Ruby users such as Heroku will accelerate the progress of Ruby development. Otherwise, there would be no point to accepting the offer.

The "support" there refers to a conversation between Benioff and Matz where Matz said a primary concern of his was for Ruby devs who either work on Ruby in their spare time or worry about job security. It sounds like Salesforce is committed to helping by hiring multiple Ruby-core devs. I think that's very real support, not just PR of any kind.

[1] [http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2011/7/12/translation-of- matz-q...](http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2011/7/12/translation-of-matz-q-a- article-after-joining-heroku)

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2757134> (HN thread on the Matz interview (so far, no comments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is totally awesome, and is a huge boon for both Heroku and Ruby, but I'd much prefer to see them hire Rich Hickey or Guido van Rossum or Martin Odersky or ...well, the list goes on. Heroku is already knows Ruby cold, they should be on-boarding the people that can help them bring their A-game to other platforms. I look forward to a world where I can ask myself the question "which platform is quickest to get up and running on" and have the answer be a list with 10 entries. Lots of people are trying this, but Heroku has the experience to make it work.

<comment><USER18> Well they have the Ring dude for clojure so...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how his Rite project is going (Ruby Lite, an "embeddable Ruby") Wasn't the project sponsored by the Japanese government? Really looking forward to its release :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool. I wonder what Matz will work on directly for Heroku. I understand that he will continue to work on the language, but what new things can we expect to see from Heroku as a platform?

<comment><USER21> > what new things can we expect to see from Heroku as a platform?

I think his presence there will serve two purposes: 1) share his Ruby cachet with Heroku, and 2) when Heroku finds a way to improve Ruby, they have a way to fast-track it now, big time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Congrats to Heroku - it's certainly a fitting parternship! I wouldn't put anything past them. With such an amazing team and insatiable ambition, they're going to be leaving a mark on history.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's very interesting that the creators of Python and Ruby are working on PaaS hosting solutions for their languages: Guido at Google App Engine and Matz at Heroku.

</comment><comment><USER24> Now we only need to know where _why is working.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can't imagine he's actually going to hack on the product, right? Is something like this a prestige move?

</comment><comment><USER26> My ex-employer (a tech consulting company) tried to on-board him & I am assuming that Matz certainly have received offers from many other tech companies too.. Kudos to heroku for making offer that excited Matz.., it is an interesting move by Heroku..

</comment><comment><USER27> Congrats James. Leave some Ruby luminaries for other companies :)

</comment><comment><USER28> Matz was rather excited to get the Heroku t-shirts last week. This is a few days before the RubyKaigi so the timing is indicative. I think Heroku wants some expansion in the Japanese Ruby market. (which is sadly still under- developed)

</comment><comment><USER29> Heroku is nice so we are nice?

</comment><comment><USER30> This has to be the most badass new hire announcement I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER31> That must have been a tough interview...

<comment><USER32> "So, can you estimate the number of gas stations in Los Angeles?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great move! Congrats to Heroku.

</comment><comment><USER34> congrats to Jamie and team!

</comment><comment><USER35> interestingly, the official press release mentions that matz will retain his positions at NaCL and Rakuten Institute of Technology.

[http://news.heroku.com/news_releases/ruby-creator- yukihiro-m...](http://news.heroku.com/news_releases/ruby-creator-yukihiro- matsumoto-joins-heroku-)

</comment><comment><USER21> So Heroku now owns Ruby.

Not that I think this will lead anywhere particularly bad.

<comment><USER36> Did Google start owning Python when Guido went to work there? Replace Google by Transmeta and Guido by Linus and you have another earlier example. This kind of thing happens all the time. You can generally count on long-time system designers and implementors to have enough integrity and pride in their creation that they won't succumb to corporate agendas even from their own employers. It's not like they're so desperate they have to suck corporate cock to hang onto a job.

<comment><USER37> It is yet to see another cloud based solution for python. Of course, having Guido there is not the _real_ reason why this would happen.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk says China rocks while the U.S. is full of complacency and entitlement - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-china-rocks-us-full-of-entitlement.html <comment><USER2> _" In German oder Englisch / I know how to count down / Und I'm learning Chinese" / says Wernher Von Braun_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not an unbiased opinion. Musk has factories over there.

<comment><USER4> He also has factories in the US.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your hobbies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Photography, with my ever-changing collection of vintage cameras (I still have a real darkroom).

Cycling, which I can combine with the above (I usually bring a camera on my rides).

I own a clarinet, which I 'play' in the sense that sounds come out of it that occasionally resemble music.

I like to cook, and bake, though I'm not sure that counts as a hobby, as it needs to happen anyway.

Like presumably most of the people here, I spend a good chunk of my day staring at screens of various sorts, so I like to be able to do things that get me away from that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ham Radio - I like CW ("Continuous Wave" which usually employs an on/off keyer and Morse Code), QRP (seeing how far away you can reach someone with minimum possible power) and modern digital mesh networks like APRS and AREDN

Guitar - I have a nylon string (acoustic, Flamenco style with low action) and like to play Bossa Nova and Jazz

Exploring - anything and anywhere new

</comment><comment><USER4> Martial Arts - Tae Kwon Do

Guitar - Jazz, Classic Rock, Metal, Blues

Bread Baking - enjoy making several different kinds of breads by hand from scratch.

Candy Making - I'm "famous" amongst my circle of friends for the caramels I make. I'm particularly fond of my toffee and nut brittle and my marshmallows are out of this world.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cycling, Photography, Backpacking, Mountaineering, Cooking and Bread Baking.

I'm actually surprised others here bake bread. I assumed it was pretty rare.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tennis - it's been a while since I last played

Coffee - Coffee addicted and like find out new roasters/beans</comment>


Show HN: Last week's rate of submissions and comments on HN - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/HN_ItemsPerHour.png

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw this item which appears to ask about rate of submission to HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083310>

I happened to have some data handy, so I graphed the number of items submitted per hour for the first 7 days of June. This is the graph.

To answer the question as a "per day" number, here are the numbers of items submitted per day, using BST day boundaries:

        Fri Jun 1 : 732
        Sat Jun 2 : 409
        Sun Jun 3 : 357
        Mon Jun 4 : 738
        Tue Jun 5 : 799
        Wed Jun 6 : 805
        Thu Jun 7 : 763

First item numbers for each day were:

        Fri Jun 1 00:03 4050886
        Sat Jun 2 00:03 4056301
        Sun Jun 3 00:00 4059458
        Mon Jun 4 00:01 4061963
        Tue Jun 5 00:00 4066417
        Wed Jun 6 00:00 4071429
        Thu Jun 7 00:02 4076648
        Fri Jun 8 00:02 4081786

Thus going by item IDs, the number on each day were:

        Fri Jun 1 : 5415
        Sat Jun 2 : 3157
        Sun Jun 3 : 2505
        Mon Jun 4 : 4454
        Tue Jun 5 : 5012
        Wed Jun 6 : 5219
        Thu Jun 7 : 5138

The ratio of comment to submission is then:

        Fri Jun 1 : 7.4 comments per submission
        Sat Jun 2 : 7.7 comments per submission
        Sun Jun 3 : 7.0 comments per submission
        Mon Jun 4 : 6.0 comments per submission
        Tue Jun 5 : 6.3 comments per submission
        Wed Jun 6 : 6.5 comments per submission
        Thu Jun 7 : 6.7 comments per submission

_Edited to remove unwarranted precision in times_</comment>


Man Uses Forced Perspective to Create Funny Interactions with Superhero Toys - <AUTHOR> https://mymodernmet.com/wire-hon-forced-perspective-photography/ <comment><USER2> These photos look great, I only wish there was one with him holding a toilet plunger and gesturing to hulk to fix it!</comment>


Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Through Ad Blockers - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2015/06/18/sourcepoint-ad-block-stopping-software/ <comment><USER2> The next logical step is an ad 'blocker' that simulates ordinary user behavior by still downloading the ads, in the background without displaying them, and added random walks by simulated 'clicks' on advertisement. This allows all the creepy tracking that comes with loading the spyware, but if done right has the potential of disrupting the already disgusting mind-manipulation while silently giving back to the content publishers.

Happy arms race.

<comment><USER3> The step after that is to create artificial humans that surf the web just like real ones, build up marketing profiles just like real ones, "view" ads just like real ones - but aren't actually people. And then computers can market things to other computers. We might even get a shadow economy where it's computers all the way down, sorta like how 75% of Twitter traffic is (used to be?) bots.

Skynet, here we come.

<comment><USER4> _And then computers can market things to other computers._

+2

<comment><USER5> Charlie Stross already wrote that: _Accelerando_.

<comment><USER6> I looked up the summary on Wikipedia[1]. It sounds like an interesting read. It was released under a Creative Commons license, so it can be read online for free.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29)

<comment><USER7> Read it recently, excellent book. Take the time if you have it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if this is the dying gasp of javascriptless web browsing

<comment><USER9> javascriptless web browsing died in 2004, and its killer is called Ajax.

<comment><USER10> Nah. For a long time after AJAX was birthed as a concept, people actually believed in progressive enhancement.

It's only somewhere in the last 5 years the SPA trend seems to have reached critical mass and instead of starting from the idea of meeting user needs by serving reasonable media types from resource endpoints (and then building up interactivity on top of that), people want to treat browsers as just another cross-platform runtime (an _inferior_ one, naturally) that happened to win out instead of Java or Flash or Silverlight.

<comment><USER11> That's because industry analytics showed that approximately 1% of visitors lack JavaScript. AJAX and things like jQuery are ubiquitous and powerful, and it can be ludicrously expensive to build a site that looks nice and works well for that extra 1% of visitors who've deliberately crippled their browsers.

Pros for expecting JavaScript to be enabled:

\- Cheaper development because you can assume a common, featureful baseline. That leads to less code complexity on both the client and the server because you don't have to implement parallel code paths.

\- Freedom to add features that would be difficult or impossible to emulate with traditional static pages

Cons for expecting JavaScript to be enabled:

\- The site won't look and act right for the 1% of visitors who are used to every other site also not looking and acting right

There are lots of reasons to use JavaScript in the browser and almost no reasons not to, so everyone collectively decided to stop hamstringing themselves to cater to a teensy portion of users.

<comment><USER10> > it can be ludicrously expensive to build a site that looks nice and works > well for that extra 1% of visitors who've deliberately crippled their > browsers.

Huh.

If you think that one of the advantages of JS-required SPA-style applications is that they will help you _avoid things getting expensive_ somehow... I'm not sure where to start, actually. Maybe the situation here is kindof like the old saw about mediation: you should do it for 20 minutes a day, unless you don't have time, then you should do it for an hour a day.

My experience is that sites that start with the focus on their shiny new JavaScript framework and their app-like UI tend to devolve into architectures with overspecific and mixed concerns pretty quickly. If you want to keep things from getting complex and expensive, start by keeping discipline involved in conceiving of the app in terms of plain HTTP and different media representations of the same relevant resources/data. For back ends already producing well-modeled JSON documents, producing equivalent HTML representations should be easy. If it's not, something is likely wrong (and if you're already producing well-modeled HTML documents, it's exceptionally rare that producing good JSON docs with the essential content is anything other than trivial).

Now it's true that some apps just aren't about resources and media types, and you need the browser-as-runtime instead of the browser as document/media viewer. It's nice that the browser keeps growing in capabilities here. But let's be honestly: most of the JS-required apps we're seeing out there these days aren't even close to meeting this bar. And the "extra costs" you're invoking of supporting clients without JS are, in those cases, self-inflicted.

> That's because industry analytics showed that approximately 1% of visitors > lack JavaScript.

And I bet those same analytics probably showed even fewer visitors without JS after they used those stats to require it -- problem solved!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems like DRM, a "solution" that doesn't have to work IRL because it works in the boardroom.

</comment><comment><USER13> The whole fight about adblocking won't be solved in the court, but with a technical arms race. In the end startups like this one will probably win, just because there is a real, monetary gain for them. And then visitors of the sites using technology like this will have to choose: Either don't see ads, but also no (or not as much) content or content, but with ads or a payment. In my opinion this will lead to a better "contract" between users and the site, where everyones cards are on the table.

<comment><USER14> it might also lead to people skipping those sites altogether, which is what triggered the whole ad-supported-web madness in the first place.

<comment><USER15> I do this on principle, especially with mobile where ad-blocking is less available. If a page is especially egregious (full page ads, poor loading, etc), I will just close the entire tab ASAP. There's very little I need to read that badly, and hopefully it will show up in some tracking metrics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People block ads not because they do not like them, but because ads are just lazy.

I am being currently "re-advertised to" by Converse. They and a few ecommerce keep showing the products I browsed, and I find that to be not annoying at all. In fact there is a small chance I would drop them a quarter to keep reminding me for some time.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like snake oil - anyone have examples of their tech in action?

BI gave an example of The Guardian in it's article, but that is visible for me.

Instead of addressing the root cause, ad tech will further hurt publishers by chasing more traffic away. How difficult is it for the ad world to get the UX issues that are at stake?

Publishers need to invest in UX - not tracking, malvert, bandwidth consuming tech that has forced users to go out of their way to install ad blockers in the first place. No, it's not theft. It's common sense and basic security.

Sorry for the rant ... Just looking for customer examples for what Sourcepoint is doing.

</comment><comment><USER17> "The publisher can also choose to circumvent the ad-blocking program and still present the ad."

"'if users opt-in to having advertising subsidizing the experience, we can serve that ad, [and if an ad blocker continues to block the ads] then that would be illegal'"

Wouldn't unauthorized use of my browser to download content over my ISP, against my wishes and for the benefit of someone else, be a federal crime?

<comment><USER18> If you opted in to having advertising subsidize the experience, you are consenting, so no.

This is also not an entirely sensible question, as it works the other way around, too: "Wouldn't unauthorized downloading of content, using your ISP, and then deliberately extracting certain parts of it, against the publishers wishes, and for your own benefit, be a federal crime?"

(Note: The question of whether this is _copyright infringement_ , which is the common claim, is separate from the question of whether it may fall under some _crime_ )

<comment><USER19> No.

It's been solved in court in the past (and some horrible misdecisions were made, like saying that if no one links to something, it isn't public), but in general: if you make something available for me, I can ALWAYS for private-only use remix it as much as I want. I can copy my CD collection a thousand times, I can burn a hundred clones of a videogame – for private use.

Which is the case here.

The publisher has no right to expect that users actually see ads. Even with TV, all recording devices since the time of VCR skip recording ads completely. And with live TV, people switch the channel.

<comment><USER18> "It's been solved in court in the past"

No, it actually hasn't, at least not to the degree you think.

For example, the main ruling in favor of your argument, the Hopper ruling, turned on this: "commercial-skipping does not implicate Fox's copyright interest because Fox owns the copyrights to the television programs, not to the ads aired in the commercial breaks."

Not on some more general right to commercial skipping.

The only thing won on appeal so far is the preliminary injunction. Dish may in fact, still lose :)

Even if they don't, unlike TV shows, publishers will likely be able to claim compilation and collective copyrights on the work _as displayed to the user_. Plus, it's not time-shifting. Plus you have website terms of use that may bind you.

You may not want this to change the result. It probably changes the result.

"The publisher has no right to expect that users actually see ads. Even with TV, all recording devices since the time of VCR skip recording ads completely. And with live TV, people switch the channel."

This is 100% not the same as what is being described here. Those are time shifting devices. This is not. It is not "fast forwarding" the ads on the computer. People are also not switching to different tabs to avoid the ads. You also have another serious problem in websites: Terms of use. Unlike TV, which doesn't bind you to anything, on the web you can be bound to terms of use (plenty of website terms of use have been held valid and binding, it's usually a mixed question of fact and law). Expecting precedent to come out the same given all this seems .. a dubious line of argumentation. It may, it may not. Acting as if this is a solved question is incredibly premature.

Additionally, the only court in your favor has not ruled that Ad skipping is generally okay, it ruled that _Fox can 't complain about it because they don't own the copyright rights to the ads".

You do realize this means _the ad owners* may be able to complain, right?

Anyway, if you believe otherwise, i'd love to see some case law. (Because the case law i've found doesn't support your argument at all :P)

(Note, since i got a private email about it: I actually don't have strong feelings one way or the other as to whether it _should_ be legal/etc, i'm just trying to express an view as to whether it _is_ )

<comment><USER19> Hmm, the US situation actually seems interesting.

Anyway, under German law, you can always make a copy or compilation of any product you can use or have a license to use for personal use.

As an adblocker is only personal remixing, it is totally legal - just like ripping a CD, or mixing two songs I downloaded from iTunes.

Additionally, there are personal rights which can not be signed away by a ToS or even a contract, including the right of remixing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And I will be blocking you in my hosts file in 0.02 seconds. And then never do business with the company that uses your tech ever again.

Bring it.

<comment><USER21> Hosts files are a relatively obsolete way of blocking ads — it seems to be only because ad companies insist on serving ads and JS from their own domains. If a content site was sufficiently motivated enough, they'd serve ads exactly as content and include javascript within the content page itself to ensure they load.

Thankfully, I haven't seen anyone go "thermonuclear" on ad blockers yet except for executive-level decisions and lamentations — but as a technological-level problem it's theoretically straightforward to subvert given the rudimentary nature of ad blockers.

<comment><USER22> I've seen one person go thermonuclear trying to prevent ad blocking, and it seriously sucks. Randomly generated content classes and IDs, shifting DOM elements around to avoid them being targeted that way, and later on just completely removing all the divs from the area and manually painting large advertisements with primitives. Made scraping substantially more difficult, but of course not impossible.

One site that still has me beat dynamically loads all of the content and code through a websocket, and various bits are so heavily obfuscated that they look like brainfuck. Finding tools to tamper with SSL websockets is a challenge enough in its own right (Chrome has nicer tools now though).

<comment><USER14> are you doing it for the sheer fun of beating the ad-blocker-blocker, or do you need the information off the site?

<comment><USER22> One is screen scraping, one is attempting to find out how a product actually works. Neither goal has a monetary incentive so it is likely that people have got there before me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Human society is unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Even in retirement, I'd wager Henry Kissinger is far more likely to mean the end of human history than AI is.

<comment><USER3> Hey, he's committed himself to improving the world by sitting on the boards of innovative companies like Theranos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea about 'untethered AIs' is a good one - what will ground an AI in human ethics? Currently they are designed to win. Will it be even possible to create an AI that 'cares' about the outcomes its calculating?

Even if it is possible to 'tether' AIs, won't we just remove those limits? Look what we do to fake persons today - corporations. They are like AIs in that small calculations made throughout the entity guide the decisions as a whole.

We cyclicly add boundaries to what they're allowed, then the next administration removes those boundaries in the interest of unbridled growth.

We'll do the same with AIs. They'll calculate a 'best outcome' of letting millions die in Indonesian drought, because average standard of living will increase for everyone else. In one administration we'll want to temper such decisions with humanity; in the next we'll just want more beer.

<comment><USER5> _what will ground an AI in human ethics?_

What grounds humans in "human ethics?" Is it thoughtful rational decision making or whims of the powerful at the time?

And which human ethics are you grounding in? Aristotelian, Cynic, Stoic, Theological?

There seems to be a common idea that humans all share some ethical framework or thread that is similar. I don't think that holds. In fact I don't know if there is any single ethic that you could argue every single human holds similarly. Maybe you could argue, will to survive and reproduce, but even that is highly variable.

The idea that we should or could build some kind of ethical homogeneity into our engineered intelligent systems is absolutely silly.

<comment><USER4> Thou Shalt Not Kill is a pretty good start

<comment><USER5> This is a common example used, to which the common question is "Is there absolutely no case in which killing is a justified and moral position?" Even then you must specify further. "Don't kill" but only humans or all things?

If another human is attacking you with intent to kill and you have no other options? How about in a case like the trolley problem [1] where you are forced into a challenge of scale? These are all valid problems with designing current engineering systems, not just AI systems.

It's possible to philosophically "bite the bullet"[2] and say "No, it's never justified or moral" however that doesn't pass the test of practicality.

So, something as seemingly obvious as "Don't kill" doesn't have firm boundaries which we can create a universal set of mathematically implementable, and acceptable, rules for.

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

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bite_the_bullet#In_philosophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bite_the_bullet#In_philosophy)

<comment><USER4> Is there no spectrum between absolutes? Anyway the AI will have no concept of the notion, unless its part of the calculation. And Utilitarian notions are notoriously repugnant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At the article's end: '[...] AI developers, as inexperienced in politics and philosophy as I am in technology [...]'.

What a nice piece of flawed logic: 'I am not educated in technology but I'm educated in politics and philosophy, therefore anyone educated in technology is not educated in politics nor philosophy'.

<comment><USER7> I don't see how you could read that from the sentence. There's no logical inference in that fragment, just a claim that people in technology are as inexperienced in politics and philosophy as he is in technology. On the whole, that is an accurate observation.

<comment><USER8> From the Wikipedia page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures)

"In his opening address at the Munich Security Conference in January 2014, the Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves said that the current problems related to security and freedom in cyberspace are the culmination of absence of dialogue between "the two cultures": "Today, bereft of understanding of fundamental issues and writings in the development of liberal democracy, computer geeks devise ever better ways to track people... simply because they can and it's cool. Humanists on the other hand do not understand the underlying technology and are convinced, for example, that tracking meta-data means the government reads their emails."[12]"

<comment><USER9> They're perfectly fine with the last point. While the govt ous not reading emails they can infer enough just given the metadata that reading the actual contents is irrelevant.

(A detective can do so as well. But that is much more expensive and doesn't scale.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still haven't found a good talk or essay about how exactly 'AI' will change anything. The only obvious difference is shifts in wealth.

The Google Duplex appears to be a great breakthrough. But what happens if it's sold and deployed? More wealth to an already wealthy Google. Low income earners who can barely make it as a receptionist will be out of work. In the restaurant example, owners cut costs and possibly earn more -- which is great for these types of operators. But as someone who wants to schedule an appointment, my life doesn't change.

Google also just released auto complete and response emails. How does something like this change my life?

Any drastic change in AI is abstract and hypothetical, based more in science fiction than reality. In the 1940s, with advances in Nuclear research, it was thought that nuclear power for energy would change the world. 70 years later, we're still using over 80% fossil fuels. Not a great example, but I'll hold this line about 'AI' until I'm convinced otherwise.

<comment><USER11> I'm in a similar skepticism camp. I studied a lot of AI and Big Data in Graduate school, but haven't done much with it after graduation. My impression from my studies and what I read of things today is that the tools haven't really changed since the last big AI boom in the '60s. There have been incremental enhancements to many of the algorithms, but the algorithms themselves haven't had major breakthroughs.

What has changed is we've accelerated GIGO to an extraordinary level that the '60s could have only imagined/dreamed of.

With a firehose of inputs on one side and a firehose of outputs on the other side, it's easy for the man-behind-the-curtain/model-in-the-machine to seem quite capable/intelligent, but how are we QA/QCing that that is actually the case?

Take everyone's growing frustrations with auto-correct systems using words they'd never themselves use, are those mistakes in the model that will get trained away eventually or representative of the firehose of garbage- in/garbage-out. Similarly, when was the last time that YouTube's "Auto-Play" feature was useful to you? I find I've turned it off on every device I own because it is nonsensical and useless and often full of literal garbage.

Some of the early logic mathematicians such as Boole and Bayes, names that come up commonly in AI algorithms, thought they might find proof of God in probability theory, and I sometimes wonder if we may find that probability theory may not prove God, but could definitely prove that (soylent) Devils are real. What's going on with machine learning in YouTube and in the ad spaces frightens me in aggregate, and the problem is still people, but we've massively accelerated GIGO around people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kissinger is right.

The number of strategic threats due to AI are exploding. Social media manipulation online, voice to text from tiny microphones, hacked autonomous devices, hyper targeted predictions of unstable systems, autonomous devices smuggling dangerous material (arms, fentanyl, fissile material), or even hard AI in the far future.

It's even decaying democracy itself. I know plenty of good people that would make great politicians but absolutely refuse to run because they understand how much dirt OSINT would pull up on them and AI only makes this worse because of advanced stylometry.

The problems with cyber are real. AI and cyber security in an increasingly cyber physical world are something we aren't prepared for. We can't even get non-trivial amounts of humans to believe that global warming is _happening_ let alone anthropogenic. Since at least 2016 the CIA has listed cyber as the number one threat to global security each year, despite the DPRK getting access to usable nuclear weapons and ICBMs.

That's the scale of the risk / hazard we face with AI and cyber security over the next decade. It's worse than North Korea getting nuclear weapons.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ironically this reads like a very well written student essay despite being written by a statesman at the dusk of his life.

Why? Well, as he says at the front of his essay, he'd never considered AI (a field funded by ARPA (later DARPA) through the height of his power) and so his musings (whoah, a car driver needs to consider novel situations! People ask the Internet for stuff immediately relevant to their needs and interests!) are, frankly, the first thoughts _anyone_ will have when they first think of machines that think. The thoughts I had as a teenager in the 1970s and I don't claim to have had any special talent.

I always believed that Kissinger is very smart, and this essay doesn't change that. But I always believed he was intellectually extremely lazy (rather than being the steely-eyed Vulkan of Realpolitik who could see through the bullshit) and this essay also doesn't change that.

</comment><comment><USER14> > immobilizes his or her opponent by more effectively controlling territory

I like how he even talks about go like an imperialist.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well, Kissinger's interventions have meant the end of many humans in history as well...

</comment><comment><USER16> History ended in 1989. Surely Kissinger was listening.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a good article.

Kissinger begins not at the purely hypothetical "singularity" of Ray Kurweil or superintelligence of Nick Bostrom but at the present where the unbridled flow of data on the Internet already threatens human society's ability to coherently consider it's future. Nearly every AI scare story (Musk, Bostrom, etc) talks about the threat of thinking-AI while ignoring the increasing and immediate impact of "dumb-AI" _as an extension of_ the blind data driven logic of today.

</comment><comment><USER18> Rather: "Human society unprepared for the misuse of ML by other humans". Fear other humans, not machines (yet).

</comment><comment><USER19> Towards the end of the article Kissinger states

"Other countries have made AI a major national project. The United States has not yet, as a nation, systematically explored its full scope, studied its implications, or begun the process of ultimate learning. This should be given a high national priority, above all, from the point of view of relating AI to humanistic traditions."

Which seems to me a disappointing end to the article. An appeal for a national effort to manage AI.

"Other countries have major AI projects" but what exactly should the US model itself after?

"The United States has not yet systematically explored it's scope" but US publishes the second most research papers on AI ([https://www.timeshighereducation.com/data-bites/which- countr...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/data-bites/which-countries- and-universities-are-leading-ai-research)) which I think in general is a bad metric but if you're looking at the output that a system produces, it's the best metric you're going to get.

Looking at the private sector, the AI makeup of the leading AI/Robotics ETF $BOTZ ([https://www.globalxfunds.com/funds/botz/](https://www.globalxfunds.com/funds/botz/)) is comprised of mostly American companies. Similarly, look at the sheer number of ML/AI startups in SV.

So I fail to see where the crisis is. If American universities are among the leaders in AI research and American companies are among the leaders in the AI economy, why is there such a tone of urgency in this article? Kissinger's argument leads me to believe that he's advocating for a blanket "AI" initiative but he doesn't have a clear idea of what he wants this initiative to do. Without a clear direction for how he wants the US to be "relating AI to humanistic traditions", whatever he's proposing here is just the marriage of shallow musings about the consequences of AI and some kind of blind belief in federal government initiative.

</comment><comment><USER20> So, any new thought?

</comment><comment><USER21> Henry Kissinger: concerned humanist

I love dark irony first thing in the morning...

</comment><comment><USER22> Can't Henry Kissinger just die already?

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Vietnam War. Only in the 90's we learned that he and Nixon torpedoed the '68 Vietnam peace talks under Johnson to make Johnson look bad before the election.

<[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate- nix...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate-nixon- interfered-1968-peace-talks-180961627/>)

This is public information. We know that part of what Nixon was looking for during the Watergate break ins was evidence that Johnson kept about this. Yet publications like The Atlantic still allow this criminal Kissinger to publish.

From: <[https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/12/george-will- co...](https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/12/george-will-confirms- nixons-vietnam-treason>)

In the Price of Power (1983), Seymour Hersh revealed Henry Kissinger—then Johnson's adviser on Vietnam peace talks secretly alerted Nixon's staff that a truce was imminent.

According to Hersh, Nixon "was able to get a series of messages to the Thieu government [of South Vietnam] making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different views on peace negotiations."

Johnson was livid. He even called the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, to complain that "they oughtn't be doing this. This is treason."

"I know," was Dirksen's feeble reply.

Johnson blasted Nixon about this on November 3rd, just prior to the election. As Robert Parry of Consortiumnews.com has written: "when Johnson confronted Nixon with evidence of the peace-talk sabotage, Nixon insisted on his innocence but acknowledged that he knew what was at stake."

Said Nixon: "My, I would never do anything to encourage….Saigon not to come to the table….Good God, we've got to get them to Paris or you can't have peace."

But South Vietnamese President General Theiu—a notorious drug and gun runner—did boycott Johnson's Paris peace talks. With the war still raging, Nixon claimed a narrow victory over Humphrey. He then made Kissinger his own national security adviser.

In the four years between the sabotage and what Kissinger termed "peace at hand" just prior to the 1972 election, more than 20,000 US troops died in Vietnam. More than 100,000 were wounded. More than a million Vietnamese were killed.

<comment><USER5> This entire post is ad-hominem and does not make an argument against the content of the linked article.

<comment><USER23> The post could be not related to the subject of the article but it's related to the author of the article.

It's clearly not ad-hominem because the comment is not rejecting the claims of the article, only expressing his opinion about the author.

On the other hand, I have to agree with the criticism about the tone that other comment express. It never improves the debate to wish somebody dead.

<comment><USER5> In which case, it's an off topic comment that is not relevant to the content of the article.

<comment><USER23> Apparently, but is that the case?

After all, both, the article and the comment, are talking about the dangers of power unrestricted by ethics.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


RethinkDB now available on AWS marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://rethinkdb.com/docs/aws/ <comment><USER2> > _It is possible to mount an EBS volume and have RethinkDB store your data on > it, but that setup is not available out of the box._

That's a curious default choice. It's hard for me to imagine why you'd ever want to run RethinkDB on local instance storange, instead of EBS, given that EBS is much more reliable, is easier to back up, can be swapped between instances, etc. (Or is this AMI more for just trying out, not for actual production use?)

Obviously, EBS has its problems, but so does local instance storage.

Also: I remember that way-back-when, RethinkDB was touted as being designed for SSD's from the ground up. Is that still the case? Would running on provisioned-IOPS EBS provide a huge benefit over regular EBS or regular local storage?

<comment><USER3> The documentation is misleading. RethinkDB instances launched from the Marketplace all run on an EBS volume.

<comment><AUTHOR> For anyone reading this, the docs have been fixed. Sorry -- it was my screwup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish I could use everything. I want to use it all. All the new platforms and technologies and even old ones that are still awesome. RethinkDB, mongodb, redis, Firebase, Parse, meteor.js, Postgres, Go, etc etc. Just take all that awesomeness and put it in an app and have it do awesome stuff.

<comment><USER5> I'd really hate to taste your cooking /joke :)

<comment><USER6> Fry it and call it okonomiyaki.

<comment><USER7> Just not omakase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome - good job making it even easier to start!

</comment><comment><USER9> That's great, but what is the strategy for data persistence?

As I understand it, if you aren't using EBS, unless you snapshot your instances, they are reset to their last snapshot once they are shut down. Doesn't that seem like a huge risk to put your database under?

Are there good strategies for mirroring data onto EBS or running a slave instance or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, the storage is EBS, the line in the docs is just misleading. We'll push a fix to the docs in a few mins.

<comment><USER10> What have you done with Marc, and why is he never on Steam these days?

<comment><AUTHOR> Marc is a live and well! I'll tell him you're looking for him :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is such a great feature. I'm really looking forward to using RethinkDB as it matures.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool, an easy way to test the clustering features.

</comment><comment><USER13> Heroku next?

<comment><USER14> There isn't an official add-on yet, but as Kudos pointed out, RethinkDB Cloud has an add-on in beta: [https://addons.heroku.com/rethinkdb- cloud](https://addons.heroku.com/rethinkdb-cloud)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resume coach? - <AUTHOR> Where can I find a resume coach? <comment><USER2> There a contact in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15560766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15560766)</comment>


Show HN: Serverless Dynamic DNS for EC2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/solidsnack/drdns/blob/master/drdns/serverless/index.py <comment><USER2> Might be better to link to top-level directory:

[https://github.com/solidsnack/drdns](https://github.com/solidsnack/drdns)</comment>


We Should Reject Diversity and Equity as Values - <AUTHOR> https://areomagazine.com/2019/11/05/why-we-should-reject-diversity-and-equity-as-values/ <comment><USER2> Surely they mean "equality", not "equity"; equity is mostly valued by older homeowners.

The author is either unwilling or ignorant of the real reason why mandating women on boards is silly: Because about 2% of the population are intersex.

Bland restatements of the Economic Problem, like:

> If selection criteria are designed to promote equity, some individuals must > benefit at the expense of others, on the basis of their immutable > characteristics. Given a finite number of positions, this is a > mathematically necessary and indefensible consequence.

Sure, some resources are limited. However, quite a few resources are not limited. Moreover, access to limited resources should not be withheld in discriminatory ways.

What's the argument here? Colleges are mean to conservatives?

<comment><USER2> Two downvotes and no words. Presumably those downvotes are from butthurt conservative snowflakes? Too bad, I suppose. This is what real right-vs-left discussions look like; people on the right say stupid shit, and then people on the left reply with tough arguments that break their worldview.

Next time, remember that diversity and equality are the only reasons that we ever listen to voices from the right; right-wing messages are so rarely connected to fact and reality that we would be better off discarding them entirely!</comment></comment>


Show HN: three-geo – Geographic visualization with three.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/w3reality/three-geo <comment><USER2> Three is a fantastic tool for some basic geoviz. If you are looking for more, be aware of LeafletJS and OpenLayers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for information from a geoviz perspective!!

In the accompanying demo app (example/geo-viewer), we are using LeafletJS for the terrain area selection UI and also for displaying a moving camera (which can also be regarded as a drone ;)) in the global geo coordinate system. We found Leaflet is so valuable.

Really excited to know about OpenLayers. We plan to spin off example/geo- viewer as the base of a new standalone 3D GIS app (which is also OSS). In this new app, we want to implement/accumulate common GIS features and push the limit of browser-based GIS applications. OpenLayers seems perfect for an abstraction module for tile fetching, layer interactions, etc. It looks so matured and supporting so many tile layer service providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool. My first thought would be mapping hiking/backcountry trails. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Actually, we initially started this project with a GPX data visualization app in mind. Open Street Map achieves this well in 2D maps, and we are very interested in a 3D version.

As you can try in the example/geo-viewer, manual 3D line marking is already supported. Soon, we definitely want to add the GPX data loading/displaying feature useful to hikers, mountaineers, drone users, etc.</comment></comment>


British Airways asked customers to post personal info on Twitter because of GDPR - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/19/17591732/british-airways-gdpr-compliance-twitter-personal-data-security <comment><USER2> Cool, British Airways also leaks your booking information to a set of third parties the article highlights - without consent. If one enables an ad- blocker, it's impossible to check in apparently.</comment>


Show HN: Learn on the go with podcast courses - <AUTHOR> http://podhut.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hi creator here. I created online learning courses made of different podcast episodes but on the same topic. You can, for example, take a course on CSS and learn about variables, flexbox, grid, and preprocessors.

I realized that I myself would like to see a service like this. A place where you can choose a very specific topic you want to learn more about and listen to it. I really love the idea that I can commute for example and meanwhile go through some programming course.

What is important is that the format of audio is podcast-like but the courses have a finite number of episodes.

This concept is not meant for example to learn to code if you don't know how to code at all. The idea is to make you better in something you're already interested in and have some experience. Deepen your knowledge in a very specific topic.

What do you think about this? Are there any courses you'd be interested in? I'd like to add something focused on economy 101 and courses focused on specific historical ages.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting, how did you choose the podcast episodes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are mostly episodes that I myself listened to and found useful.

Right now it's more of a playlist of episodes I find useful.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Finally launched my side project, Write.app - <AUTHOR> http://writeapp.me

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all. Creator of this thing here. I'm about to head out to catch a train home from work but before I do I just want to pop in here and say any feedback is appreciated. I've been working on this for about 6 months now and I've torn it apart and rewritten/redesigned large chunks of this more times than you can imagine. So though I know it's quite simple and still has many flaws, this is a labor of love for me. I hope others find it as useful as I do. The whole idea is to have a place to store your writing that's not meant for the public the majority of the time while not being all skeuomorphic (as in "It's just like a paper journal... except online and cheesy!") and just generally being a place for self-expression.

My last redesign of it took ("Stole" maybe?) a lot of ideas from the Ghost Wordpress fork idea that was posted here a few weeks ago.

Anyway, I'm off to catch my train but I'll be back to see if anyone comments or cares. If you find bugs, please let me know (either here or my email is in my profile). If you find a security hole, do me a favor and email it to me privately so I can get a chance to fix it. I don't want to be _that guy_ who gets called out on a security issue in public. But there shouldn't be anything major if anything at all.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER2> 1) I logged out, then logged back in. It loaded <https://writeapp.me/login/validate>, a blank page and did nothing else.

2) In my browser (Chrome), when I try to create a new notebook, nothing happens if I click " New Notebook" - it only works when I click the "+" button itself.

3) When, I click on the "Options" icon on the bottom of the writing page, it doesn't indicate that anything happened - I just saw a flash of text. I only realized that an "Options" pane had opened when I tried scrolling even further down the writing page. Perhaps have it slide up, or to the side from the left?

<comment><AUTHOR> You know what, passwords are case sensitive and I have done an awful job with error messages. That may have been the problem logging back in but I don't have access to anyone's passwords so I'm not sure if that applies to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Design looks great. Only thing is that its forgetting me every time i visit the main page. Im logged in, then i click the logo on the far left, im back on the main page and no longer logged in.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not forgetting you exactly but it is failing to redirect you to your account area. That's an obvious oversight. Sorry about that. I'll fix that ASAP. In the meantime (meantime being the next couple of hours as I'm on my way home from work) you can go to writeapp.me/write and you'll be in your account again, just as you left it. Currently, it'll only remember you for 2 hours. I didn't want to make it indefinite in case people log in on a public computer or something. Is that something I should change?</comment></comment>


How Do You Get a Train Moving? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/06/how-do-you-get-a-train-moving/ <comment><USER2> It seems like cheating that the answer to "How Do _YOU_ Get a Train Moving?" is "With a locomotive."

I'd answer "with a crowbar". I used to work in a railway museum and when we didn't have an engine in steam we'd do our shunting with crowbars. The technique is to get a 6 foot long bar with a bent end. Wedge the point of the bent end between the tread and rail, so the "elbow" is resting an inch or two behind the wheel and the bar is up at a 45 degree angle, so forming a lever with a lot of mechanical advantage. Put all your weight on the bar. Eventually the car will start moving. As the car moves, release the bar, slide it forward and repeat. Eventually the car will be moving fast enough that you just run along beside it, sliding the bar forward and jacking up and down with your hands. One person can move a typical car on the flat, but if that's not enough, a person with bar on each wheel will get most things moving.

Always have someone on the handbrake, as you will kill yourself if you try to stop the car with the bar!

<comment><USER3> Other answer: with a lot of model trains: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC- dmKHiCnY#t=445](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC-dmKHiCnY#t=445)

<comment><USER4> According to the video about 100 kg tractive force is enough to get the locomotive moving. That's a lot less than I expected (though I've seen a video of a strongman called John Massis pulling a loc by his teeth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a very poorly written article (I'm amazed this is written by a physics professor). Static and kinetic friction is only a resistive force to a train if there is slippage between the wheels and the track.

-Assuming a no slip condition at the wheels, the friction will rotate the wheels not drag on the train/car.

-The reason why there is a gap/space in the train couplings is a tolerance/GD&T issue.

-Engine torque is almost always higher at lower speeds [http://image.circletrack.com/f/enginetech/ctrp_1003_nascar_s...](http://image.circletrack.com/f/enginetech/ctrp_1003_nascar_sprint_cup_engine/27509422/ctrp_1003_21_z%2Bnascar_sprint_cup_engine%2Bdyno_sheet.jpg) (this is why you have to down-shift when climbing a hill) and is what gets a vehicle moving.

Top commenter got it right:"The locomotive is accelerating itself and the cars, not overcoming the friction in the bearings. Axle bearings have pretty low friction (at least negligible compared to the inertia of a loaded car); if they didn't, they would get hot, the grease would melt"

<comment><USER6> Slack is something railroads would love to get rid of.

If the slack isn't managed properly when starting a train the jerk can rip the coupler knuckle right off and split the train (which brings everything to a stop when the brakes automatically apply when the air supply hose is separated).

I've seen many a train startup on a grade with all the slack stretched out and wrapped around many degrees of curvature: modern diesel-electric locomotives have tremendous tractive effort right from a standstill.

These modern locomotives have computer-controlled wheel slip systems, sand dispensers (that inject sand between the wheel and the rail to increase friction), and active steering trucks. And for the past decade or so locomotives have switched from DC traction motors to phased AC (which don't have high-current brushes that can melt at high-load, low-speed).

All US railroads have mandated low-friction roller bearings in everything since the 60s or 70s, too.

I'd imagine the railway engineering field has all the physics of this stuff well-documented since the basics of railroad operation hasn't really changed in 100+ years.

<comment><USER7> I can't understand what your reply has to do with DINKDINK's comment.

<comment><USER8> I would have been a 4th generation RR employee, if the RR hadn't gone bankrupt. Got to spend all kinds of time as a kid in rail yards going stuff that would probably be illegal for everyone involved now a days. This is before CCTV everywhere and extensive tracking. Anyway I'll try to match up first post comment/question with second post correct answer, if this reformat helps:

Torque is higher at low speeds - No, with "modern" say post 1960 diesel- electric locos its constant. Or more accurately current limited to a max which is achievable at almost any reasonable low speed condition. Maybe a car analogy is all locos can "spin their tires" under any condition up to 45 MPH or so. There are no "econobox locomotives" or the equivalent.

Peculiar spherical cow assumptions about no-slip conditions - No, its very complicated and as you'd suspect lots of anti-lock anti-skid technology actually started on trains before it went to cars, and trains are always slipping a little (not very much, and the optimum is not exactly zero just close to it)

Slack is an intentional mfgr tolerance thing - No its something that could (almost) be eliminated and is a huge PITA under certain operating conditions. Its goal zero not goal 0.1% by design or whatever.

Theoretically the bearings must be pretty good - yes indeed they are, awesome roller bearings required by regulation since the 60s

If you provide specific examples of what doesn't make sense it would be possible to expand upon that specific topic.

<comment><USER9> To start a train, is it the coupler springs not slack which allows each car to start rolling? (fighting momentum, not so much static friction)

<comment><USER8> OK... first of all there are thousands (no joke) of coupler designs. If you've seen "Thomas the Tank Engine" you're familiar with 1830s era chain/buffers but those are obsolete. I can only talk about the modern USA Janney coupler. My comments might be totally wrong in Norway or Russia or pretty much anywhere else. Saudi Arabia of all places uses Janney couplers. (edit to add my point is there may exist a coupler design in Germany or England or something that inherently uses springs. Just not in the USA, not for over a century, ours are solid bars of interlocking hands made of steel with a guard that prevents them from unlocking and a pin/latch arrangement that prevents them from swinging open...)

Anyway if its under tension it can't be unlocked. When you release tension you can shove a pin out of the way (if its not rusty) and it then can be unlocked. So that in itself is an interesting comment. If the train isn't under tension it literally can't fall apart short of metallurgical failure (like a crack) and train crews don't like it when their train falls apart, so the don't like their train not being under tension. All freight couplers are the same but the hazmat and passenger car couplers are a little weirder and slightly harder to uncouple and have a lot less slack by design (I've been told its mostly closer mfgr tolerances). None the less couplers do rust and removing tension means a rusty coupler could unlock and train crews hate that. So yeah, crews don't like a train that gets compressed. You have to back up to switch but you don't do it for fun or whatever. Aside from the whole visibility thing which means you could kill some poor dude a half mile away backing over him and never know it.

The thing that connects the coupler to the center of the car is called the draft gear. To say it has a high spring coefficient would be an understatement. Some cars/engines don't have any draft gear at all and the coupler is welded right to the center / spine of the car. When a train couples, the spring flexes so things aren't permanently bent. Its not like a shock absorber in a car which flexes all the time while rolling along, its more for damage reduction (edited to add, and the coupling process itself)

The slack comes from the 1/2 inch or so space in the coupler, times a large number of cars. A hundred coal cars times 1/2 inch is like 5 feet of slack ... So no need for springs you've got all the slack you can handle in the couplers. You could spec a coupler with 1/16th inch precision but then every time you switch a freight car you'd need a guy with a sledgehammer to screw around for 10 minutes so thats hazmat and passenger only which I have no experience with.

Since the (19)60s all cars have roller bearings and the static friction is so low that unless you applied the brakes in some weird manner the cars will kinda flop around on their own. Pushing a train is an interesting experience that should be a part of all physics experimental curricula. You really can push a train by hand. It won't be easy and it won't go fast and it definitely won't accelerate very fast, but its not hard. So you could only guarantee compression if you're actively moving / just moved or you're headed downhill slightly. Wind can actually move cars around. This is why all cars need a parking brake (that horizontal wheel) in addition to the air brakes. It would be mechanically complicated to put a train under compression but it could be done by locking the brakes or something.

The static friction of a car is like 100 pounds if the bearings are in good condition and the parking brake is completely removed etc etc. The slightest incline, or maybe even wind load, exceeds the force of static friction. If you have a hundred tons of coal in a car, the static friction is a mere rounding error. It might be calculable, or even measurable, but it won't be noticable when driving.

(edited to add the best car analogy I can give is its like a skateboarding kid hanging onto the back of your car, you're just not going to notice the extra friction compared to the mass of the car)

<comment><USER9> Realizing that you don't have as much experience with passenger trains, but just out of curiosity about the physics --

On a theoretical passenger train where there is exactly zero coupler slack... say this train travels on a perfectly straight and level track so there's no need for coupler slack at all, maybe the cars are actually welded together for this experiment --

Would it be particularly difficult for a single engine to start the train?

(Assume the train isn't ridiculously heavy or anything. This is really just curiosity about whether slack and/or draft gear make a difference when starting from a standstill.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huh.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_action](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_action)

"Loose coupling is necessary to enable the train to bend around curves and is an aid in starting heavy trains, since the application of the locomotive power to the train operates on each car in the train successively, and the power is thus utilized to start only one car at a time."

An example at 2:20 in this video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D9zE6mju48&t=2m20s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D9zE6mju48&t=2m20s)

<comment><USER11> So how do you get a locomotive started when the engine and cars are not on flat track? If there is any kind of incline, you'll have no slack in the couplings.

Can you use the brakes somehow?

<comment><USER12> I'm guessing you answered your own question. If they put the break on the last car, they could let the train compress backwards before starting. Naturally it would still be more work than starting from flat though, so obviously there would be an incline limit beyond which a given train couldn't start regardless.

<comment><USER11> Can the last car's brakes hold the weight of all the cars in front of it? Can the conductor apply each car's brakes independently?

Interesting stuff!

<comment><USER12> The original article stated that a train wasn't able to start because the caboose's brake was on, so presumably the answer to the second question is yes, at least for that car. Presumably the first question would depend on the slope of the incline (although if necessary other brakes could be engaged after their cars' couplings were compressed). Anyway, all just conjecture on my part!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From my father, who used to drive steam and diesel locomotives in the UK on a Heritage railway (2ft Gauge).

He says strictly speaking, legally you're not allowed to reverse a train once passengers are inside without permission, but you can "rock" the locomotive forwards & backwards if you're stuck.

Procedures may differ in the USA.

<comment><USER8> Also the reasoning is you can derail a collection of (relatively) lightweight cars by pushing behind them with a very heavy engine, but its much harder to derail by pulling.

Think of trying to keep a rope straight by pulling on it, vs trying to keep a rope straight by pushing on it.

The passenger train rule is because its hard to kill people by tipping over coal cars especially when its a rare failure mode anyway. But you wouldn't risk it with cars full of passengers.

(Oh and edited to add WRT switches, its subjectively 10 to 100 times harder to derail on a switch going one direction than the other, so again you'd risk backing a bunch of coal cars thru a switch but it would be pretty dumb to do it with cars full of passengers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am fairly certain that trains do not need the slack between cars to get moving. Like others have pointed out, trains seem to be perfectly capable of starting on inclines where there would be no slack.

There is one assumption in the article that is certainly wrong: "...but it seems crazy to think that the train's friction coefficient is 10 times more than the cars"

This does not make any sense. The forces we are comparing is the friction between the rail and the wheels in the case of the engine and the friction in the bearings of the axles in the case of the cars. There is of course some frictional force from the deformation of the track and the wheel as well but as they are both quite rigid (being made of steel) it should not be very significant.

<comment><USER15> The article has the physics completely wrong.

Static friction is what opposes movement between two surfaces that are static next to each other and kinetic friction is what slows down movement between two surfaces. Static friction is always >= kinetic friction.

This is explained very well in here (the top picture says it all): [http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu/hbase/frict2.html](http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu/hbase/frict2.html)

Think about how when you start your car from a standstill you need to be careful about your clutch release but when the car moves even the tiniest bit you can even start in the second gear if you want.

So, the engine car's wheels get kinetic friction (because they're rolling) and the other cars' wheels (which are stopped) are blocked by static friction. When you have slack and you move one car at a time you only need to beat the static friction of one car at a time. Even if the difference is 10%, if you have 10 cars and it starts to add up. I'm not saying slack is required for starting the train, just that there is an increased difficulty in doing so without slack.

<comment><USER15> Also, this is why doing a wheelspin is never a good idea when you have trouble starting your car/train. The traction when the wheels are blocked but the engine tries to move them is always a lot better than when they're spinning in place.

<comment><USER16> To be super-pedantic (because the topic is interesting), a little spin is good for an automobile. Rubber friction is a combination of adhesion, mechanical deformation, and wear.[1] In order to maximize traction with a tire you will have some optimal slip, increasing the "wear" component beyond what is seen in "normal" driving conditions. Of course, too much sliding/wheelspin and you reduce the other components. It's a balance that depends on rubber compounds, tire construction, and road conditions.

[1] [http://insideracingtechnology.com/tirebkexerpt1.htm](http://insideracingtechnology.com/tirebkexerpt1.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Of course modern trains have electric motors on each car, and engines are just giant diesel generators making the electricity...

<comment><USER18> The trains in the u.s. are still pretty primitive. Do a google image search on amtrak for some cringeworthy pics.

Where I live in Europe the only trains where the engine pulls are freight trains. All passenger trains except some cog-wheel trains in the mountains have diesel electric generators and individual motors on each wheel.

<comment><USER19> While Switzerland has opted to go all-EMU for its passenger trains, that's not true of every country.

For example, the only powered axles on the French TGV are at the front and rear of the train. All the axles in-between are unpowered. The TGV isn't exactly a primitive train.

The TGV was the basis of the Spanish AVE and the Korean KTX. The KTX also uses additional powered axles on the first and last cars, but it still has a lot more unpowered axles than powered ones.

As for Amtrak, the Acela isn't a primitive train. It's a mashup of the French TGV and the Canadian LRC. And yes, it has unpowered axles in the middle. Its main problems are its excessive weight (forced by FRA regulations), and the totally inadequate investment in the track over the last 80 years. The basic design isn't that bad.

<comment><USER20> >The TGV was the basis of the Spanish AVE

Well, the AVE 103 is based on the Velaro platform which most certainly has powered axles on every car, as you would expect from a German train. The same goes for the Russian Sapsan, the Chinese CRH3 and the German ICE3

<comment><USER19> The AVE 103 may be based on the Velaro, but the AVE 100, 102, and 112 are based on the TGV, which has non-powered passenger cars.

The point is that non-powered passenger cars do not automatically indicate a "primitive" rail system, as the previous commenter seemed to think.

Some countries have made one choice, other countries have made the other choice, and some countries even use both technologies simultaneously.

And that's just high-speed trainsets. It's quite common to find non-powered passenger cars on conventional trains as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think that having to appeal to couplings' slack to be able to start a train was used in the steam era, because steam engines are constant-force machines (limited by steam pressure and cylinder area). Diesel-electric or electric machines can start stretched trains, even manuals of 1950 engines advise to start stretched. Starting slacked is dangerous because of the impacts on couples (current trains are much, much longer than steam-era trains).

</comment><comment><USER22> The article totally misses the fact that the static friction to overcome on the cars are a static _torque_ not a force. The forces on the cars are acting on the coupling and at the wheel contact point, but the static friction to overcome is at the axle diameter. The torque arm is such that the force there is larger by the ratio of the wheel and axle radii. The larger the train wheels, the less effect the static friction will have.

</comment><comment><USER23> ALWAYS wondered this...</comment>


Social Media Marketing Fatally Undermined By User Sabotage - <AUTHOR> http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/11/social-media-marketing-fatally-undermined-by-user-sabotage/ <comment><USER2> So if you pay to advertise on a social network, how do you do it without invading a uesr's personal space? Isn't that kind of that point? That is why you are paying to do it. Or does the author just mean if you are invading a user's personal space, you should do it something every single user you are targeting will find clever?</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone want to go through SICP with me? I'm in Seattle - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I'm a mid-20s software engineer living in Seattle and I'm working on improving my computer science fundamentals beyond what I got in/from school.
After talking to some friends and co-workers and doing research on the internet I decided to go through Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. I've been making decent progress but would like to set up a group for any other like minded people to go through the book with me.
I'm pretty flexible - thinking the pace should be a chapter a month? (if that's too fast or slow for you I'll switch it up) I just want to go over the information with other people and have resources in case I can't figure out an exercise or part of the book.
My email should be in my profile, or post here. I'll be checking back frequently.
Also if anyone who has worked through SICP has any advice any wants to share I'm happy to listen or if you want to go through the book again for a refresher (or because you enjoyed it a lot) join up!
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'm trying to work through the book as well! I've found a great IRC community over on the Freenode server. The channel is #symbo1ics. It's been a sweet place for motivation so far. I'm sure you would be welcomed with open arms! Good luck, and hope to see you there!</comment>


Ask HN: The Markdown mess. Where to now for plain text formatting syntax? - <AUTHOR>

Jeff Atwood et al recently attempted to come up with a better defined standard for Markdown.
The original author, John Gruber, took exception to this for whatever reason, ultimately forcing Atwood and his associates to entirely remove the "Markdown" name from their effort to standardise/improve.  This can't have been good for what is now called "CommonMark", ultimately now a spiritual successor to Markdown, but now lacking close association with the original.
So where to now for plain text formatting syntax? Things now appear more fragmented than ever. <comment><USER2> Atwood has been working on the issues with markdown since the early days of StackOverflow [2008]. He began looking at a new parser as early as 2010. The folks at Github have been likewise working around the problems inherent in Gruber's definition. Many of these are due to his definition not being based on a context free grammar and become important at the scale of sites like StackOverflow and Github.

Is the world fragmented? Hardly. There's less difference between CommonMark Markdown and Gruber's Classic Markdown than between the 31 flavors of regular expressions that programmers deal with every day.

Why didn't Gruber just set Markdown free? Well you'd have to ask him. My suspicion is that Github drives traffic to his web properties by linking to his documentation as the canonical source. Atwood being a Microsoft developer probably doesn't sit well either.

But in the long run, it won't matter any more than Larry Wall not getting Ken Thompson's blessing when he wrote Perl's regular expression engine. People will use what works, and if CommonMark Markdown works better than Gruber Markdown, then that's what will stick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jeff Atwood's Discourse is Ruby On Rails - I don't think he's committed to Microsoft exclusively.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's true. Then again, his reason is the priority he placed on open- source, and the licensing is more complex on the MicroSoft stack.

[http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-ruby/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/why- ruby/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just do what works for you (use Gruber's spec if it solves your problem, use Common Markdown if it solves your problem, use your own hand rolled solution if it solves your problem), and ignore the noise. Natural selection will do its thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> As before the recent brouhaha, AsciiDoc.</comment>


One theory why eBay's profits are falling - <AUTHOR> http://launchlab.co.uk/article/Business-Blog/Even-eBay-gets-the-blues/706

<comment><AUTHOR> Most people don't 'downgrade' their shopping tastes, so eBay isn't benefiting from higher-end consumers. People just buy less of the same stuff.</comment>


Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://www.stupidhackathon.com/ <comment><USER2> projects should get posted within the next day or so</comment>


1936 Nobel Peace Prize medal appeared in a pawn shop (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/1936-nobel-peace-prize-medal-to-sell-at-auction-after-appearing-in-south-american-pawn-shop-9189969.html <comment><USER2> Here's the result of the auction:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-auction-nobelpeaceprize- id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-auction-nobelpeaceprize- idUSBREA2R1O520140328)</comment>