Visualizing a complex function - <AUTHOR> http://puzlet.com/m/b00d3

<comment><USER2> Yes, we want to add support for editing JavaScript directly in Puzlet Web Lab (it's particularly useful for copy/pasting snippets). We've found, however, that writing scientific computing code is much more succinct in CoffeeScript. Moroever, it is fully compatible with all JS libraries.

Note also that you can see generated JS by clicking the "JS" toggle button in Puzlet Web Lab.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really cool! It will be great when it supports JavaScript.</comment>


Irish DNA originated in Middle East and eastern Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/28/origins-of-the-irish-down-to-mass-migration-ancient-dna-confirms?CMP=share_btn_fb <comment><USER2> Interestingly enough, ancient Scottish legends do claim that they came from the Middle East via Spain and Ireland - this is mentioned in the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath:

 _" They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous.

Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today."_

[http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/the-text-of-the- declaratio...](http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/the-text-of-the-declaration- of-arbroath-1-465230)

<comment><USER3> snorri sturlson claimed the norse gods were refugees from Troy. There must be something appealing about having exotic roots.

<comment><USER2> And the Romans claimed a similar back story:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No. It shows that the four individuals sequenced from this time (~3000 to 4000 years ago) who died in Ireland had significant middle eastern ancestry. It is not a sampling of the Irish population at the time, nor even a likely representivive sampling of the ancestors of the modern Irish population. All it tells us for certain is that some of the people living in Ireland at the time had middle eastern ancestors.

<comment><USER5> That's overly dismissive. The sampled individuals had several crucial genes: the C282Y hemochromatosis mutation, a Y chromosome haplotype which is common among modern Irish, and a gene for lactase persistence, all of which strongly suggest genetic continuity with the modern Irish.

<comment><USER4> All these genes are found elsewhere in Europe too. You really can't read that much into such analysis because of this - genes get around.

The most interesting thing about this study is that that there were individuals with a high level of middle eastern ancestry in Ireland at the time. This is not too unexpected given that the Phoenicians were tin trading with Cornwall around this time so of course they could have been trading with the Irish as well. One of the things we have found in recent times is the bronze age trade networks were more extensive and widespread than might be expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The 11th century book _Lebor Gabála Érenn [1]_ (a Tolkein-esque attempt to provide an epic history for Ireland) claims that the Gaels (Irish) originated in Scythia (modern Eastern Iran and *stan) and migrated to Ireland via Spain.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> It aligns with what we know about the history of the Celtic languages. The ancestor to the remaining Celtic languages first appeared in Central Europe. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto- Celtic_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Celtic_language)

<comment><USER8> No, you're misinterpreting things. The analyzed DNA is from 5, 4 and 3 thousand years ago, at a time when there are suspected to have been no Celtic speakers in the Isles. Speakers of the Celtic branch of languages began appearing in the Isles far later than that (probably around 600 BCE).

This DNA would have not been representative of the DNA of the people who brought Celtic languages to the Isles. Similarly, the people who brought Celtic languages to the Isles are not necessarily representative of the current or even the populations contemporary to their times (minority languages can become dominant as was the case with Hungarian).

This only tells us about the population's genetics, but it doesn't link it to the Celtic language group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some interesting storytelling: [http://jahtruth.net/tephisum.htm](http://jahtruth.net/tephisum.htm)</comment>


Show HN: Pixyll, a minimal, mobile-first Jekyll theme - <AUTHOR> http://pixyll.com/

<comment><USER3> I'm a fan. Reminds me of mdo's [http://markdotto.com/](http://markdotto.com/) theme (which isn't open source). Slight nitpick, I find the navigation bar to be too small/unreadable.

<comment><AUTHOR> It definitely drew lots of inspiration from mdo's theme, and basscss.

Yeah, regarding the navigation bar, I was wondering if I should make that font a slightly larger size. I think your nitpick has persuaded me to go ahead and make it a little bigger.

<comment><USER3> In that case, I'll be using your theme. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is wonderful to hear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a word of advice as someone who also released a Jekyll theme - <USER2> will not remember to change the default settings. So I would recommend you put an "example.com" email instead of your personal email in the repo (unless you like getting random emails!).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. I will have to change that right now. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Beautifully simple. And thanks for the reminder about [http://jekyllrb.com/](http://jekyllrb.com/) which seems like a cool blogging system...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Jekyll is great, especially when used in tandem with Github pages.

<comment> alok-g How is it when used with a self-hosted plan? Also, my client machine is Windows - I see a guide to install Jekyll on Windows, but not sure if it will actually work (not officially supported).

On the theme itself, looks good. I like it.

For comments, is disqus the recommended solution? Does it slow down the system again with database calls? Security issues again?

I am also interested in having charts, but I presume integrating those would not be much trouble.

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't run Windows, so I don't know whether it will work or not. Charts can also be added using a js library. You will have to include the data statically in your Jekyll build, as part of the js, or you can make an API call if available.

Adding to the comment by tacticus about Disqus: It's the preferred solution for Jekyll sites since they are static. Disqus takes care of all the commenting heavy lifting on the client side, while also taking care of the database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice. My only complain is the huge footer. It really doesn't match the theme. Also, bulleted and numbered lists have smaller fonts, and their line height is odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's definitely something that isn't quite right about the footer. I will have to ponder how to make it fit in more with the rest of the theme. I've just added Github issues for the lists/line height weirdness, I will fix that ASAP.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks good. I personally feel that the menu options are a bit small for a mobile-first design, but this looks like a great alternative to Poole.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you're definitely right on that. I'm going to be increasing the nav font size so that it's easier to read, and easier to tap on mobile devices. I overlooked that aspect a little bit =/.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm, would I be able to use Jekyll themes on Octopress?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Pixyll theme uses a different DOM structure for the templates and includes, so it would require some tweaking to work with Pixyll's stylesheets. Though, it would be feasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The theme is beautiful and has a nice name too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> looks beautiful, thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you liked it!</comment></comment>


Why Erlang? - In-A-Gist Blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.inagist.com/why-erlang <comment><USER2> Nice writeup - what websocket implementation are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my own <https://github.com/jebu/websockets>

<comment><USER2> Cool. There are a few disparate erlang implementation right now. Misultin has one, zotonic has one, I patched mochiweb to support websockets on the same port too: <https://github.com/RJ/mochiweb>

<comment><USER3> Definitely disparate, and it seems to be the case with the web frameworks as well. Going to check out Jebu's implementation. Have been using Misultin, which has been great thus far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Was a great article until I clicked on the Libya link at the top and it took me to Justin Bieber. Just glad nobody walked into my office at that time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooops.. just fixed it, thanks for letting know</comment></comment>


The new ng-conf site doesn't use AngularJS - <AUTHOR> An ng-conf announcement came via email, expressing this in the 2nd sentence:
"After much blood, sweat, tears, pain and suffering, the new website has been launched, and we think it looks pretty good."
First I thought, that's not too reassuring to read from a web framework organization. So I went to check out the site.
I was surprised there doesn't seem to be any AngularJS used. It looks like Wordpress and JQuery.
https://www.ng-conf.org/ <comment><USER2> It's a premade WordPress theme for conference sites

[http://www.showthemes.com/conference-wordpress-theme- fudge](http://www.showthemes.com/conference-wordpress-theme-fudge)

</comment><comment><USER3> That makes me think more highly of the conference organizers.

It's a small indicator, at least, that they've got a decent amount of awareness of when using Angular is a good idea, and when it would be overkill.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can know Angular and its benefits without needing to use it everywhere. There's no point reinventing the wheel writing everything in Angular 2 for a sake of it.</comment>


Prime Number Diagrams in Python and SVG - <AUTHOR> http://alphapixel.com/content/prime-number-diagrams-python-and-svg

<comment><USER2> The article essentially looks at the distribution of primes modulo a fixed number m (here m=40). Each "ray" of the diagram corresponds to a residue class modulo 40.

As the author observes, if x and m share a common divisor, then there can be at most one prime congruent x modulo m [3]. The interesting classes are those with gcd(x,m) = 1. For those Dirichlet's Theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions [1] tells us that we will in fact find infinitely many primes in these residue classes. More refined, the prime number theorem for arithmetic progressions [2] tells us something about their distribution.

As for the squares of primes: If m = 40 then the residue classes modulo m which will contain infinitely many primes can be represented by:

1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 17, 19, 21, 23, 27, 29, 31, 33, 37

Therefore the only residue classes in which infinitely many square of primes can lie are the squares of these residue classes, which turn out to be represented by 1 and 9 modulo 40 (just square the previous numbers and take remainders of dividing by 40).

This explains why all but finitely many of the squares of primes lie in the two rays corresponding to these residue classes.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirichlet%27s_theorem_on_arith...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirichlet%27s_theorem_on_arithmetic_progressions)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number_theorem#Prime_num...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number_theorem#Prime_number_theorem_for_arithmetic_progressions)

[3] Suppose d = gcd(x,m). If y is congruent x mod m, then m divides y-x. Since d therefore divides x and y-x, it divides y. If d is not 1, then y can only be a prime if y=d and d is a prime.

(one more edit): We can also say which classes will contain a single prime and which ones will contain a unique prime square: If p is a prime that has a common divisor with m, then p mod m will contain a single prime (p itself). Then p^2 mod m will contain a single prime square (well, p^2). In the case m=40, we have that 2 and 5 are the prime divisors of 40. Therefore the residue classes represented by 2 and 5 contain a single prime, and those represented by 4 and 25 contain a single prime square.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried coming up with a proof, but instead I have a new observation I can't explain:

FACT: No prime number can end in an even number (because all such numbers are divisible by 2) or in 5 (because all such numbers are divisible by 5). So, all prime numbers must end in: 1, 3, 7, or 9.

FACT: When you multiply 2 numbers, the units digit of the product is the same as the units digit of the product of the units digits of the two numbers.

FACT: Combining the last two facts, every prime number squared must end in 1 (if the prime ended in 1 or 9) or 9 (if the prime ended in 3 or 7).

FACT: Thus, every prime square modulo 40 must be one of the following numbers (and cannot be any other number): 1, 9, 11, 19, 21, 29, 31, or 39.

So, I just have to figure out now why 6 of those 8 numbers can't be prime squares modulo 40. That's when I noticed something odd: no number x, such that x modulo 40 is 11, 19, 21, 29, 31, or 39, is a perfect square. (Tried this through x = 1 million.)

Anyone know why that is?

<comment><USER4> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_residue> also the Legendre symbol.

Also there's no need to consider numbers >= 40 when working mod 40

        47 * 47 (mod 40)

        = (40+7) * (40+7) (mod 40)

        40 * n = 0 (mod 40) for any integer n since 40*n will be a multiple of 40, so:-

        = 40*(40+7) + 7*(40+7) (mod 40)

        = 0 + 7*(40+7) (mod 40)

        = 7 * (40+7) (mod 40)

        = 7*7 + 7*40 (mod 40)

        = 7*7 + 0 (mod 40)

        = 7*7

        So n^2 (mod 40) = (n mod 40)^2 (mod 40).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a question - what is the advantage of putting this in a circle? Wouldn't these patterns exist just as well in a normal chart? The only difference is you don't see column 1 next to column 40 but that doesn't seem to have much impact.

</comment><comment><USER6> Apparently down due to heavy load. Unable to get anything from Coral Cache, but the text is in the google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Falphapixel.com%2Fcontent%2Fprime- number-diagrams-python-and-svg)

</comment><comment><USER4> p^2 mod 40 being one of a small set of numbers is related to quadratic reciprocity.

All odd numbers have a p^2 mod 40 value that is 1, 9 or 25.

The margin isn't big enough for my proof, but only odd numbers with a multiple of 5 will have a p^2 mod 40 value that is 25. Once you remove the case for p=5 (by ignoring the 'inner ring' of numbers where p^2 < 40) then the only valid residues for odd numbers (that aren't multiples of 5) are 1 or 9, but, more importantly this is true whether they are prime or not.

</comment><comment><USER7> Site is down, but I think this is one of the images: <http://imgur.com/07ukx></comment>


US blocks crackdown on tax avoidance by net firms like Google and Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jul/14/us-tax-avoidance-google-amazon <comment><USER3> So, let me see if I understand this: the US is going to bat for the big software companies who don't want to pay taxes in other countries, and yet I, an expat American, am expected to file an income tax return with the IRS every single year for my foreign earnings, which may be subject to dual-taxation if I make "too much."

What a crock of shit.

<comment><USER4> Well I agree with you that the foreign earnings things completely crazy. Using one bad policy to argue against a good one is just as bad. This is a good move on the part of the US, what we also need is the ability to move corporate profit from foreign subsidiaries back into the US without facing tax.

<comment><USER5> You're missing a step though - which is that these corporations do everything possible to avoid paying the due tax on those foreign profits. I'm all in favour of getting to repatriate profits then - but taking the profits through a tax haven needs to be stopped first.

Take Google in the UK for instance. They don't "sell" anything in the UK according to their tax returns, so claim every deal is actually finalised through Ireland and therefore subject to lower Irish taxes. So their UK tax is minimal despite making large profits from there.

It provides a massive competitive advantage to companies large enough to full off these kind of operations. Google have possibly been caught out actually selling in the UK, but in most cases their conduct is legal - which is why the law needs changing.

If you want to make money in France, the UK, Germany or wherever you should pay local taxes to those countries. It would be grand if those situations could be simplified and made accessible for digital goods (which are more likely to be sold cross border).

<comment><USER6> The problem with preventing the use of 'tax havens' is that there's no non- arbitrary way to decide if a company is truly using another country as a tax haven, or that they are actually using developers from another country. In the Google example, Google UK is clearly benefiting from the developers that work outside UK, therefore they should be able to pay 'brand fees' or whatnot to the 'main Google'.

Of course in this case most of the development is not happening in Ireland, but how can you decide if the fees are reasonable or not? You'll either end up with a very complex tax code with loopholes (which is non-desirable), or you'll give arbitrary power to tax bureaucrats to enforce arbitrary taxes to certain companies (and this will in practise create non-just tax decisions and corruption).

<comment><USER7> _Of course in this case most of the development is not happening in Ireland_

I'd say that very little (probably zero) development is done in Ireland, but I get the impression you think that development is the taxable activity (I don't know if it is or not). However, there are 1,700 people doing something in Ireland (from [http://www.idaireland.com/google/index.xml](http://www.idaireland.com/google/index.xml), 1/2 way down):

 _A site reliability /engineering team supporting Google's European hosting and search activities; Multilingual customer support for Google's AdWords advertising product; On-line relevancy testing and Google product support; Shared Services to support Google's EMEA operations._

As an Irish person, I'm getting a little weary of the constant references on HN implying that Ireland is little more than a tax haven. There is a significant number of jobs attached to the US multinational presence here, viz:

\- Apple: 4000 employees ([http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/22/ireland-were-no- tax-haven-...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/22/ireland-were-no-tax-haven- but-yes-apple-did-pay-2-tax/))

\- eBay: 3000 ([http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/retail-and- servic...](http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/retail-and- services/ebay-opens-european-headquarters-in-dundalk-1.1372373))

\- Google: 1700 (see above)

\- Facebook: 500 ([http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/facebo...](http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/facebook- to-hire-100-dublin-staff-1.1253407))

I could go on, but I have stuff to do, and I feel like I've already done more research than most journalists commenting on this area. For those interested, there's a list of foreign ICT companies operating in Ireland at [http://www.idaireland.com/business-in-ireland/information- co...](http://www.idaireland.com/business-in-ireland/information- communication/)

 _Edit:_ Removed woe-is-me comment following a trigger-happy downvoter.

<comment><USER8> Google does not pay tax in Ireland either, even at low Irish rates. So while it is great that it employs people there and it might anyway, Ireland is integral to its tax evasion strategy, as is the Netherlands.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't pay very much (corporation tax), but it does pay: [http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland/google- de...](http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland/google-defends-low- tax-payment-1.2003) \- it took me 3 seconds to find this.

<comment><USER8> Sorry I didn't mean none but nowhere near what you would expect given this is the entire revenue from Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The US IT sector is heavily subsidized. Giving Apple, Google, Facebook etc. billion dollar subsidies at home would spur trade wars. So instead the US uses its never failing ability to play European countries against eachother and its influence over smaller jurisdictions like Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Guernsey, Jersey, Bahamas, Isle of Man, British Virgin Islands etc to make sure that large US corporations' foreign income - which wouldn't be taxed in the US anyways - can be kept untaxed.

<comment><USER10> Other countries and foreign companies can't and don't take advantage of legal global tax dodging jurisdictions and schemes?

I wasn't aware it was exclusive to the US. I also wasn't aware German / French / British etc. IT firms don't dodge global taxes at every opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It talks about France. France is a machine of expending money right now, better said, of wasting money.

I am living in France this Summer, a very rich and beautiful country with a hole in the pocket. French people love to life well, and someone else to pay the bills, the Germans, the rich, whoever but not them.

Mr Hollande only want to do one thing, to raise taxes. But there is never enough money when you don't expend wisely.

<comment><USER12> You should go back to where ever you come from or wherever it is better for you to live.

Sarkozy ruined France so yes now everbody needs to pay for it.

And the problem is not taxes,i'm happy to pay taxes. The problem is people like French liberals ( liberals are "right-wing" in France ) that gives hand outs to their friends or vote laws without financing their them , and then all they have left is blaming the poor,the homeless,the public workers,the artists or the muslims for France demise...

> French people love to life well, and someone else to pay the bills,

Whatever. Or maybe you prefer US way of life, where it is me/myself/I and there is next to 0 solidarity.

<comment><USER13> Sarkozy is not libertarian at all if that's what you mean by "libéral". He's just as socialist as the left when it comes to the economy. To give you an idea, Sarkozy created more than 50 taxes during his mandate [1] and didn't cut on spending while creating more social aid programs (RSA). Only in France would he be considered a libertarian or "néo-libéral" as they say just because he limited the maximum amount of tax one could pay to 50% [2]. A 50% tax makes you a libertarian, Ayn Rand disciple in France, isn't that insanity? You still have to work until the 28th of July for the State in France.

1: [http://www.contrepoints.org/2012/03/07/72137-lahurissante- ac...](http://www.contrepoints.org/2012/03/07/72137-lahurissante-accumulation- dactes-manques-de-sarkozy)

2: [http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com//file/318975.pdf](http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com//file/318975.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Only France could make Brussel look like Galt's Gulch to the people who have a lot of money.

[http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1876/french- elite...](http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1876/french-elite-are- fleeing-paris-to-live-in-brussels-tax-haven)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let's see how this pans out. Maybe this time the UK will not play for the US team, given the outrage there about this issue, but I'm afraid that without a common EU position about this the US will be able to use their usual divide et impera tactics.

<comment><USER13> I hope the US wins. I'd rather this money stays with Google and Amazon than it goes to the EU states. Why? Because the more profit Google and Amazon make, the more value they produce for society as in more work, better technology, better life etc. What does the state do with tax money? It spends it badly and ends up creating more debt. So, it creates the opposite of value, negative value or debt, and crony capitalism because everyone wants to influence the way this money is redistributed. To give you an idea of how bad it is here, people work until the 28th of July for the state here in France because of all the taxes, if you have a company it can be even worse.

EU states are already the most taxed ones in the world and they have the biggest national debts, it's clear here that the way to fix this is not "more tax" but "less spending". For the last 60 years, spending has been skyrocketing and taxes are at the highest and are killing jobs, innovations and whole economies. Why keep spending even more by making taxes even higher than they are, this is ludicrous. It's time to admit maybe we should start spending less, not more taxes, this isn't working and hasn't worked for the last 60 years.

<comment><USER16> The idea that private industry is always more efficient than the public sector is, at best, an over simplification. One need look no further than healthcare to find an example where the public sector is vastly more efficient than a market of competing, private sector companies.

The state also spends money on things that would not be funded any other way. Pure-scientific research, such as CERN. Policing for people too poor to hire private security services. The idea that these things are "the opposite of value" is ludicrous.

Also, if you're not going to tax Google and Amazon, then that gives large international companies who can dodge tax a huge advantage over smaller national companies who cannot. That undermines the underlying principle of capitalism: competition. Either you tax no companies, or all of them - <USER2> halfway position is worse than either.

<comment><USER13> Public health-care is a complete failure here in France. We actually pay more than Switzerland where it's privatize and the French assurance maladie is going completely bankrupt while being forced on us. Many pure scientific research have been done by private entities, I don't see why only public programs could do any pure scientific research. Plus, if the people were given their money back , maybe they could use it to invest in stuff they actually care about such as pure scientific research which only represent like 1 or 2% of our national budget today.

As for policing, I don't think anyone disagrees that it should remain public. Justice and Police and Military security are what the state exists for. Not for subsidizing movie producers or a dying paper media industry like we do here in France. I'm ok with a low flat tax that everyone would pay to sustain the basic functions of the state. It would probably be cheaper for Google and Amazon compared to whatever they're paying their accountants to design their tax schemes and give them huge gain in time wasted for bureaucracy.

<comment><USER16> WHO ranks the French health care system as the best in the world, and the expenditure per capita is less than Switzerland (at least in 2007), so I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from.

I also suspect you'd have a hard time finding private companies willing to spend $9 billion on a particle accelerator with no foreseeable profits.

I'm generally against subsidising any industry, but letting Google and Amazon get away with dodging tax is effectively the same thing as a subsidy. Speaking as someone who owns a small company, I'd rather the playing field be level.

<comment><USER13> > WHO ranks the French health care system as the best in the world, and the > expenditure per capita is less than Switzerland (at least in 2007), so I'm > not sure where you're getting your numbers from.

[http://www.securite-sociale.info/](http://www.securite-sociale.info/)

[http://reachfinancialindependence.com/french- healthcare/](http://reachfinancialindependence.com/french-healthcare/)

FYI: it's forbidden by law to leave social security in France and to encourage others to do so. Best system ever indeed, once you get it you never leave it unless you're ok with jail time.

<comment><USER16> Those sources don't appear to quote any hard numbers, and don't seem to dispute the WHO's methodology, but then again I can't read French :)

<comment><USER13> Sarkozy was elected in 2008 and he significantly lowered what national healthcare pays for you. You now need to pay for both a national healthcare and a private insurance to complete the cost. Problem is national healthcare is not a real insurance, what you pay is based on your salary, not your actual risk. So people with no risk end up paying much more than they would with a private insurance. My family in the Netherlands and Switzerland pay way less than I do.

<comment><USER16> The WHO report is back from 2000, so it's certainly possible the rankings have changed since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure why people are particularly surprised by this. Most of the large international companies that make most out of tax avoidance have large US bases. While the US economy does lose some to the schemes they use (like all the cash Apple has sat outside the US, to give a commonly quoted example) it loses less than the competing economies overall so agreeing to crack down on tax avoidance could result in a net loss. Even if it didn't, those companies can also afford to buy the best lobbyists in town who in turn can buy the relevant number of votes to threaten politicians who don't toe the line.

<comment><USER18> and when these US based companies eventually bring back those profits to the US (whether it be at the full current rate - unlikely - or some negotiated one time discount rate), the lower the foreign tax burden the greater the US government gains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you make a certain amount of money in a certain country, then you should pay that country's taxes. Pretty simple concept, no?

This whole "let's reroute all our profits from all the countries into this country where the taxes are close to zero" is utter BS. If you don't like its taxes, don't do business in that country. Simple. If the government thinks they're losing businesses with high taxes, then maybe they will lower them - or maybe not. It's their and their citizens' prerogative.

<comment><USER13> > It's their and their citizens' prerogative.

No it's not. Our states are not pure democracies. If a majority of people decide by referendum that we should kill all Arabs, it would not be their "prerogative". That's because we are constitutional republics before being democracies. That is to say we all have to abide by what our constitutions say no matter what the majority say. And last time I checked, our constitution protects private and individual property. Therefor, a 75% tax or even 50% like we have in France goes against the protection of private property in our constitution and it was rejected by the supreme court here. Any taxation goes against the very basis of our constitutions and therefor should not be treated lightly or abused. Or do you think that if a majority decides it's ok to tax people 100% then that's ok because it's "their prerogative"? How about if a majority decide women shouldn't vote anymore either, would it be their prerogative too? The answer is no. Google and Amazon already pay lots of taxes in the US, if they had to pay in every single country, they'd have much less money to invest in all those products we enjoy while the government would just create more debt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Actually, in the same manner the US initiated a massive FUD campaign against the "evil" (non-US) forces at the ITU summit last year in Dubai. Behind the facade of "save the Internet", the agenda was to save the Internet giants like Google and keep the US control over the net. In light of NSA revelations, it has even more sinister overtones.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm no fan of the overreach of the US government that includes, but is not limited to:

\- requiring all citizens and non-citizens to declare all foreign bank accounts (FBAR) including signatory authorities on trusts and companies;

\- unclear rules on the aforementioned. Do you have to declare retirement accounts? Are they taxed? Nobody really knows. It's clear the only value in FBAR is in non-compliance if the government decides to prosecute you;

\- requiring non-resident citizens and residents to file tax returns and pay taxes if their income is sufficiently high and either the income is in a country that has no double taxation treaty with the US or it does and its tax rate is simply lower, even for those who haven't stepped foot in the US in 20+ years. I actually know many US citizens who don't do this and it could be a real problem for them at some point.

All of this while allowing the systematic avoidance of tax by US companies on a massive scale. US companies need to report their foreign income. An individual would have to pay US taxes on foreign income. Why shouldn't a company do the same? Why can't it pay the difference between US taxes and whatever taxes they've already paid as is standard in all double taxation treaty cases?

But the move here by the French is blatantly political and narrowly targeted at US companies. You'll note the language is around the "digital economy". Well, why should such reform be limited to only Internet companies, which-- surprise, surprise--are primarily US companies?

That's actually what the US (rightfully IMHO) is objecting to.

All of this is simply window dressing however. The real problem with the system is complexity. Think of tax loopholes as bugs. The more complex software, the more bugs there are and the harder it is to eradicate them. Tax law is no different.

Unfortunately there is no political appetite for true reform as every complicated exception is the result of shoring up some constituency or pork barreling or other "corruption" so as much as we need to stop, say, poring money into corn subsidies, it just won't happen for the foreseeable future.

Borders are disappearing. We already see the nonsensical effects of this such as attempts to limit content distribution to geographical regions. At some point we're simply going to have a global tax regime and, dare I say it, world government, scary as that will probably be.

</comment><comment><USER22> So basically: "They pay taxes to us, fuck you and yours"

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow. How low can you go? How corrupt can you get?</comment>


Ask HN: Experience of one kidney and vesicoureteral reflux - <AUTHOR> My 18 month old daughter has one kidney and grade 4/5 Vesico-Ureteral Reflux. This means if she gets a UTI it is likely to scar her kidney. The solitary kidney makes it more problematic and if it becomes too damaged then she will need dialysis or transplant.
Everytime she gets a high temp we have to test the urine for possible infections which is quite stressful.
She is having a DMSA scan that will confirm whether she has any scars on her kidney and then the following steps. At the moment we think she will have to have a ureteric reimplantation procedure which should reduce the reflux and protect the kidney. We hope this intervention will prevent any further damage and requiring dialysis or transplant (at least in the short-term).
It's been a rollercoaster year and definitely used up a lot of my time and mental capacity. By nature I analyse different possible outcomes and try to prepare for it.
Has had similar experience? Other any words of wisdom or support? <comment><USER2> No similar experience, but as a father of 3 I wish you all the strenghth in the world...

One word of support: it has been my experience that kids are incredibly resilient. They 'bounce back' so much easier from serious and/or life-changing events than adults can. From what I've read about VUR there's a pretty good chance things will be a lot, lot better in 1 to 1,5 year for you all. Which brings me to my advice: despite the hardship, try to enjoy each other. You want to remember her first steps, words, teething, not the 100s hospital visits.

Stay strong!</comment>


The science that's never been cited - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08404-0 <comment><USER2> 10% of papers being completely uncited is a little misleading. There is a long tail of papers with 1 or 2 citations that were hardly read beyond the abstract and only cited to up a paper's number of references and had a few good keywords. That research is effectively uncited.

The reason for this isn't really surprising: Most research isn't that groundbreaking. Most research is done because if you don't produce a paper every now and then or else the university will fire you. So you crank out that study you did on the insulating properties of the grey squirrel's tail vs the red squirrel's tail and you keep your job, although nobody gives a crap about how warm a squirrel's tail is.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, now that you mentioned this, I'm really curious how warm a squirrel's tail is.

<comment><USER4> Seriously, you should write a paper on it when you learn

<comment><USER5> Not my field, but this[1] is kind of related. It looks at a certain type of squirrel native to southern Africa that uses its tail as a parasol to provide shade.

[1]: [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/physzool.57...](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/physzool.57.1.30155968)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if part of the reason for uncited papers being so low is that authors cite their own papers in subsequent papers. For example, an author is studying field X, and publishes papers. No one cites the first paper. The author then writes a new paper on X, but cites the first paper. Thus, although no one but the author cited the papers that the author wrote, all but the last one have citations in other papers.

Another way this works is that authors in the same department may cite each other's papers especially if the fields are somewhat related.

I wonder what the data would look like if they excluded citations by the authors of the original paper.

<comment><USER7> In the methods section, they do say that "first author self-citations were excluded." One of the figures in the Nature article also pulls out self- citations.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.5250](https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.5250)

<comment><USER6> Do note however that many times the first author is not the principal investigator (ie the person that has the funding for the study and is often tenure track faculty) but is often a graduate student or a post-doc. The principal investigator may be in the middle or even at the end of the author list. Thus just excluding first author self-citations is probably inadequate. The chances are high that a grad student or post-doc is going to cite their adviser's previous papers.

<comment><USER8> The rule to read the author list, simplified: first author did the work. Last author funded the research. Everyone else contributed somewhat.

<comment><USER9> That's only true in some areas (e.g. some biological fields). In other areas (e.g astronomy or much of physics), it's decreasing order of contribution. In mathematics, the author list is usually alphabetical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "Lack of citation cannot be interpreted as meaning articles are useless or > valueless," says David Pendlebury, a senior citations analyst at Clarivate.

On the other hand, presence of citation can not be interpreted as meaning articles are useful or valuable. For one, there could be chains of useless and valueless papers citing each other.

<comment><USER11> Striking similarity to PageRank and Link Farms.

<comment><USER12> PageRank was initially invented for scientific publications and later applied to web sites.

<comment><USER11> Wow, that's amazing to know - thanks for sharing!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me, based to some extent on my own experience, that a paper has a harder time getting cited when it's a bit off the beaten track (and might in fact be more original, trail-blazing and interesting), because by definition it's a bit lonely in its field. Conversely, when the work is fairly derivative it gets lumped in with others and is easier to cite as part of the related work section of another paper, even if its influence is minimal.

<comment><USER14> Some papers are also just very useful as citations. My least interesting paper is my most cited for this very reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was looking into a CS academic who claimed to be widely cited. Mostly it was self-citation, in his own papers. He seemed to be the editor of a journal which published a lot of his own papers citing himself.

I couldn't help thinking of that looking at the graph of decreasing uncited papers.

<comment><USER5> If he actually has a journal and does that, he's nothing more than a con artist.

<comment><USER15> Hehe yes, that's the general conclusion. I'm not sure if I should name names. (Ah well) The guy I'm talking about is Azlan Iqbal, a Malaysian CS professor. I know him as the writer of numerous wacky articles on ChessBase (leading chess news site) about his chess+computer studies. People criticize his shoddy work in the comments, and he says, nay, jeers they're not qualified to judge because they didn't read his uni thesis, dont know CS, dont understand his algorithm, etc. Kind of amazing. I guess he can't be an impostor in CS, but most of his published articles are about computers + chess, with the Dunning- Kruger effect in full flight. I guess you have to know a bit about chess to fully realize how inept his stuff is. But just the embarrassing way he attacks all critics in the comments is remarkable. Although the CB readers largely ignore him now. See the stories with most comments to see what I mean. [0]

Are there a lot of people like this? Or worse?

[0] [https://en.chessbase.com/author/azlan- iqbal](https://en.chessbase.com/author/azlan-iqbal)

<comment><USER5> > Are there a lot of people like this? Or worse?

This guy is something else... I have honestly never seen anything like this before.

Most of his journal papers [1] are not even close to standard journal paper quality. His latest one, titled "A Simple Encryption Method for FTP Passwords", is a two-page document showing how to use a substitution cipher to encrypt FTP passwords... That wouldn't even pass off as a project for an undergrad CS course!

The second journal paper _seems_ acceptable, but I am also not familiar with chess algorithms, so I cannot provide a definite opinion.

Some amazing quotes from [2]:

"Let me begin by saying that the aesthetics model in chess that I developed for my Ph.D. is considered a seminal piece of work in then uncharted waters."

"While I have written many papers, to the extent memory serves, I do not self- publish at all even though admittedly, some of my publications are certainly better or more prestigious than others (like any academic)." (note: you should never self-publish, so there really is no need to "consult" your memory)

"In fact, I am quite confident I could last at least 20 moves even against Magnus Carlsen under tournament conditions."

"[...] I simply do not need to be a chess master as there are many official chess masters only too happy to assist and work with me on projects. I am frankly quite amazed at how open-minded and forward-thinking some of them are."

[1] [http://metalab.uniten.edu.my/%7Eazlan/](http://metalab.uniten.edu.my/%7Eazlan/)

[2]: [https://en.chessbase.com/post/women-and-beautiful-chess-a- re...](https://en.chessbase.com/post/women-and-beautiful-chess-a-response-to- critics)

<comment><USER15> Hehe OK I'm glad you 'enjoyed' that, glad I mentioned it. Yeah, the non-stop bragging and credentials-showing hehe. Oh you didn't get onto the 'good' parts of the women and chess one. Not sure which was 'best', the cringeingly sexist language or the incredibly inept experiment design...

Well, people in the comments (CB comments have never been half so impressive) accurately ripped his work to shreds, not much for me to add. OK, maybe he's somewhat a CS impostor too. :-) It's Dunning-Kruger it its most virulent. Well, it's CB's fault for publishing him there too; people beg them not to, each time they do. I guess no other academics send their stuff there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Then, checking on Google Scholar, Heneberg saw that many of the remaining > papers actually had been referenced by other works indexed in the Web of > Science, but had been missed because of data-entry errors or typos in the > papers

I wonder if you could look at the number of citations to non-existent papers to find these typos. If you collected such a set, you could do a loose search against the list of published papers, and see how many are a close match. For instance, a typo in an author's name or the paper's title could be ignored while matching the journal, date and page could give the auditors a list of best guesses for this missed citations.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if citation research could become self sustaining, if it generates enough cited papers.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like how the 3dB point for engineering papers is 4 years (that is where 50% of the papers remain uncited). I am a bit surprised it goes down from there. I have always felt that a big chunk of the engineering or technical papers out there reference technology that is obsolete after 5 years[1]. There are the seminal papers of course, the ones that it seems are always cited, but a huge chunk which were useful when published, are much less so later.

[1] No I don't have a citation :-) but having written a few papers and looking for related work I found the chance of finding something relevant dropped precipitously when you got into papers that were more than a few years old.</comment>


US Scientists Resurrect Deadly 1918 Flu  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8103-us-scientists-resurrect-deadly-1918-flu.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I was a little critical of Sam Altman's post awhile back about investing in defensive biotech ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6890060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6890060)). Reading this, I think I may have been a bit too harsh.</comment>


Taking Automated Tests Off The Pedestal - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/104920553571646483561/posts/fmyZi1MxMgo

<comment><USER2> For those not aware why this guy's rant might be important, he's the author of "Working with Legacy Code". That book is pretty much a how-to (and a great one at that) on how to get your legacy code base in a testable state so you can write automated tests.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are there really _that_ many teams who have just too darned many otherwise- perfect automated tests? I freely concede it's theoretically true, any non- trivial cost/benefit analysis with an infinity or zero for one or the other is always wrong, but I'd be more concerned about people using this sort of thing as an internal excuse to ignore tests than hopeful this will actually save someone.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I read it it wasn't that they were simply _too_ many but that they were not _otherwise-perfect_. The implication is that we probably have a lot of automated testing cruft but keep it because it is a passing test. This is something I've seen frequently. Even when I strive to keep the tests as long as I can I end up deleting them sooner or later because they are just too brittle and hard to work with.

Tests themselves are a form of code coupling so they almost always come with a cost.

I do agree with you (and said as much in my comment on G+) that there is some danger to this discussion becoming and excuse for laziness and ignorance, but that in itself isn't a good reason to not have the discussion.

<comment><USER3> I added the "otherwise perfect" clause because of his third paragraph, which to my mind basically meant that for the rest of his post he wasn't talking about tests that could be fixed to run faster (with reasonable effort), but the remaining tests that are left even after you've polished the setup to a reasonable degree.

Certainly I've broken tests with new code, examined broken tests, and simply nuked the broken tests before. Usually it's because they're either better covered by some other test written since then, or covering use cases I thought I'd have that never emerged. Sometimes I fix them to be less brittle over time.

It is a good discussion in theory, I just question whether there's that many teams for which this really applies.

I may be suffering from excessive reliance on my own personal experience. As I said yesterday in another comment, I tend to not to worry about whether something is "unit" or "integration" or "acceptance" testing, and most of testing is actually at least one abstraction level above what would be properly considered "unit testing". I personally don't have much difficulty with test stability as a result. People who write lower level unit tests may encounter this far more often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Automated testing is neither good nor evil, it is a tool like many others which has certain advantages and certain shortcomings and disadvantages. Unfortunately, we've been living in an era where, frankly, uneducated heathens dominated the industry with their beliefs that automated tests were not worth the effort.

Finally we've started to move beyond that. But unfortunately we've ended up more or less lurching into a general mindset of unfettered adulation for testing. On balance that's probably better than the unwashed heathenism of earlier but it's still a dangerous situation to be in. Automated tests have their own pitfalls. Test code is often lower quality than regular code, for example, requiring special care to keep it up to par. Also, it's all too easy to write passing tests which hinder rather than enhance your ability to modify the code base (which, by the way, is the primary reason to have automated tests in the first place).

The proper way to approach testing is openly and directly, by having an honest debate on the level of testing necessary, the cost of testing, and the processes necessary to ensure that tests are high quality and providing value. Sometimes this can result in a decision to not test some aspects of a product. And that's ok as long as that decision is made rationally.

More so, as Fowler says, automated testing is just one tool for increasing the quality of a product, but in many ways it is not the most effective one. Formal code reviews and beta testing, for example, have shown to be some of the most effective techniques for finding defects. Additionally, they are capable of finding defects that testing cannot: defects at the level of design.</comment>


Does anyone use comments any more? - <AUTHOR>

Maybe it's just me.  I am old school.  I also have to come back to projects months, and in a few cases, over a year after having written the code.  I was taught to comment and comment profusely.  And that's what I do.
Every function, method, variable or property has a comment.  Even within methods, clear explanations of everything that goes on is everywhere in my code.  The logic of a loop, the reasoning behind a conditional, the setting of flags and some variables.  In some cases the commenting is a mini-story of how the program flows and why certain things have to be done.  An easy-to-follow plain-text explanation of the code.
Yes, this takes time and work but it has always proven to be well worth the effort.
I've cloned a few GitHub projects and, I have to say, I am absolutely amazed when I look at the source files.  Project after project without comments.  Not one.  Just a pile of code.  Not only does this require more work to understand what the author was thinking or why he or she took a specific approach, but I would imagine that the code is also harder to maintain and evolve as the author and others loose touch with it for months or more.
Is this what they are teaching in school these days?  Damn the documentation, just write code and make it work?
I, for one, will not accept anyone working for me taking this approach.  Code is expensive to produce and it must be well documented for others to maintain, support and evolve. <comment><USER2> _I, for one, will not accept anyone working for me taking this approach. Code is expensive to produce and it must be well documented for others to maintain, support and evolve._

You might be right, but you also might be focusing on the wrong thing. There is a case to be made that the goal should be clarity, and comments should be reserved for the cases where the code itself cannot be made clearer. Steve McConnell expresses this particularly well:

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/95398523/McConnell-Code- Complete-C...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/95398523/McConnell-Code-Complete- Chapter-32-Self-Documenting-Code)

The whole chapter is a gem, and it's hard to find a pull-quote that does it justice. It's probably the single piece of writing that most changed my attitude about programming. But if you'd like a starting point, your position sounds a lot like a character in his opening allegory at line 177:

 _"I want to suggest a commenting standard for our projects," Thrasymachus said. "Some of our programmers barely comment their code, and everyone knows that code without comments is unreadable."_

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't have time to read the entire thing. I scanned it quickly and have to say that I don't think I disagree with the recommendations of that paper. In general terms comments should not describe the mechanics of the code "looping through all available names" but rather the intent "Find the user name".

That comments get out of sync with code is a fact. That they stay out of sync is inexcusable. What I will generally do is to fully test and debug a chunk of code and then go back and annotate. I sometimes have a "Go comment the code" item in my to-do list and will spend time here and there cleaning-up and clarifying comments. The other interesting thing that can happen when commenting this way is that you can find issues with the code or identify refactoring opportunities.

It's like sitting down to explain what the code is doing to another capable programmer as opposes to a 12 year old who is just starting to learn how to program. Maybe that's the best way to put it. What do you say to an experience programmer if you had to do a code review and explain your code? That should go in the comments.

If a method or subroutine is absolutely trivial then you say "This finds the average of the voltages across these four inputs".

If, on the other hand, the routine is more complex, you have to describe the overall intent "this calculates the values of the missing pixels" and then dive within the module to explain some of the specific techniques being used "Polyphase FIR filter to interpolate image data for missing color samples" or "Bounds-limited adder to clip FIR filter data to legal image data range".

In other words, you don't explain every line of code but rather functional chunks that make it easier to navigate it and understand what is being done at a macro level and why.

Again, my peeve is with projects that have files upon files with not a single comment. I don't expect a book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I personally find code with profuse comments harder to maintain and evolve over time than code without. Because you have to maintain the comments as well as the code, and never know when you can believe the comments. (General rule of thumb, if in doubt, do not believe the comments.)

 _IF_ you have only high quality people, and _IF_ you have high quality code reviews, _THEN_ it is possible for comments to become maintainable, valuable, etc. I personally have only worked in one software organization where this was true.

</comment><comment><USER4> Schools are terrible at the craft of software style stuff. The one time they did teach me about comments, they seemed to insist on something like seen in this story: <http://thecodelesscode.com/case/39>

I think there might actually be an old-school element here. Coding up to the 80s or the early 90s tended to be about squeezing the absolute most capability you can from the machine. Clarity and conciseness probably took the back seat to optimization hacks, so writing the comment to describe the original intent of the code actually was vital.

Peter Norvig's old Lisp programming book has a nice illustration on how the programming style in Lisp has evolved from the 70s to the book's 1992: [http://books.google.com/books?id=QzGuHnDhvZIC&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=QzGuHnDhvZIC&lpg=PP1&dq=paradigms%20of%20artificial%20intelligence&pg=PA30)

SICP also had the "programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute" quip, and also notes "In this book we don't use many comments; we try to make our programs self-documenting by using descriptive names."

Since the 90s, programmers have had a bit more breathing room, and the idea to actually write the code itself so that it will concisely describe what it's doing when read by a competent programmer has become much easier. You still want to document nontrivial interfaces, tricky things from the application problem domain and problem workarounds in the code, but the actual business- as-usual code tends to be readable and idiomatic enough that you don't need to comment every function, method and variable. Most can be inferred well enough from context.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a recent college graduate, I can tell you that they still teach the comment everything everywhere method, and in fact for most of our programming projects, documentation was at least 20% of the grade. I professionally, do not comment, but instead, write "clean code" that can be understood simply by reading it. Anything complicated I comment, but usually that means I need to refactor and rethink my approach.

I highly recommend this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook- Software-Craftsman...](http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software- Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882) as it changed my life when it comes to software development. I have a real problem with commenting everywhere as most of the time you'll find a lot of public String getName() with like a comment of //Gets the name, uh, durr its name is get name! If you create concise methods with one general purpose you can create very readable code. Definitely check the book out, it is a very good read.

</comment><comment><USER6> This comment was originally posted by shasty ut for some reason has since been deaded. I thought it was worth reposting:

Over commenting is a bad practice. Comments should be reserved for code which is difficult to understand no matter how well it can be written.

Forcing a developer to constantly shift between the english language and a programming language takes up precious screen space and insults the developer by constantly making her switch gears.

Inline comments are the worst abused. After that method doc for the purposes of supposed documentation.

A well named class in a stable framework needs no documentation as long as its interface is intuitive.

Chances are you are interacting with really bad systems and want some help. If the code is that bad, I doubt the developers comments would be much better.

No comments is the best if you can get away with it and have a self documenting set of interfaces.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree. This isn't about interfaces. This is about their inner workings and the reasoning behind some of the decisions or techniques being made.

You talk about over-commenting. I am talking about no comments whatsoever, not even to document methods or subroutines. I cloned this one project that was loaded with methods not used anywhere. In fact, it had included the SBJson framework and it was being used in a method that never got called. The issue came up because it collided with my own use of SBJson on my project and I wanted to figure out what to do about it. It turns out that I could just delete the entire thing and it did not affect the code at all.

I'll give you another example. I have not programmed in Forth in a long time. Maybe fifteen years. However, I do have tons of Forth code that I wrote back then for various projects. All of it is very well documented. I have no doubt that, fifteen years later, I could grab that code and be back in the swing of things in no time at all. I wouldn't have to read through the code in detail and go through the process of building stack images in my head to figure out what is going on. Without comments code libraries like that become impenetrable black boxes.

I could say the same about LISP. I haven't touched it in ages. I wrote tons of utilities and at least one major framework (one year dev time) for a variant called AutoLISP (runs inside AutoCAD). Again, tons of comments which would allow me to jump right in and know exactly what is going on.

It should go without saying that trivial stuff does not require comments. As an hypothetical example, a loop that searches an array (or whatever) for a specific match doesn't need line-by-line comments. What I might do here is, again, hypothetical, just before the "for" statement throw-in a comment that says something like "Look for CRC code match in packet data". With that simple line anyone reading the code knows what the intent was. I can read that code five years later and know exactly what it does without having to read backwards and forwards through the code to figure out what each variable might be, where they come from, what they are loaded with, what the intent might be, etc.

I also find it invaluable to document state machines (particularly for hardware --FPGA-- designs). If you take something like a custom DDR3 SDRAM controller state machine, well, it isn't a trivial thing to read through and figure out what it is doing. Well-authored comments can turn something that would take hours-upon-hours to comprehend into an easy read.

I have seen the value of good comments and code documentation many times over during my career. Keep in mind that I am not making a comparison between sparse comments and writing a book.

<comment><USER7> How about you break out your "Look for CRC code match in packet data" loop into a boolean function called "PacketContainsCRCCode"? The rule of thumb that I learned early on, and that I try to apply, is that comments should answer the question "why," not "what." "What" is easily answered by naming your methods (and variables, should you be forced to use them).

I know what you're getting at. There's nothing worse than reading a 50-line function with no comments. But the real WTF isn't the lack of comments - it's having a 50-line function in the first place (or 8000 lines for that matter). Having lots of comments is a code smell - it indicates poorly factored code. Next time you need to write a comment explaining what a piece of code is doing, try writing a function instead, with a name that says what it's doing, and see where that takes you.

I highly recommend Misko Hevery's "Clean Code Talks" on YouTube. They're part of the Google Tech Talks series, and they will blow your mind if you let them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since I started writing Perl I absolutely started adding more comments. I make sure that I add a comment with sample input for my regexes, particularly if they're complex.

The Regex comments make all the difference, because I can easily check if my sample inputs that I wrote the regex against have changed. I'm also reminded of what I'm trying to get, instead of trying to figure out "Okay, I have a $host, $ip, ..."

</comment><comment><USER9> Hi, (robo)Martin, My opinion on comments is, that they are extremely useful for functions, classes (f.e. javadoc). It is essential to know, what a part of code does. In the function body, I think it is much more important to use meaningful variable names. I mean: Do I really have to comment a variable like "numberOfUsers" with a statement "The number of users"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, variable names need to be really descriptive. And, no, they don't each need a comment. Here's an example, in a recent app I had to slice an image based on a given number of rows and columns. The variables were named:

      int image_rows;
      int image_columns;

The actual code, with comment, went something like this:

      // These variables will determine how the image is sliced.
      // They are bounds-limited in code to max values imposed by hardware and
      // defined in configuration_settings.h
      int image_rows;
      int image_columns;

A year from now I won't need to read far into the code to understand what they do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _I've cloned a few GitHub projects and, I have to say, I am absolutely amazed when I look at the source files. Project after project without comments._

I wish people would add a one-line comment to the top of every source file saying what it's for. ONE LINE is all I ask.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://tomdoc.org/> makes comments the perfect bridge between "documentation" and "code"

</comment><comment><USER12> I use comments far less than I once did. I spend more time writing self- documenting code.

Over time, I had the experience of mine and other people's comments generally being out of sync with the meaning of the code. Further, extremely complex code is too complex to fully document in the code and easy code should require no documentation. There's a middle ground but its much less than everything.

The time I once spent on comments I now spend on picking function and variable names as well as writing tests and asserts. Tests and Asserts are nice since if they stop being true, they force you to change them, unlike comments which can stay stale with no repercussions.

This isn't saying I write no comments. I write comments but a comment is intended for something unusual. That's good because that means it will get read.

</comment><comment><USER13> I completely agree with you. When I write code, the actual code only captures a small fragment of the total mental model that is my solution to the problem at hand. There is so much information about the problem that is _not_ captured purely in code that a maintainer would need to know to make well-informed decisions about the system going forward. I have been fortunate to be in the position of handing off my work to a colleague. Knowing I had left a well- documented system behind was a great satisfaction.

The only time commenting becomes difficult for me is if I am in a team where I know I will be the only one maintaining good comments. It takes no effort to update comments as you code but if I am the only one doing it then it becomes a problem.

</comment><comment><USER14> are you working on an open project that involves team? Then IMHO you need comments, but most of the time I develop website and app by myself and I don't need much comment for explaining, only as reference as to what the code section is, and no one has complained about it yet

<comment><USER15> Maybe it's just me, but on several occasions I've gone back to (uncommented) code I'd written several month or years ago, and thought "what the hell is going on here? Who wrote this shit?" Those time I really wish past me had taken a few seconds to write out exactly why he had solved that particular problem in that particular way, despite how obvious it no doubt seemed at the time. There are few things more annoying than finding some 'ugly' code, fixing it, having a bunch of stuff subtly break and then finally remember that there was a very good reason why you originally wrote the code the way you did. If only I'd left a comment of two for future me, much time and anguish could be saved.

<comment><USER16> Sounds to me like tests could have helped your code far more than any comments would have.

<comment><USER15> Some stuff, especially stuff connected to performance or memory usage, is very tricky to write tests for. Doubly so if it is only a problem on certain hardware.

<comment><USER16> That's certainly true. I'd argue though, that most code is in a position where good naming and tests provide sufficient clarity, without requiring free-text comments.

<comment><USER15> Tests can only tell you what some piece code is supposed to do, not why its doing it the way its doing. Why do you choose to define this particular constant to this particular value, why are you using that particular data structure, why are you rolling your own version of a certain function rather than using the one supplied in the library you are using, why are you using that seemingly round about way to get to that particular result?

There are lots and lots of ways to write a function that passes a test, I want to know if there is a reason why you chose the approach you used.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which voice recorder will best capture my parents' oral history? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/askjack/2013/mar/21/which-voice-recorder-capture-parents-history?commentpage=1 <comment><USER2> Other things that help: Begin with 5 seconds of silence then state the date, time, and location of the recording. End with some silence if possible as well. The silence can be used to aid noise reduction if post-processing is desired.</comment>


At the Mars conference, Jeff Bezos Hosted Roboticists, Astronauts and more - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/technology/at-mars-jeff-bezos-hosted-roboticists-astronauts-other-brainiacs-and-me.html <comment><USER2> Sounds like a part publicity (NYT was invited), part employment fair for the Bezos' ventures. He can talk to the candidates, observe how they behave, and at the same time intrigue them with the prospects of working for him.

Amazingly, the article does not mention what the presentations were about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this an article or the outline of an upcoming Silicon Valley episode? It's hard to tell.

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds pretty similar to SciFoo, which is an annual unconference inspired by FooCamp. SciFoo is held at Google, and refers to the attendees as "campers". It often has cool science demos, telescope parties, etc. I would guess MARS was influenced by SciFoo and FooCamp and probably even has an overlap in the attendees.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is just like a SciFoo (well, not the cigars bit)! And in fact I submitted it under a title along the lines of "Bezos' private unconference" but the title was edited -- perhaps "unconference" is not a familiar term?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We had a beer pong robot at our party first!

But more seriously this makes me wonder about collaborations between Blue and Rocket Lab or between Amazon Robotics and Boston Dynamics. The first is currently independent and the later is under the Softbank umbrella.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is cool but on some level this pisses me off. What is this story about, really? Is it a quick recap of when a bunch of elites gathered and lived in luxury for a bit? The bit about free booze flowing and attendees smoking high end cigars triggered something in me that I'm not sure I understand fully. It feels like Bezos just wanted to host a cool party so that other people that he consider cool will think he's cool.

<comment><USER7> >triggered something in me that I'm not sure I understand fully.

I think that feeling is called jealousy.

<comment><USER8> I think you mean envy.

<comment><USER9> To explain why you're right:

Envy = You have that thing and I want that thing.

Jealousy = I have this thing and I want you not to have this thing.

<comment><USER7> I was getting ready to have my mind blown, but now I'm just confused:

"jealous: feeling or showing an envious resentment of someone or their achievements, possessions, or perceived advantages."

"Synonyms: envy, covetousness"

<comment><USER10> Jealousy is generally related to human feelings. "feeling or showing a resentful suspicion that one's partner is attracted to or involved with someone else."

It is mostly incorrectly used by people to depict envy. Also it became also a cool factor. "Your trip to Jamaica makes me jealous". Huh ? Envy is about "a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck."

So you are actually envious. So stop being resentful at someone's luck or connections :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Writing A Bootloader - <AUTHOR> http://evenchick.com/articles/writing-a-bootloader/

<comment><AUTHOR> Bootloaders are pretty ubiquitous in embedded systems today; just about every device with a microcontroller runs one. I'm writing one to learn about them and support specific protocols. This is a first working prototype of a bootloader, but it does explain how they work and what they do.</comment>


Stack Overflow Is Cruel and Lazy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@josephmeirrubin/stack-overflow-is-cruel-and-lazy-426be2d5d661 <comment><USER2> Then when you do the opposite of whats mentioned in the article, and put together a long, detailed, with failed attempt examples, question you don't get answers because its too much to read.

The middle ground is an incredibly thin line that moves arbitrarily depending on who is around with enough reputation points to close it.

</comment><comment> a-fried-egg You can't even as questions as if you're a newbie struggling to learn something new. Everything is set so that you already need to be a SME out-of- the-box and they don't provide good resources for you to get to that level.</comment>


Robert Zubrin answers "why should we go to Mars?" in the most eloquent way - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKQSijn9FBs&t=49m16s <comment><USER2> The three reasons are 1) it's where the science is, 2) it's where the challenge is, and 3) it's where the future is.

This is further described as 1) if we find fossils, or don't find fossils, then it helps us understand abiogenesis, and if we drill and find life then we can understand biology better, 2) it's a "bracing challenge for our society" that will drive a new generation of scientists, engineers, and doctors, and 3) we need new branches of humanity on Mars, just like the European settlement of the Americas.

He does not (in that short clip) explain why _humans_ need to be on Mars to do the science.</comment>


Improvements in Firebug 1.2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.railsjedi.com/posts/24-Firebug-1-2-Excitement

<comment><USER2> Still in alpha, but beta1 seems to be around the corner: <http://www.getfirebug.com/blog/2008/03/18/27/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't think it could get any better.. but "open with editor" is awesome.</comment>


The Connection Between Wi-Fi and Illness is Real - <AUTHOR> http://preventdisease.com/news/12/031112_The-Connection-Between-Wi-Fi-Technology-And-Illness-is-Real.shtml

<comment><USER2> PSA - Do not waste your time by clicking on the link.

There is zero emperical data that suggests Wi-Fi causes illness. The whole article is nothing more than FUD. The site also published an aritcle suggesting that vaccines are useless.

<comment><AUTHOR> When it comes to health I am generally a reverse skeptic when it comes to interference and tampering - prove that it does no harm first rather than how great it is.

Anyhow, at bottom of article is link to another article (Electromagnetic Radiation From Laptops and Wireless Devices Nuke Sperm in Proximity) [http://preventdisease.com/news/11/113011_Electromagnetic- Rad...](http://preventdisease.com/news/11/113011_Electromagnetic-Radiation- From-Laptops-and-Wireless-Devices-Nuke-Sperm-in-Proximity.shtml) which references: [http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(11)02678-1/abstr...](http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282\(11\)02678-1/abstract)

<comment><USER3> "One sperm aliquot (experimental) from each patient was exposed to an internet-connected laptop by Wi-Fi for 4 hours, whereas the second aliquot (unexposed) was used as control, incubated under identical conditions without being exposed to the laptop." I'm no scientist, but this just screams "too many factors" - IIRC other studies have shown a link between offline laptop use (this was sometime in early 200x IIRC, before ubiquitous WiFi) and decreased sperm motility due to the higher temperature; this is an interesting point for further research, but using this as "proof" that "EM nukes sperm" [note the clever "nuclear" insinuation] is, uh, not very convincing. (I don't see this SIG complaining about wireless analog phones, microwave ovens, or other established 2.4 GHz technology. Is there an agenda? Those "EM prevention devices" ads linked at the top perhaps?)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're emf sensitive, you don't need any scientific study to tell you electrosmog is real, unpleasant, and likely (highly?) damaging. Wi-fi, cordless phones, walk-through and handheld security x-rays and cell phones can all be felt. I've heard of documented incidences of cancers near powerlines, especially of breast cancers of women sleeping on coiled beds near those lines. Why is any of this a surprise? your iPhone is a health hazard.

<comment><USER3> It may be _possible_ that EMF sensitivity is a medical condition. If that happens to become accepted however, I for one would like to have some actual data on that (what EM frequencies, power, exposure time, who is most at risk, etc.) instead of a 'ban everything, btw we sell a miracle protection' style fearmongering. 'I have heard things' are anecdota, not data - I have heard five impossible things before the breakfast, doesn't necessarily mean they're true or false.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, my testicles hurt last time I used my laptop's wifi device close up rather than using an external one on a usb extension cable (and on multiple occasions.) I consider emf-sensitivity to be a side-effect of being healthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> All the article says is "cell phone electromagnetic signal may be harmful in prolonged exposure, Wi-Fi is a similar type of signal, so it's also harmful [note the not-so-subtle shift there]; there is no evidence to support our thesis, so naturally we conclude that OH NOES TEH SKY IS FALLING11!1!!!" Pure FUD opinion piece.</comment>


Prosecutors say California utility PG&E could face murder charges for wildfires - <AUTHOR> https://www.thisisinsider.com/california-utility-company-pge-could-face-charges-for-wildfires-2018-12 <comment><USER2> Consider the following scenarios:

1\. If an unincorporated person built and sold you a watch that turned out to keep time very inaccurately, you could get your money back and maybe get some civil damages.

2\. If an unincorporated person used your payment info to take money from you monthly without your knowledge, they would lose their ability to charge anybody money and likely go to prison for fraud.

3\. If an incorporated person sold you a digital watch that was likely to electrocute you and continued to sell it after people were shocked to death, that person would certainly see prison time.

\---

But in a megacorp now, it seems scenarios 2 and 3 are penalised only by fines of a fraction of the amount of money they made from their very bad behavior. Criminal charges should be the standard in many cases where they are not.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about this particular case.

</comment><comment><USER3> PG&E intended to kill?</comment>


How to Pair Program - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dickeyxxx/how-to-pair-program-d6741077e513

<comment><USER2> I haven't had much exposure to pair programming, but it's really important to remember that it's ok to ask for control! Both team members should feel open to request and give way access as you go along.</comment>


Sivers/Ferriss interview that will make you think - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1196-siversferriss-interview-that-will-make-you-think <comment><USER2> There are so _many_ gold specks in this interview. Here's some about blog/marketing

"If you go to South by Southwest and just ask questions, after a while people are like, "At least this guy's honest about not knowing certain things." Then eventually they'll say, "Who are you again? What do you do?" And I'll say, "Oh, I'm writing a book." They say, "OK, what's it about?" Da da da da da. Bump into them three times and they'll say, "Hey if you want you can send me a copy of your book." This absolutely works very, very well. Much better than doing the usual, "Hey, I've done this, I've done that. Let me send you a book. It would be awesome if you could review it on your blog. Yeah thanks."

"So you use marketing to acquire customers, and product to keep customers. You need to use those two in tandem. You need to learn how to sell around your product. This is particularly true with bloggers. It's true with producers at Oprah. It's true with people that get inundated with sales pitches. You need to learn how to sell around your product...

If your product is your music, how can you sell around it so that you avoid the aversion people have to hearing, "Buy my shit, buy my shit, buy my shit!"? The way you avoid that is to have an interesting story to tell."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to link to the interview directly but it's quite long and this link gives you enough if you want more.</comment>


How real-time deepfakes trick your brain to think that you are somebody else - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/how-real-time-deepfakes-trick-your-brain-to-think-that-you-are-somebody-else-c5d44b69a718 <comment><USER2> This $20/hr beauty booth seems like a horrifying way to exploit people's insecurity for profit.

Then again, .ai is a pretty expensive TLD. Somebody's gotta pay the bills.

<comment><USER3> The main costs are most likely hosting / processing costs to do the "deepfaking".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Monetization strategy for my open source projects? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Hacker News,
I have two really cool projects that I want to open source.
First one is called Baraka and its a Python framework for generating Objective C code.You can generate Objective C classes by writing their templates in Python. Its very useful as some vanilla code needs to be written in every app and using Baraka you can auto-generate most of your vanilla code.
Second one is a re-implementation of Facebook for iPhone and I would like to open source it and call it OpenBook.It basically uses the facebook graph api and has most of the functionality the facebook for iPhone has.
Now I want to do this for the following reasons.
1) They have been rotting in my private repos for quite some time now and I would rather have them benefitting some other hacker than rot there.I also want to give back to OS.
2) I would like to promote my free hacker news app for iphones and ipads. (Check it out at itunes.apple.com/us/app/hackernode/id473882597)
3) If possible I would like to make some money :)
Now can you please share your thoughts on how I can accomplish goal 3 and also what license I should use and why?
OpenBook will most likely be free but how do I protect myself against sleazy copycats who will publish a dozen paid clones of OpenBook on the app store the next day? <comment><USER2> Commenting mostly because you asked me to on Twitter:

1) The market value of a social network with 0 users is 0. This would be true if you were at 100% feature-parity with Facebook. You're not.

2) There are a couple of ways to make money with OSS. I strongly suggest moving away from the consumer Internet onto the producer Internet with your OSS endeavors if you want to make money. This gives you a lot of attractive options, such as a) solving the problems of companies which otherwise would have to pay $20k per month per engineer to solve those problems and then b) selling them consulting services priced with regards to the value you will create for their businesses.

For example, I have OSS A/B testing software. That fact plus a history of publishing regarding A/B testing and achieving results with it makes me pretty darn useful to other software companies. I do occasional consulting on how to implement A/B testing at software companies, generally less on the code side and more on the "What should we test? How should we test it? Can you get us started?" side and price that service appropriately, with a salespitch sounding something like "So what would a 5% lift in your conversions at this point in the funnel do for your business? Cool. I think my project rate will be only a fraction of that, and my clients get 5% lifts all the time."

3) Code isn't valuable per se. Solving problems is valuable. To solve problems with code, you will often have to market that code directly to people who have the problems your code will solve. Engineers often think that the act of uploading code to Github will make magical things happen for them. They are sorely mistaken.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for responding.

I would like to clarify that OpenBook is not a new social network.It just shows a person's facebook feed and pics like the official app.Call it a facebook for iphone clone if you will.

<comment><USER2> Ah, my mistake. OK, back to the question: who does this code solve a problem for? Facebook already has an app to do this and it is highly likely that theirs is superior to yours. Additionally, folks don't pay THEM for it, either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its true that it doesnt really solve anything.I just made it last year to see if I can. (Actually I built HackerNode from the same code which does solve a problem for folks trying to read HN on iOS devices)

But now I am thinking if I open source it then other people can contribute and perhaps make it better than the official app.

Think firefox for facebook iphone apps.

<comment><USER3> So if it isn't solving a problem, why would it be useful to anyone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually it is solving some problems.It enables you to read your facebook feed and friends feeds ,profiles and their photos etc etc.

Its just that facebook for iphone is also solving those problems and some extra ones too.

With the support of the open source community it could solve so many other novel problems and even solve the existing ones better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> make your HN app better than other HN apps and charge for it - add some features like "Don't show posts about x" and "Hide stories after reading". Offline capabilities

If you already have these features, promote them.</comment>


Showing Off to the Universe: Beacons for the Afterlife of Our Civilization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-universe-beacons-for-the-afterlife-of-our-civilization/ <comment><USER2> I really like the subtle emphasis on traditional engineering, whereby we tend to use the simplest methods to produce something predictable, and can therefore recognize it as "unnatural". It ignites the imagination to think of what an unpredictable, "natural" engineering scheme may produce for us in terms of beauty or unexpected utility. For example, I always thought it best to learn outdoors and that 90-degree angles hinder me, they make me anxious and tense. What about a classroom with smooth, round edges, walls of varying but somehow synergistic colors schemes, and beams of varying lengths, textures, and widths, like what you'd see in a natural setting? All precisely calculated and predictable, but the effect would be abstractly beautiful rather than concretely unexpected.

When I was a kid I lived on a street with a hill and field and some very large deciduous trees growing out back. There was a windstorm in summer that broke off entire limbs from these trees which collected in a loose pile by the trunks. The branches fell in such a way that you could go inside the pile, like a little hut. The neighborhood kids and I moved some around and made a more secure version, but the base structure was the same. It inspired us greatly, I think we slept out there for two days.

<comment><USER3> You might be interested in the architecture of Antoni Gaudí, who wasn't very keen on rectangles. In particular, your description of the pile hut makes me think of the crypt of the church of the Colonia Güell, which is a weird, sinuous space supported by irregular columns. it's difficult to take good photos of, but here are two of my best:

[https://imgur.com/a/FRwo9](https://imgur.com/a/FRwo9)

You can probably search up a few videos of the interior, which might give you a better impression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So only a little off topic, but does anyone here use the Wolfram language and Mathematica for research and common coding tasks? I've been pleasantly surprised so far with the depth of the language (the import statement is a single unified way to import everything from CSV, text, excel files, mathematical optimization (.mps) files, graphviz dot files...etc). I'm just starting to use it and the fact that you can wrap a oneliner in a single command to turn it into an interactive widget with a slider, or convert it to C code, JIT it, or run it in parallel or on a GPU is crazily well integrated. I love python (open source and free instead of proprietary and expensive), but in Python every one of those things is a separate library if it exists. I've always known about Cython/Jython/PyPy, but that requires a lot more effort to utilize in the same way.

<comment><USER5> Wolfram Alpha [1] is another tool from them that's simply phenomenal for a multitude of purposes, including research. It's what I'd really like to see in a search eventually. It tries to actually directly deliver answers instead of correlating searches to a prioritized list of websites which is slowly degenerating search into 'search trendy websites by keyword.' For instance search google for "price of google stock in 2009", and then do the same search on Wolfram Alpha.

As that project evolves, it could eventually be the sort of searchable knowledge database that would render current search obsolete. Google itself could be a literal query of 'list high traffic SEO'd sites that mention [search term]'. Who actually wants that result other than the sites in question, ...and the companies that profit from their advertising, is beyond me.

[1] - [https://www.wolframalpha.com/](https://www.wolframalpha.com/)

<comment><USER4> Yea I used it a bit in college. It is pretty neat when it has the information you need, but a lot of people are using proprietary information not on the public wolfram alpha cloud. So Alpha is a little gimmicky to me although great for helping with homework.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >>Should we think of this "piscifact" as some great achievement of puffer fish civilization, that should be celebrated throughout the solar system?

Well I for one am very proud of that little pufferfish and wish him the best and would definitely put it on the fridge if iwashis mother.

(It's a thing male pufferfish do to attract a mate, I'm not just using 'him' as generic pronoun, also pufferfish are adorable and super cool and you should fall down the Wikipedia hole if you have an hour)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's just an example, but this comment:

> _Then there are cases where it's not even clear whether something represents > a language. An example is the quipus of Peru—that presumably recorded "data" > of some kind, but that might or might not have recorded something we'd > usually call a language_

is slightly out of date: As of December, at least some khipus have been shown to exactly match with Spanish census documents!

[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/khipus-inca-empire- har...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/khipus-inca-empire-harvard- university-colonialism)

</comment><comment><USER6> So there's a dead comment pointing out the cartoonish predictably of Wolfram's self-promotion which yeah that's definitely in the article--which includes at least two extended talks about cellular automata for example followed by short dismissals of them for the purpose-- however having hate-read a lot of Wolfram's articles: this one actually grapples with the topic where most of his articles are simply "Mathematica is the solution".

</comment><comment><USER8> > There've been other messages sent, including a Doritos ad, a Beatles song, > some Craigslist pages and a plant gene sequence—as well as some arguably > downright embarrassing "artworks".

He seems to refer to:

"Joe Davis is an artist and a research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the mid-1980s, he became concerned that no image of humans had been sent into space representing the details of human genitals or reproduction. So he led a project to transmit the sounds of vaginal contractions towards neighbouring star systems. To do so, he recorded the vaginal contractions of ballet dancers."

There's nothing "downright embarrassing" in sending these sounds, and sending them isn't conceptually different than sending all other "samples" mentioned in the whole article.

It just tells something about Stephen Wolfram (and others who share his evaluation of that).

</comment><comment><USER9> Take a coherent ray of light, shine it with Morse code encoded information on the green zone of a star systems predicted planets position, ahead of time. Repeat with a realistic rhythm of generations.

The best beacon is a automated light house.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hacker News Community, 4 out of 8 comments as it stand is basically a longer version of "Stephen Wolfram is a narcissist".

This is pretty poor form, if not for the fact that it is a cliché critique, because it fails to consider that Stephen is a businessman and it is natural to promote his work and businesses by extension.

<comment><USER11> I count only 2 such comments; one already dead, and the other I just flagged. I'm for (and unilaterally supporting) site-wide ban for the "Wolfram narcissist" comments, as it's a tired cliché and detracts from the good points made by the author.</comment></comment>


Microsoft breaks HotMail for Linux users - <AUTHOR> http://linux-watch.com/news/NS6023147333.html

<comment><USER2> The Hotmail team are sniffing based on firefox version but if sniffing must be done, it should be done by gecko version instead which will then take the cross section of browsers. It goes to show the kind of uproar and community excluded when sniffing is done wrong.

</comment><comment><USER2> The article is also a little bit of flamebait when it says hotmail is in part run on Linux. All parts of Hotmail run in Windows Server. They use Akamai for caching static files such as images - as do many Microsoft services. Akamai reports they use Linux though.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was just pointless IceWeasel bullshit.

<comment><USER4> It indicates that someone at Hotmail was using User-Agent sniffing to determine when to suggest browser upgrades.

Which is a fundamentally stupid thing to do.

<comment><USER3> Changing the User-Agent string, pointlessly removing identifying markers, that's not "fundamentally stupid"?

<comment><USER4> You do know that most browsers let you change the User-Agent string to whatever you like?

This won't keep out IceWeasel users who actually understand the machine they are operating.

And motivations that you don't understand are not necessarily stupid. If you don't understand why it was important enough to the debian core team to bother with the effort of maintaining a forked version version of the browser; you are not able to comment intelligently on the topic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Critique my startup - swagapalooza - <AUTHOR> http://www.swagapalooza.com

<comment><AUTHOR> About the site: I realize that it's not immediately obvious what makes this a startup as opposed to a conference, but ignoring the business model I'd like some feedback on the copy and design of the site. Is it clear what the event is all about? Does the site make you want to come?

My emacs is open so if I get specific suggestions of things that can be improved there is a good chance it will happen.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is probably not what you're looking for - but I would suggest that you rethink the name of your site. It's too much of a mouthful -- too many syllables.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, although it's pretty much set in stone at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try linking to the blogs of attendees -- you have pretty spectacular pagerank right now, so they'd be into it.</comment>