The Grammar of Vim - <AUTHOR> http://rc3.org/2012/05/12/the-grammar-of-vim/ <comment><USER4> I've been reading through the brand new Practical Vim by Pragmatic Bookshelf, it goes pretty in depth in this and much much more: <http://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim>

<comment><USER5> What is the level of the book? Is it worth getting if I'm a pretty heavy vim user already, or is it more of a beginner's guide?

<comment><USER6> Same here. Need something for advance vim users.

<comment><USER7> IMO once you get past knowing the core stuff on an editor, the next frontier is scripting. If you would consider yourself advanced in vim, I would suggest starting to learn VimL

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suspect there's an opportunity/lesson lurking here somewhere.

One of the biggest complaints devs have about tools is responsiveness. The more responsive a tool is, the higher time-density of information available to a developer.

IDEs tend to suck in this regard, but Vim positively shines. Many people advocate Vim because it tends to shine in this department, even though they may not consciously realize it. Responsiveness seems to be the one vital attribute for developer tools in general. (Mosh is another example of a dev tool that capitalizes on responsiveness.)

So at first glance, it's quite odd that many IDEs suck re: responsiveness. After all, this is measurable. However, the tools to measure this on desktop apps tend to be proprietary and quite involved to use. As a result, FOSS developer tools don't do this kind of measurement, and the Tragedy of the Commons results in bloated IDEs. So the environments that avoid poor responsiveness tend to be ones that matured in a world with far fewer resources.

The takeaway: if your plans for world domination also involve a dev environment to rule them all, you'd best be measuring UI responsiveness as a part of your continuous integration/testing -- and set standards and make the devs stick by them.

<comment><USER9> I have Eclipse, Netbeans, Monodevelop, and Geany right now on 12.04. And besides having some ridiculous start up times (like, ~10 seconds, then again I have this test 12.04 partition on an old IDE hard drive from 2001. "shades" I must just be a daredevil...) they are pretty snappy, and I imagine any responsiveness shortfalls are JVM disk IO, so an old IDE drive with 60 mb sequential read / write is about as bad as it gets, and I don't lose productivity to slow software with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A link, or links much like this describing the "grammar" of Vim, gets reposted every few months, which is probably fine because it's a good thing to learn and share, but it would be nice if there were a HN "Hall of Fame" which would prevent reposting things like this over and over and over again. It could have either posts, or "concepts" with some of the more popular posts about Vi/Vim/etc, Emacs, C++, etc.

(What reposts, you say? I was thinking of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2911930> or <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3361993> linking to Yan Pritzkers original post, referenced in parent link. But to be fair, they are different posts, not truly reposts.)

(However, there's also value in serendipity of new users "discovering" great links, so perhaps we can just leave well enough alone. Yeah, I know, useless comment when it takes both sides of a point).

<comment><USER11> > Yeah, I know, useless comment when it takes both sides of a point

Incorrect. Given a subjective question, the most useful comments acknowledge and consider all possible answers according to their due weight.

<comment><USER10> That's a nice thing to say, thanks. As I kept editing my comment, I kept thinking "Pick one side and stick to it... but I can't!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have been using Vim for a few years. I recently installed a trial version of ViEmu plugin for Visual Studio. With Vim inside my main IDE at work, I have the chance to really master it. But I ran into an unexpected hiccup - <USER2> else can use it when we're collaborating on code! Sadly, I think this might be a big enough reason to remove it.

<comment><USER13> I am increasingly disappointed in all those Vim 'emulators'. VsVim, jVi, ... They aren't vim, no plugins, no real customizations. I really like that they exist, but it could be better. We need the REAL vim in an IDE, not some vim functionality.. EDIT: I use VsVim and you can disable it with ctrl+shift+F12. This helps when working together with other people..

<comment><USER5> Now THIS is a great idea.

vim lacks a lot of modern features, and the fact that it has to be compatible with running on shells means that it _can't_ implement a lot of things which you would need to make it look and feel like a normal editor.

For example, we'd need the ability to make windows that are only part of the screen, in order to make convenient popups (for, say, ctrl-p find in files actions). We'd need the ability to have actual graphics to separate sections. We'd need the ability to have _different fonts_ for different buffers. Etc.

What I think we need is an IDE which is just a layer _on top_ of vim, which gives it a few things:

* a sidebar, ala NERDTree, only good-looking and consistent with how sidebars should act, e.g. doesn't move with the other window-movement commands, can't be changed to another buffer.

* Honest-to-God normal IDE _Tabs_ , which let you have lots of open buffers, let you see them visually and switch between them normally.

* A buit-in, _fast_ , find-in-project/find-tag/command-t like functionality, which has nice graphics to make it easy to use and is actually fast on any project.

Etc.

And all of this can be done _on top of_ a normal vim, making it have the ability to have all of the old plugins and configurations works. Obviously a lot won't be necessary (e.g. NERDTree), but for GUI environments, this would absolutely make vim rock.

<comment><USER13> Most of this can be done with Vim already... And the stuff that can't, like graphics, popups... I don't care for. How would you control that sidebar? With the MOUSE O.o !? I like nerdtree exactly because it's a buffer, because I can navigate it like my text. The essence of my comment above is that I want this in my IDE's, not the other way around..

Also: vim has tabs (:tabnew)... And there are search plugins for vim, fuzzy finder being one.

EDIT: But I like your idea of turning Vim into a real IDE, I've been looking into this .. Vim need to "understand" the code. Better omnicomplete, refactoring ...

<comment><USER5> I'm not blaming you specifically, but this is the problem - anytime someone points out something that could be better with vim, people jump in to show "yes vim CAN do that". And they're right. It's just that it's done _worse_ , and takes a lot of setting up to get right.

To elaborate on the "worse" part, there are a few problems right now:

1\. _The plugins don't interact nicely with each other._ For example, NERDTree exists, but it doesn't always play nicely with other plugins. Keeping it always stuck on the left side of the screen, taking up the same space, is not possible. If you use fuzzyfinder, for example, running fuzzyfinder from withing the NERDTree buffer will open the new buffer INSTEAD of NERDTree. This is _never_ what I want. For another example, try jumping to a saved mark across files (e.g. 'V) from within NERDTree.

This is not even getting into plugins that will create new windows, and screw with your window layout, including messing up NERDTree.

In my vision, I would want to have a sidebar, make it keyboard-controllable of course, just make it "outside" of the actual vim, letting you control it absolutely. This is just one example.

2\. The second problem is, vim _looks bad_. I'm sorry, but little graphical conveniences just don't exist in vim, and it is often the worse for it. For example, open Sublime Text's "find if project" drawer. It looks much better, is better convenience-wise, and it's something I use 200 times a day - I want it to be perfect. The fact that the drawer appears in the top-left, has a larger font-size, uses bold properly to make it clear what you're selecting, etc., is something that is just plain BETTER.

3\. As for the current solutions to some of the things you mentioned:

Find file in project plugins: Yes they work. They don't look nice (see point 2 above), but they do exist. However, you have a choice between:

\- Command-t, which is annoying to set up (don't take my word for it - look at the list of users who rant and rave about how good ctrl-p is, because it is easier to set up!).

\- Ctrl-p - awesome (I use this one), but often slow. Especially when I want to display 50 results at a time (I have a large screen, I want to USE it). Coloring all the results is slow, and I'm not on a slow machine or anything. I'm not even talking about the indexing time, which luckily for me isn't a problem with my currently small projects.

\- FuzzyFinder - nice, but looks terrible, and has a lot of funky behavior. E.g., the NERDTree mess (ctrl-p avoids this by writing code in the plugin to detect "common buffers" and not load things into them - not a scalable solution).

As for tabs, sure, vim has tabs - except they're not supposed to be used like the tabs everyone is familiar with, because that's what buffers are for. They're more for "workspaces". Forget the terrible naming of a feature which is similar, but different to what everyone else in the world means when they say "tab" - there are still no _good_ ways to show which files you have open. It's not a killer feature, but a convenience a lot of people would like.

Summary: Let me get this straight. I _love_ vim. I adore it. I kind of hate it, because having used vim, I can't find myself liking anything else - <USER3> my beloved Sublime Text 2, which is an amazing editors, frustrates me for lack of vim features.

The reason I write all of this is because I want the editing experience of vim, but the "everything-else" experience of Sublime Text 2 (or any modern editor). That would be an amazing thing.

<comment><USER13> Just to be clear: I was the person saying things could be better... But I also wanted to point out Vim CAN do most of it. I agree with you on many points...

Maybe I could try writing some plugins in the future :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does emacs have a consistent grammar like this?

I use vim, but have been interested in learning emacs too. However, every time I startup the emacs tutorial, I immediately start missing the vim's semantic grammar.

Have I just not gotten far enough into emacs to discover that yet?

<comment><USER15> Not as such, though many commands can be prefixed by a "universal argument" count; "C-u 5 C-n" means "move forward 5 lines", just like "5j" does in vi.

In Emacs terminology, many vi commands can be followed by a movement command, in which case they act on the region from the current point to where the movement ends up. Instead of saying "dw" (delete forward-word), you'd use something like "C-space (mark position) M-f (forward-word) C-w (kill-region, AKA 'cut'). There are many semantic movement commands, acting on the space travelled just isn't automatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> True but I'd say this verb-noun idiom only accounts to 15% of the user manual. For instance learning fold commands za will tell you nothing about other commands using 'a'.

<comment><USER7> Text objects are the core of editing though, stuff like z or all the g commands are more situational. I replace the contents of a string (ci"), delete a word (daw), copy the contents of an array (yi]), etc WAY more often then things like folding

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do you guys use a mix of VIM and Text editor? OR just VIM?

<comment><USER18> What do you mean? Vim _is_ a text editor.

<comment><USER17> With a text editor I meant something like Gedit.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What side projects you built in 2018? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I wasn't satishfied with existing applications for binding joystick to keyboard inputs. I couldn't find a single tool that could mimic analog controls by PWMing/pulsing keystrokes, so I made my own, so I could finally have proper support for my joystick in games that didn't support it (Mainly GTA online for helicopter ownage)

Its mostly useful for stuff like that, making bad PC ports work with joysticks, but I guess you could use it for accesibility as well as it also can bind mouse to joystick etc.

I also attempted to make a HTML5 player for an old physics sandbox game called Phun / algodoo. It kinda worked, but I put it on hold because I got annoyed by some problems I had with the physics engine I used (LiquidFun)</comment>


The Ethical Way to Ration Coronavirus Hospital Care - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-17/the-ethical-way-to-ration-coronavirus-hospital-care <comment><USER2> Are we sure that the economic damage of the shutdown of the world economy out weighs the heath risks of the virus. Are we in group think here? A major recession/depression means a lot of people go hungry, lose access to medical care etc. Does anyone know of studies or research that looks at the health impacts of a shutdown vs. the health risk of the virus ? Just asking questions.</comment>


Ask HN: What questions should you ask investors of prospective employers? - <AUTHOR> I'm considering a job offer from a Series A company. They've graciously set up a brief call with one of their investors.<p>I'm having trouble coming up with a set of useful questions to ask. What are some important things about a company that an investor can give perspective on? <comment><USER2> You could ask them what made them decide to invest and where they see the company going. This should mostly be a fluff call but the answers might be interesting.</comment>


Cost of adding a NPM package - <AUTHOR> https://bundlephobia.com/ <comment><USER2> Heh, cool! I wonder, would "find the cost of adding a npm package to your bundle" be short enough to fit in as the title? Originally, I expected this to be a blog post about how adding one more NPM package ballooned things.</comment>


The indefatigable efforts of J. M. Keynes - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/jm-keynes-footnotes-to-plato/ <comment><USER2> "This revolutionary theory – his Liquidity Preference Theory – is still considered too radical to be acceptable today."

What? Liquidity preference was taught in my undergrad macro class using the textbook by Greg Mankiw. It's the basis of the IS/LM model. And central banks are constantly worrying about interest rates and liquidity. To whom is it too radical? Probably some people disagree with it, but I wouldn't call it very "radical" today. The author is fighting straw men.

<comment><USER3> Exactly right. And the IS/LM model, which is Hicks's interpretation of Keynes's General Theory, is the basis of current macroeconomic theory.

<comment><USER4> People always talk about Keynes but its really Hicks interpretation that got everybody on that track.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Short summary of the difference between supply-side (Milton Friedman) economics vs demand-side (John Maynard Keynes) economics:

[https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/012615/what- differe...](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/012615/what-difference- between-keynesian-economics-and-monetarist-economics.asp)

My main experience with this on a microeconomic level was during the housing bubble and recovery. I tried working at home flipping used Macintosh computers to sell on eBay and found that as money got tighter and tighter around the country, prices kept falling from $300-500 in the course of a year to $150-300 and eventually I couldn't make any money at it.

Part of this was the natural drop in price of electronics but part of it was also the fact that everyone was broke so demand for computers fell. I think we could do a lot for the US economy by putting more money in the hands of consumers and raising demand. We could also think about what people are buying, and start investing in projects that pay off in the long run (renewable energy, permaculture, automation etc) vs projects that are unsustainable (coal, monocropping, the service economy).

The fact that most people have never really heard of these sorts of government-driven public works since roughly the late 70s tells me that supply-side economics won. But I think on a local level, we might see a resurgence in demand-side economics with recycling, cooperatives, some level of universal basic income - things that make life easier for working people. At least, I thought that before the last presidential election. But if people are looking for hope in these times, Keynesian economics is a great place to start.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry but your comment and the post you link to is complete nonsense economically and worse applied to Keynes and Friedman is utterly wrong. The article you linked is an honestly an embarrassment.

Furthermore nothing in the actual economics of either of these two people puts them squarely in the supply-side/demand-side 'camp' and furthermore those terms are used competently wrongly to the point of meaninglessness in public discussion anyway.

I don't want to get into a long post here, but your way oversimplifying the issue economist discuss to a point where it borders on satire.

To get a somewhat better understanding in a short time:

\- [https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/KeynesianEconomics.html](https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/KeynesianEconomics.html) (written by Alan S. Blinder)

If you are further interested in the history of economists long dead, consider:

\- [https://www.mruniversity.com/courses/great-economists- classi...](https://www.mruniversity.com/courses/great-economists-classical- economics-and-its-forerunners)

<comment><USER5> So you're a Friedman fan I take it? _ducks_

<comment><USER4> I'm a fan of R. G. Hawtrey

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there an "Economics for Hackers" resource or book that isn't tainted by political bias?

<comment><USER7> What would you like to see in a book like that? Seems an interesting idea

<comment><USER6> Why rich countries/cultures are rich and poor countries/cultures are poor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Worse, it has led to increasingly frequent financial crises. These began > first on the fringes of the global economy (in the 1970s and 80s), but in > 2007–9 moved to its core, the US and Europe.

Far as I got in TFA...

Anyone who doesn't recognize "financial crises" have been going on for, like, forever probably isn't that much of an expert on the subject to even consider their argument.

<comment><USER9> The first of the "increasingly frequent financial crises", I should think, is what's intended. Not the first one period. Not to defend that point—my background is little help here—but I think yours is a misreading.

<comment><USER10> Recessions have become increasingly less frequent since Keyenes.

I think there may be an argument around the US experiencing fewer, but greater in magnitude recessions, but im not sure of the specifics.

<comment><USER11> No you´re right. The banking system was bouncing up and down like a yo-yo in the 19th century, on average there was a crisis every 10-12 years (also astonishingly regular). The mean time to crisis is several years longer these days.

<comment><USER12> We had a respite after the Depression and banking regulations. Then Reagan(?) and deregulation, and now we're right back to the yo-yo

<comment><USER4> Bank failures were very common in the US specifically, especially in the GD. The reason is that the US had 10000s of banks because of a regulation called 'Unit Banking'. This made banks incredibly weak (not diversified) to shocks and failed often. Because of other problem in the US system this often lead to lots of banking failures. 1000s of them went down in the GD for example. Compare to Canada where no bank failed (there were less in the first place of course).

It was deregulation that finally abolished that absurd practice along with other changes, including some more regulation, and the removal of lots of old regulation that lead to an improved banking system.

The Depression of 1929-1933 was followed very quickly by a recession in 1937 but banks didn't fail anymore. Pretty much every economist agree that the reason was the FDIC and the consolidation of the banking system in the following years.

To track bank failures today on deregulation in the 80s is a really hard sell, if you study the history of banking you will see huge changes in regulatory structure, types of regulation and so on all the time, including after Reagan. To sell the old 'evil republic deregulation is cause of all evil' story is always easy but unless you are at a political rally it is a pretty meaningless statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think Keynes is a lot more comparable to Freud than to Darwin. Hugely inspirational in his day, inspired a lot of interesting ideas, clearly a very bright guy. But not necessarily ever right about anything, or at least anything new.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article contains so much nonsense its hard to comprehend how this is not an attempt at satire.

It seems the anther has read some Keynes and has defined a whole new history around it.

I highly recommend people against reading this text, it represents the worse kind of historical rewriting and reinterpretation to serve the needs the person writing it.

I would also point out that a lot of the insights that Kaynes made popular and enjoyed wide popularity from the 1950 to 1970s has since gone away. The theories today called 'New Keynesian' really are far more evolution of 70s monetarism.

> Keynes's development of the science of macroeconomics goes largely > unacknowledged by a profession still

So all of this is wrong. In no meaningful way did Keynes develop the science of macroeconomics.

There were working on the exact same topics as him for a very long time before him. One might argue that he was the most well known macro economist in England at the time, but that's about it.

Furthermore, the idea that Keynes is 'unacknowledged' is unfathomably wrong. There are macro economics schools today that refer to themselves as 'New- Keynesian', 'Post-Keynesian' or 'Old Keynesian'.

> by a profession still steeped in classical microeconomics

I don't even know what he is referring to. Nobody does 'classical' economics since the 1870 (except some forms of Marxist economics).</comment>


Ask HN: How does a junior engineer plan for a managment position? - <AUTHOR> This is my last semester as a software engineering student.
And even though I love coding (and I'm not planning to ever stop writing code), I always saw myself more in a role of "management of some-sort" where I could have more influence on how projects are done, technical choices, policy, technical-design and long-term objectives.
My point is, on the long-run, that I don't see myself as "just" a coder.
My school offers a master's degree called "Management and project innovation", I've also heard good feedback from people that are doing an MBA elsewhere.
Do you think that this kind of career-objective should be achieved via school, or do you think that this comes naturally with seniority? <comment><USER2> Having the ambition to be a manager is great, however I'll advise that you first focus on building some functional expertise (engineering in your case). Great managers command respect of their team by showing that they understand what their team is doing, asking right questions and hiring great people. How will you develop all these without having some functional experience yourself? I think you should start as an engineer and develop management skills on the job, through mentorship, reading, taking initiatives etc. (and if needed, pursuing MBA later). Feel free to reach out if you want to talk more 1:1.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great question, and it's good that you're thinking about your career trajectory.

School is generally thought to be a fast-track to experience. That is, a degree translates to N years of experience in the real world. In reality (at least according to my experience), the MBA degree is merely a ticket to an interview. If you got your MBA in Management and Project Innovation, you might have a leg up on non-MBA holders, but you'll still wind up with a bit of trial-by-fire, since you don't have a lot of real world experience. Plus, grad school can be expensive.

Another route would be to go straight into the workforce and do some real- world software engineering. You'll find out really fast whether the coding-to- decision ratio is good enough for you, or whether you really want to move up into management. As others will tell you, management is a whole different animal. For most technically minded people like software engineers, they usually only want to make technical decisions. Managers, on the other hand, have to think about a lot more, especially on the business and people side of things.

Find a mentor and learn as much as you can. At first, this should merely be a lead engineer. They'll have experience making decisions AND the technical chops to back it up. If you reach the position of Lead Engineer and you still want to get into management, find another mentor. (Hint: mentors are a fantastic way to move up in organizations and learn a lot in the process).

And above all, don't rush into anything. You have your whole career ahead of you. Enjoy it as much as you can.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for this detailed answer.

Would you care to explain for me a little further the concept of mentorship especially in a context of a big corporations?

<comment><USER3> At some point, you go to a senior person and you say to them, "I've been here X [months/years], and I feel like I've learned a lot. Someday I think I could see myself doing what you do. If my career goal is to have your job in 2 years, what do you think I should do?" Hopefully, this person is receptive and will give you advice. Meet with them periodically and check in. If you do well, they'll want to train you as their replacement when they inevitably leave or get promoted out of that position.

Repeat ad nauseum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Highly recommend you do some reading on Quora. There are many similar questions, and asking there is likely to get a good set of answers to add to anything here.

Realize also that many engineers are disdainful of managers and management, so take any feedback you get with a grain of salt. Explicitly aiming to become a manager will get a bad reaction from people.

That said, managing people and process is a real set of skills at which people can be good or bad. You can practice and improve these skills like any others. There are plenty of people who are managers who are poor at it, but that's no different than any other job. And no, experience itself won't grow you the way you want. Adding side training will be essential, whether it is individual courses, Udemy and similar coursework, reading, or full degree programs.

I think an Master's in this "Management and Project Innovation" would be valuable. My path was realizing after about 7 years of software work that I really enjoy the larger activities of businesses even moreso than the software development, so I got an Executive MBA. That gave me some negotiation power to finally slot into a leadership role. It also rewired my brain and vastly expanded my knowledge of leadership and of understanding business concerns to be effective. It really revolutionized my whole way of thinking about the world and made me a better person in my personal and professional lives.

So my take would be: if your passion is in _orchestrating_ projects, do consider that MBA and angling for a Project Manageer role as well. But you should also get a year or several of software development so you learn the realities of people working on software projects. I think practical experience is important to stay grounded when you get with with management theories and practices. Without real-world experience anchoring you, it can turn you into a Pointy-Haired Boss personality.

If you already think that is going to be an interest to you, I encourage you to go work 2+ years as a software engineer, then start a Master's degree concurrently after you have some experience.

Email me if you want to talk in more detail.

<comment><USER5> Hello

I am in a similar position (7 years of development and getting bored of having no say in what gets build) and wanted to ask a couple of questions.

\- Is an MBA essential for the transition?

\- Does college name matter when doing an MBA for this purpose?

\- Do you get to recoup the cost of the degree?

\- Did you change employer to make the transition into project manager?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It really depends on the size of the company you are seeking for. I have worked in start-ups and one of the largest financial institution.

For start-ups: As long as you are good, you will have a say in most of the area you mentioned (maybe not policy and long term objectives)

For sizeable company:

How projects are done - as development manager, you will be one of the many stakeholder in the project. Instead of thinking you will be dictating how a project is done, your role will more likely in leading some sort of committee where decisions are agreed upon by all the stakeholders.

Technical choices - the architecture team is responsible for deciding on the technology choices.

Policy - policy change is usually driven by internal, external audit. You will be assigned to take care of the aftermath of the audits depending on your area of expertise.

Technical design - manager usually don't have the technical know-how on the technical design

Long term objectives - these are coming from the investor level by setting ROI target for CEO to meet. It will subsequently trickle down to every level in the organization.

It sounds like you have a romantic notion of what a managerial role entails. In this day and age, management are usually the ones getting slashed. The smarter ones usually stay in senior technical roles because the compensation in the managerial role doesn't justify the risk and the time involved.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been a professional developer for 10 years. Maybe you plan on being more of an analyst. Managers usually are pushed away from technical decisions. Don't try to become a manager too soon. Nobody wants a manager that is 10 years younger than the technical staff.

Want to grow quickly? Learn the ropes in big companies for big money, use small startup companies to grow into new functions. Don't stick with the same job too long.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the difference between an analyst and a manager?

> Learn the ropes in big companies for big money

I think I'm going to do my graduation project in something like that. Should I push for a contract there after (as a first job)?

> Don't stick with the same job too long

How long is too long ?

<comment><USER7> By analyst I mean this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analyst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analyst) > Should I push for a contract there after Try to surround yourself with the best developers and managers out there. Learn their tricks and tales. > Don't stick with the same job too long I've once spent 2 years at a job learning nothing, accomplishing nothing and getting insulted on a daily basis. Don't stick longer than 5 minutes in such a place. As a rule I try to stick 4-5 years. Unless of course I get grossly disrespected or something way more beautiful comes along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Consider a lead, team lead or architecture based role. If you want control of technical desicions, a regular management position won't give you what you are seeking.

Also pay attention to politics. That becomes on of the main items to master while looking at management, even though places deny this, it exists everywhere.</comment>


MBA students demand tuition fee refunds over campus closures - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/d093664c-0381-487f-99e6-027230e2104f <comment><USER2> Why only MBA students? Why not the whole studying population in the country?

<comment><USER3> I think MBA students are being uniquely screwed in that one of the biggest points of B School is developing relationships with people you'll work with "in the wild." Not to downplay networking in other degrees, but frankly the only difference between HBS and night school is these connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a business. Students still are taking classes online. Why undermine our own educational system.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with a monthly budget to spend on development time? - <AUTHOR> I have a monthly budget to spend on freelancers. What would you ask them to work on? Small projects or go all-in on one big project? Ideas? <comment> ng-user This question will produce absolutely no valuable answers without providing at least a bit of context.

What are you trying to accomplish? What problems are you facing? What do you intend to do with this budget?

You can hire 100 code monkeys and have them accomplish _anything_ just to say you spent the budget, or you can provide rigid leadership in a certain direction. It's up to you to decide whether they succeed or fail.

</comment><comment><USER2> Whatever your full time people either can't do or would be so miserable doing that they'd quit if you put them on it for more than a few days at a time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would ask them to work on solutions for office tasks that should be automated or are otherwise annoying or barriers to faster/quality delivery. I would ask for documentation describing the problem to be solved before work begins and a review of their tested solution once it is functional.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tedious development tasks.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would have them do small pieces. Specifically I would have them write tests. Unit tests, regression test, etc.</comment>


Trump wants project seeking links between mental health and violent behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/white-house-considers-new-project-seeking-links-between-mental-health-violent-behavior/ <comment><USER2> He could look at the very long standing collected statistics of the violent incidents he's interested in, and simply look up whether the person or people involved previously flagged by experts in the mental health industry.

But it sounds like he wants to ignore the enormous tomes of existing data. Isn't that a sure-fire way of wasting money and polluting the pond by ignoring the past and then defining variations of select criteria that already exists?

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like it may return the previous amount of stigma, and maybe increase the stigma, to seeking mental health treatment.

If this is just administrative, the potential for abuse is also significant.

Previous science, as the article states, hasn't shown a huge link between mental illness and mass shooting. This could also be viewed as a giant waste of taxpayer dollars.</comment>


Moving to SF for an internship. First time moving. Very nervous. What to do? - <AUTHOR>

I've been offered an internship at a Silicon Valley company and will be moving in a couple weeks. This is the first time I'm moving out of my parents house, I'm only 17.
I will be living with a couple folks in Mountain View. I'm nervous and sometimes have anxiety issues and home sickness. What do I do? How can I cure my home sickness/anxiety problems?
The internship will last three months, and I have a possibility of moving on full time if all goes well.<p>Any tips/advice? Has anyone gone through this type of issue before? <comment><USER2> First off, you should be really thankful that you have your living situation figured out already. I moved to the Bay Area myself many years ago, without fully realizing what a pain it is. I'd say finding a place to rent was about 70 percent of the hassle.

Second, you should have plenty of options to communicate with your loved ones back home: skype, google hangouts, instant messaging, and so on.

So I would say, just do it, and hope for the best. Making a big change like this almost can't help but broaden your horizons.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having lived in the Bay Area for a while in the past I can assure you that moving there will probably make your anxiety much worse.

Being on the edge of a big shaky bathtub surrounded by clueless narcissists made me very uncomfortable. And I am not prone to anxiety.

The cost of living makes being there pretty pointless unless you have an executive level job.

<comment><USER4> As someone who might move there, I would appreciate to hear about your experiences. The cost of living in SF already worries me.

<comment><USER5> Are you looking to live in SF proper, or more generally the Bay Area? Living in SF proper is a bit complex, not only in terms of cost, but in terms of how to find a place at all. But living in the Valley is not all that complex. It's a bit pricey, but not absurdly so if you have a salaried job and are looking to rent an apartment rather than buy a house. You can even find a place remotely in a number of cases, if you rent from a big corporate-owned apartment unit in places like San Jose or Santa Clara. Downside is that it's a vast expanse of suburbia, and a car is nearly mandatory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations! A way to get rid of anxiety is to meet people your age and have activities outside of work. Shoot me an email(in my profile) when you are in the Bay Area and we can meet up.

</comment><comment><USER7> Center your adopted world at Red Rock Coffee [http://www.redrockcoffee.org/](http://www.redrockcoffee.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Have fun. Party a lot. Learna lot and overcome your fears. Enjoy your internship.

</comment><comment><USER9> "a couple [of] folks"

"a couple folks" makes absolutely no sense grammatically. Seriously - show me a parse tree that makes sense of "a couple folks".

<comment><USER10> I don't think this would be the most useful reply to the post even if correct, but both "a couple X" and "a couple of X" are pretty common constructions. I would use "of" in the case of "folks", but I think it's a pretty subtle usage preference rather than an issue of parsing; with other words, like "days", I wouldn't use the "of". Here is some HN usage: [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+"a+couple")</comment></comment>


Reinventing the Network Stack for Compute-Intensive Applications - <AUTHOR> https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-09-26 <comment><USER2> From the article -- _"The true bottleneck for processor throughput is the network interface used to connect a machine to an external network, such as an Ethernet, therefore severely limiting a processor's data ingest capability," said Dr. Jonathan Smith, a program manager in DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O). "Today, network throughput on state-of-the-art technology is about 1014 bits per second (bps) and data is processed in aggregate at about 1014 bps. Current stacks deliver only about 1010 to 1011 bps application throughputs."_

I don't disagree with this, but see the challenge not so much as the transmission speed between nodes, rather I see it as the 'semantics' for expressing addressing and placement. (and yes, I am a big fan of RDMA :-))

One of the things I helped invent/design back when I was at NetApp was some network attached memory or NAM. NetApp was among a number of people who realized that as memory sizes got larger, having them associated with a single node made less and less sense from a computational perspective.

One can imagine a "node" which lives in a 64 bit address space, has say 16GB of "L3" cache shared among anywhere from 12 to 12,000 instruction execution or 'compute' elements. More general purpose compute would look more like a processor of today, more specialized compute looks like a tensor element or a GPU element.

"RAM" or generally accessible memory would reside in its own unit and could be 'volatile' or 'involatile' (backed by some form of storage). With attributes like access time, volatility, redundancy, etc.

That sort of architecture starts to look more like a super computer (albeit a non-uniform one) than your typical computer. With nodes "booting" by going through a self-test and then mapping their memory from the fabric and restarting from where they left off.

I thought I might get a chance to build that system at Google but realized that for the first time in my career that I was aware of I was prevented by my lack of a PhD. And what was worse, given the politics at the time, no one with a PhD would sign on as a 'figurehead' (I reached out to a couple and we had some really great conversations around this) because of the way in which Google was evaluating performance at the time. (think grad school ++ but where only one author seems to get all the credit).

Now that I've had some free time I've built some of it in simulation to explore the trade-offs and the ability to predict performance based on the various channels. Slow going though.

<comment><USER3> It's very sad that lack of a PhD would cause such a decision to be made rather than that it would get debated on its merits.

<comment><USER2> Or that the merits of a suggestion were inversely proportional to an employee number, but cultures such as those frequently emerge in engineering driven organizations with a lot of smart people. I speculate that it is an offshoot off the imposter syndrome effect, when someone is feeling like an imposter and they are being asked to make a big decision, they search for externally generated metrics that would increase their confidence in the decision.

Degrees, low employee numbers, industry awards, are all signals that "someone else" thought this person was "good". And not even super geniuses understand everything about everything and they still have to make decisions.

Sad or not, in my experience working around gifted engineering teams it is not uncommon.

<comment><USER4> > Sad or not, in my experience working around gifted engineering teams it is > not uncommon.

OK, so I had hoped that this was a problem unique to Google but I guess its not.

I just don't get this kind of thinking. I understand that a PhD is a good marker for intelligence... but not for ingenuity (maybe a tiny bit). I've worked with both PhD's and non PhD's... while PhD's are amazing to talk through different ideas, what may or may not work, the people I was most productive with have universally been people who get _excited_ about technology (not saying they're mutually exclusive). Mind, not excited about _fads_ , but those who can't wait to code a prototype to see if it really works as expected. Those who will jump in the middle of an outage and are excited to learn about what might have gone wrong.

Those are the attributes that I now look for whenever I have to make a choice between teams, between companies, whatever. The people that get excited by new designs and architectures, who love to talk through them, are the best people to work with.

I guess I do understand why Google is that way... I just hope that this kind of thinking doesn't infect other workplaces.

<comment><USER5> Google is a big company and maybe this was true but it feels false (having worked there & other large tech companies) that the reason for failing to get that project going was the lack of a PhD. Now having top engineers on board probably is key, but again that isn't tied to any advanced degree but due to Google hiring & promo committees which are intended to reward merit.

The value of this is multi-faceted. It shows technical validation by trusted engineering talent. Those engineers are able to expend their own political capital on the project. Those engineers have demonstrated an ability to navigate corporate hierarchy and deliver large-scale projects. One of the key requirements of higher levels of promotion is that you are focusing on strategic goals for the companies rather than strictly complex/important technical products.

Having interesting & exciting conversations is nothing. Everyone is smart & happy to nerd out about complex and interesting abstract concepts/designs. Doesn't mean that they think those ideas are worth pursuing or that they're worth pursuing right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 8 dual port 100G NICs (available for a while)or 2 dual port 400 gigabit NICs (not yet available) would out-bandwidth the memory controller on an Epyc 7742; how are NICs such a bottleneck that they need to be increased 100x to keep up when DDR5 only doubles the bandwidth?

I forget what the bandwidth of CPU cache is but I'm guessing it's not 10 terabit/second either.

<comment><USER7> « _how are NICs such a bottleneck_ »

Simple: when the packet data does _not_ need to be processed by the CPU. For example a router forwarding network packets at 10 Tbit/s. The data can stay in the NIC cache as it is being forwarded. No PCIe/CPU/RAM bottleneck here.

Also, EPYC Rome has 1.64 Tbps of RAM bandwidth today (eight DDR4-3200 channels). 10 Tbps is less than three doublings away. It's conceivable server CPUs can reach this bandwidth in 4-6 years.

<comment><USER6> 32 port 400G (12.8 terabit/s) 1u routers already exist today, the conversation is about the NIC at the server <-> network boundary not switching ASICs. The only reason you don't see 400G NICs in servers is the lack of the servers ability to put that much bandwidth over PCIe (the real bottleneck location).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've long had the fantasy that machines that communicate a lot amongst themselves could develop an optimized "argot" just as humans do. For example we're on the local lan and could dispense with the fragmentation infrastructure. Or there are only six of us so could we just use three-bit "nicknames" instead of 48 bits of MAC. Etc.

Perhaps some nice adaptive machine learning could drive this.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's well and good, but the limitation here is PCIe or other Bus bandwidth, and memory bandwidth. PCIe 5.0 gets us to 1Tbps per x16 slot. The top-of-the- line CPUs Max our at 6.4Tbps of memory bandwidth (Power10 when it is released).

This would require a large ASIC or FPGA to be useful, loaded with high-flocked HBM2.

<comment><USER10> They are looking at the entire system and they are willing to challenge (improve or replace) everything, including buses like PCIe. This is also an effort not meant for regular servers, but very high end. We already have 128 PCIe lanes or more in a single server, that means 8 Tbps; not in a single connection or slot, but aggregated.

Also dual socket CPU's are very popular and more than that is still accessible; multiply the memory bandwidth by the number of sockets. Think about total throughput, not per bus, per socket, per NIC, etc.

<comment><USER11> _They are looking at the entire system and they are willing to challenge (improve or replace) everything_

That's also what I thought; just put the NIC inside the processor and connect it to the internal fabric. (This still leaves plenty of software challenges.) But then DARPA says "The hardware solutions must attach to servers via one or more industry-standard interface points, such as I/O buses, multiprocessor interconnection networks, and memory slots, to support the rapid transition of FastNICs technology." Even if your "NIC" uses all 128 lanes of PCIe 5 that's only 4+4 Tbps. If you get rid of serdes and use something like IFOP that's ~600 Gbps per port then you'd still need something like 16 of those links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 400Gbps switches exist today [1]. They cost the annual budget of the NFL, but they do exist. 10Tbps "just" requires an increase of 25.

Now getting this in consumer-level hardware...

1: [https://www.router-switch.com/n9k-c9316d-gx.html](https://www.router- switch.com/n9k-c9316d-gx.html)

<comment><USER13> How much to they actually cost on a per unit basis? Roughly?

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing since you need to get a quote, the answer is, "if you need to ask..."

<comment><USER15> If you need to ask... you are attempting to gather information to make a rational decision. I really dislike that [gatekeeping] meme. People who rely on "if you need to ask..." canards are most likely not in your interest.

<comment><USER16> That is not really about buyer, but seller. If seller hides price, that is usually good indicator. They know that they don't compete on price, that showing price frightens potential clients.

<comment><USER11> There are some markets (like 400G switches) where all the sellers say "call for pricing" so that doesn't really give you any information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Before 100gbe or anything remotely close on consumer systems most (all?) in kernel networking stacks are going to need to be scrapped.

By then you might as well redesign the OS to something less painful to use.

</comment><comment><USER18> Excerpt: "Enabling this significant performance gain will require a rework of the entire network stack – from the application layer through the system software layer, down to the hardware."

Let's start with TCP.

TCP is an abstraction layer over IP, creating the _abstraction_ of reliable, ordered, guaranteed data delivery -- over an unreliable network, which does not guarantee that any given packet will arrive, much less which order it will arrive in, if it even does arrive.

That _abstraction_ is called a "Connection".

But connections come with a high maintenance overhead.

The network stack must check periodically if a connection is still active, must periodically send out keep-alive packets on connections that are, must allocate and deallocate memory for each connection's buffer, must order packets when they come in in each connection's buffer, and must do I/O to whatever subsystem(s) communicate with the network stack, etc.

Speeding up that infrastructure would mean rethinking all of that... Here are some of the most fundamental questions to that thought process:

1) What new set of criteria will constitute a Connection -- on IP's packet- based, connectionless nature?

2) Who will be permitted to connect?

3) How will you authenticate #2?

4) Where (outside NIC, inside NIC, computer network stack, ?) will you perform the algorithmic tasks necessary for #2, #3?

5) What are you willing to compromise for faster speed? E.g, you could use raw datagrams, but not only are they not guaranteed to arrive, but their source can be spoofed... how do you know that a datagram is from the IP address it claims to be without further verification, without the Connection (and further verification of the Connection level, like SSL/Certificates,etc.)?

In other words, rethinking TCP/IP brings with it no shortage of potential problems and security concerns...

It might be faster to simply make the NIC cards faster, as the article talks about...

Or have the Clients or Server software be more selective about what data they send or receive... or what they accept as Connections, from whom, and why...

That is, maybe it's not a speed problem... maybe it's a selectivity problem...

Still, I'm all for faster hardware if DARPA can realize it. :-)

<comment><USER19> It sounds like they don't go far enough. Perhaps the way to go is to redesign the CPU as well. CPUs could consume raw datagrams directly off the wire. To authenticate them we could use HMAC [1], which would presumably be built right into the CPU cache.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am genuinely curious to see what types of "compute-intensive" applications fit the bill here. Outside of storage workloads (syncing data, etc.), why would you need a 100x improvement in data transfer rates between the machines? (We have TPUs and their specialized network architecture for ML-like workloads ...)

Physical distance between the machines in a DC prevents RAM style "shared- memory" architectures, at least ones that aim to have 30~60ns access times (10-20 meters). Unless there are new paradigms for computation in a distributed setting, I don't see the benefit for this ...

Also, what are the fundamental limitations/research problems of todays hardware that prevent us from building a 400G NIC? I cannot think of anything outside of PCI-e bus getting saturated. We already have 400G ports on switches ...

<comment><USER21> >I am genuinely curious to see what types of "compute-intensive" applications fit the bill here.

Well, for example, physical simulations using finite element or boundary value approaches. Pretty much anything you'd use with MPI or do on a supercomputer is going to run better on a machine with a nice network stack like this.

Even large scale storage (think backtesting on petabytes of options data) that uses a map-reduce paradigm and is properly sharded for the data access paths and aggregates would benefit from something like this.

<comment><USER20> Do you have numbers or papers that support your argument? That these applications are bottlenecked by the network?

There is a 2015 paper [1] that argues that improving network performance isn't gonna help MapReduce/data analytics type of jobs much:

" .. none of the workloads we studied could improve by a median of more than 2% as a result of optimizing network performance. We did not use especially high bandwidth machines in getting this result: the m2.4xlarge instances we used have a 1Gbps network link."

Granted things might have changed by now, but I am curious to see how and by how much?

[1]: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/nsdi15/nsdi15...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/nsdi15/nsdi15-paper- ousterhout.pdf)

<comment><USER21> The 2015 paper is obviously wrong or selling something; it's virtually always IO bound. Yes, I know many people assert otherwise; they're wrong.

Some map reduce loads, especially the kind that people running spark clusters want to do, end up moving a lot of data around. Either because the end user isn't thinking about what they're doing (95% of the time they're some DS dweeb who doesn't know how computers work), or because they need to solve a problem they didn't think of when they laid their data down.

I guess I cite myself, having done this sort of thing any number of times, and helped write a shardable columnar database engine which deals with such problems. If you don't want to cite me; go ask Art Whitney, Stevan Apter or Dennis Shasha, whose ideas I shamelessly steal. FWIIW around that timeframe I beat a 84 thread spark cluster grinding on parquet files with 1 thread in J (by a factor of approximately 10,000 -the spark job ran for days and never completed), basically because I understand that, no matter how many papers get written, data science problems are still IO bound.

<comment><USER22> There are references somewhere under [http://nowlab.cse.ohio- state.edu/](http://nowlab.cse.ohio-state.edu/) for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Slight tangent, but FYI for an accessible, authoritative, useful "book" on networking from the perspective of a modern web/app developer, I highly recommend "High-Performance Browser Networking". [https://hpbn.co/](https://hpbn.co/)

<comment><USER23> OP is about reinventing the network stack. My comment was a pointer to a great reference about the current network stack. Someone decided that was downvote- worthy (why?)... so its visibility is reduced to 0. I don't care about my karma points per se (may well lose more for this one), but I feel compelled to complain about having been muted/censored after posting a concise, relevant comment. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Napatech also has some state of the art programable NIC product offerings as well.

[https://www.napatech.com/products/napatech- smartnics/](https://www.napatech.com/products/napatech-smartnics/)

I know a number of cloud providers are customers of theirs. Nice to see practical use cases for FPGAs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please don't post advertisements disguised as a real post. If you work there, it should be disclosed.</comment></comment>


SecondMarket CEO: Wall Street Will Put 'Hundreds of Millions' Into Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230346 <comment><USER2> Man with personal and professional interest in Bitcoin prices increasing tells reporter Bitcoin prices will increase. News at 11.

<comment><USER3> If there was a market for grandmothers, they would trade them.

<comment><USER4> There is a secondary life insurance market, which is close :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we tranche all the cryptocurrencies, including bitcoins, repackage the tranches into pools, then sell them to insurance companies as AAA-rated bonds?

<comment><USER6> ...and buy dirt-cheap credit default swaps on them from the insurance giants?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Of course they'll be buying in six months, after spending six months telling everyone that it's a bad investment and a bubble.

<comment><USER8> No it's always been a bad investment because it's either a currency (not an investment) or a commodity (but one absolutely nobody consumes and does nothing).

<comment><AUTHOR> Bad investments don't go up 50x in a year. I think you need to adjust your definition of bad investment.

<comment><USER9> Picking a number on a roulette wheel pays 35x in about 1 minute.

If your number happens to come up was it a good investment?

<comment><USER10> Because the concept of an instantly transferable easily stored and hidden immune from state control pseudonymous electronic currency having any amount of success is clearly just as random and unpredictable as the result of a roulette wheel spin.

<comment><USER11> You're picking out the positives and purposefully avoiding the negatives.

<comment><USER10> No analysis no matter how biased is going to seriously come to the conclusion that bitcoin having any success is purely as random as a roulette wheel. I challenge you to come up with something even vaguely plausible along these lines, no matter how pessimistic you want to get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if you can predict HN comments about Bitcoin depending on time of day. Sometimes it seems like they're entirely "can't you see it's all tulips", other times, "all fiat is obsolete."

</comment><comment><USER13> What have the trading volumes been like on Second Market since Facebook went public? My perception is that pre-IPO Facebook shares was the bulk of their business.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been on the fence about bitcoin. On one hand, the design is genius, with a few exceptions (mainly, the fixed supply). And it has garnered an incredible amount of publicity and usage for a digital nextgen currency.

On the other hand, and I think where I will end up, it's completely stupid. While the speculative benefits are terrific for marketing, they are totally incompatible for use as a currency. As is the apparent concentration of ownership.

<comment><USER15> What's really bizarre to me is how a "digital currency" can have such slow transactions. I want my transactions carried out and verified instantly. Right now its minutes to hours. But once the network grows, it could be days.

<comment><USER16> It's important to note as a business that most "instant" verification provided by traditional payment networks are far from being "fully" verified. Instead, it's more like a preliminary verification. Most merchants who sell for credit cards, Paypal, or even ACH know that their payments can be reversed weeks to even months afterwards.

Bitcoin compresses this drawn-out risk of reversal into a ~1 hour window (0 to 6+ confirmations). So if you're OK with a very small risk of reversal, you can accept payments instantly (i.e., after 0 confirmations). This is perfectly fine if you're selling meals, or domain names, or alpaca socks. If you're selling a car, and you want near absolute certainty that your payment will never be reversed, wait an hour or so for 6 confirmations. After 6 confirmations, payment has been reversed only one known instance in Bitcoin's history, and that payment was eventually returned to the merchant in question (so no merchant has ever lost money after accepting a 6 confirmation transaction).

Now, for consumers, it's a different matter -- there are advantages and disadvantages to Bitcoin. But for merchants, Bitcoin is a very clear winner. And many of us consumers are very happy to buy with Bitcoin.

Not to mention all the non-commercial uses for money transfers Bitcoin fulfills, most notably remittances.

By the way, if you have an idea for a decentralized digital currency with the protection against the Byzantine Generals problem [0] needed to protect against transaction reversals that also provides "full" verification instantly, I encourage you to develop your project. It has the potential to be a Bitcoin killer (then again, the network effect may be too strong...).

And finally, to correct a misconception, the time needed for 6 confirmations on the Bitcoin network will always take an average of an hour, regardless of network size. That's what the self-adjusting Bitcoin difficulty is all about.

0\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance)

<comment><USER15> I'm not informed as much as I could be about bitcoins, but it's comments like these that make it even more daunting. Slow learning curve I guess.

What happens when the number of bitcoin transactions becomes too great for the network to handle? There is a finite number of computers, they can only process so many transactions at a time. If bitcoin became as popular as the US dollar, would there be enough nodes out there to handle a load of that magnitude? Or, for a more specific example: tomorrow every monetary transaction in the US is done using bitcoin, what happens?

I did appreciate your subtle sarcasm though. A++

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It will either cost them billions or be worth single digit millions to do so, depending on the time of day!

</comment><comment><USER18> The end of Bitcoin as we knew it (a rebellion against Wall Street and the governments)!

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory)

<comment><USER20> Doesn't this theory also apply to a stock traded on a stock market?

edit: reading the wiki article, I see that it indeed can. The assumption being that there is no rational justification for the price paid.

However, this assumption is wrong. Simple calculations give a price much higher than the current value if Bitcoin comes into widespread use as a currency. In more detail, given the limited supply and any arbitrary transaction volume, you can come up with a price for Bitcoin. The current valuation is not supported by the transaction volume. However, low estimates of transaction volume if Bitcoin comes into widespread use imply a much higher price.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Splittable Browser? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know an internet browser that allow this? Why no one builded it?<p>http://youtube.com/watch?v=6cfmiYTZgqI <comment><USER2> You can use Firefox with the extension Tile Tabs to achieve something like this.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile- tabs/?sr...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile- tabs/?src=search)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like dwb ([http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/](http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/))

I believe it's inspired by dwm ([http://dwm.suckless.org/](http://dwm.suckless.org/)).

I haven't used dwb in a while, and development doesn't seem to be super active, but it seems to be what you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you aren't too set on the "tiling" bit, you can try this for chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-resize- split-s...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-resize-split- screen-l/bkpenclhmiealbebdopglffmfdiilejc?hl=en-US)

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://polybrowser.com/](https://polybrowser.com/) might be what you're looking for. It's based on Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER6> its actually a function of the window manager for windows you can try WindowPadder (AHK) for unix use a tiling window manager ie awesome

</comment><comment><USER7> Opera could do this before it turned into Chrome Clone #6783.</comment>


Kīlauea volcano eruption fosters algae bloom in North Pacific Ocean - <AUTHOR> https://news.usc.edu/160393/kilauea-eruption-algae-bloom-north-pacific-ocean/ <comment><USER2> Pumping nutrient rich water from the deep ocean to the surface is one proposed way of increasing ocean productivity to repair fish stocks and sequester carbon.

This volcano has provided a natural demonstration of this effect.

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

<comment><USER3> Fish, yes, but it doesn't help with global warming. The problem is that while you sequester a lot of carbon you end up converting some of the carbon from CO2 to CH4--and that's a much stronger greenhouse gas.

<comment><USER4> Could you by any chance point me towards any solid quantitative studies of that? The Wikipedia page mentions it in passing, but the reference is pretty unsatisfying:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> very interesting! could someone explain why the hot water would lead to deep, cold water being brought to the surface? I thought hot water is less dense than cold water. Wouldn't it just sit on the surface for a long time?

Or is there just such a large amount of this extremely hot water that the mixing overtime generates movement across the board?

<comment><USER6> I think it's that, as the lava sinks to the ocean floor, it warms the colder, nutrient rich water at depth and causes it to rise.

<comment><USER7> Exactly this. Warm water is less dense than cold water and "floats" over it. The volcano has created a temporary nursery for fishes basically.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the most beautiful song or album you've ever listened to - <AUTHOR> What is the most beautiful album/song you've ever listened to? <comment><USER3> This might seem like a cliché answer, at least because this is not what I typically listen to on a normal basis, but for an album I'd Pink Floyd's The Wall.

I think it has a certain degree of universal appeal. It has really aged extraordinarily well. If you are ever given the opportunity to listen to it on an any type of hifi system, do so. You'll find layers of eery texture and masterful use of stero dynamics. As a cherry on top, the album forms a perfect loop.

As for a song, Aphex Twin's Avril 14th. I love that you can hear the action of the piano in the track. It was recorded with a kind of player piano that makes it sound very mechanical, but it still has a somewhat organic feel to it. It's very quaint yet oddly contemporary.

<comment><USER4> Although I've listened to it a lot I wouldn't really describe the wall as beautiful, it's quite jarring in places. Comfortably numb is kind of beautiful. I'd choose dark side of the moon or wish you were here as beautiful though.

<comment><USER3> That's fair. I really like the contrast. Dark side of the moon is nice, but it's always left me wanting more.

<comment><USER4> Not to sound condescending, I found I grew out of The Wall, I think because it deals a lot with issues from childhood and rebelliousness. The themes of Animals (politics and how we relate to each other), Dark Side of the Moon ( sanity, the meaning of life and life after death) and Wish You Were Here (sanity, conformity) seem more relevant at the moment. Roger water obviously has this rebellious energy and anger where as Dave Gilmour is more reflective and creates beautiful art but without the same kind of passion. At the right time and with Richard and Nick, they made such a perfect combination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All of Art Tatum's music

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke2_qob16ls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke2_qob16ls)

Check out this reharmonization/improv on Chopin. The guy was basically blind, hence the insane awareness of where the keys were.

</comment><comment><USER6> Album: The Pat Metheny Group (called the "white album" because of its plain white cover with just the four names of the players). Side one of the LP was just "San Lorenzo" and "Phase Dance". The former still gives me chills, 40 years later.

Song: Wildflower, by Skylark (fun fact: David Foster was a member). Here[0] is a live version. Here[1] is the background story.

Honorable mention: Hoptsoi, by the Finnish group Värttinä. OMG, the strings. [2]

[0] [https://youtu.be/2zPWlOXwnGo](https://youtu.be/2zPWlOXwnGo)

[1] [https://www.songfacts.com/facts/skylark/wildflower](https://www.songfacts.com/facts/skylark/wildflower)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeXn_J8-q2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeXn_J8-q2g)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a few of my faves:

Bob Dylan (Love Minus Zero/No Limit) [https://youtu.be/ufbHfGU7WxA?list=LLlpi7Iw6jy- mv42RGAAiFVA](https://youtu.be/ufbHfGU7WxA?list=LLlpi7Iw6jy-mv42RGAAiFVA)

Sekret Sekret (New King Jack) [https://youtu.be/DyoHMZo7uGA](https://youtu.be/DyoHMZo7uGA)

Steve Winwood (Can't Find My Way Home) [https://youtu.be/eoSn2Y-b6wI](https://youtu.be/eoSn2Y-b6wI)

Traffic (Dear Mr Fantasy) [https://youtu.be/pSQ1akE2CcM](https://youtu.be/pSQ1akE2CcM)

Joe Strummer (Johnny Appleseed) [https://youtu.be/4IbMiqIdeME](https://youtu.be/4IbMiqIdeME)

</comment><comment><USER8> Mahler - Symphony No. 5 Adagietto [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75YmlDR92UQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75YmlDR92UQ)

Miles Davis - _Flamenco Sketches_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3W_alUuFkA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3W_alUuFkA)

Those were the two that immediately came to mind, then:

Barber - _Adagio for Strings_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKrxPTePXEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKrxPTePXEQ)

Miles - _Concierto De Aranjuez_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cscpJisU6k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cscpJisU6k)

\- _In a Silent Way_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bdBONxS- Es](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bdBONxS-Es)

Keith Jarrett - _Visions_ (48 seconds long) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDujecndByY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDujecndByY)

\- _Interlude No. 3_ (1 minute 17) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us0EU- yXAlg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us0EU-yXAlg)

\- _Sympathy_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQLTuyIHAMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQLTuyIHAMc)

KJ's American Quartet - _Still Life, Still Life_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiVg5cSug3k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiVg5cSug3k)

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sings R. Strauss' _Four Last Songs_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs0vSC9DUhU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs0vSC9DUhU)

Most beautiful _album_ is I guess Keith's solo piano _Facing You_. Doesn't seem to be on youtube at the moment. This is one track from it, _Ritooria_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVpDWxoFGP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVpDWxoFGP4)

</comment><comment><USER9> Listening to this now [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRIfsFefatg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRIfsFefatg)

Medieval style is rather beautiful.

<comment><USER10> This video popped in my recommendations just a couple of days ago. A welcome surprise. It made me think about how music changed since the medieval ages, not in terms of technology, but in terms of composition, rules and etc. And I haven't yet come to any definitive understanding. Maybe because I don't know the first thing about music theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Okay, one more: "Calypso", Suzanne Vega:

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

Steely Dan's "Home at Last" is another interesting turn on Odysseus.

</comment><comment><USER11> Time without consequences - Alexi Murdoch

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3QJ4brLYZQ&list=PL04432CD8C...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3QJ4brLYZQ&list=PL04432CD8C7C0A83A)

</comment><comment><USER12> Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - <USER2>

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy2zDJPIgwc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy2zDJPIgwc)

My favorite piece of all time. It encapsulates what I want to feel about life

</comment><comment><USER13> An Armenian chellist playing Paganini's Variations on a theme from Moses in Egypt.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g00bVs0zBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g00bVs0zBg)

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huDWAc61Lx4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huDWAc61Lx4)

One of the only songs where I prefer the live version to original studio

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yscm61p5eyA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yscm61p5eyA)

</comment><comment><USER16> My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West

</comment><comment><USER17> Disintegration - The Cure

</comment><comment><USER18> George Winston's Autumn

<comment><USER6> In preference over _December_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love Mary Bessi voice. I listen to them even today

</comment><comment><USER20> Tubular Bells the original version

</comment><comment><USER21> Robert Miles - Remember Robert Miles

</comment><comment><USER22> The ballad of Cleopatra by Lumineers.</comment>


Accelerat.io – Yelp for accelerators - <AUTHOR> http://accelerat.io/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a fantastic, important project. Keep up the good work.

That said, the UI is encouraging visitors to prioritize information that isn't important. For example, % equity, $ per %, and average funding.

The equity stuff isn't important because all of them take so little that an early-stage company shouldn't be worrying about it. The mindset that "we're gonna be a $1B company, so 1% is worth $10M to me" is common and insane. New founders need to snap out of that.

I've seen tons of founders quibble over a few percent, and none of them were successful. Successful founders get past those issues and execute.

As for the average funding: the _most successful_ company won't need to raise anything at all after going through an accelerator. So the metric of "how much was raised after leaving the accelerator" is lumping the failures along with the super successful. That makes it a useless metric.

Here's the data that would be ideal, although I'm well aware that it's not necessarily possible:

0\. Reviews! Great idea. These will be absolutely vital once you get some traction. You need to have a very strict way of verifying identities though -- maybe force people to show you their certificate of incorporation for the company that went through the accelerator, even if their review is anonymous to the public. Some accelerators will act like a cabal and game the rankings if you don't do this.

1\. % funded companies that either exit or survive for 5 years

2\. % of mentors who have successfully exited in the past (an accelerator with investor-only mentors is just a shitty angel investment)

3\. [x] alumni with highest valuations (3 would probably be enough)

4\. Age of accelerator

<comment><USER3> Wow, great feedback! Totally agree regarding average funding (it's biased and averages don't say much about distributions), I'm working on ways to get other metrics.

Also love your suggestions for better ones. I could do 3. and 4. relatively easy, 1. and 2. are harder but definitely worth considering.

Regarding verifying identities, I'm fully focused on getting real reviews. I've been gathering more than 100 reviews already by reaching out to people I know that have actually been through accelerators. As for the reviews that come in via the website, there is a verification process to make sure they are real.

<comment><USER4> Median funding might be interesting (and less skewed by larger follow-ons).

<comment><USER2> True, but still wouldn't solve the problem: the best outcome and worst outcome look the same in that data set ($0 raised).

<comment><USER5> That's what quantiles are for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi HN,

Creator of Accelerat.io here. Just launched today and would love to get your feedback.

I built this site because when I was applying to accelerators some months ago I wasn't really sure which ones to apply to as there were so many of them but so little transparency about how valuable they really are. We all know Y Combinator is good, but how about all those others out there?

For the interested, the site's built in Python/Flask, custom design on top of Bootstrap (inspired by ProductHunt and NomadList), and makes heavy use of the DataTables.js plugin, which had been awesome so far.

Would love to answer any questions you may have and of course, if you've been through an accelerator first hand, I'd love to include your experience on our site.

<comment><USER6> Really great site. The call to actions in-line is kind of distracting though, may be necessary to get enough volume but it's annoying until then. You could have the footer information be at the top and then remove the call to actions mixing with the data.

<comment><USER3> I agree it's can be a bit annoying, but as you mention it's a trade-off we intentionally chose for: we can only succeed when people add accelerators and reviews and this seemed a good way to grab some attention. Will be monitoring how succesful it actually is and if I could make it less intrusive or better targeted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Setting October 2005. Krugman writes

"I used to live next door to a Russian émigré. One day he asked me to explain something that puzzled him about his new country. "This place seems very rich," he said, "but I never see anyone making anything. How does the country earn its money? The answer, these days, is that we make a living by selling each other houses. Since December 2000 employment in U.S. manufacturing has fallen 17 percent, but membership in the National Association of Realtors has risen 58 percent."

This services-dedicated-to-startup industry is smelling very much like a bubble.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/opinion/12krugman.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/opinion/12krugman.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I work in the particle accelerator control systems field and always get my hopes up when I see "accelerator" :)

</comment><comment><USER9> There aren't enough accelerators to need a Yelp. What you need is more like a "US News & World Report" college rating, but for accelerators. Heavily manually designed to ensure that the top few look logical.

This seems like a fair comparison since for many people accelerators essentially replace business school.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great idea, hope that you are successful with this! If you're able to get good, verified reviews, the site will be tremendously valuable.

The other area I'd personally like, which might be hard to get reliable information for, is mentor accessibility and expertise. Both during and after the program.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why "$ per %" instead of valuation?

I don't have a good idea of what's a good "$ per %" but I do have a good idea of what is a good/bad valuation, so I find myself having to do calculations. I sense that others are the same.

<comment><USER3> No specific reason, didn't think of it. Got some other comments along the same line, will think about changing it, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Extremely nice. So many people have gone through these programs, but so few have taken the time to build something that makes it easier for the next people who will want to go through them. I always found that strange.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've heard a few people say they were going to build a "Yelp for accelerators," but none of them actually followed through. So I'm glad someone finally did this!

</comment><comment><USER13> Suggestion: Repeat the the column headings every 20 rows or so or make it sticky. By the end of the page I had to scroll back up to remind myself of some of the columns titles.

<comment><USER13> Another minor UI issue: The Title for the page is "Yelp for..", causing the tab I have it in to have the visible title of just "Yelp" with your logo.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The package manager you always wanted - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/teamdomy/domy-cli <comment><USER2> The package manager I always wanted (and still want) is SGI IRIX 6.5 inst(1M), not npm or anything built on top of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gosh, it was so long ago, but I've still got the blues for it.

<comment><USER2> My memory is very long. And I do not forget.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I forget everything and it bothers me a lot. Do you take any medication or suppliments?

<comment><USER2> No, but I do try to eat at least one piece of fruit per day, whatever I get my hands on.

I mainly remember because this was my passion. I also constantly meditate on everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Web Components, I presume?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeap, in the beginning we want to cover React, Angular and native (HTML) Web Components. It would be great to write components in simplified Ruby or Python, but it won't happen any time soon (WASM).</comment></comment>


How To Launch A Startup Without Writing Code - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/102728/How-To-Launch-A-Startup-Without-Writing-Code.aspx <comment><USER2> Great write up. This is how I built my company, Just Add Content ([http://justaddcontent.com](http://justaddcontent.com)), all on open source. Sure, it's no Dropbox but it's doing some pretty neat things. For example, it'll have front-end editing in the next few weeks, which makes content management incredibly easy.

This strategy was my only option. My BA is in Psychology and my MS is in Finance. I'm 29 and I spent the last 8 years in the Marine Corps (just got out in October as a Captain). I had no technical background, but on my last 12-month deployment to Afghanistan (returned in April 2013) I spent my free time building the first version on a $300 duct-taped laptop while teaching myself to code. For me it was a mental escape. I was on a small Marine advisor team living with Afghans. So sure, it's not revolutionary, but I did the best I could with what I had. And to this day I'm still a self-funded single founder and my costs are so low that even if I never got another customer I can stay alive indefinitely. I even have investment and acquisition interest from some companies in the space. Luckily I'm in the financial position to turn it down to keep focusing on my long-term vision.

When I started working on this in early 2012 I never imagined it'd be this hard, but I also never imagined I'd get this far. Even two years later I absolutely love it every day. I'm still passionate about the industry and have massive plans for the future. I want to change the way small businesses work and how they use websites. And look how it all started, just some dumb Marine that had an idea in 2012 a few weeks before deploying to Afghanistan for a year.

<comment><USER3> I enjoy reading this comment and can feel your enthusiasm. I was too in the Navy years ago and ended up coding when I had free time in the machine shop (enlisted ;)). People look at me like alien and thought I was some kind of genius... lolz

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This wont work for tech focused startups. Google could never exist without writing a single line of code. Nor could Dropbox. etc...

Yeah maybe a retail/ecommerce website sticky taped using off the shelf parts with glue, but definitely no tech startup. A landing page offering something which isn't built yet might also work using wordpress et al. However you still need some tech knowledge to get this setup.

Being in a position to build an idea is a lot more powerful then raving on about not needing to write code to build a startup. For those that have read Founders at Work will know that ideas change. This means iterations. Many many iterations. Very fast. Testing the waters with a MVP... usually that requires writing code. Unless of course you want to move slow then yeah don't write code and hope for the best with the glue.

<comment><USER5> Didn't dropbox start life as a slide deck on Drew Houston's laptop until he got matched up with some (very skilled) programmers from MIT? I seem to remember him pitching it before he even had a tech team assembled.

<comment><USER6> Drew Houston coded the first version by himself. From [http://www.wired.com/business/2013/09/dropbox-2/](http://www.wired.com/business/2013/09/dropbox-2/) \- "Houston started coding a version of what would become Dropbox's signature folder, the portal to an app that magically holds and syncs the same files on every computer and mobile device where you install it...."

Also, if you look at his YC application, it is clear that he had written the first version. -> YC application => [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > They're getting their first customers with minimal technology, and often no > code at all. Instead of building fancy technology from the outset, they're > hacking together inexpensive online tools such as online forms, drag-and- > drop site builders, advanced Wordpress plugins, and eCommerce providers.

In order to _hack together inexpensive tools_ and make your website look decent, guess what, you need to KNOW a couple of things such as HTML/CSS/PHP (wordpress) or Ruby (octopress), Python (Django) or whatever.

The examples described offer kind of services that can be build with wordpress plugins right? Okay, but even to make these plugin work properly together, you need at some point someone who knows how to _write code_.

Knowing how to write code, is a standard knowledge for startups, because is what turns ideas into products taking away one of the biggest expense: Development. If you have enough money, or investors you could outsource that, but for me makes not much sense. Being leader and developer at the same time, gives you a unique view top-down and down-top of your product. You can understand the dynamics of the entire operation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Even with two technical co-founders (we're both developers), we're still following this strategy with Lambda ([http://getlambda.com](http://getlambda.com)). With the exception of our homepage (which is a Jekyll site), we haven't written any code and don't have any immediate plans to start coding either. We've been able to bring in >100k in sales in one month and expect to be able clear over a million next year.

We've discussed some ideas we could start developing, but in each case, we've always been able to come up with a quicker/cheaper way to test the relevant concept without development work. Sticking to a "no code" strategy has been a good way to focus our efforts on activities that actually matter. We both like to code and would probably be happier spending a week hacking instead of taking sales calls, but the latter is more important to our company right now.

Just because you can write code doesn't mean you have to.

<comment><USER9> Looks like a good business and if you are able to bring in that many sales it looks like an excellent business. How do you find your consultants and your customers?

I'd guess: consultants: hackathons, personal network, customers: personal network, conferences

<comment><USER8> That's right for the customers side: it's a lot of personal networking and referrals.

For consultants, we've had a lot of resonance with various social media channels. It's really nothing fancy or surprising, just making a consistent effort to engage with various communities (like HN) has been fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the right balance is to at least have some kind of prototype to show off. The initial phase of "not having to write code" is pretty short. You are more likely to figure out who are the customers and who are not. You will also exhaust all options to get email / signup quickly... If you spend way more time into this phase and still don't want to write code, you will start losing people's interest. So when I said the "right balance" is to code in 2-weeks timeframe. That's what my buddy and I did with this TV social site with show casts/celebrities [http://www.tivify.com/](http://www.tivify.com/). It is something raw, brutal but works!! We at least could take it to Meetup and show off to people. That's easier to sell than slidedeck or launchpage.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like how to succeed in business without really trying ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwjL_erNSbc&list=PL22F92A9225...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwjL_erNSbc&list=PL22F92A922575136C)) so they could be on to something.

</comment><comment><USER11> For a second I thought this was going to be about hardware startups, or perhaps about some of the other goods and services that aren't websites.</comment>


Data USA: Comprehensive Visualization of U.S. Public Data - <AUTHOR> http://datausa.io/ <comment><USER2> Awesome! TIL that county with highest HIV/Chlamydia case ratio of all the counties in Georgia [1] is... _drum roll_ Butts County!

Gotta love statistics.

[1] [http://datausa.io/profile/geo/atlanta-sandy-springs- marietta...](http://datausa.io/profile/geo/atlanta-sandy-springs-marietta-ga- metro-area/#stds)

</comment><comment><USER3> In case you were wondering: "About the Visualizations The visualizations in Data USA are powered by D3plus, an open-source visualization engine that was created by members of the Datawheel team."

<comment><USER4> Hi everyone, I'm Dave, one of the developers of D3plus (and Data USA itself). Thanks everyone for checking out our site. If anyone has any questions feel free to shoot them my way.

[http://d3plus.org/](http://d3plus.org/)

<comment><USER5> Hi Dave, I was looking at this page [http://datausa.io/profile/geo/pennsylvania/#housing](http://datausa.io/profile/geo/pennsylvania/#housing) I noticed that a lot of the ranges on the x-axis are not consistent. Is there a reason for that?

<comment><USER6> Jon here - also worked on Data USA.

Several of the visualizations use data from ACS summary tables and the axis in several of the visualizations reflect the underlying buckets provided by the Census Bureau.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like the majority of the data comes from the Census...which is not a bad thing as Census data is under-used though the official U.S. Census site and FactFinder is highly...unintuitive to use. DataUSA has a Github repo and wiki which lists its data sources (available through its API): [https://github.com/DataUSA/datausa- api/wiki](https://github.com/DataUSA/datausa-api/wiki)

FWIW, the Census has also started building out its own API: [http://www.census.gov/data/developers/data- sets.html](http://www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> One of the stats they show is gini coefficient. Is There anything counterintuitive about that statistic that I should keep in mind? For example, do high income areas have a high gini (simply because of the construction of the statistic)? or maybe small areas tend to have a smaller gini?

<comment><USER9> GINI is a measure of the spread of a distribution so even if in theory everyone earned $1,000,000 it could be seen as "equitable" according to GINI. What matters in GINI is what portion of total amount are distributed to what "buckets". So high/low income doesn't necessarily impact GINI per se. Checkout [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Beautiful! I like looking at the ratios for cities, patients to Primary Care, Dentists, Mental Health etc. SF doesn't score to well :-(

</comment><comment><USER11> Really annoyed by the tooltips for some reason in most JS visualizations. It is fairly easy to tell what the exact numbers are already.

I think it would be a nice touch to make the standard error bars pop out or something else interactive. On printed plots, error bars is perhaps the only thing that you both want and don't want that would benefit from the dynamic nature of these.

<comment><USER4> Agree, the visualizations should definitely have margin of error incorporated into the designs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a knowledge graph being built in the background - powering the project ?</comment>


Chernobyl 30 years later - <AUTHOR> http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article73405857.html <comment><USER2> Some notes:

Yeah, per a later study as described in Wikipedia, slamming the control rods home was the final fatal mistake, because their tips were inexplicitly made of graphite (a moderator if pure enough), and they displaced light water that in this reactor design was a neutron absorber. Add the (illegal in the US) positive void coefficient of this light water used for cooling, and you get exponential growth of the nuclear reactions until the reactor sufficiently disassembles itself.

"500 roentgen" is something more like about the LD50 for generic radiation due to bone marrow effects, so you'd expect around half of those viewers to survive without treatment. Add another 50% and the lining of small intestines get killed, which is not survivable in any way.

 _The wildlife is tough to beat. Wolves and bears and big cats, even wild horses, thrive inside the perimeter._

Which suggests that the dangers of radiation are a bit overhyped. Then again, we humans have longer lifespans, and thus more time for a cancer to slip by the body's defenses.

This "3,000 year" estimate is interesting. The metric I've read is that generic US civilian nuclear reactor waste decays in 600 years to stuff that's no more radioactive than the ore it was mined from, which I grant you is not stuff your children should be rolling around in (and that, or rather the radon from it, is death to smokers, but so are many many other things when combined with smoking). This corium is not quite the same thing, though ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corium_(nuclear_reactor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corium_\(nuclear_reactor\)) ).

A million years is ridiculous, a definition of safety that's self-defeating.</comment>


Ask HN: Cool technology oriented startups/young companies. - <AUTHOR>

Most of the companies advertised/discussed on HN, are consumer oriented. So, there's very little cool brand new technology used there. Basically what they do is to just take existing hipster web/MVC framework, optionally invent disruptive business model to change existing market. Most of them disrupt in the area of business models not technology.
Which young technology companies/startups you know which are mostly technology oriented and which can disrupt the market in the near future?
Here's my list:
* Oculus VR
* FP Complete
* Meteor <comment><USER2> * Delphix - database virtualization

* Intentional Software - intentional programming

</comment><comment><USER3> Meta: augmented reality, google glass done right.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's your question?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which young technology companies/startups you know which are mostly technology oriented and which can disrupt the market in the near future?</comment></comment>