Open-source "pandemic ventilator" - <AUTHOR> https://www.instructables.com/id/The-Pandemic-Ventilator/ <comment><USER2> The naiveté being expressed in the comments here and as the premise behind the ventilator is astounding. I though I would share some information to put things in perspective:

\- If you are unwell enough to need a ventilator then the ventilator itself is going to the least of your worries. You will need the drugs and expertise to care for you. The current respiratory illnesses going around aren't like polio and the iron lungs where all you need is help breathing.

\- If you can sort the above to have any hope of survival you need a "modern" ventilator that can operate in way that this simple homebrew device is physically not capable of offering. Most of the improvement in caring for people with ARDS is based upon careful and tight control of ventilatory parameters to prevent secondary lung injury.

\- Modern ventilators have a price tag of if you have to ask you can't afford it.

So in summary this is a nice build but serves no practical purpose.

<comment><USER3> This is correct.

Particularly the "if you are unwell enough to need the vent, the vent is the least of Your worries."

The vent keeps you oxygenating while we address the (usually multiple, overlapping and interacting) severe issues that led to you needing the vent. This is ICU-level care. A vent without an ICU doc and appropriate medications (and ideally a resp tech and a nurse) might as well be an origami crane.

Hospitals will run out of one those other things, on average, before they run out of vents.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for chiming in.

If I understand what you're saying correctly, you're saying that in the case where one would be so sick as to require a ventilator, they'd be in a situation where the ventilator only buys more time before the condition worsens, but doesn't actually address the root cause of the problem. As such, even if someone were to find a hospital-grade ventilator that fell off the back of a truck and managed to properly use it, the non-ventilator care is what makes the difference in outcome, not the ventilator itself.

Is that correct?

<comment><USER3> Not quite. The vent process itself requires careful management to provide net benefit (eg, controlling the level of sedation, avoiding secondary lung injury).

So while the non-vent care is what makes the difference, improper use of a hospital grade vent is more likely to do harm than good. Eg, Vents frequently clog. It requires a little bit of clinical experience to recognize that as what's happening, and intervene appropriately. It's not a complicated thing, and anyone that's worked the ICU for a bit can recognize and handle it, but it would be a killer in the hands of a layman, and it's only one out of a hundred issues.

Additionally, I'd hesitate to describe it as buying time, because that implies a linear sequence. Let's say you have condition X that implies oxygenation and blood perfusion. Vent manages oxygenation while I work on maintaining perfusion and the underlying X, but if all I have is the vent, the patient will still die from lack of perfusion. The vent didn't buy any additional time, it just closed off one route of death temporarily.

When a patient needs a vent, it's very rare that the vent is the only route to death that is being proceeded along.

This was pretty stream of consciousness, but I'm typing in the bathroom, so ... sorry if it's a bit of a mess.

<comment><USER5> How do you maintain perfusion?

<comment><USER3> It depends on the precise mechanism of failure, but generally a combination of fluids of various concentrations and extravasation characteristics, and drugs that either cause the constriction of blood vessels, or increased heart pumping strength, or both (these often pop up in popular media as "pressors").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here [1] is another interesting low-cost version of ventilator. It's an immersion two-phase continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, of which all the parts are printable. The patient still needs to be able to initiate breaths themselves, but it will cost a lot less energy to breath.

Combine it with a (admittedly lot harder to make) homemade pressure swing adsorbtion system that delivers high-oxygen air, using zeolite sieves and alternating pressure [2].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHiRTMQCf1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHiRTMQCf1Y)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylj4oOnlIY0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylj4oOnlIY0)

<comment><USER7> Not a medical professional but the CPAP route sounds more promising to me. Simpler, less risk.

What about just oxygen bottles or oxygen enrichment? They have their own dangers though.

<comment><USER8> I would imagine in a situation where you need ersatz CPAP, bottled oxygen is harder to come by and/or less affordable.

PSA oxygen generators are simple to construct and provide continuous oxygen as long as you power them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the initial studies out of Wuhan, about 15% of Covid-19 patients required critical care. These patients were treated with a ventilator, antiviral medications, and the support of an ICU. The mortality rate was about 2-3%.

This scenario does not scale very well in a pandemic because there are simply not enough resources to provide this level of care to those who need it.

There are about 5000 ventilators in Canada, for example, meaning that the country can effectively treat, at most, about 33,000 cases, assuming that the 15% ratio of total sick patients to those requiring critical care holds true.

The mortality figures that we have so far are based upon everyone who needs it receiving critical care. As the pandemic scales, the mortality figures could easily reach 15% as the number of sick greatly exceeds the capacity to treat them.

This project shows, therefore, that someone understands the real problem of Covid-19 and is attempting to solve it.

I'll take a plywood ventilator over no ventilator any day of the week, even without the other resources of an ICU.

I suspect a jet ventilator would be easier to build and more effective under the circumstances, so maybe that should be version 2.

</comment><comment><USER10> While well intentioned, I really don't think this should be built by anyone for use on an actual patient. As mentioned in other posts, mechanical ventilation is only part of "life support" with a typical ICU admission for ARDS requiring: establishing peripheral IVs, central venous line (giant IV in neck to heart placed under sterile conditions), intubation (Which requires expertise and advanced equipment), oxygen (lots in terms of liters), medications (inotropes, sedatives, paralytics, nutritional support, bronchodilators, etc.) urine/foley catheter, the ability to suction the airway, nasogastric tube, bedside monitoring (arterial line, capnography, etc) potentially chest tube, dedicated bedside staff and access to X-rays and CT, blood work (particularly Arterial blood gas analysis for mech vent) to guide process, specialists for consults and this doesn't include what else is needed when other systems fails (as is this case in ARDS: kidneys can fail which needs dialysis). Also, mechanical ventilation needs heat and humidification (requiring about 1L or sterile water every 12-24 hours) so you don't jam up the airways with a mucus plug; so you need a temperature probe on the vent circuit as well.

Also, mechanical ventilation is an aerosol generating medical procedure and even with the proper filters can still expose people in the surrounding meter or so to a virus.

There's also a great little unit that was used in Vietnam war called the Bird after the inventor - simple and clever and should be able to be cheaply manufactured or even potentially DIY but I think it required a high pressure gas source to drive the tidal volume.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for a detailed, well considered response.

> intubation

Do you think a laryngeal mask airway would useful in these kinds of situations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I get that people are scared and trying to reassure themselves. This is really not the way to go.

I don't know how to foster some kind of constructive discussion of preventive best practices or whatever, but medical devices that aren't cleaned properly and kept sterile cause horrifying and deadly infections regularly. This even happens in hospital settings.

This article doesn't even seem to be bothering to address the need to disinfect everything. With lung issues, that's a not unimportant detail.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is maybe unrelated, but is there a diy version of a mask for filtering air? What I want is a full face mask with filtered air for working on cars, around solvents and paints, and such, but the masks usually require the force of your own lungs to pull the air through the filter and through a 1 way valve when you exhale. I want something battery powered that does the air filtering. What am I looking for and how much does this cost? And would something like this be usable for what I had envisioned when I read "pandemic ventilator" which would be like something you could wear while you were out and about and it would filter everything you're breathing.

<comment><USER14> What would the battery be for?

<comment><USER13> To power some type of air pressurization system so that it's not my lungs that are pressurizing the air, this is because filtering the air requires additional pressure to force the air through the filter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If it comes to that, you can also share a conventional ventilator between two people. It's an ugly hack, because you have to use the same settings on both patients, so it doesn't allow for the sort of precise control you want if you're managing ARDS, but probably still a better solution than using a home- made ventilator.

It was successfully used when the ER ran out of ventilators in the wake of the Vegas shooting[1], but is probably better used in the sort of emergency where you just need to win a few hours' time than a sustained crisis.

1: [https://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one- las-...](https://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one-las-vegas-ed- saved-hundreds-lives-worst-mass-shooting-u-s-history/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I live in Vietnam. They do not have anywhere near the capacity needed to deal with ventilating. In HCM with a population of 9 million the largest hospital, Cho Ray, has 1000 beds ready but only 200 intensive, and 20 ventilators. Even fewer ECMO kits. Its one of the best equipped hospitals in the country. If things get bad, thousands will be sent home, thousands will die. Currently we are working on ways to repurpose industrial bottles and work with local gas and liquid oxygen manufacturers to come up with stop gap solutions to get oxygen to several thousand people at once, across the whole city, using existing propane gas distribution systems and grab app for monitoring and delivery. This is our ONLY option. For those pointing out how dangerous homemade ventilators and oxy kits can be, assume that WE KNOW that already, and that we wouldnt be looking at this unless it looked like there being no other option. We have under 700 large hospitals, but over 35,000 local clinics, many of which are run by local doctors with training and their own oxygen gear. We dont need them to be perfect, we dont need them to last forever, we just need them to work. If they save more than they harm, when people without them would die anyway, thats a meaningful impact. And yes, Viet doctors and government will use WHATEVER they need to get sh*t done and save lives.

</comment><comment><USER17> The number one issue with ventilators is bacteria and second is if they fail you die.

This absolutely the measure of last resort, but as the pandemic spreads there will be ventilator shortages and people that don't have to die will die.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thank you, creating a directory here: [https://github.com/wikirona/wikirona/blob/master/oxygen/READ...](https://github.com/wikirona/wikirona/blob/master/oxygen/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, some of the comments/downvotes here are astounding, especially for a group of people priding themselves on problem solving and FOSS.

Obviously, a plywood vent isn't hygenic. But R&D isn't a zero to one jump, you gotta start somewhere. Often it's that first spark of "wait this is something that needn't be only the domain of hospital gear companies" to inspire others to work on the problem.

Sure, a vent alone is probably not gonna improve your chance of living without the right care, but if there was a set of condensed instructions and WHO essential meds, yeah, maybe you have a shot.

This is also more about developing countries / rolling pandemics / CME- Carrington event than cov19 alone. Tell me, when was the last time you saw a panic in a trace/log to the effect of, "This should never occur." ? No one wants to be in the situation to need backups. This is part of a backup plan.

The defeatism in this thread already makes me want to go and improve the design. For one, you can get pneumatic valves which take the place of 2 or maybe even 3 of the valves on the machine.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was thinking that with the shortage of antiviral masks in the consumer space, if there was a way to diy one. Extra points if it involves a 3d printer.

<comment><USER20> Masks are not for keeping healthy people safe from pathogens. They are for keeping sick people from spreading virus laden droplets when they cough/sneeze.

A mask that's capable of keeping a virus out is a a) much more expensive than a typical surgical mask, b) easy to wear improperly, negating its usefulness, and c) only good for a limited time before needing to be thrown out.

<comment><USER21> > Masks are not for keeping healthy people safe from pathogens

All the doctors and nurses having to wear masks will be so relieved to hear this.

But seriously the advice of not wearing N95 masks when you are healthy is not because they are ineffective, but because they are trying to discourage hoarding. Even current CDC recommendations for healthcare workers suggest N95 masks for only patient intake and direct care, with all others wearing surgical masks to help protect the supply of N95s.

<comment><USER20> This discussion wasn't targeted at healthcare workers, and I never said N95 masks weren't effective (when worn properly). N95's are the type of mask I'm referring to in the second half of my comment. Worn properly, they are an essential piece of PPE.

The difference is, healthcare workers are trained in the use of N95 masks, undergo annual fit testing, etc.

<comment><USER21> You might be interested in this [1] training video showing that proper use of N95 masks is basically how people put them on.

Additionally - this [2] new search shows that if 80% of uninfected persons wore a mask for a few days, the pandemic would be over.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoxpvDVo_NI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoxpvDVo_NI)

2\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30229968](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30229968).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very cool project, and a fun article, though I can't help feel like this thing is more likely to kill you than nCoV-19. It's got a mortality rate of 0.7% (same order of magnitude as the garden variety flu) and I'm betting there's a much more than 0.7% chance this thing blows your lungs clean out haha.

<comment><USER23> 0.7% mortality rate for 2019-nCoV is inaccurate.

We do not know the mortality rate with any precision at this point and early estimates place it far higher than 0.7%.

Let's be neither alarmist nor complacent, but above all get our facts right and avoid spreading misleading information.

<comment><USER22> The WHO pins it at 0.7% and falling as understanding thereof and treatment improves [1 - page 12, graph on page 13]. This makes a lot of sense as the earliest numbers were based only on people presenting severe symptoms, and huge quantities of people with nCoV are completely and totally asymptomatic.

As with the flu, mortality is highest in older people, and the immunocompromised.

[1] [https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who- chi...](https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint- mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf)

<comment><USER23> Thank you for providing the source. This helps tremendously in clarifying and advancing the discussion.

We need to be careful about what exactly the WHO is reporting. In this case, they are reporting estimates of the _crude fatality rate_ defined as _deaths_ / _total cases_. This will equal the mortality rate once the outbreak is over, but has limited use during the outbreak as they call out in footnote:

> The Joint Mission acknowledges the known challenges and biases of reporting > crude CFR early in an epidemic.

During the outbreak, a better but still imperfect estimate is _deaths_ / _settled cases_ where _settled cases_ is the sum of deaths and recoveries. [1]

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22399755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22399755)

<comment><USER22> Indeed, I am basing my confidence on the trendline in the graph on page 13. The number of people infected (41K) is about two thirds now as compared to the peak (58K), and the CFR is dropping exponentially as cases resolve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This has genuinely given me hope. It would be great to see more ideas and work around this.

<comment><USER25> It reminds me of the baby incubator made from car parts.

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/babys-hot- whe...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/babys-hot-wheels-an- incubator-made-2008-12-16/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow to think someone wrote this 12 years ago. I feel there is a lesson here but I don't know what.

<comment><USER22> The lesson is diseases happen, and then they go away and we forget all about them. Bird flu, swine flu, SARS, MERS and soon nCoV-19. The number of active cases is approaching half of what it was at peak, and the mortality rate is now close to 0.7% - and largely weak/immunocompromised patients, the same order of magnitude as the normal flu. Further, a few groups claim a vaccine is only a few months away, and it responds to some existing antiviral medications.

<comment><USER27> In Qoom nothing has been done. The Iraniam government refuses to take even the most basic control measures.

<comment><USER22> It also has a 0.7% case fatality rate in China (and 0.6% outside) on par with H1N1 at 0.45%. Nothing really _needs_ to be done -- this time. The situation would be far, far worse with a disease that actually killed a lot of healthy individuals.

<comment><USER28> Worldwide, there were 2,979 deaths and 42,576 recovered. That math suggests you might have an extra decimal point there. There are many ways to do the math, but 0.7% is not really a sensible number to work from. General consensus hovers at 2-3%.

Aside from that, a much larger (as of yet unknown) number have permanent lung scarring. That's not a joke. Read about SARS and MERS long-term prognosis from similar scarring.

<comment><USER22> That's unfortunately a common misunderstanding of how CFR or case fatality rate works. It begins huge as only the most serious cases are identified as nCoV and it falls as the long tail comes into view.

Over the last few days, we've seen thousands of recoveries and tens of deaths. Marginally, it's 0.6% globally from the latest WHO data. The media is sensationalizing this and playing on peoples fears and emotions.

Check out the graph on page 13 of the WHO report: [https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who- chi...](https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint- mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf)

> Aside from that, a much larger (as of yet unknown) number have permanent > lung scarring. That's not a joke. Read about SARS and MERS long-term > prognosis from similar scarring.

To your own point, we have no idea if it's even a thing. Just because SARS, MERS and nCoV are all coronaviruses doesn't mean they act the same way. MERS has a 35% fatality rate vs. and I can't stress this enough 0.6%, so two whole orders of magnitude less fatal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can you actually buy a consumer ventilator? I would see myself paying up to 10k for a ventilator to have at home just in case...

<comment><USER30> A cpap, or especially s bipap will come pretty close. Not the same in that isn't true life support, but it does make breathing _much_ easier.

I use a cpap at home for sleep apnea and was on a bipap for about 48 hours when hospitalized for pnuemonia.

Machines cost about $500-1500 dollars. Do require a percription though.

<comment><USER20> CPAP is a good way to prevent someone from getting intubated later on. It doesn't reduce the risk entirely, but early and aggressive CPAP usage can definitely reduce the likelihood of a pt needing intubation further down the line (more common w/ asthma/COPD, but there is some evidence supporting its use w/ ARDS pt's as well)

<comment><USER31> In not sure this is true. CPAP/PEEP are used for first line mild ARDS. But it seems hard to find any conclusive evidence for efficacy. It definitely makes people more comfortable, but it's hard to say if the clinical efficacy is really there.

<comment><USER20> The evidence is stronger in the case of mild ARDS (early NIVPP reduces intubation rates), by the time it has progressed to moderate/severe ARDS, it's too late and NIVPP isn't going to do any good.

Apologies that I'm on my phone right now and don't have links at hand, but I have done some reading on this topic recently.

<comment><USER20> Outside the edit window, but this is one of the studies I was referring to: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4057073/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4057073/)

From the conclusion:

> Intubation rates did not exceed 35% in non-ARDS and mild ARDS and NIV may > thus be used as the first-line ventilatory support ... By contrast, 84% of > severe ARDS required intubation and NIV does not appear beneficial in this > subset of patients ... In patients with moderate ARDS, NIV may be worth > attempting in those having a PaO2/FiO2 ratio >150 in the absence of > hemodynamic instability or altered consciousness ...

There are definitely significant shortcoming to that study (single facility, etc), but it definitely points in the direction of CPAP being a viable treatment, especially if it's used aggressively (initiated early, high PEEP, etc)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A-Rod's 600th HR Landing Spot Projection at Tropicana Field - <AUTHOR> http://seatgeek.com/blog/sports/baseball-sports/next-stop-tampa-bay-a-rods-600th-hr-prediction-for-tropicana-field <comment><USER2> Fantastic analysis. I think there will be more grown men with gloves at tonights game than the kids. Normally I feel foolish packing one along, but if I had tickets, I'd definitely bring it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes, with 100k basically flying through the air, I could see it getting a little rowdy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting article, except for the ticket price graph, whose lower limit is $40. Why show a bar graph that doesn't start at 0? It eliminates the purpose of bar graphs - to visually compare the magnitude of values.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point, not sure that in this case it eliminates the ability to compare because the actually raw $ numbers aren't that important, it is more about the % changes.

With that said, when not starting from 0 a "squiggly" line should be used to make note.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A somewhat related question, how come in baseball they are so happy to give away any ball that even goes remotely near the crowd? Wouldn't each ball be worth enough that they would want to cut down on the amount needed per game?

Here in Australia on cricket ball condition effects the game so you'd defiantly not want fans taking the ball and in AFL they don't want people taking the balls although they do switch balls around often during a match. I guess that would be virtually 0 chance that the player could get the 600th run ball back for himself?

<comment><USER5> The average lifespan of a baseball is something like 1.7 pitches. They bring hundreds of them to a game.

Pitchers go out of their way to mangle the balls in specific ways before they throw them, so even the ones that last a few tosses are in rough shape. You'll often see a pitcher simply throw a ball back to the catcher to have it replaced.

The math, by the way, is something like 10k fans @ $50/seat vs. 120 baseballs @ $0.75 wholesale. If there's any chance whatsoever that giving one to a kid in the stands will make him happy enough to come back for another game at any point in his life, it's well worth it.

<comment><USER4> Ah that's what I was wondering, how cheap a baseball they use at that level goes for. Had a feeling that it must not have been much.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I'm probably wrong above in saying that they cost the ballpark anything at all. I suspect the manufacturer pays Major League Baseball a lot of money every year for the privilege of supplying those balls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Baseball may be slower than anything in the world to watch, but this one of the things that always brings me back to the game - stats.

<comment><USER7> Slower than golf?

<comment><USER8> A good sports channel will jump around the course enough to make it seem faster than baseball. Plus golf courses are better to look at especially in the women's tournaments.</comment></comment></comment>


What is autism? How the term became too broad to have meaning any more - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/26/autism-neurodiversity-severe <comment><USER2> We have an autistic child and have faced backlash of a different sort, namely scorn from parents of "real" autists.

Autism is so difficult to pin down because it's a highly individualized disorder. Two people with a similar severity of the disability may exhibit completely different symptoms. Is one autistic and the other not? My child has an extremely difficult time understanding why or even that others feel things, and he will react in extreme ways to the slightest disruption of his schedule, and he has other ("mild") symptoms, yet he is able to attend school with "typical" peers (and lots of arm twisting, legal threats and an IEP) and by all outward appearances doesn't "act autistic." Is he not autistic?

Maybe we need two descriptions or to separate conditions by severity or something, but I'm not convinced we need to consider them as completely different and unrelated conditions.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a saying making the rounds: "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism"

It's apparently very hard to make any general assumptions or observations about people with the condition.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Macbook Pro or Gaming Laptop Better for Machine Learning? - <AUTHOR> I'm on the verge of buying a new laptop to replace my broken MBP 13" 2015.  I dropped my old laptop and broke the screen, the cost is over $500, so I sold it on eBay.  I loved that machine.  It worked fine and I was hesitant on new Macbook because of product quality concerns.
Also, I learn ML on the side.  CUDA seems to be the current popular tech for GPU-accelerated DL programming.  I have not used OpenCL much at all to know if Mac's AMD can do the same or not.
So far, I think if I continue on studying ML, I'd better get a laptop with a good nvidia graphics card like MSI GS65 stealth with GTX 1070/RTX 2070.  I'd use it for tuning models before pushing work to ec2 instance.  Macbook cannot do that.  Matlab also works a lot better on Windows.
I have hard time letting go Mac OS, however, like the old saying "it just works." No BSOD, no crapware, blazing fast due to software optimization, clean packaging of applications, and I really like Scrivener, brew, and super-fantastic trackpad.  If I get a Mac again, it's probably gonna be end of the year, because I'm waiting for the redesign and scissor switch keyboard.  I might either get a 13" MBA, or 15" MBP with maxed out specs.
Biggest thing that held me back from Windows laptop is also the quality control.  Granted, Macbook repair and Apple Care is not cheap at all.  Repairability of Mac sucks, but I have very bad experience with Windows laptop vendors, too, and windows laptops have much higher chance of breakage within 3 years in my experience.
Please give me your advice, assuming I can only get one of them... it'd be much appreciated. <comment><USER3> Don't prematurely optimize.

ML these days has all sorts of scale and scope. For instance, what used to take a few days baking on a GPU server can now be run in a few lines of codes on a CPU. The ecosystem moves very quickly, so it's better to be adaptable than to consign yourself to a specific paradigm of computation.

That being said: Yeah, a lot of stuff is in CUDA or nvidia world. AMD and OpenCL support is usually late and usually lackluster.

These days you can do a lot free to get started. Get started with Kaggle kernels and Colab for free. They give you access to nice GPUs. Learn a little bit of how to do things on AWS/GCP, because almost always people are just trying to burn their free credits as part of their investment package or something.

If you're utterly concerned with performance, most workstations I know of usually run Ubuntu. Performance is far superior. Owning or building a GPU workstation is still remarkably cheaper than renting to some degree. A key idea I'd like to highlight here is that with ML/AI, regardless if your data is small or your batch processes "doable", you should be automating your pipeline so you don't have to worry about it. In the same sense that a GROUP-BY SQL statement is also machine learning speaking roughly. Being able to get your data into workable shape is more important than having nice hardware. Get the data to work for you first before you think about performance or speed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Call me crazy but I would get an alienware (which is what I have). Gamers will say that its overpriced compared to other gaming laptops, but I love mine. The trackpad, keyboard, and over all build are extremely solid. Along with that I've got a GTX 1080 and 32 mb of RAM. Windows subsystem linux is actually really great once you get used to it. You can run everything you need, I never have problems like I used to. Command line is all linux, but then you get all the great drivers on windows (linux OS drivers for things like speakers and monitors can be terrible).

I had macs for five years, I ended up getting this alienware half off (which is why I bought it, never would have otherwise), and I'll never go back to mac. Completely overrated. Again, linux command line on a windows laptop is amazing. Really surprised it hasnt caught on more yet with developers. Also google colab and anything cloud can be really annoying for ML experiements. Its cheaper to hack things together all day on your laptop and only move to the cloud when you need to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alienware specs are good, but a Alienware 15 is 7.69lbs... I have a work computer Dell Precision M6300 is about that weight... I hate having to carry that around...

<comment><USER5> There's Alienware's m15 notebook, which is lighter and can also come with the RTX 2060. If you work mostly at home / at a certain place, perhaps a desktop computer will be more cost-efficient. Maybe paired with one of the new Ryzens (12 or 16 core) that even beat the i9 9900K in many benchmarks ;-).

I work (full time-ish) freelance for 3 to 12 months at a time. I upload my work in git, and save my data in Dropbox. After each project I make sure everything I need is in the cloud, and clear the hard-drive and do a clean re- install of the OS (Linux; last 3 installations were regular Ubuntu, Manjaro, and currently on Xubuntu). I switch between hardwares a lot (sometimes I even use an Intel NUC with an i5 + good SSD + enough RAM, which can be really fast on a light-weight Linux). So I'm less dependent on the hardware and I get faster at setting up what I need. Last time I needed about 1,5 hours to re- install a new Linux distro, setup my ssh keys and get the programs I need to be 98% productive again.

I feel none of the OSes (e.g. Mac OS, Windows, Linux... Linuces?) always "just work". After some time of usage, they seem to always break down somewhere. I try to reduce the risk of failure by having exchangeable hardware + software, a re-installation routine and online-synced data.

Add a nice mechanical keyboard and a decent mouse that fits your hand - <USER2> you gain control of your computer and have more freedom in your choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would recommend you look at the current crop 9750H + 1660Ti laptops with relatively larger battery.

Eg: Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED or MSI GS65 Stealth

Or, buy a Intel ULV processor based laptop like the Thinkpad and get a beefy machine in place like Hetzner Cloud

</comment><comment><USER7> A lot of the downsides you mention of Windows is quite rare these days. There's much less viruses, crapware, BSOD, and so on. A lot of friends say that they bought a Mac because they never have to shut it down; you can do similar with Windows as well. I seriously considered getting a Macbook last year for iOS dev, but it was too hard to give up some of the things on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd get a MacBook Air and learn on colab or Kaggle kernel.

With the money left over from the price difference between air and maxed-out 15" MBP, you can buy extra hours of GPU online, or just get a cheap box to put in your closet.

<comment><USER9> You can get a cheap gaming laptop with 1070GTX for the price of Air and have Ubuntu on it. Moreover price of cloud minutes with GPU quickly stacks up.

<comment><USER10> Yeah. Second this. Apple is useless for machine learning. Get anything that can legit run CUDA and has Linux on it.

<comment><USER11> You can use external GPUs

<comment><USER9> Wich gets like crazy expensive.

<comment><USER11> An enclosure + GPU?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just picked up a Dell G5 Core i7 9750H, 16gb and RTX for less 1300 at Microcenter. 200 cheaper than Dells website.

So far I'm loving it. It weighs a lit bit more than 5 lbs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see it is pretty good value. I kinda hope it comes with 2070 though because of 8GB. Also it is a bit heavy for me, but still better than my current ~7 lbs laptop...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> the best OS for machine learning is Linux IMO, No BSOD, no crapware. (but the trackpad experience is poor)</comment>


30 spies dead after Iran cracked CIA comms network - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/02/iran_cracked_cia_google/ <comment><USER2> This might get a little longwinded. Sorry.

The following is from [http://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amaz...](http://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amazing_success_identifying_cia_agents_in_the_field/) and describes the way the Russians implemented SELECT * WHERE CIA FROM EMBASSY_EMPLOYEES: "differences in the way agency officers undercover as diplomats were treated from genuine foreign service officers (FSOs). The pay scale at entry was much higher for a CIA officer; after three to four years abroad a genuine FSO could return home, whereas an agency employee could not; real FSOs had to be recruited between the ages of 21 and 31, whereas this did not apply to an agency officer; only real FSOs had to attend the Institute of Foreign Service for three months before entering the service; naturalized Americans could not become FSOs for at least nine years but they could become agency employees; when agency officers returned home, they did not normally appear in State Department listings; should they appear they were classified as research and planning, research and intelligence, consular or chancery for security affairs; unlike FSOs, agency officers could change their place of work for no apparent reason; their published biographies contained obvious gaps; agency officers could be relocated within the country to which they were posted, FSOs were not; agency officers usually had more than one working foreign language; their cover was usually as a "political" or "consular" official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations usually left agency personnel untouched, whether their rank, their office space or their telephones; their offices were located in restricted zones within the embassy; they would appear on the streets during the working day using public telephone boxes; they would arrange meetings for the evening, out of town, usually around 7.30 p.m. or 8.00 p.m.; and whereas FSOs had to observe strict rules about attending dinner, agency officers could come and go as they pleased." I read the book. When a CIA agent's cover was blown, the CIA had a spare care and apartment and the agent's replacement needed just that, so they tended to reuse the car and apartment. And wondered why the replacement was then identified so quickly.

So. After that long digression, here comes a hypothesis: Organisations that can keep their mistakes secret, can make themselves _seem_ much more capable than other, similarly large organisations.

<comment><USER3> At the University of Maryland, our network access was through the NSA's "secret" MILNET IMP 57 at Fort Mead. It was pretty obvious that UMD got their network access via NSA, because mimsy.umd.edu had a similar "*.57" IP address as dockmaster, tycho and coins.

[https://emaillab.jp/dns/hosts/](https://emaillab.jp/dns/hosts/)

        HOST : 18.104.22.168 : TYCHO : PDP-11/70 : UNIX : TCP/TELNET,TCP/SMTP,TCP/FTP :
        HOST : 22.214.171.124 : DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL,DOCKMASTER.DCA.MIL, DOCKMASTER.ARPA : HONEYWELL-DPS-8/70 : MULTICS : TCP/TELNET,TCP/FTP,TCP/SMTP,TCP/ECHO,TCP/DISCARD,ICMP :
        HOST : 126.96.36.199 : COINS-GATEWAY,COINS : PLURIBUS : PLI ::
        HOST : 126.96.36.199, 188.8.131.52 : MARYLAND,MIMSY,UMD-CSD,UMD8,UMCP-CS : VAX-11/780 : UNIX : TCP/TELNET,TCP/FTP,TCP/SMTP,UDP,TCP/ECHO,TCP/FINGER,ICMP :

[https://multicians.org/site-dockmaster.html](https://multicians.org/site- dockmaster.html)

Whenever the network went down (which was often), we had to call up a machine room at Fort Mead and ask them to please press the reset button on the box labeled "IMP 57". Sometimes the helpful person who answered the phone had no idea which box I meant, so I had describe to him which box to reset over the phone. ("Nope, that didn't work. Try the other one!" ;) They were even generous enough to issue us (CS department systems staff and undergrad students) our own MILNET TACACS card.

On mimsy, you could get a list of NSA employees by typing "grep contact /etc/passwd", because each of their courtesy accounts had "network contact" in the gecos field.

Before they rolled out TACACS cards, anyone could dial up an IMP and log in without a password, and connect to any host they wanted to, without even having to murder anyone like on TV:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVth6T3gMa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVth6T3gMa0)

<comment><USER4> Holy shit. I can't believe some of what I just read. Although it appears this was in the late 80's, so I suppose it makes more sense factoring that in.

<comment><USER5> In the book "The Cuckoos Egg", the author describes how the hacker penetrating his networks was using it to access military networks. That was in the 80's as well I believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question is, why did they need an informal communication channel? What made this easy, and why was using a correct channel considered too difficult? Maybe Edward Tufte will write about this someday, as this might be another example where user interface design ended up having a big impact on world history (Tufte has written about John Snow using a clever map to end the cholera epidemic in London in 1853 and the Challenger shuttle disaster of 1986, the launch being allowed partly because the engineers from Thiokol were not able to present their information in a comprehensible way).

The article says:

" _But the rest of the agency had become too reliant on the system, which was originally intended to only be a temporary communications channel, and had left the relatively insecure site up far longer than intended and used it to send information that should have been reserved for more secure channels. "It was never meant to be used long term for people to talk to sources," the report quotes one official as saying._"

So why did it last so long? What did it offer that the more official channels did not? What kept the agency from developing technology that might have allowed better protected communication channels that might have also been easy to use?

Protected communication is not a sideline for the CIA, it is the core competency. This is something the CIA is supposed to be good at.

<comment><USER7> > So why did it last so long?

"It's temporary unless it works" \- Red Green.

I always fight temporary solutions because there is a perception that one does not need to be as rigorous with temporary solutions. Then there is no sense of urgency for a replacement because this one works, it becomes a "technical debt", a "nice to have", and never gets fixed. In some cases, lack of rigour is the one functionality everybody loves that cannot be removed (security vs convenience).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Green_Show#Red_Green](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Green_Show#Red_Green)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY7nx5Z6Kzo&t=3m41s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY7nx5Z6Kzo&t=3m41s)

<comment><USER8> Wow, that Red Green show is hilarious. Plan to waste the rest of the morning on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is just a rehash of Yahoo's article:

[https://www.yahoo.com/news/cias-communications-suffered- cata...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/cias-communications-suffered-catastrophic- compromise-started-iran-090018710.html)

<comment><USER10> Mods, please change link to this source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And this is eight years after the largest HIPAA violation ever (at the time) at NY Presbyterian suffered because a physician programmer was allowed to take down a firewall and Google started indexing patient records. [https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-presbyterian- columb...](https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-presbyterian-columbia- hipaa-settlement-2014-5)

</comment><comment><USER12> I always like to think of the counter case, but note, this is pure speculation. Could the CIA have planted a fake insecure communications system in order to execute key players in Iran's nuclear program? It would be a force-amplifying move. Instead of having 15 spies, you could have 1 (the double agent in this case) who reveals the fake communications network, that in turn takes numerous other players off the board.

<comment><USER13> The article actually cites 30 killed ... in China.

So in this case, no.

I assume Iran would be careful if they saw a variety of loyal and crucial players implicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's easy to target poor security as the culprit, but it seems another root cause is such bad UX of official, secure communication channels that drove these agents to chat in this alternative, vulnerable system.

Just as a river follows the path of least resistance, so too will users follow the best UX software. Bad UX kills.

<comment><USER15> UX can't provide security. It can only provide better UX.

Security is a spectrum from convienent/useful to secure. They are mutually exclusive characteristics.

Perfect UX won't remove inconvience of having to preaarange deliver of one time pads, biometric twofactor auth, waiting out of band confirmation of your identity, etc.

All of those can have horrible UX on top of the inconvienence. But even with perfect UX they will never be frtionless as being able to use any device, on any network, using any app/OS, to post on a useless/passwordless site.

<comment><USER15> As an example. Having the internet searchable is useful, us convienent. But it reduces security because of its convienence.

This breach would not have happened without that convienence.

UX could have made it easier to remember to robots file. So could process, or review or other security practices. But no UX is gonna solve fact that internet is insecure due to its convienence.

The internet can never be secure. At best you can get lower levels of insecurity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, security is intrinsically difficult for an organization to get right, because the learning landscape is not continuous. You don't have gradually increasing costs from going in a particular direction; you have apparently zero costs, maybe even rewards, from going in that direction until suddenly OMFG WE HAVE A PROBLEM! This is hard for any machine learning algorithm to deal with, and it is hard for individuals to deal with, and so no surprise that it is hard for organizations to deal with. Lax security, in most cases, yields zero apparent costs until suddenly it is very expensive.

All of which is outweighed by the fact that dealing with this kind of thing is the CIA's reason for existence as a separate intelligence agency, outside of the military (since Pearl Harbor). I am not at all convinced that we would be doing worse to fold intelligence back into the military as it was pre-WWII, because having a culture that understands this kind of problem is the CIA's whole purpose for being separate, and it doesn't seem to have worked.

</comment><comment><USER17> This incident is now used to as part of a collective PR case for military action in Iran. Earlier articles [0] on this CIA failure points to China breaking the network. Which is odd now that it's used to make the case against Iran.

[0] [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia- communicati...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia- communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Bit of a mis-leading headline considering the article states: "After a double agent showed Iran's government one of the sites, they were then able to use Google to identify other sites the intel agency was using and began to intercept communications."

<comment><USER19> One of my favorite pastime activities: googling for certain unsecured automation systems and messing around with them. They can be found with zero false positive rate thanks to an obvious misspelling on the login page. There's no need to resort to inurl, intitle and similar modifiers that trigger the captcha almost every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The NYT has a much better write up: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia- spie...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies- espionage.html)

Basically, an internal mole leaked the network, which the Chinese then exploited to roll up the agents. It's not like China just stumbled upon it, they were tipped off. While the nature of the platform didn't help, the roll up was caused by a double agent.

<comment><USER21> Is this the same breach? People are talking like this is separate from the one you linked to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've always thought that the CIA was completely incompetent, but I've never seen more conclusive evidence than this. I've never worked with anyone so flippant about security, but no one should ever expose secrets without proper auth. I won't even expose user address without cert or password auth. It just goes to show you that the old adage is true: if you are a completent programmer you don't end up in government.

</comment><comment><USER23> Intelligence chiefs of four countries (Iran, Russian, China and Pakistan) met in July, 2018

[https://tribune.com.pk/story/1756290/1-pakistan-regional- spy...](https://tribune.com.pk/story/1756290/1-pakistan-regional-spymasters- resolve-counter-islamic-state-afghanistan/)

I guess this meeting had something to do with all of this.

<comment><USER24> These deaths took place 5+ years ago, sharing information about a mutual border/former border seems more likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Google Hacking (or Dorking): [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_hacking](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_hacking)

</comment><comment><USER26> > Web scraping is a two-edged sword

No, doing this is:

> But the rest of the agency had become too reliant on the system, which was > originally intended to only be a temporary communications channel, and had > left the relatively insecure site up far longer than intended and used it to > send information that should have been reserved for more secure channels.

</comment><comment><USER27> Isn't this article just a restatement of the original Yahoo news story here? [https://www.yahoo.com/news/cias-communications-suffered- cata...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/cias-communications-suffered-catastrophic- compromise-started-iran-090018710.html)

<comment><USER28> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> there are couple things come to mind in that context - that story of Iran MITM-ing HTTPS using a small CA they either hacked and/or acquired and Siemens spying software/hardware at Iran's telcos.

</comment><comment><USER30> > originally intended to only be a temporary communications channel

Some code never dies

</comment><comment><USER31> > A defense contractor for the CIA named John Reidy claims he warned the > agency that it was using insecure communications systems in 2008, and again > in 2010 when he started to suspect the channels had been cracked. A year > later he was fired by the agency, a move he claims was retaliation for not > shutting up.

strongbox.gov is needed to protect people with brains from being strong-armed by management without brains:

[https://medium.com/@cyphunk/the-nature-of-conflict-is- changi...](https://medium.com/@cyphunk/the-nature-of-conflict-is- changing-f9ef39709cab)

</comment><comment><USER32> Weren't these just CIA informants i.e. not actual CIA officers? I think the word "spies" is a bit misleading.

</comment><comment><USER33> What were these communication channels the CIA was using that was being indexed by Google? Some public forum or something?

<comment><USER24> They made websites for fake companies offering job and visa opportunities. People would reply and end up recruited. I'm not sure how exactly they used it for further communication though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "But the rest of the agency had become too reliant on the system, which was originally intended to only be a temporary communications channel, and had left the relatively insecure site up far longer than intended and used it to send information that should have been reserved for more secure channels."

Sounds familiar...

<comment><USER35> Amazing...and they have essentially unlimited budgets. Protecting their spies is #1 in any agencies' book, otherwise who would tell you secrets?

The saddest part: The "decider" probably got promoted as usual.

<comment><USER28> It seems like these issues are rarely solely due to unilateral technical incompetence; there's often at least one person who sees the true risk, tries to communicate the risk, and gets completely ignored. The Challenger disaster had several Thiokol engineers express major concerns in vain; this disaster had John Reidy (supposedly):

>A defense contractor for the CIA named John Reidy claims he warned the agency that it was using insecure communications systems in 2008, and again in 2010 when he started to suspect the channels had been cracked. A year later he was fired by the agency, a move he claims was retaliation for not shutting up.

>"It was a recipe for disaster," Reidy said. "We had a catastrophic failure on our hands that would ensnare a great many of our sources."

The person who could actually save the day and prevent the catastrophe gets ignored, marginalized, and/or fired. The people who were involved in the original disastrous decision keep moving up in the organization and usually keep their jobs after the catastrophe. So it's not like these organizations are lacking smart people: their institutional and bureaucratic incompetence just prevents those people from doing their job properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> With stories like this it really makes you wonder how we as a nation have survived this long.

<comment><USER37> Maybe (much) spy work isn't quite the serious business the national security apparatus would have us believe?

I mean, it's obviously serious business to the people taking risks and doing the work on the ground, I'm talking about it actually being useful to the nation.

<comment><USER38> Totally agree. While they do get a few wins, I wonder what's the ROI when you take all the failures and waste of resources into account. My guesstimate is not much but like other useless government programs, it hires a lot of people so nobody dares questioning it.

<comment><USER39> > Totally agree. While they do get a few wins, I wonder what's the ROI when > you take all the failures and waste of resources into account.

Very far into positive territory, I'd imagine. Most day-to-day intelligence work probably doesn't have much effect, but every once in awhile they probably get a big win that's so massive that it justifies all the effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why kill spies? I would think turning local spy in to double agent would be far more beneficial. Or at least feed them wrong information you want. Killing spies simply replaces them.

<comment><USER41> The second you go after anyone using the communication channel it's fairly likely the entire channel will shut down or change so you're much better off moving quickly on everyone you identify than leaving them out where they might disappear. This is especially true since the information China used was provided by Iran - so was very likely to leak sooner or later. Once you've rounded up all the spies it's up to the government what to do, but either they can trade them, imprison them or kill them and I guess this time they decided it was best to just send a message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370900)

</comment><comment><USER43> phpbb ?

</comment><comment><USER44> > And Google's search functions allow users to employ advanced operators — > like 'AND', 'OR'

ELI5 not needed...

<comment><USER45> Maybe it's a very sophisticated way to tell that {AND,OR} are not functionally complete.

<comment><USER46> Right, it should just have either NAND or NOR. Much simpler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Or it was intentionally left vulnerable with names of people the CIA wanted dead in Iran?

If I were the CIA and I wanted a few of Iran's top nuclear scientists killed, I'd just make it seem like they were working for the CIA and let Iran's counterintelligence do the work for me.

<comment><USER48> That would still be a pretty dumb move in itself - nobody would want to work with anyone who claims to have CIA connections not even for vast amounts of bribery.

I know that countries with less than stellar records of civil rights don't care too much about due process but the not a violent complete moron thing to do would be to ask questions before shooting - namely being sure that they actually are spies or traitors and investigate the claims. For one it could point out peripheral connections down the chain and you know make sure that you aren't getting 'spies lists' of anyone who is close to finding the actual spy.

Granted in that sector it seems that there isn't a scarcity of violent immoral morons even in the west given a love for torture among the CIA. Given the known effects pushing torture is really saying a few things: They want to be able to fool themselves by hearing exactly what they want to hear. They want their foes to fight to the death like a cornered rattlesnake - putting their last breaths in killing as many as possible in the face of insurmountable odds. Finally they want no mercy shown to them if captured.

There are no words for that except evil and stupid - their deaths will not be mourned no matter how horrific because they deserve it and the world will be better off with their passing. I guess that means that the CIA really may be that stupid which isn't a surprise given their real goal with Castro appears to have been to make him as assassination resistant as possible.</comment></comment>


The practicalities of CSS Media Queries, lessons learned - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bloop.co/the-practicalities-of-css-media-queries-lesso

<comment><USER2> I guess my point to this was to show how simple it is to tailor a website to mobile webkit users. For example, HN isn't using any media queries and in probably 30 minutes it could be perfectly nice to read and respond to comments on my phone.

I'll volunteer an hour to do it.

<comment><USER3> Is there any way to have custom css files inserted into the Android web browser? Then we don't need to ask pg et al. To do this, we can do it ourselves.

<comment><USER2> Possibly, I'll have a look. Seems a very long way around for a tiny benefit. Maybe I'll try asking pg and see if it's gets anywhere.

<comment><USER3> I would be very interested if this is possible. It could be used for different sites aswell, not just HN

<comment><USER2> A mate of mine just said it would be possible for firefox on android via a plugin, but he didn't think so for the standard webkit browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> for your issue with wanting to swap stylesheets when the user clicks (mobile | standard) or whatever, try doing all your media queries in the stylesheet <link> tags themselves, then using javascript to unset all the media="" parts, or change them so that the correct stylesheet applies, rather than faking browser width that might fuck around with other JS functions

<comment><USER2> Thanks lenary, I guess that'd be fine for a small amount of adjusted styles for mobile. Becomes a bit of a mess pretty quickly though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "user-agent sniffing (long since shown to be a terrible idea)"

Wrong. On mobile the consensus is this is a sad necessity. There are services to automate and abstract this so you aren't manually creating your own UA DB.

<comment><USER6> It seems like this article makes it clear that it's not really a _necessity_. FWIW, I've been redirected to mobile sites on several occasions just because my desktop browser is Opera.

Not that this can't be taken care of with a little careful coding, just saying that user-agent sniffing is still troublesome, and separating desktop from mobile can be tricker than expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> " _For the user: she visits<http://bloop.co/> and instead of viewing the regular webpages, the page content is styled appropriately for small screens._"

Not in the Android standard browser.

<comment><USER2> I've written for screens smaller than 480px. I have an android that, landscape, is 860px or something. In that case it won't work, and I'd rather not make the assumption that it's a mobile screen.

I presume your android is larger than 480px and that's why you say this?

<comment><USER7> It is, but the page is unwieldy and overly wide on that browser.

Looks like there's a big gap between "small screens" and "screens that can comfortably display the page".</comment></comment></comment>


How To Date Like An Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-date-like-entrepreneur.html

<comment><USER2> Love this post! Only thing I disagree with is that you only need on to say yes. The first yes might not be the best match for you. Compatibility is not quite as important in business as it is in romantic and sexual relationships.</comment>


Jeff Dean takes over as Google's AI chief - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/4/3/17191944/google-ai-head-jeff-dean-reshuffle-john-giannandrea <comment><USER2> Seeing the comments, I can't but imagine what kind of personality is needed to not be affected by that kind of reputation and recognition. Like everyone expects everything you do or say to be really smart. I guess its kind of like being a celebrity; but instead of looking or acting good you have to be smart all the time.

Edit: Also, how is Peter Norvig not Google's AI chief???

<comment><USER3> > I can't but imagine what kind of personality is needed to not be affected by > that kind of reputation and recognition.

The reason many Harvard grads keep the fact that they went to Harvard to themselves is because they have a similar expectation -- that everything they say will be brilliant.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q51ld- scMI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q51ld-scMI8)

<comment><USER4> Ouch :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to see a long coding stream from Jeff or another senior Googler, _that_ demoed all the tools they use and the infrastructure they have available to develop and test new code...

<comment><USER6> Not exactly a coding stream, but a good overview of the tools he uses regularly [https://usesthis.com/interviews/jeff.dean/](https://usesthis.com/interviews/jeff.dean/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI Jeff Dean gave a lecture at YC on AI last summer:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcStlHGpjN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcStlHGpjN8)

</comment><comment><USER8> I read this and thought - that's going to be a big culture shift, Jeffrey Dean Morgan taking over Google's AI: [https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/walking- dead-...](https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/walking-dead-jeffrey- dean-morgan-negan-season-7.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1)

<comment><USER9> I think an affinity for "brains" still holds here. ;) [as long as my zombie allusion holds...]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jeff Dean is arguably one of the top 3 most productive and influential industry programmers of all time.

<comment><USER11> Just curious, who do you think are the other two?

<comment><USER12> I'd definitely put John Carmack on the list, probably as #1. And I think antirez should be somewhere up there as well

<comment><USER13> While antirez is a great programmer, I think his accomplishments are far from that of Dean or Carmack. There are many notable folks in his playing field.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. For example, homebrew isn't the best package manager. But its vast reach is a feat of its own.

Same with redis. Is it the best DB ever? Probably not. But it is definitely used quite a bit in the industry and a lot of people get acquainted with nosql databases and k/v stores through redis.

Engineering accomplishments without proper marketing, education and adoption are quite useless, for better or for worse

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The list of mostly dudes seen as programmers worth worship makes me sad. Most great software is usually written implicitly or explicitly as a team.

Here's a name for a start. Jessie Frazelle. Very influencial in the Kubernetes project. I'd love to see a list of "industry changing" female programmers. Mostly because it's 2018 and we need to change the perceptions that "great software can only be written by men"

</comment><comment><USER15> So many chiefs.

Jeff Dean is the AI Chief, and Fei Fei Li is the Chief Scientist of AI/ML

Not sure what the distinction is, but good for both of them.

<comment><USER16> Presumably there are some googlers around here that can explain the difference in detail,but Fei Fei Li is R&D in Google Cloud whereas Jeff Dean is taking the organisational role as head of AI. So much more of the organisation will be involved - some product development, marketing, operations etc. as well a R&D.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> off topic: how much do you think a guy like Jeff Dean is worth? 18-19 years at Google, pre-IPO and a super-programmer. Keeping in mind that Google paid Anthony Levandowski $120 Mil and Uber way more than that (technically Uber bought his company and maybe a hard drive :))

More than $500 Mil?

<comment><USER7> Levandowski got $120M through acquisition, not salary as an engineer, did he not?

Anyway, there was an old article about top salaries at Google that speculated Jeff making $3M/yr [1].

Jeff also angel invested in Teleport, which got acquired [2]. And his wife and him also have a philanthropy foundation that recently donated $1M to MIT [3] (to promote diversity).

Any more recent employee stock options he gained and past IPO returns could obviously vary significantly depending on percentages, length of time, etc. But I'd be surprised if it was as high as $500M...

[1] [https://www.itworld.com/article/2693353/man-or-myth- the-3-mi...](https://www.itworld.com/article/2693353/man-or-myth- the-3-million-google-engineer.html)

[2] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/teleport-2](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/teleport-2)

[3] [https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2016/8/10/one-of- goo...](https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2016/8/10/one-of-googles-top- programmers-has-made-stem-diversity-a-phi.html)

<comment><USER17> We're all guessing, but his net-worth probably didn't come from his salary. He joined Google 1-3 years after Google was founded so we have to assume that he got a lot of stock options, especially given his talent. When Google IPO-ed in 2004 it had a market cap of $23 Billion. Today is 30 times that much.

Of course he might have sold shares, but then he might have gotten super bonuses for a lot of his projects. Maybe he asked to leave and Sergey and Larry gave him a new title and lot of money. Sometime a small tweak makes a Google-sized company billions or tens of billions. They are generous with a tiny % of the sum.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/waymos-uber-lawsuit- reveals-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/waymos-uber-lawsuit-reveals- anthony-levandowskis-120m-pay.html)

"Embattled engineer Anthony Levandowski collected $120 million from Google, despite involvement with at least one start-up that would ultimately compete with the company, according to new legal filings. "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm curious what this means practically. What will he be doing all day? Is it still research or code writing, or at this level is he focused on managing people and projects at a high level? If the latter, what does that even mean?

</comment><comment><USER19> I believe was worthy. Jeff Dean deserves it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Jeff Dean writes directly in binary and provides the source code as documentation for other developers.

<comment><USER21> [https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean- facts](https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-facts)

My favorite: Compilers don't warn Jeff Dean. Jeff Dean warns compilers.

<comment><USER22> LOL, Jeff Dean's pin number is the last 4 digits of pi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I prefer a Hollywood Director as my AI Chief

</comment><comment><USER24> For what it's worth, there is no "AI" division at Google. That term just doesn't enjoy any currency inside the company.

<comment><USER25> Brain, DeepMind and MI are mostly researchy. I know some people working on applied deep learning that got shuffled multiple times between PAs in the last year - it seems to be the solution for this exact problem.

<comment><USER26> What is MI?..

<comment><USER25> MI - machine intelligence. Actually, it sounds like the article actually means MI when it says AI. John Giannandrea mentioned in the article used to be a head of "search & MI". So it makes sense that Jeff Dean would become a head of MI.

<comment><USER26> This is a cool name, I think people should use it more widely instead of AI.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shortcat - Keyboard productivity app for Mac OS X - <AUTHOR> http://shortcatapp.com/ <comment><USER2> As someone who has tried to come up with a lot of product names...

"Shortcat -- killing mice, one at a time."

is just genius. Super-kudos to whoever came up with that.

<comment><USER3> I'll pass the kudos on :) I'm glad you like the name

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey all, I'm the developer behind Shortcat. Feel free to ask me questions or give me feedback! I'm on a short holiday at the moment so I might not be able to respond super quick.

If you do use the app and it crashes, please send a crash report and a short description what you were doing. It helps me a lot figuring out what the problem is. I post up known issues at [https://trello.com/board/shortcat- bugs/51ac6a3711f6b34606001...](https://trello.com/board/shortcat- bugs/51ac6a3711f6b34606001d7f) (public Trello board) so people can vote and comment on issues.

I strongly suggest reading the README as I haven't baked in a tutorial to the app just yet.

<comment><USER4> I love this! Would love it even more if it let me choose from the open tabs (the open coversations) in adium...;)

<comment><USER5> Similar issue occurs in iterm: [http://i.imgur.com/UBybMP4.png](http://i.imgur.com/UBybMP4.png)

<comment><USER6> Would you mind sharing which font that is? Looks a bit like some form of Courier. Is it a specific zsh theme (oh-my-zsh), or custom? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh wow, this is brilliant. My only problems with it are that it doesn't work with some applications, which is the _perfect_ problem to have, because it means I can now identify applications that have accessibility issues that I didn't notice before.

Demand for accessible apps increases -> I become more productive and apps become more accessible for people that need them. Perfect!

<comment><USER3> That's the idea! I've had a few emails from a few devs of Mac apps and they're going to fix up some issues

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Being able to define new shortcuts in real time is awesome, but half the battle. Helping me learn the shortcuts that are already there is the other half.

Can you guys add a feature that flashes on the screen the keyboard shortcut that already exist for an action performed via the mouse?

Even better if you can add a threshold for an action. For a trivial example, imagine just going to the edit menu and choosing cut/paste/copy. If I perform that action more often than once every 10 minutes, shortcat would flash a fairly large overlay on my screen showing me that shortcut. You could even make this progressive. First teach me any shortcuts for any action performed every 5 minutes for a particular application. Once I learn all those actions, expand the threshold one minute at a time until I learn a new action. Once I consistently perform those actions within the threshold via the keyboard, further increase the threshold until I learn all the commands.

How much do you plan on charging?

<comment><USER9> To help with the other half (of learning the existing shortcuts) you can learn them at [https://www.shortcutfoo.com](https://www.shortcutfoo.com)

Shortcat seems like a great complement to shortcutFoo! Very cool idea.

(disclaimer: I created shortcutFoo)

<comment><USER8> Cool. However, what I really want is an app that trains me while I'm doing my own work. Going to a specific site to practice on that site is great and all but it doesn't help me remember a shortcut nearly as much as learning that shortcut while working on my own work. Learning on my own work is far more likely to be retained, because my brain can link the recently learned shortcut with something which has meaning to me and is likely to be far more top of mind than a random lesson example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazing. This has instantly become a must-have utility for me after trying it out for just a few minutes. Easily the best new Mac utility I've seen in a very long time.

I noticed the mention of the "regions" feature in the README, so maybe you already have plans for solving this, but one thing I'd love would be to have a way to select something based in part on its proximity to something else. For example, imagine I want to click on the comments link for a particular story on the HN front page. It'd be more intuitive to me to type, say, "Shortcat#comments" to pick the item that matches "comments" nearest the item that matches "Shortcat", than to type "comments" and hit Control to select the correct link.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

Regions needs a bit more thought, but it'll let you narrow down the search space easier when you're using a complex app like Xcode with a billion different scrollviews.

That's actually a pretty cool idea! I had ideas for sorting by depth in the element tree to current active or moused over element, but a proximity-based search would be interesting. What operator would you think is meaningful? I haven't got plans for '#' just yet.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure what the best operator would be for my suggestion, but after thinking about it '/' would work well since it calls to mind the idea of navigating a hierarchy. 'Shortcat/comments' feels nice to me. It can also be typed without using shift on a US keyboard, which is convenient.

<comment><USER3> I'll be adding '/' down the track for a proper hierarchy, but things that are close to each other aren't guaranteed to be in a sane hierarchy. What about '@'? "comments@shortcat" kinda flips it around first, which could work as you might decide to narrow down the query when you see too many results. A possible problem is that the second part of the query also has too many results.

<comment><USER10> That sounds like a good approach!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can see this being an OS X power-user/accessibility feature in the next major release. Enjoy your acquisition and/or idea being brazenly appropriated.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm seeing a CloudFlare error:

DNS Points to Prohibited IP You've requested a page on a website (shortcatapp.com) that is on the CloudFlare network. Unfortunately, it is resolving to an IP address that is creating a conflict within CloudFlare's system. If you are the owner of this website, you should login to CloudFlare and change the DNS A records for shortcatapp.com to resolve to a different IP address.

Timestamp: Fri, 07-Jun-13 22:40:20 GMT

Requested URL: shortcatapp.com/0

Error reference number: 1000

Server ID: FL_29F5

Process ID: PID_1370644820.240-1-3281482

Edited to remove my personal info.

<comment><USER3> It seems to be fine here... anyone else having the problem? The /0 at the end of shortcatapp.com looks a bit odd...

<comment><USER13> I had the same problem just now, when I clicked the download link. I went back and clicked it again and it worked fine the second time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You've nailed it here, outstanding job.

Any chance of defining a custom selection key other than ctrl? On my Macbook air, holding the control key with my pinky or thumb while I type is really awkward. Shift would seem more natural, as the pinky finger is already used to using this as a modifier, no?

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

Hmm, probably. I used to use Shift but the problem was there are languages where they need to use Shift to be able to type more letters (Thai for example), so it wouldn't let them type other languages. I could probably add it as an option though, but you wouldn't be able use capital letters, naturally heh

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome, goes great with vimium for chrome [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'll be the one to say it. Awesome. Anything like this for Linux or Windows?

</comment><comment><USER17> Any way this can be "downgraded" for Snow Leopard? I hate the iOSification Lion and Mountain Lion have gone through. I like my vintage Expose with the Dashboard disabled.

</comment><comment><USER18> A very good compliment to Quicksilver indeed. This will be invaluable when I'm in browser tab hell and need to find one specifically.

A menu bar icon would be appreciated!

<comment><USER3> The menu bar icon is coming back in the next version (v0.4.3) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very cool!

Small suggestion: In the case of selecting an item that's not the topmost, it would be nice if it was a one-step process rather than two (you need to first highlight with ctrl+letter, then activate with Enter).

Maybe a repeated press of ctrl+letter could actually activate the selection. Or maybe pressing and holding ctrl+letter for a short while.

<comment><USER3> The reason why I'm currently making users explicitly use Enter/Return to click is because this allows them to use modifiers while clicking, so Ctrl+Enter for right click, Cmd+Enter on a link to open it in a new tab, etc. However, I think Ctrl+letter might be interesting, but might be confusing on multi-letter shortcuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is cool. Nice name.

I've already been doing something like this in browsers for some time:

Cmd+F

Type

Enter/Shift+Enter to go next/prev result (or Cmd+G/Cmd+Shift+G)

When it highlights the link you want to press: Esc, Enter

Of course the beauty of this app is that it works outside the browser too.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great idea and product. I will gladly pay for it. One of the biggest issues I had when transitioning from pc to mac was the lack of meaningful shortcuts. This would have eased the pain greatly!

I could not figure out how to click an element when using . to highlight all elements.

</comment><comment><USER22> I subscribed to your newsletter (life is too short for beta software, but once it hits 1.0 I'm all over it!) and you're on Elizabeth Street!

I'm based out of Canberra at the moment, but it's great to see local guys pop up on HN occasionally.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very nice. On your readme page you mention that with sublime text nothing works. I presume the onus will be on Sublime text developers to make their tabs available to the assit API?

EDIT: On further inspection of README this is somewhat covered. /sleepy

<comment><USER24> Works with TextMate 2 and 1's file browser, not tabs

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So if I type in '.' and see the control I want to specify listed as 'C', how do I tell Shortcat to activate 'C'? I tried obviously typing in ".C" or just "C" but neither work.

/missed something obvious

<comment><USER26> Ctrl + C

<comment><USER25> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks cool, I'll have to test it out. Should reduce the amount of tab/shift+tab I have to do right now.

That said, the video screencast doesn't show up in firefox sans flash player. Not a huge deal but thought you might want to know.

</comment><comment><USER28> I must be doing something wrong but I can't see how to select an element or button by the letter over it's highlight. Ctrl+Letter doesn't do anything for me. From the README, that seemed to be the way to do it?

<comment><USER29> If there are multiple highlighted elements on screen, Ctrl-Letter lets you select which element is highlighted green. The green element can then be activated/selected with Enter.

As others already suggested, the possibility of directly activating a specific element by shortcut would be great. Awesome app nonetheless!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Love it. This is a great app! One thing I'm missing though - settings for colors. I have color vision deficiency and it's very hard for me to see which element is selected.

</comment><comment><USER31> An integration with [alfredapp]([http://alfredapp.com](http://alfredapp.com)) would be so awesome! Hope you can get in touch with them!

</comment><comment><USER32> The reviews for this are one of the more enticing reasons of late for me to switch off of linux. I'm really excited about this. great stuff!

</comment><comment><USER33> Made me think of an App I wrote a while ago with the opposite objective, never touch the keyboard to launch an app. (SapiensApp.com).

</comment><comment><USER34> Is there something like this for Linux?

</comment><comment><USER35> How are you able to query the accessiblity api so fast? In my experience, it's awfully slow.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's what exactly what I've been wishing for years. Does it work in web browsers ?

<comment><USER3> It works in Safari pretty well and Chrome if you run it with a certain flag (see README). I'm not sure about Firefox at this point though.

<comment><USER37> Doesn't work with Firefox. Please find some solution

<comment><USER38> Works in Firefox if you (force) enable the accessibility on via about:config. Change the value to -1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone who tries to avoid mice for RSI-related reasons, this looks amazing. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER40> Excellent tool! A good complement for QuickSilver.

Bonus: the cat is absolutely cute :)

</comment><comment><USER41> It's really a nice tool to use with. It's as awesome as Alfred !!

</comment><comment><USER42> I am in love with the idea of this tool. Can't wait to try it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Which came first? The name or the product? Both are outstanding.

</comment><comment><USER44> Any chance of this being made/ported for Windows platform?

</comment><comment><USER45> Looks really cool, but doesn't work with Postbox.

<comment><USER3> This app relies on applications implementing the Accessibility API properly. I'm hoping that there'll be enough Shortcat users to pressure application developers into making their apps more accessible so people who actually need to use accessibility tools (due to being visually impaired can) use their apps.

I've found that most mail clients (apart from Mail.app, which I don't like) have pretty terrible Accessibility support, due to heavy emphasis on custom views. It's still possible to add Accessibility support on custom views though, but visually-impaired users tends to be a pretty small niché unfortunately...

<comment><USER46> In addition to its other merits, apps like this are a great way to encourage developers implement Accessibility support, which is really not that burdensome at all.

If it gets more app developers to support it (even if it's because their users want to use power tools like this), then indirectly, much good will be done for the users who need Accessibility support for its intended purpose. Definitely a win all around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Nice. It looks like a system-wide EasyMotion.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think it awesome product with brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's like Ctrl + F meets Vimium.

<comment><USER50> You can setup similar functionality in vimium - Just set " Use the link's name and numbers for link hint filtering" in vimium's advanced options. It's default way to move around vimperator as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Who did the cute little cat design?

</comment><comment><USER52> command+shift+{

command+shift+}

?

</comment><comment><USER53> ace-jump-mode.el for OSX. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER54> Brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER55> this is fantastic!</comment>


The Chinese were solving 14th degree polynomials in 1303. Why? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9bkfhj/by_1303_the_chinese_were_solving_equations_of_the/ <comment><USER2> One of the things I find interesting about ancient Chinese math is how computational it was (in modern terminology we would say they were only interested in computable numbers); AFAIUI the ancient Chinese were vaguely aware of numbers that could not be computed exactly (i.e. irrationals) but mostly cared about being able to compute approximations up to whatever precision was required for a given task. So while Western mathematicians were struggling in vain to find a way to double a cube using a compass and straightedge or to derive a quintic formula, the Chinese mathematicians were satisfied with an algorithm that found useful approximations. There is a profound difference in philosophy, as evidenced by the title of this entire thread: the Chinese were "solving" 14th degree polynomials, but only in the sense of having an algorithm for doing so (as opposed to having a formula like the quadratic formula; in fact there is no such formula for degree 14 polynomials, or for any polynomials beyond the quartic).

<comment><USER3> Hate to be annoying, but I'm a native English speaker and I just skipped over "AFAIUI" because it was too much work to guess what it meant.

"As far as I understand it" ? RIP if you're not a native speaker.

<comment><USER2> I think it is a relatively common abbreviation used in informal writing online, similar to "AFAIK" or "AFAICT" (maybe those are not so common?) but admittedly less common than "QED" or "etc." Yes, it means "as far as I understand it."

<comment><USER4> Anecdotally, I'm a native speaker, have been reading text on BBSes and then the internet for well over 30 years, and have never seen that one. AFAIK has been around for decades.

Like some other commenters, I skipped right over it rather than try to parse it.

<comment><USER5> I've been online for 20 years, and AFAIK was pretty common, although a few years ago I came across AFAICT which was pretty easy to extrapolate as ending with "can tell". From that I was able to recognize the pattern here and pretty quickly got "understand it" for UI. I think it's pretty neat that we're able to adapt language in this way, though obviously not foolproof or universal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first I thought the headline meant they were factoring or finding the roots of 14th degree polynomials, which would have been quite impressive.

But no, the page just says they were calculating the answer for a particular value of x, using "the method of fan fa, today called Horner's method". A simple process, for example:

To compute 3x^2 + 12x + 12, start with 3, multiply by x, add 12, multiply the result by x, and add 12 again.

<comment><USER7> No the headline was not wrong. One of the answers explained Horner's method and its relation to using abacus (which has a small register file, in modern lingo). However that is not the extent of the book mentioned. You can find the book here: [https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9B%E5%85%83%E7%8E%89%E9...](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9B%E5%85%83%E7%8E%89%E9%89%B4) The equations dealt with have been transcribed into modern algebraic expressions. They were definitely solved, not merely computed.

The more complete answer should have been "The higher order polynomial (as high as 14) came from solving multivariate simultaneous equations (with degrees as high as 4) by elimination of variables."

<comment><USER6> I wasn't referring to the reddit page, but the Wikipedia page it's based on:

> Si-yüan yü-jian (《四元玉鑒》), or Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns, was written > by Zhu Shijie in 1303 AD and marks the peak in the development of Chinese > algebra. The four elements, called heaven, earth, man and matter, > represented the four unknown quantities in his algebraic equations. It deals > with simultaneous equations and with equations of degrees as high as > fourteen. The author uses the method of fan fa, today called Horner's > method, to solve these equations.[48]

If there's more to the story you might want to correct Wikipedia.

<comment><USER7> The page I linked to is the actual page for Si-yüan yü-jian (《四元玉鑒》). The Wikipedia article you referred to may be slightly confusing but is not wrong. If you tried to solve a polynomial numerically, Horner's method would be handy. However we know there is no general solution per Abel and Galois.

<comment><USER6> Which part are you're referring to when you say "The equations dealt with have been transcribed into modern algebraic expressions. They were definitely solved, not merely computed"?

<comment><USER7> The page I linked to listed the problems posed and solved. The Chinese version is accompanied by modern notations using x,y,z...

By the way the numerical solution to high order one variable polynomial was already known and given by another mathematician in an earlier (1247 AD) book: [https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%95%B0%E4%B9%A6%E4%B9%9D%E7...](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%95%B0%E4%B9%A6%E4%B9%9D%E7%AB%A0)

<comment><USER6> I thought you were referring to a specific solution for a 14th degree polynomial.

If you're just referring to the notation, that's a modern translation using modern notation. What was in the original?

<comment><USER7> I am saying all the equations listed also had their solutions given.

<comment><USER6> It's not clear to me what's the original and what's a modern addition. For example:

Mixed question Straight paragraph source Eighteen questions.

Eighteenth question:

Today, there is a sum of money and multiplication, and the product is reduced by the sum of the balances. It has a total of 170,162 steps. Only the cloud and the benefits. The fourth is Yifang, the third is from the low, the second is the benefit of the low, the first is the right, the three squares open, such as a quarter of the flat. Question, long, flat geometry? Answer: Ping is twelve steps and is thirty steps long.

Li Tianyuan is the opening number and has:

(equation)

The solution is x=3, multiplied by four, which is the flat number.

It seems to me that the text is the original Chinese (with only a numeric solution for one case) and the general equation is a modern addition.

<comment><USER7> I don't know what your confusion is. Every problem was given in the format of "Question, Answer, Steps to arrive at the answer" in the Chinese original. Numerically solving high order polynomials was already known so was not explained. The explanations were focused on elimination of variables for simultaneous equations (which can give you high order single variable polynomials).

<comment><USER6> It might just be lost in translation, since I'm using Google Translate, but I don't see the "Question, Answer, Steps". I'll have to take your word for it.

<comment><USER7> Ah I see. Sorry I missed that there is a English page (actually linked to from the link referenced above). While having fewer problems than the original page it may give you a better flavor than Google Translate (and shows how far Google translate still has to go :-): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Mirror_of_the_Four_Unknow...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Mirror_of_the_Four_Unknowns)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> AskHistorians is surely one of the great jewels of Reddit.

Fantastically moderated, and filled with an array of helpful experts happy to research and write up answers to all sorts of interesting questions and topics.</comment>