Why China will beat Silicon Valley at turning AI algorithms into businesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/china-beat-silicon-valley-turning-ai-algorithms-sustainable-businesses/ <comment><USER2> can you include a link to these articles that is not blocked to non- subscribers?</comment>


New JavaScript test library - <AUTHOR> http://sazeracjs.com/ <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Even moderate drinking can damage the brain, claim researchers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/06/even-moderate-drinking-can-damage-the-brain-claim-researchers <comment><USER3> It will be ignored. There is so much investment - financial and emotional - <USER2> the alcohol industry, that this study will be smeared, discredited, and buried, within months.</comment>


Node.js HTTP Server Security Vulnerability: Please Upgrade To 0.6.17 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodejs.org/2012/05/07/http-server-security-vulnerability-please-upgrade-to-0-6-17/ <comment><USER2> This looks more or less like the same bug that hit nginx (perhaps unsurprisingly? doesn't Node borrow nginx's HTTP parsing code?).

It's a bad bug; if you haven't updated nginx to get the patch, you should do it. The public writeups don't do it justice.

<comment><USER3> node.js doesn't share any code with nginx

<comment><USER4> That's not quite true. The http-parser library has some bits lifted from nginx. Node itself, however, does not, and the bug is not quite the same as the nginx bug (though they do have a lot of words in common: attacker, request, carefully-crafted, etc. ;P

<comment><USER2> The impact of the bug is the same, and it's an idiosyncratic kind of memory corruption bug, which is why I thought the original flaw might have been inherited. Thanks for clearing it up.

<comment><USER5> s/corruption/information leak

<comment><USER2> To my mind the exact same class of bugs, but you're not wrong to clarify. It's a particularly bad breed of "disclosure".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> since there are two kinds of size (size | size_), i wonder if longer, more explicit, names would have helped prevent this bug.

<comment><USER6> size_ is an amazingly terrible variable name, especially in a scope that also contains size. It's a little bit surprising to me that an open source project with node's visibility has code written that way.

<comment><USER7> What an odd belief, that quality of variable name selection scales with open- source project visibility! I would have thought it would scale with the judgement of active committers.

Another odd belief is that criticizing a variable name that occurs fairly deep in the bowels of an open-source project that you are not actively involved with would carry any weight. Do you know what the code conventions are around this project? Whether the underscore has some agreed-upon significance?

It's not that I'm against griping, I'm just against griping without sufficient context. It doesn't add to the conversation.

<comment><USER8> I think the grandparent's gripe is both valid and contributes to the conversation: it helps remind us that when people without institutional knowledge are encouraged to get up to speed and contribute to a project (i.e. the whole idea of "community open source"), verbose and logical variable names are valuable.

Asserting that size_ is always an objectively terrible name is difficult, as yes, there might be some sort of convention around underscores. However, I have trouble disputing that verbose, plain-English, logical variable names help enhance code quality and reduce barriers to contribution.

I'd certainly feel much more comfortable getting up to speed with and contributing to a code base which used more verbose and logical names than say, size_.

<comment><USER5> > I have trouble disputing that verbose, plain-English, logical variable names > help enhance code quality and reduce barriers to contribution

This was the entirety of my point, but said more articulately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am trying to reproduce this problem with <https://gist.github.com/2628868> on node 0.6.8 and get the same result as with node 0.6.17. I use nvm to switch between node versions. Has anyone been able to reproduce the bug? Thanks.

<comment><USER4> I was only able to reproduce it sporadically. The test is a bit fiddly with the timing in the client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has there ever actually been a recorded case where someone has used this against a Node.js webserver or application? And if so, what did they accomplish?

<comment><USER4> The only example of this exploit that I'm aware of is the script that Matthew sent me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> C's legacy keeps spreading.

<comment><USER12> Pointer arithmetic, what could go wrong?</comment></comment>


Epiphany-V: A 1024-core 64-bit RISC processor - <AUTHOR> https://www.parallella.org/2016/10/05/epiphany-v-a-1024-core-64-bit-risc-processor/? <comment><USER2> This is fascinating:

The Epiphany-V was designed using a completely automated flow to translate Verilog RTL source code to a tapeout ready GDS, demonstrating the feasibility of a 16nm "silicon compiler". The amount of open source code in the chip implementation flow should be close to 100% but we were forbidden by our EDA vendor to release the code. All non-proprietary RTL code was developed and released continuously throughout the project as part of the "OH!" open source hardware library.[20] The Epiphany-V likely represents the first example of a commercial project using a transparent development model pre-tapeout.

<comment><USER3> RTL = Register Transfer Logic, and EDA = Electronic Design Automation, for anyone else who was curious. I don't know what GDS stands for, but context indicates it's the actual physical description that's used to make the part.

But I'm confused about what part of this is open and not open. Do they mean that they imported their Verilog into a proprietary tool, which generates the design? That doesn't make it open source in practice.

<comment><USER4> HW design is not that different from SW design. Comp table below:

HW SW Verilog --> C/Java/etc EDA --> GCC/LLVM GDS --> Binary (elf)

The GDS is completely tied up in NDAs due to the foundry. The EDA combines/translates open source code with proprietary blobs to produce a "super secret" GDS binary blob that gets sent to the foundry for manufacturing.

<comment><USER5> > HW design is not that different from SW design.

Shouldn't be. But it is.

<comment><USER6> Except the economics are vastly different. The complexity and cost of manufacturing, the computationally intensive cost of simulation and various checks and optimizations (be it clock timing or mask optimizations to etch features _that are smaller than the wavelength used to etch them_ ), all mean that you can't just "compile and publish", and turnaround times are months, not hours.

And there are no open-source toolchains for any of this. It's a student project to implement a SW compiler, why isn't it to implement an RTL compiler?

<comment><USER7> Nothing about the time frames or even production costs justify the disparity in how proprietary and closed hardware manufacturing is. For the exact reason hardware and software are different open sourcing your patterning toolchain has nothing to do with your competitive advantage in actually having built foundries with functioning lithography. The cost is in the later, the former is just abuse of position for power over the end user.

If anything, it hurts your bottom line. You would probably get more third party interest in having print outs of custom hardware if the toolchains were more open. It is not a question of price, its a question of exposure.

I'm not even talking about the 12-20nm stuff. It is still crazy expensive because the hardware and software R&D was huge and these companies are hoarding their toys like preschoolers because of a prisoners dilemma in regards to competitive advantage. But older 45-100nm plants are often still in use but are still just as inaccessible as ever to most hobbyist hardware enthusiasts.

<comment><USER6> _> The cost is in the latter, the former is just abuse of position for power over the end user._

Exactly, hence my question about "student projects" which is really about why aren't there more OSS projects that challenge this. Is it because of the lack of platforms to experiment on, or the inherent difficulty of the task?

<comment><USER8> Thinking about this, yeah it'd be amazing to e.g. Have a community-driven forum with some DIY CPU designs (lisp machines!) with an affordable (let's say under $1k per chip) way to get them made. We'll probably get there eventually, but I'm not aware of where progress on this front is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am here, if anyone has questions. AMA! Andreas

<comment><USER9> What will be cost estimate for a PCI-e board ? Chip ? if this thing touches consumer hands.

Are you planning any production samples for research / universities / DARPA ?

<comment><USER4> The chip is about the same size as the Apple A10, so in terms of silicon area it's in the consumer domain, but price will only come down to consumer levels if shipments get into millions of units. Big companies take a leap of faith and build a product hoping that the market will get there. Small companies get one shot at that. With University volumes and shuttles, we are talking 100x costs. So the $300 GPU PICe type boards become $10K-$30K with NRE and small scale productio folded in.

<comment><USER10> You should look into alternative financing methods.

How long is the period from needing the cash to pay for production to availability in retail, roughly?

If it's all about volume, accumulating orders over a long period using some non-reversible payment method could, perhaps, get you into millions of units. It's all about how long people are willing to wait in order to save on per- chip unit costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Two things immediately jump out

        Custom ISA extensions for deep learning, communication, and cryptography
        DARPA/MTO
        autonomous drones cognitive radio

The radar geeks are gonna love to get their hands on ~250GFLOP, 4watt processor.

<comment><USER12> I have a naive question based in my dreams:

Is possible to design a CPU that ON-DEMAND switch between parallel and linear operation? So, if we have a 1000 cores, it switch to 10 with the linear power of 10 x 10?

In my dreams this was very usefull, but wonder how feasible clould be ;)

<comment><USER13> No.

Basically the limiting factor in most designs isn't so much arithmetic as fetches and branches. Especially cache misses. Theses are inherently linear operations - if you need to fetch from memory and then jump based on the result, for example.

Superscalar 'cheats' somewhat by spending area to keep the pipeline fed, through branch prediction and suchlike.

The nearest thing is the graphics card, which has a very large number of arithmetic units but less flow control, so you can run the same subroutine on lots of different data in parallel.

Highly multicore chips make a different tradeoff: external memory bandwidth is _very_ limited. Ideal for video codecs etc where you can take a small chunk and chew heavily. Very bad for running random unadapted C code, Java etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did I read the specs wrong or are they claiming a 12x - 15x performance improvement over the Ivy Bridge Xeon in GFLOPS/watt? In a <2w package? [http://www.adapteva.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/hpec12_ol...](http://www.adapteva.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/hpec12_olofsson_publish.pdf)

<comment><USER15> That's not unreasonable.

<comment><USER15> I should clarify:. Presumably the parallella's RISC does away with a lot of the superscalar features of the x86 which are embedded in the xeon phi's

One way to think about it is that things like branch prediction and speculative and out of order execution are like real-time JITting of your code.

Not having that silicon can make things way more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if the Erlang/BEAM VM could take advantage of it. Erlang would be a beast. if any of the pure functional languages get running on it (for easy parallel), watch out. Nice work!

<comment><USER17> Things like Seastar[0] and Rust's zero cost futures would also make good use of many cores.

[0] [http://www.seastar-project.org/](http://www.seastar-project.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone looking for cached link for the website

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.parallella.org/2016/10/05/epiphany- v-a-1024-core-64-bit-risc-processor/)?

Related Report - [https://www.parallella.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/e5_102...](https://www.parallella.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/e5_1024core_soc.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> The linked paper mentions a 500 MHz operating frequency, as well as mentioning a completely automated RTL-to-GDS flow. 500 MHz seems extraordinarily slow for a 16nm chip - was this just an explicit decision to take whatever the tools would give you so as to minimize back-end PD work? Also, given the performance target (high flops/w), how much effort did you spend on power optimization?

<comment><USER4> Paper stated that 500MHz number was arbitrary (had to fill in something for people to compare to). Agree that 500MHz with 16nm FinFet is ridiculously slow. We are not disclosing actual performance numbers until silicon returns in 4-5 months. 28nm Epiphany-IV silicon ran at 800MHZ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> But can I run Erlang on it?

<comment><USER4> Hah! You thought you would get us with that one.:-) Here is the link to the Erlang OTP developed at Uppsala University for Epiphany.

[https://github.com/margnus1/otp](https://github.com/margnus1/otp)

<comment><USER20> Is this actually running Erlang processes on the epiphany cores or just erlang spawning special processes on the epiphany cores? I've seen the latter and was not impressed.

<comment><USER4> This is actually a cut down erlang otp running on the Epiphany cores. It's not ready for production, but it's interesting research. See the README.

<comment><USER20> Sweet! Though the README does not identify what is "cut down" or the status and what remains to be vetted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would anyone be interested in an Epiphany dedicated servers a la Rasberry Pi collocation ([https://www.pcextreme.com/colocation/raspberry- pi](https://www.pcextreme.com/colocation/raspberry-pi))?

I've always wanted to play with these units, but buying one doesn't make a lot of sense for me (where would I put it?). I would be super interested in making them accessible to folks.

</comment><comment><USER22> What are the benefits/advantages of choosing something like this over a traditional Arm/x86 or a GPU? My knowledge in this area is limited. :)

<comment><USER23> Best I can tell, Epiphany is designed as a co-processor, so it's not booting the OS and relies on a host (like an ARM/x86) to run the show and issue commands.

The Epiphany cores have significantly more functionality than GPU cores, so they're useful for things beyond computing FFTs and other number-crunching tasks. For example, you could map active objects one-to-one onto Epiphany cores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I read through the pdf summary and it doesn't look as if the shared memory is coherent (which would be silly anyways). But I couldn't find any discussion about synchronization support. Given the weak ordering of non-local references it seems difficult to map alot of workloads. My real guess is that I haven't seen part of the picture.

<comment><USER25> Not a hardware genius here. What does coherent memory mean?

<comment><USER26> As I understand it: If memory is coherent then all cores see the same values when they read the same location at the same time. Stated another way, the result of a write to a location by one core is available in the next instant to all other cores, or they block waiting for the new value.

<comment><USER25> Thank you all for that help. Did not see definitions elsewhere in post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What's the practical application of a chip like this?

<comment><USER4> In general it was built for math and signal processing (broad field). Within those fields, more specifically it was designed initially for real time signal processing (image analysis, communication, decryption). Turns out that makes it a pretty good fit for other things as well (like neural nets..). Here is the publication list showing some of the apps. (for later, server is flooded now): [http://parallella.org/publications](http://parallella.org/publications)

<comment><USER28> Google cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gpEOQO...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gpEOQOZcORgJ:https://www.parallella.org/publications/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> PAPER: [https://www.parallella.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/e5_102...](https://www.parallella.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/e5_1024core_soc.pdf)

(access until we resolve the hosting issues, wordpress completely hosed...)

</comment><comment><USER29> Prepend cache: to the URL to view Google's` cached version of this website.

<comment><USER30> For the lazy - [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.parallella.org%2F2016%2F10%2F05%2Fepiphany- v-a-1024-core-64-bit-risc- processor%2F%3F&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.parallella.org%2F2016%2F10%2F05%2Fepiphany- v-a-1024-core-64-bit-risc- processor%2F%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.5527j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow from Kickstart to DARPA funding! How did I miss that?

<comment><USER32> They went surprisingly silent after the KS boards. I falsely assumed they left the business or went employee. Delightful surprised they found ways to keep searching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For those interested, Andreas did an interview on the Amp hour a while ago. [http://www.theamphour.com/254-an-interview-with-andreas- olof...](http://www.theamphour.com/254-an-interview-with-andreas-olofsson- adatevas-ampliative-abacus/)

Congrats to everyone at adapteva. I remember talking to a couple of researchers who were using the prototype 64 core epiphany processor who seemed excited at how it could scale. I wonder how excited they'd be about this.

</comment><comment><USER34> 1024 64-bit cores? Cool. Very impressive.

64 MB on-chip memory? For 1024 cores? That's 64 K per core. That seems rather inadequate... though for some applications, it will be plenty.

<comment><USER4> You need think of it as aggregate memory, not as per core memory to use if effectively. Are you aware of a chip with more than 64MB of on chip RAM?

<comment><USER35> The latest generations of IBM Power processors have >64MB L3 caches on chip. The Power 7+ has 80MB per chip, the 12 core Power 8 96MB, according to Wikipedia the Power 9 will have 120MB.

<comment><USER4> Good data! That puts e5 in good company with some big-iron heavies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there a mirror anywhere?

<comment><USER37> [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XCsT2e...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XCsT2efmgU0J:https://www.parallella.org/2016/10/05/epiphany- v-a-1024-core-64-bit-risc-processor/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)

This PDF is a great technical overview as well: [https://www.parallella.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/e5_102...](https://www.parallella.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/e5_1024core_soc.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So each processor has 64KB of local memory and network connections to its neighbors?

The NCube and the Cell went down that road. It didn't go well. Not enough memory per CPU. As a general purpose architecture, this class of machines is very tough to program. For a special purpose application such as deep learning, though, this has real potential.

</comment><comment><USER39>
        Cray had always resisted the massively parallel solution to high-speed computing, offering a variety of reasons that it would never work as well as one very fast processor. He famously quipped "If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use: Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"

I cannot see how this thing can be programmed efficiently (to at least 70% of computing capacity, as most vector machines can be programmed for).

</comment><comment><USER40> The ISA is epiphany or risc-v?

<comment><USER41> It's backward compatible with Epiphany-III...so it's still Epiphany ISA with new instructions.

<comment><USER40> I have read it but in the past he wrote a blog post that risc-v will be used as isa in future products.So maybe 64 bit risc-v with backwards compatibility with epiphane?(it sounds a bit strange)

<comment><USER42> The Epiphany core is a co-processor, and the "main" processor is a couple of ARM cores to run Linux/other.

Maybe in the future they will offer boards with Risc-V main processors, and Epiphany co-processors.

I'm not sure how feasible 1024 Risc-V cores would be (although it sounds awesome). Epiphany cores were designed for this sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> Agree, but people have all kinds of pre-conceived notions about co-processors so let's clarify some things: e5 can't self-boot, doesn't have virtual memory management, and doesn't have hardware caching, but otherwise they are "real" cores. Each RISC core can run a lightweight runtime/scheduler/OS and be a host.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, but for a very specialized market, somewhere in the corner between GPU and FPGA. Closest existing offer might be Tilera?

Site is currently slashdotted so I can't comment on details like how much DRAM bandwidth you might actually have.

<comment><USER43> Tilera is what I thought of, too. It's actually where I'm getting my ideas of applications for Epiphany-V. They did a lot of the early proving work on architectures like this. Example: first 100Gbps NIDS I saw used a few Tilera chips to do that.

<comment><USER44> Kind of off topic, but are there any low-end/hobbyist Tilera boards? The Linux kernel has support for it. I've always thought you could stress multi-threaded code in interesting ways by running it on tons of cores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Good to see this here! I actually wrote a paper analyzing this architecture for one of my bachelor classes, been a few years but: [http://simonwillshire.com/papers/efficient- parallelism/](http://simonwillshire.com/papers/efficient-parallelism/)

</comment><comment><USER46> What I don't understand with computer chips, is how really relevant the FLOPS unit is, because in most situations, what limits computation speed is always the memory speed, not the FLOPS.

So for example a big L2 or L3 cache will make a CPU faster, but I don't know if a parallel task is always faster on a massively parallel architecture, and if so, how can I understand why it is the case? It seems to me that massively parallel architectures are just distributing the memory throughput in a more intelligent way.

<comment><USER4> You have to look at all the numbers (I/O, on-chip memory, flops, threads) and see if the architecture fits your problem. Some algorithms like matrix matrix multiplication are FLOPS bounds. It's rare to see a HPC architecture (don't know if there is one?) that can't reach close to the theoretical flops with matrix matrix multiplication. Parallel architectures and parallel algorithm development go hand in hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The website is erroring out for me, so I wonder what the motherboard situation will be like for this chip. It would be really nice to be able to buy and ARM like we can buy an x86.

</comment><comment><USER48> Truly inspirational in showing what largely one person can do even in these times of huge fabs, expensive masks, and difficult, modern design rules

[http://meanderful.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/adapteva-tapes- out...](http://meanderful.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/adapteva-tapes-out- epiphany-v-1024-core.html)

</comment><comment><USER49> The website is down. Maybe a good opportunity to demonstrate the scalability improvement with such 1024-core processor?

</comment><comment> bra-ket how do I connect external RAM to it, and what would be the cpu-to-memory bandwidth in that case

<comment><USER4> External RAM, up to 1 Petabyte would be connected through an external FPGA, containing an epiphany link, some glue logic, and a memory controller.

<comment><USER21> From my understanding the Zynq's memory controller can only handle ~4GB of memory. Am I missing something? Is there a way to connect more than 4GB -- if so, I'd be very interested.

<comment><USER4> Larger FPGA support 64-bits with custom memory controllers.

<comment><USER21> With the new chip, is there a memory controller on the board, or will you still need the FPGA's?

Even with the new MPSoC, I think the memory controller is limited to 8GB.

Do you know what the most efficient cost / GB confit is for a Epiphany + memory controller or FPGA

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> that's going to provide some interesting race conditions for sure :D

</comment><comment><USER51> What is the possible applications? i.e how to potentially make use of all the cores? Is it more like GPU programming?

</comment><comment><USER52> Tying in to earlier discussion on C ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12642467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12642467)), it's interesting to imagine what a better programming model for a chip like this would look like. I know about the usual CSP / message passing stuff, and a bit about HPC languages like SISAL and SAC. Anyone have links to more modern stuff?

</comment><comment><USER53> Wish I was still working on genetic programming and digital artificial life. This would be barrels of fun.

</comment><comment><USER54> Seems like this url is really popular,I get this connection error:

Error establishing a database connection

<comment><USER55> Mirror: [http://archive.is/Zj9hG](http://archive.is/Zj9hG)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56>
      Error establishing a database connection

Overload thru request storm?

</comment><comment><USER57> Any chance of adding 16-bit floating point support in Epiphany-VI?

</comment><comment><USER58> Error establishing a database connection

</comment><comment><USER59> 403 error now for the entire site.

</comment><comment><USER60> Page is overwhelmed.

Can anyone provide a summary?

</comment><comment><USER61> too bad the entire site is returning a 500 error now

<comment><USER62> i can't see anything on the site. is this for sale or just a proposed architecture? amazon seems only to be selling your 16-core device. was there a 64-core one? can't access your product offering.

<comment><USER63> The tapeout is apparently at the foundry and they are expecting chips back in 4-5 months. (I gathered this info from a google cache of their blog)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I think my thoughts on the parallella stuff still hold:

[http://41j.com/blog/2012/10/my-take-on-the-adapteva- parallel...](http://41j.com/blog/2012/10/my-take-on-the-adapteva-parallella/)

Basically this is a recurring theme in computing, but the whole custom massively parallel thing rarely works out.</comment>


Plagiarism to the Max v3 - <AUTHOR> http://definitivunwichtig.blogspot.de/2012/03/plagiarism-to-max-v3.html

<comment><AUTHOR> hells to the yeahs</comment>


ABC trying new commercial formats - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/business/media/21adco.html?ex=1332129600&en=2d17bc1021fb2f20&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss <comment><AUTHOR> There's some great stuff in here about the problems with television advertising, the issues with transferring that advertising to the web, and some hints about some interesting market opportunities.

If you are planning on an ad-based revenue model, it would be foolish not to learn about the issues the largest ad-based entertainment venue (TV) is having.

</comment><comment><USER2> I read the whole article and still didn't see how show stopper ads would work. Does it just go straight to the ad seemingly out of nowhere? Thats the equivalent to a popup/under in the web world.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://18.104.22.168/search?q=cache:VuaNfoScr5IJ:www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2007/03/19/vh1-primes- pod-buster- format/+showstoppers+vh1&hl;=en&ct;=clnk&cd;=3≷=us&client;=firefox-a](http://126.96.36.199/search?q=cache:VuaNfoScr5IJ:www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2007/03/19/vh1-primes- pod-buster-format/+showstoppers+vh1&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

here's a google cache of a slightly better description... but still vague on the details.</comment></comment>


Warren Buffet on scheduling meetings - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1928-warren-buffet-on-scheduling-meetings <comment><USER2> This little tidbit about Buffet is hard to confirm, as Jason admits in his post. However, I can confirm something like this is common behavior in China.

I first experienced it when going to China in 2000 to meet with banks. My job was to convince them to let us modernize their software and provide Internet banking. We would have a meeting setup and present to a room of top officials. These meetings could never be confirmed until the day before. Keep in mind I had to first fly from NY to Vancouver to Hong Kong to get to Beijing with no schedule of meetings, just several that were in constant "maybe" status and no clear dates.

A typical meeting (once I cleared the previous evening's dinner meeting, also unscheduled, to be sniffed out) would be a vice-chairman, the head of IT, a few others. Then we'd go to a big lunch. If they liked what they saw, word got to the Chairman and he would join us at lunch, we'd get to know each other a bit and then if that suited him, have a meeting with him after lunch. After quite a bit of this, it became clear this was a pattern. In years to come, I learned to accept that all meetings were in flux and decided the day or only hours before. It turns out to be very effective for them in several ways. The multilayered approach allows for quick vetting before access to the decision maker. And the short scheduling approach allows them to constantly reshuffle the deck.

But, of course, as with Buffet (if indeed its true), in China, this behavior is exhibited most by those with the power to do so. The rest of society plans several days or weeks in advance.

</comment><comment><USER3> Marc Andreesen has testified that he really does this: from <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid.html> (the link is to Marc's old blog, which now appears to be inaccessible):

"Let's start with a bang: don't keep a schedule.

"He's crazy, you say!

"I'm totally serious. If you pull it off -- and in many structured jobs, you simply can't -- this simple tip alone can make a huge difference in productivity.

"By not keeping a schedule, I mean: refuse to commit to meetings, appointments, or activities at any set time in any future day.

"As a result, you can always work on whatever is most important or most interesting, at any time.

"Want to spend all day writing a research report? Do it!

"Want to spend all day coding? Do it!

"Want to spend all day at the cafe down the street reading a book on personal productivity? Do it!

"When someone emails or calls to say, "Let's meet on Tuesday at 3", the appropriate response is: "I'm not keeping a schedule for 2007, so I can't commit to that, but give me a call on Tuesday at 2:45 and if I'm available, I'll meet with you."

"Or, if it's important, say, "You know what, let's meet right now."

"Clearly this only works if you can get away with it. If you have a structured job, a structured job environment, or you're a CEO, it will be hard to pull off.

"But if you can do it, it's really liberating, and will lead to far higher productivity than almost any other tactic you can try."</comment>


Ask HN: Interesting Browser Homapages - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have an exciting or useful browser homepage? Im getting tired of the chrome standard. <comment><USER2> What about Momentum: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfkn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfknpbbblfpciffpaejjkokdgca?hl=en)</comment>


You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work - <AUTHOR> https://sandymaguire.me/blog/brilliance/ <comment><USER3> I enjoyed the article, but I think the author learned the wrong lesson from his friend's success story. Csongor says:

> Then learning the answer revealed that it's actually something that can be > fixed --- as is always the case with these things if you think about them > enough.

The author focuses on the consequent, thinking long and hard about something, but misses the antecedent, acquiring a deep understanding of a problem area.

I'd say the antecedent is as important as the consequent, if not more important. If you went to grad school you likely knew tons of brilliant people who worked long and hard on important and difficult problems and got nowhere. What they were missing was not some secret effortsauce, but that they picked a problem on which they didn't have an opening or insight into, so all their hard work was them spinning their wheels while standing still.

One thing I tell my students now is that they should always pick problems where they have something everybody else working in the same area doesn't. Like if you want to do formal verification but your background is years spent in industry as a kernel developer, you should avoid the temptation to chase the latest fad (e.g., adversarial machine learning or Spectre/Meltdown), and instead pick a poorly understood and validated module in the kernel and try to find out what you can do to make that module more secure.

<comment><USER4> Lots of people have one skill, few people have two, and only a tiny fraction ever put multiple skills to use at once.

<comment><USER5> So true. This is also the 'Dilbert Theory of Value Creation' that I have used to great profit. Scott Adams likes to say, he is not the funniest guy around but funnier than most people. At best, he'd be a mediocre comedian. He can also draw better than most but hardly a Picasso. And yet, by combining both skills he has something "rare and valuable" that has led to enormous financial success.

He also adds that it easier to do this (combining two or more skills) than it is to be the very best at one thing e.g. an NBA player--it is actually easier, statistically, to become a billionaire than it is to become an NBA player.

There are more than 2,000 billionaires worldwide but only about 480 NBA players (32 teams with roughly 15 people on the roster). And if you think about it, becoming a billionaire usually involves multiple skills (good at programming + business, bill gates. Good at research/analysis + cultivating a rare temperament that allows you to act on the insights produced by the research even when everyone around you is losing their shirt, Warren Buffett etc, etc).

Being an NBA player requires one skill at a minimum. Being tall!

<comment><USER6> > There are more than 2,000 billionaires worldwide but only about 480 NBA > players (32 teams with roughly 15 people on the roster). And if you think > about it, becoming a billionaire usually involves multiple skills (good at > programming + business, bill gates. Good at research/analysis + cultivating > a rare temperament that allows you to act on the insights produced by the > research even when everyone around you is losing their shirt, Warren Buffett > etc, etc).

That's not really true. Once you are billionaire you can stay a billionaire for decades. Meanwhile most NBA players don't have long careers, many stay in the league only for a few years. I'd expect that over 10-20 years there have been more NBA players than billionaires.

<comment><USER5> You have a point but there is also quite a bit of churn in the billionaire ranks. So if you include all that have been billionaires in the last 10 - <USER2> years you'll have many more than just 2,000. And for practical purposes, having $500 million vs. $1 billion is really the same league of wealth. So if we make the criterion $500 million my point is absolutely true! 5,000 at any given time vs 480.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A friend recounted a conversation where he was talking to one of his friends, saying he couldn't understand how these people could be so dumb. (I don't recall what "these" refers to...) His friend said, "I don't think it's that they're dumb. They just aren't curious." That was an enlightened comment. I think that is one of the elements that is needed to do brilliant things, just as Csonger says he was interested in understanding why this was "not possible".

<comment><USER8> Not even "not curious", but often just "not curious about that thing, right now".

Heck, most people understand very little about the myriad of everyday systems that keep them alive. Forget engines, computers or say, type theory. Most literally don't know where their water comes from (to any level deeper than "it comes in a pipe") or where their poo goes - and collectively that's ok because the benefit of society is that this stuff gets taken care of for us.

I think looking up now and then, scratching the surface of our own ignorance, can help specialists build empathy when communicating with others outside their field.

<comment><USER9> There is a cost to curiosity. Lack of focus. I had a real challenge in my career- I continuously ranged far afield in learning well beyond the direct subject areas of my network engineering career.

That often took away time I 'should' have spent directly researching problem areas applicable to my day job. It finally led me to separating with a company I had been with for 8 years and had a lot of close relationships with.

But what it did was put me on a path to actually use that store of knowledge. Now I'm a Network/Enterprise Architect and a key cog for my current CTO. I wasn't being used optimally previously but I also didn't make sure I was in the correct position that those skills/tendencies could be recognized and not be a hindrance. So much in life is in the framing of things- control that story, and your success is much more likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not the sine qua non one might expect. Another trait is probably even more important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference large amounts of 'meaningless' detail, trusting to later experience to give it context and meaning. A person of merely average analytical intelligence who has this trait can become an effective hacker, but a creative genius who lacks it will swiftly find himself outdistanced by people who routinely upload the contents of thick reference manuals into their brains. [During the production of the first book version of this document, for example, I learned most of the rather complex typesetting language TeX over about four working days, mainly by inhaling Knuth 's 477-page manual. My editor's flabbergasted reaction to this genuinely surprised me, because years of associating with hackers have conditioned me to consider such performances routine and to be expected. —ESR]_

[http://catb.org/jargon/html/personality.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/personality.html)

<comment><USER11> How can one learn or acquire this trait?

<comment><USER10> just start drinking from the firehose.

the trick is to convince yourself not to care about the immediate utility of what you're learning. And store pointers to data, it's lighter weight.

<comment><USER12> agree. read a lot. especially other people's source code.

<comment><USER10> read a lot, and i'd say read more or less any and all competent texts you can find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think brilliant, not-brilliant, idiot or any other judgemental terms spent on tagging someone or ourselves is just a waste of time.

The greater the effort spent on something by someone, greater is the probability of a favourable outcome to them. But it is still a probability and not a certainty because of variables involved.

<comment><USER14> As long as people work to live, there will be a pressing demand for such labels, flawed though they may be. Top organizations will always want to hire the smartest/most brilliant/non-idiotic people they can afford, for various practical definitions of these terms.

If two people seem similar in every way, but Person 1 has demonstrated that they achieve greater probability of success compared to Person 2 given comparable time investments, then you'd probably want to hire Person 1. Real life is never this cut and dried, but the principle holds.

<comment><USER13> I largely agree and work is a test environment, like any other test e.g. SAT; one who performs better is rewarded.

But there's plenty of occasions where judgements is a waste of time, like at the personal level expressed in the OP article. OP does agree that the activity is result from the ego, I don't think he/she did enough to explore the ego resulting in injustice to the colleague as whole in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> More or less the same point which Richard Hamming makes in his talk _You and Your Research_ :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw&list=PL2FF649D0C...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw&list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30&index=31#t=14s)

Except, of course, that Hamming gives a few more practical pointers.

<comment><USER15> Slightly better video and sound (from the same source material):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3msMuwqp-o&list=PLctkxgWNSR...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3msMuwqp-o&list=PLctkxgWNSR89bl7hTOS3F3wuoGj7id3Xy&index=32#t=22s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This goes along with a study I read a while back that you can do practically any job with an IQ of 120. Higher than average, but not anywhere close to genius level. With an average IQ of 100 you can still preform well in something like 80% of jobs.

Software engineers have an average IQ of 110ish so most HN readers are capable of doing almost any job. It's really about effort and things that are harder to measure like creativity

<comment><USER17> > Software engineers have an average IQ of 110ish so most HN readers are > capable of doing almost any job.

Do you have a source for this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Something I read many years ago:

There are two way to get a Ph.D. - find a problem and solve it or find a solution method and come up with a problem that the method solves.

The second way is by far the easier.

</comment><comment><USER19> Depends on what you count as "brilliant work". All of the Neuroscience PhDs at Stanford, UCSF and MIT (non-exhaustive list, just examples) I've met are at least 2 standard deviations away from average intelligence and many are 3 SDs away. Makes me think that some brilliant work requires being brilliant.

<comment><USER20> Bit of a sampling bias. "Neuroscience PhD at MIT" is a helluva qualifier.

<comment><USER21> I guess this highlights the problem, that "brilliance" is in fact subjective and relative. To some "brilliance" is a PhD at MIT, to others it is being able to do something much more mundane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This was a good article, but I'm skeptical if someone from UWaterloo can attest to being "Normal". People that came from Waterloo are pretty exceptional on average unlike normal people like me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Really good read. So true that most 'innovation' is really a lot of tedious work most people don't bother doing. That is in sharp contrast to the 'Eurika!' moment that most people think of. There may never be a eurika moment, just a bunch of small insights put together into a body of work.

<comment><USER24> I think it was Issac Asimov's quote that the most exciting phrase in science is not "Eureka!" but "Hmmm... that's funny..."

Meaning, many innovations are the result of unexpected outcomes rather than a brilliant mind setting out to prove a specific result

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not sure about that. Brilliant work is by definition brilliant. :D Although you can do pretty great things and even be very famous or very rich even if you are not smart.</comment>


The Single Rotation rule: simple and rich reversible cellular automaton (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://dmishin.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-single-rotation-rule-remarkably.html <comment><USER2> Fascinating. I notice some arguments that sound a bit like CA applications of Noether's theorem (symmetries correspond to conservation laws). For example, "as a consequence of the time-reversibility, no pattern can completely disappear", and "collision of a lightest spaceship with a static life always produces another lightest spaceship and the same static life". Could these be formulated as time-energy and position-momentum relationships?

<comment><USER3> momentum maps pretty strangely to automata, since to move more slowly you need a more complicated spaceship

<comment><USER4> Thats actually the principle behind doubly special relativity and the Feynman checkerboard.

If all fundamental particles move at C, then movement at less than C for a "macroscopic object" would have to be facilitated by internal bouncing.

You can actually get special relativity from a couple principles:

1) All fundamental particles move at C. C usually equals 1 cell per tick.

2) Energy = amount of change per unit time. Change defined as particle movement or particle interaction.

3) Complimentarity - A particle cannot interact and move at the same time.

4) Mass = amount of internal bouncing

5) Speed of an object = (internal change due to energy / total change due to energy)

Heres a CA I made based off of these concepts: [https://github.com/churchofthought/ScatterLife/blob/master/R...](https://github.com/churchofthought/ScatterLife/blob/master/README.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating. The rule reminds me of this iconoclastic tour de force from the great David Hestenes, which takes intrinsic angular momentum _seriously_ , i.e. electrons really are spinning or spiralling:

 _The Zitterbewegung Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics_ [http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/pdf/ZBW_I_QM.pdf](http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/pdf/ZBW_I_QM.pdf)

 _" The idea that the electron spin and magnetic moment are generated by a localized circulatory motion of the electron has been proposed independently by many physicists. Schroedinger's zitterbewegung (zbw) model for such motion is especially noteworthy, because it is grounded in an analysis of solutions to the Dirac equation. Surely, if the zbw is a real physical phenomena, then it tells us something fundamental about the nature of the electron..."_

</comment><comment><USER6> This is really cool! It's very interesting that the time reversible cellular automata also conserves mass. I feel like there must be a connection to Noether's theorem here; in fact I'd wager that _any_ time reversible cellular automata conserves mass..

<comment><USER7> There are a load of papers on the subject, I read a lot a couple of years ago. Some leading names: Fredkin, Margolus & Toffoli, Gerard Vichniac, Jarkko Kari, Tetsuya Hattori, Morita & Ueno, Shinji Takasue, mostly 70s and since.

I made movies that looked like sunlight reflecting on ripples in a river (I mean, looked _exactly_ ) using 2D CA based on a couple of Rudy Rucker papers, based on (I believe) _the_ original (1D) CA paper, analyzing non-linear effects on waves, modelled as a row of particles, neighbours joined with springs, sliding up and down frictionless rods.

I used this super-simple formula to approximate the wave equation: a cell's height (each cell stores a number representing height of the water) = half the sum of the 4 neighbours from the previous generation, minus the cell's height in the gen before that. i.e. C_t=(Nsum_{t-1})/2-C_{t-2}. (Note that adding C_{t-2} to both sides produces a time-symmetric equation.)

Amazing that it produced totally realistic-looking water! (I added a feature to show sunlight reflection if the 3D angle of the plane between each adjacent 4 points was in a particular small angle range)

Different conserved quantities in CAs indeed correspond to different conserved quantities in the physics. (I don't remember the details enough now to say more.)

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I'll check some of these out! Sounds like a very fun project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not make the gif a graceful fallback instead of showing modern browsers both svg + low quality gif</comment>


The start-up chronicles: Learning to listen to unpleasant truths - <AUTHOR> http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2009/12/10/the-start-up-chronicles-learning-to-listen-to-unpleasant-truths/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29 <comment><USER2> My own experience is that entrepreneurship is a character flaw. Entrepreneurship is not something that can be rationalized and easily explained away. Entrepreneurship is a deep desire to create and destroy at the same time. It requires simultaneous distain for authorities and respect for past artisans. In fact, if I thought there was a cure, I would have taken the blue pill. Therefore if one could accept entrepreneurship as what it really is, then there is a much less immediate need for acceptance and validation (except in the marketplace). The end result is that entrepreneurs would have a very different perspective on listening to unpleasant truth, that rejection is not an undesirable and unavoidable side product, but in fact part of the journey.

</comment><comment><USER3> It all else fails he can always ask the customer. Just phone the sucker up and start a discussion instead of guessing what they want.

</comment><comment><USER4> Bill Gates has said something like "Your unhappiest customers are your best sources of learning."</comment>


Pan-Assay Interference Compounds - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-assay_interference_compounds <comment><AUTHOR> Thought it's an interesting concept to keep in mind with the explosion of interest in biomedical research, and the number of articles we tend to see about compound x curing disease y in a petri dish.</comment>


Posture Affects Standing, and Not Just the Physical Kind - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/posture-affects-standing-and-not-just-the-physical-kind/?_r=0 <comment><USER2> > Many years ago, researchers showed that women who walked sluggishly with > eyes on the ground, as if carrying the weight of the world on their > shoulders, were much more likely to be mugged than those who walked briskly > and purposely with head erect.

You also look more aware with good posture. This deters attackers because they do best when they catch you off-guard. Walking sluggishly also suggests the target is tired, another good opportunity for the attacker.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr: Spine straight, shoulders back, chin up. Better for you, more comfortable, and people think more highly of you besides.

<comment><USER4> It's certainly not more comfortable than slouching or everyone would do it.

<comment><USER5> Short term no, long term yes. It's uncomfortable now because you're not used to it. As you develop the back muscles necessary for good posture, you'll feel better in the long run as it'll take pressure off your spine.

<comment><USER4> When I sit up straight my back no longer makes contact with the chair, adding much more stress. Maybe there's something wrong with my back :/

<comment><USER5> > Maybe there's something wrong with my back :/

Could be the chair too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Posture is the prime visual signal people at distance give off. Intimidating/confident people are walking as if they are paleolithic warriors staring at the horizon. The key is developing neck muscles with head/shoulder exercises and not bending down for "comfortable viewing/holding" of mobile devices.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would recommend Foundation Training exercises for anyone with bad posture or back issues. I've been doing Foundation Training for the past couple of weeks and it has definitely helped with my posture. You can watch how to do their main 'Founder' exercise on youtube.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp84tCkNiFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp84tCkNiFg)</comment></comment>


The study on climate-induced collapse they thought you should not read – yet - <AUTHOR> https://jembendell.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/the-study-on-collapse-they-thought-you-should-not-read-yet/ <comment><USER2> As someone who spent a few years of his life studying climatology, nothing in here is surprising. The science all seems well-sourced enough, it's the conclusions that are raising eyebrows and depressing stomachs. But it's not at all a stretch to say that things are going to get really bad for civilization in the near future. We've just spent so much time trying to prevent the worst affects of climate change that we haven't gotten around to realizing it's probably too late. A million tragedies are already playing out around the globe, and there are a billion more coming.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't try mitigation; but just that mitigation will likely be less helpful than we hoped. If someone wants to prove me wrong, please do so in the form of inventing cheap CO2 scrubbers.

Honestly the "deep adaptation agenda" is a little bit hopeful, as at least it's something of a roadmap for the sacrifices we'll have to make in the future.

> I hope the deep adaptation agenda of resilience, relinquishment and > restoration can be a useful framework for community dialogue in the face of > climate change. Resilience asks us "how do we keep what we really want to > keep?" Relinquishment asks us "what do we need to let go of in order to not > make matters worse?" Restoration asks us "what can we bring back to help us > with the coming difficulties and tragedies?

</comment><comment><USER3> Great paper, but as a non-acadmic I was disappointed by the last paragraph before the conclusion:

> I think it may be our vanity as academics to think that any one but > academics and students read academic papers. Therefore, I have chosen to > leave my recommendations for managers, policy makers and lay persons for > another outlet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also known as The Climate Change Paper So Depressing It's Sending People to Therapy according to Vice.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwpdb/the-climate- change...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwpdb/the-climate-change-paper- so-depressing-its-sending-people-to-therapy)</comment>