French Team Invents Faster Code-Breaking Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/news/170850-french-team-invents-faster-code-breaking-algorithm/fulltext

<comment><USER2> This isn't really new, as far as I can tell; it's an article presenting the Joux et al result from June 2013.

Recap from the earlier discussion: this only affects small-characteristic fields so far, which is fairly exotic. Standard systems that most of use use daily, such as RSA, are unaffected by this result so far. Whether or not the result can be extended to them is an open question. The result does not affect elliptic curve based cryptography either.

(I don't mean to downplay this result. It's great, it's just that we've seen it before, and this article doesn't really bring anything new to the table, as far as I can tell.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was half-hoping this submission would just upvote a previous conversation - I guess I'll have to go searching, but I don't have time now. Thanks for your comment - useful.</comment></comment>


Is Sydney's (or Australia's) job market for developers so bad? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Senior Java Developer at a well known worldwide company, which is a recognised and trusted brand. Aside from Java (Spring ecosystem), I do basic DevOps stuff, AWS EC2/SQS/ECS/S3/whatnots, can write decent front-end apps in AngularJS, and I handle new stuff with relative ease.
My profile is quite wanted here in EU, I get offers from all across the continent, but two months of trying to relocate to Australia have made me strongly discouraged. I get automated rejection letters or the communication falls silent; long and personalised cover letters are met with a brush-off in a form of 'alright, but what's your visa status again?' (even though I state in the CL that I don't have any).
Is the back-end/full-stack market in Sydney so satiated, that Australia can support all its IT from people born there?
Thanks for hearing me out, it's being painful for me. <comment><USER2> It is very hard to get a company to sponsor you for the appropriate visa. Whilst your skills and experience might be very attractive, there are many people with comparable skills who get visas at their own expense, come over and then apply for jobs. Perhaps your company might have projects in Australia that could be assigned to work on. That would overcome both the visa and employment hurdles.

<comment><USER3> I agree regarding the visa predicament. Australia, within the last few years, began seriously limiting working migrant visa's (with the abolition and re- classification of the 457 visa). Everyone I know either came over as a student and then on a bridging visa, or are part of an inter-company transfer.

The poster will likely have more success with a inter-company transfer; but its a very long process to then become a "permanent resident." Don't limit yourself to just Sydney, though.</comment></comment>


Where To Find Your First 2,000 Beta Signups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frontapp.com/saas-where-to-find-your-first-2000-beta-signups/ <comment><USER2> A little while ago someone on here posted about their "$9 startup", and how they've grown a huge mailing list of signups without writing any code. I think you're falling in to a similar trap they had: confusing signups with users and potential customers.

The number of people who sign up from places like friends of friends, Betali.st, etc is vanity. It doesn't actually count for anything unless you can turn them in to paying users, which is incredibly unlikely given that they're a completely random bunch of "people interested in startups". It's the difference between being interested in your product and being interested in solving the pain that your product solves. People pay for the latter. People just cost you money if they're the former, albeit not much.

The two metrics that really matter are how many people _use_ your application and how many people _pay_ for your application. You could get a million signups and still fail.

Sorry if this sounds harsh. I learnt this particular lesson the hard way. My advice: work out who your potential users are, who decides to buy the products they use, and market directly to them. Ignore everything else.

<comment><USER3> Good story, but I think you are forgetting that they are just after Beta users to test their product and find flaws and bugs. They will most likely finish Beta and then focus on growing their user-base with people who are likely to pay for their product.

Beta testers don't necessarily have to be the customers who are going to stay with you forever.

<comment><USER4> but those are the worst beta testers. Because they'll give you useless feedback like "that color looks ugly", or "you need to make that font anti- aliased" rather than "I wish I could export this data to Excel so I can run calculations from it" or "I wish this could integrate with Mailchimp and generate email reports to show to my boss".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would love to read a follow-up of sign-up numbers after you've been sitting on the top of HN for today :)

We've had some really good luck with HN for sign-ups in the past, and if you're being transparent about it, I'd love to hear how the numbers turn out for you.

<comment><USER3> I agree, an update to their blog post with HN numbers would be cool

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good breakdown, what about socialmedia referrals? Surely people that have tried the app have also tweeted about it, do you have any insights of how many tweets have been mentioning your product over the past few months?

<comment><AUTHOR> good question. We actually didn't have sharing buttons on our home + the fact that we had a really really minimalistic homepage for a long time limited the "viral" leverage.

That said for our public beta it'll be a focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note: Betalist only features products that are in private beta and not out in public beta.

</comment><comment><USER8> Where? Growth Hacking lol.

</comment><comment><USER9> Vanity Metric</comment>


J'Accuse WikiLeaks Founder Assange Claims Google Has Deal with Clinton - <AUTHOR> http://sputniknews.com/world/20160607/1040951223/assange-clinton-google-deal.html <comment><USER2> I've read this twice and still can't find any substance in it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This explains why sometimes for articles on google news such as about rape and child molestation Trump's picture happens to appear as an associated image.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any evidence of this aside from rumor?</comment>


Square seeking more capital, $4B valuation - <AUTHOR> http://vator.tv/news/2012-04-18-square-seeking-more-capital-4b-valuation

<comment><USER2> Square is one of the few startups in recent memory that truly have a 'killer app.'</comment>


Show HN: Python lib for rich text, markdown, tables, etc. in the terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich <comment><USER2> Other great tools in the python terminal sphere are colorama, blessings and urwid.

Colorama is just for cross platform colouring, blessings is a very elegant wrapper over curses which is still useful for not-fullscreen things, and urwid is a full-blown widget library for TUI stuff.

<comment><USER3> please also consider blessed, an API-compatible fork of blessings that adds Windows 10 support, 24-bit color, keyboard input, and more. [https://blessed.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html#brief- ov...](https://blessed.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html#brief-overview)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lovely work, and I feel sad that this kind of labor inside a teletype emulator is something we consider anything but niche nostalgia in 2020.

<comment><AUTHOR> I felt for sure we would have Minority Report interfaces by 2020, but looks like we're stuck with terminals until retirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm blown away. That's amazingly gorgeous!

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of my own Marked-Man utility [1], but this is _way_ prettier. Definitely will have to check this out. Maybe I'll redo marked-man with this lib.

[1]: [https://github.com/ashton314/marked- man](https://github.com/ashton314/marked-man)

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks great. I love stuff like this, especially that it is cross platform. One thing that would be nice to see is a list of which terminals are supported, or at least what the various terminals support.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Should work with any xterm compatible terminal, and Windows legacy terminal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perfect timing.

I was looking at Urwid ([http://urwid.org/](http://urwid.org/)) last night for a new project. Urwid is a console user interface library for python.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's beautiful, but what I love most is the detailed README. Thank you for the attention to detail.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll add my grateful thanks.

Rich has already become my go-to tool for various Python stuff. I use these days Code's Python file with notebook cell comments. With this I can use console and Jupyter Notebook style rendering depending on wether I'm using regular IPython or Code's Interactive Window. I'm adapting my console printing to leverage Rich's features for Django querysets and other objects I'm dealing with. Rich gives me poor man's Jupyter Notebook widgets. Now I don't need to switch to ipynb files for browser based JS widgets much at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to hear its useful to you. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related to this - is there a way to have a similar rich-styling library designed for email outputs?

I have some daily reports generated by a python script via cron. The script currently outputs plaintext and the email just adds <pre> tags around the output, for formatting purposes. Some spicier formatting would be nice.

<comment><USER6> There is an method to export the terminal as HTML. See [https://rich.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/console.html...](https://rich.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/console.html#rich.console.Console.export_html)

Here is an example of the output [https://rich.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appendix/colors.html](https://rich.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appendix/colors.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Excellent ! Really love the traceback coloration, would love to have that enabled by default, should probably check pythonrc if it can hook that up. Also, RST support would be nice to render docstrings. Also, nice sphinx docs dir, perhaps enable rtfd.io or something that will publish them somewhere as HTML ?

<comment><USER6> Some good ideas there. I'm hoping that people will build such things on top of Rich. I don't want to add much more to the core lib...

<comment><USER13> Well I have just finished a sub-optimal color implementation with also my own print() implementation in [https://yourlabs.io/oss/cli2](https://yourlabs.io/oss/cli2) and I'd be willing to throw another week at it, but didn't really identify how rich could help exactly, if you want to open a ticket there then we can start a discussion

See some screenshots:

[https://yourlabs.io/oss/cli2/uploads/1bb0d9278047b4656f97ebb...](https://yourlabs.io/oss/cli2/uploads/1bb0d9278047b4656f97ebbfe3f59b19/2020-05-05-112049_1026x700_scrot.png)

[https://yourlabs.io/oss/cli2/uploads/8692ed0815082af8a903619...](https://yourlabs.io/oss/cli2/uploads/8692ed0815082af8a903619a05ec3ce1/2020-05-05-112102_1051x397_scrot.png)

Still working on the rendering part

Keep up the great work

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a short block of code I put in a lot of projects with just color output and formatting. But now I really want to start using this.

I like that it's cross platform and you can do very simple things or very complex formatting. This is super neat.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is great! Will certainly be using it in all my command line tools and scripts. Particularly the log handler. Also, like how it has special support for Jupyter notebooks.

Thanks for developing this.

</comment><comment><USER16> Excellent work, kudos! By the way, as a freelance software developer, do you work with Flask or other frameworks (instead of Django), if needed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yeah, I've worked with a variety of web frameworks, including Flask.

<comment><USER16> My pleasure. Great, will keep it in mind for potential future collaboration. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very cool, looks nice enough to try throwing it in my projects right now (since I've never settled on a proper output formatter).

</comment><comment><USER18> Really cool esp the table stuff and pretty printing list and dicts in color.

This might be useful to integrate into pandas, BeautifulSoup etc

</comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone able to get this working in PyCharm?

I can get it working on both a shell Python and iPython console, but not in the PyCharm console.

<comment><USER6> Never tried PyCharm. Do you know if it handles Color normally?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This really rocks, man, can't wait to use it. I used to use 'Clint', but this is even more robust.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is SO cool! Amazing collection of features, really clean API design. I had no idea how much I wanted this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Came to echo many others here - great work and fantastic attention to detail. Thanks for your effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gracias

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Looks great! Any chances of curses or other TUI integration, or is that out of scope for the project?

<comment><USER6> I had a vague notion of building some kind of UI on top of Rich, but tbh I want to reclaim some spare time after 1.0.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for making this and thanks for making time to take care of yourself! Cultivating your creative energies is an achievement in itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It would be awesome for manpages and vim helpfiles to have formatting and color like this.

<comment><USER26> If you're willing to use zsh, there's an oh-my-zsh plugin to color the manpages, and you can adjust the colors as described here [1].

[1] [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/501156/personalize-...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/501156/personalize- colored-man-pages-zsh-plugin-colors)

<comment><USER25> Thanks, I'll check this out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is awesome. I've used termcolor and urwid in the past, will give this a shot.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is really cool! How did you even go about building something like this.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow. That progress bar - I'm sold. Looking forward to trying it out

<comment><USER30> I've been using "rich" for last month and I love it. It makes nested progress bars easy. There is still a lot left to desire but it is amaze balls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Awesome work, the Jupyter notebook support is really appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER32> Absolutely love this. Will implement it in my CLI games.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to see that! Tweet @willmcgugan when you have something :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Right on time</comment>


Another Ghost Town built by China in Angola - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18680217

<comment><USER3> This link has some interesting satellite photos, and some discussion in Portuguese.

[http://negociosangola.blogspot.com/2011/04/nova-cidade-do- ki...](http://negociosangola.blogspot.com/2011/04/nova-cidade-do-kilamba- kiaxi-finalizada.html)

I wonder why they picked such an isolated spot 30 km from the capital. Angola has one of the lowest population densities in the world, surely land is not so scarce there that you need to go such a distance.

EDIT: well, I'm reminded yet again of how you can't rely on journalists. I took the 30 km figure from the BBC article here:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18646243>

However, a check of Google maps shows that this town is a mile or so away from the capital, right outside the ring road. Even from the center of Luanda, it's not 18 miles as the crow flies. Certainly not "18 miles outside the capital". Doesn't seem like an unreasonable location, now that I've seen it.

EDIT 2: the affordability of this by average Angolans (or any large number of Angolans) is a different story, but my guess is that given the population growth of Angola and the location next to the capital, this town will fill up one way or another, tho' possibly at a loss to the government, which is repaying the Chinese loan for this with oil revenues. Also, it seems that the vast majority of workers who built this were Chinese - apparently Angola didn't insist on local employment offsets.

<comment><USER4> 18 miles = 28.968192 kilometers

<comment><USER3> Wow, that seems like a pretty random response to the BBC saying a town right next to the capital is "perched on an isolated spot 18 miles away from the capital".

And by the way, what you said is not true. Please investigate the concept of significant digits. Reading that something is "18 miles away" and taking that to mean an exact number of millimeters is ridiculous. Given that we don't know from which exact point we are measuring, "18 miles", "19 miles", and "about 20 miles" would all be OK here, as is "30 km". If any of these were true, that is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a Chinese american, this shows the house of cards that is Chinese state capitalism. China builds these types of communities as a "bribe" to exploit natural resources in the respective country.

There are plenty examples of ghost towns in China [https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+ghost+towns&hl=e...](https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+ghost+towns&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=imvnsu&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jS_zT4TEDKii2gXH9bXOCw&ved=0CFEQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=624)

I've visited some of these places on my trips back to China. The local governments in China are typically the ones who approve and push through these nonsensical plans.

<comment><USER3> The town itself doesn't seem like much of a bribe, since the funding was provided as a loan to Angola, and is being repaid from oil revenues. Also, the vast majority of the workers were Chinese, although it's pretty usual in such cases to negotiate major employment for the locals.

Source: [http://negociosangola.blogspot.com/2011/04/nova-cidade-do- ki...](http://negociosangola.blogspot.com/2011/04/nova-cidade-do-kilamba- kiaxi-finalizada.html)

Now, whether a bribe ended up in someone's pocket to enable all this - I have no idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know why they have these small balconies below the windows? Never seen this before.

<comment><USER7> You can put plant vases on those and not have the risk of your vases falling on someone's head. Somewhat like this: [http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look- flower-pots-as-window-b...](http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look-flower-pots- as-window-box-58834) (random image found with google image search).

<comment><USER8> Yep, although that's a picture of an actual balcony (a small one, but still), with a proper door instead of just a window above it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This can't be a ghost town, I saw 2 pedestrians, more than on my weeklong visit to Silicon Valley.</yada>

</comment><comment><USER10> I prefer to read over videos. Here's the article: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18646243>

</comment><comment><USER11> China is building major buildings in many other countries -- They're sometimes offered as "gifts". Makes you wonder what they expect in return..

<comment><USER10> From the article: _Kilamba was financed by a Chinese credit line - <USER2> Angola is repaying with oil - so it has technically been paid for. But if the houses go unsold, then the Angolan government will be left with stock on their hands and a potentially wasted investment._

So it's not a 'gift' per se. It's more like a bribe, to fulfill the president's promise of 1M new apartments. By pricing these at $120K each, China can extract a _lot_ of minerals from Angola.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wonder what Paul Krugman think about this.

Edit. It's an honest question, these towns might turn out to be a good thing, I don't know.

<comment><USER13> Best Krugman comment on China I've ever seen, although it's inspired from reading someone else's analysis.

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/financial- repres...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/financial-repression- chinese-style/)

<comment><USER7> The original analysis was posted and commented here on HN. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4091199>

<comment><USER13> Yes, but I find Krugman's insight on that much more interesting. Hempton did an excellent job to summarize the issues. But Krugman is the one who identified what I believe to be the more important issue after thinking about it: the time bomb of when the savers become dissavers, and the corresponding consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The ghost towns remain empty for the first year or two. But within five years all chinese ghost towns fill up. That's what I heard. We continue to hear about ghost towns because as soon as old ghost towns are filling up, china continues to build new ghost towns for future expansion.

Please correct me if wrong.

<comment><USER15> There are cases of overbuilt areas but I think these stories are the West's insecurities on display about China's success.

In the US (Nevada) and Canada, there are areas where the developers have overbuilt, perhaps not on the scale of these Chinese development projects.

<comment><USER16> I thought it means that the Chinese are in for potentially even bigger trouble than the west.

<comment><USER17> It's unlikely, as mortgages (and debt in general) are very unpopular in China. It's currently not possible to even get a mortgage. Chinese ghost towns are, for the vast majority, bought and paid for by rich speculators in cash.

Not to say speculation isn't trouble, but theirs isn't built on debt (as was ours).

<comment><USER18> I agree with you - debt is a big big no no - and having been here for some time now, I think China functions in an very very different way than the west, which is also why we see these conflicting reports telling us China is going down or up and so on. I am having a hard time understanding it often myself, but I try and sometimes, when I need to get stuff done (and I mean, just get stuff done!), it really helps to think like a Chinese..

Let me give you a simple maybe non-related example.. I tried to get a visa for China and it wasn't possible at all through official channels.. No matter what I did (embassy, visa offices and whatnot), they simply wouldn't grant me a visa which would allow me to enter and leave China as I wanted (only single/double entry, which is no good).. In the end after some help from a Chinese friend, I managed to get a visa because he knew somebody who knew somebody at the local police station, who could print a visa for me..

This is how you get stuff done in China - you know somebody - I now owe my friend a favor and as I understand it is unforgivable, if I do not pay him back some day in some way. China is driven by guanxi (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi>) ..

I am totally speculating here - just a laowai trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Someone Chinese please enlighten me!..

<comment><USER19> The fact that your friend can ask you for a favor in return is Guanxi, and is certainly a characteristic of Chinese culture that provides accountability and also is factor in whom one befriends.

The fact that a favor was required to get a visa that presumably you qualified for (or if it was used to get one that you didn't qualify for as well) is borderline corruption, even if no currency or goods were exchanged, since Guanxi dictates that at very least a favor is now owed. I have friends from China that talk about situations like this that include obtaining marriage licenses and dealing with fees associated with second and third children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing I hate about those kind of urbanscape is their utter blandness, even if people were to fill it up.

</comment><comment><USER20> The footage from the video reminds me of the empty city in the movie Inception. It's pretty eerie seeing so much housing with no life.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why does the article title say "Footage shows African 'ghost town'"?</comment>


Show HN: Modern, geeky blogging platform - <AUTHOR> https://followme.co/page/tell-me-more <comment><USER2> Curious what has changed since previous submission.</comment>


SpaceX is working on a kid-size submarine to extract those boys in Thailand - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/07/elon-musk-says-spacex-is-working-on-a-kid-size-submarine-to-extract-those-boys-in-thailand/ <comment><USER2> For those confused by this: What they are making is less of a "submarine" in the mechanized sense, and more of an enclosed, air-tight & weighted chamber which two divers can tow between them (one diver in front, one behind) with a kid inside. So about the size of an adult body, hence being able to fit through the narrow caves.

<comment><USER3> If the passages are narrow, why is an inflatable pod a preferred solution to a face mask? I'd imagine it would be at risk of puncture.

<comment><USER4> There are so many issues with either a pod or a solid tube. The biggest one is buoyancy. If it is full of air it will need to be weighted, and have air added/removed to adjust for pressure changes with depth. But imagine if the kid "turns turtle". Any brief head-down orientation will result in the fabric collapsing around the kid's head as the air rushes up to his feet. Correcting this requires forcefully turning the kid around to keep his head up. This is one (of many) reasons why commercial divers in dry suits use solid helmets. It isn't an issue for wetsuits. I'd rather slap a full helmet on the kid and tie him up into a bundle. It won't be pretty but does solve the buoyancy issues. I'm sure they are also considering drugging the kids to reduce the risk of panic attacks.

Here is the nasa device, the personal rescue enclosure:

[http://www.astronautix.com/r/rescueball.html](http://www.astronautix.com/r/rescueball.html)

(It wouldn't work. Wrong shape and no buoyancy control.)

<comment><USER5> Of the difficulties the pod solution poses, I don't think that neutral buoyancy us one of them, so long as the pod is rigid (e.g. steel) in construction.

The best succinct definition for neutral buoyancy I could find was this one, from Wikipedia:

> ...a condition in which a physical body's average density is equal to the > density of the fluid in which it is immersed.[0]

This means that once the pod has been weighted to be neutrally buoyant it will be so at any depth of water, since neither it or water are compressible[1] and thus their average densities are unchanged by depth.

The challenges of maintaining neutral buoyancy arise when you submerge a compressible object, such as a scuba diver wearing an inflatable buoyancy control device (BCD). The water pressure (caused by the weight of the water above) will squeeze them and their equipment, compressing anything that is air filled.

To sink from the surface, the diver has to deflate their BCD, and then put sufficient air in it to achieve neutral buoyancy at their desired depth. If they swim downwards, the higher water pressure will squeeze them some more, the air in their BCD will compress some more, and their average density will increase. They will now be negatively buoyant and will sink.

The deeper they sink, the higher the water pressure will be, the more the air in their BCD will compress and the more negatively buoyant they will become. So they'll sink faster and faster. This happened to me once when I was first learning to scuba dive. It can be scary.

The opposite applies to ascending. This is why good buoyancy control is such an important (and difficult) thing for scuba divers to learn.[2]

From a buoyancy perspective, a metal pod is more like a camera in an underwater housing. These are rigid in construction (usually either plastic or metal) and their buoyancy characteristics don't change with depth.

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

[1] Not strictly true for water, but true enough for scuba diving depths

[2] [https://www.padi.com/courses/peak-performance- buoyancy](https://www.padi.com/courses/peak-performance-buoyancy)

<comment><USER6> None of this is relevant because the cave contains a restriction so tight that a rigid pod wouldn't fit through. The last thing they want is a solid object wedged into the restriction.

The SpaceX design is apparently flexible to fit through the cave, so some buoyancy adjustments would be necessary.

<comment><USER5> With a flexible pod, you'd partially deflate it to get it through awkward areas, which would make it negatively buoyant. Once re-inflated to the previous pressure it would be neutrally buoyant once again.

Re-inflation could be done via the same gas cylinder that's being used to replenish the air in the pod.

<comment><USER7> But if it's flexible then, like a driver with a BCD, it won't remain neutrally buoyant at every depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not SpaceX, a partner company. While helping is admirable, if he actually wanted to help in a more reasonable timeframe/more humble way then there are better channels he could have used, this all seems like a publicity stunt to me.

<comment><USER9> It might not have been his idea at first to help, I found this tweet: [https://twitter.com/mabzmagz/status/1014251869760249856?s=21](https://twitter.com/mabzmagz/status/1014251869760249856?s=21)

<comment><USER10> Chiang Rai governor: "i am the one who invited @SpaceX because my friend works there."

[https://twitter.com/yayqe/status/1015287476284346368](https://twitter.com/yayqe/status/1015287476284346368)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jul/06/thailand-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jul/06/thailand- cave-rescue-looming-rain-clouds-could-force-quick-rescue-decision-live)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It sounds like the rescue operation has begun. 5 thai navy seals and 13 foreign divers have entered the cave: [https://twitter.com/gordoneaton/status/1015805529950650373](https://twitter.com/gordoneaton/status/1015805529950650373)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jul/08/thailand-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jul/08/thailand- cave-rescue-operation-divers-trapped-boys-live?CMP=share_btn_tw)

<comment><USER12> Yes. Thai TV is currently reporting that the extraction operation has begun. The stateless kid (forgot his name), the only English speaker, will be the first one to make the attempt. They expect/hope he will emerge around 9pm Thai time this evening, about four hours from now.

<comment><USER12> Thai news reporting that the first two boys are out of the cave. No report yet of their condition.

Edit 1: News media being kept away so they will be light on details for the time being.

2: Chiang Rai health dept head says the two are being examined at the field hospital near the cave.

3: Timely updates in English here [https://www.bbc.com/news/live/44755093](https://www.bbc.com/news/live/44755093)

<comment><USER13> On your BBC link, they got 4 kids out, all in good health. Taking a break for the night:

> We will be able to continue the rescue operation when we are ready to do so. > We will be ready soon, because we will need to redo laying out all of the > air tanks and all systems along the way again. We have used everything [in > the set up] that we had today. The set up team will do their work again once > they are ready. It'll be difficult to tell exactly when the next > [evacuation] will start. But I guess it will be ready in the next 10-20 > hours.''

8 kids and the coach are still inside. Looks like they may not need any outside help after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The pods already on their way via SpaceX [http://www.times- standard.com/general-news/20180706/wing-inf...](http://www.times- standard.com/general-news/20180706/wing-inflatables-assisting-with-thai- soccer-team-rescue)

<comment><USER15> Wing Inflatables is a partner for SpaceX. This is pretty smart as they had expertise in flotation devices. The general assumption that SpaceX was designing and manufacturing these out of SpaceX spacecraft material was wrong. In fact, they were probably en route via Elon's private jet around the time he started tweeting about them.

> 14/ "What is interesting is, if you know #California at all, we are 350 > miles north of #SanFrancisco in a little town, #Arcata. That is a little > #riverrafting town. We manufacture inflatable recovery parts for #SpaceX".

> 15/ "So we have a relationship. When Elon had an idea he asked our > engineering team to get a hold of us. It was wonderful to see it all come > through", says Branagh, Wing Inflatables' president and CEO.

[https://twitter.com/WendyDent/status/1015795955621191680](https://twitter.com/WendyDent/status/1015795955621191680)

[http://www.wing.com/](http://www.wing.com/)

<comment><USER16> It wasn't a general assumption: he said as much in a tweet.

"Got more great feedback from Thailand. Primary path is basically a tiny, kid- size submarine using the liquid oxygen transfer tube of Falcon rocket as hull. Light enough to be carried by 2 divers, small enough to get through narrow gaps. Extremely robust.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2018"

<comment><USER15> Hmm, it appears that SpaceX designed their own escape pod, separate from the Wing Inflatables which were flown to Thailand. While it is clear they didn't finish it in time for the very time sensitive Thai cave rescue operation, they are testing it out in a pool.

Video of it being tested: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016063173139427329](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016063173139427329)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm hearing news that that the rescue is about to begin, they aren't going to wait for any new equipment.

"Rescue crews: the 12 boys + coach each have a dive mask connecting with an air line to their escort/diver. The diver has the oxygen tank/regulator. So, the boys are not SCUBAing, per se. Also, each boy will have physical contact with their rescuer throughout."

[https://twitter.com/DavidShuster/status/1015789259649937409](https://twitter.com/DavidShuster/status/1015789259649937409)

<comment><USER18> 11 hours minimum per boy for the trip though. Hopefully it all works but I'd hope the backup plan preparations are continuing.

<comment><USER19> Wowsers! I haven't been following this.

Does anyone have any info on what the route is out of the cave? That's a hectic journey.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is Musk thinking? First the bouncy castle tube and now a solid-walled submarine? He really has no appreciation for the cave environment.

Tight spots in caves aren't tubes. They are irregular twisty-turning CAVES. Some squeezes (the term of art for the narrow bits where you have to remove gear) are so tight that you cannot take a full breath. Any solid object more than a couple feet long will be stuck very quickly. Now imagine that in the dark, not seeing more than a few _inches_ in front of your face. Then add a swift current constantly trying to separate you from your air supply. When a hardened cave diver calls something "gnarly" take it to mean a claustrophobic nightmare that would send 99% of us into a lethal panic attack.

Worse yet, imagine this sub becoming wedged in a squeeze. Setting aside the terrified kid dying inside, the only way to or from the twelve others is now blocked.

I'm a diver but no expert on caves. I've been in dry caves and have dove a couple lava tubes, but I would never tell proper cave divers how to do their thing. If I were the King I would airlift every possible drilling rig in Asia. I'd turn that mountain into a wiffle ball in the hopes that one breaks through, or at least add more places for pumps.

<comment><USER20> At least the pumps did work. Before I only saw two small 10cm waterhoses going out. Yesterday I saw a double size 30cm hose pumping water out in full speed. These 30cm made the difference I believe.

<comment><USER21> Yes pumping is the proper solution as long as they have drain point. Humans have mastered pumping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The actual operation has no mention of this stuff at all:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jul/08/thailand-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jul/08/thailand- cave-rescue-operation-divers-trapped-boys-live)

And the pre-planned operation is under way due to lower than expected rainfall making most of the journey walkable.

So what's what? Why are we talking about Elon or SpaceX at all?

<comment><USER23> Because 1. It's great idea? and 2. May be a lifesaver in many other use cases? and 3. Is a good example of tech used to help, not just take? and 4. Beats watching TV?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sounds kind of like what NASA came up with for moving astronauts from a damaged space shuttle to a rescue shuttle. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure)

<comment> orbital-decay Along with concepts like PARACONE or Langley Landers, it was one of the crazier space technologies though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's somewhat interesting how much attention these kids have received, meanwhile how many kids have died worldwide from hunger, disease, and warfare since June 23rd? Probably a bit more than 12. I guess that's not as exciting to read about though.

<comment><USER26> I made a lot of family members really mad yesterday by saying exactly this. Then I looked up some stats. The numbers are a few years out of date, but UNICEF estimates that 29,000 children under the age of five die of preventable causes _every day_ [1]. And those kids didn't do anything wrong to get themselves a death sentence. Now ask yourself how many of those kids could have been saved with the amount of money, manpower, and attention being devoted to the Thai soccer team.

Stuff like this gets pretty sad if you think about it in utilitarian terms.

[1] [https://www.unicef.org/mdg/childmortality.html](https://www.unicef.org/mdg/childmortality.html)

<comment><USER27> the same goes for any social problem you help solve.

People are quite upset about kids getting separated from parents at the border. Yet offer no help for the thousands of children that die every day.

Every person decides what cause is important to them. The hypocrisy is when people who favor one cause judge those who arent interested in that cause.

<comment><USER28> I am not fishing for drama but I want to speak my mind. On that note, the most blatant form of hypocrisy in my opinion is pro-"life" supporters whose main argument is "think of the children" yet they also ignore the thousands of children that die every day.

<comment><USER21> What do you think of masturbation ?

<comment><USER29> Please don't do this here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It seems crazy, I can imagine the horror if the pod gets stuck between rocks while going through a narrow tunnel.

The simplest solution is to give the children swimming and scuba diving lessons from inside the cave and then once a safe route has been established, the children can get to the exit one by one (accompanied by a professional diver) by swimming along a rope which leads to the exit.

</comment><comment><USER31> IIRC they've been talking about the potential of "packaging" up the individuals since they first found them. Packaging being giving them an air tank, face mask, and making them neutrally buoyant them so the experienced divers can push and pull them along the tunnels.

This seems like the implementation of that plan?

<comment><USER32> The repeated stories so far have suggested that there's a passage that's too narrow for both a tank and person to fit through at the same time.

<comment><USER31> So long as the professional divers have full control over the "package", it shouldn't be a deal breaking issue. Detach the tank, move them through separately, just as the divers themselves do.

It's certainly not safe, as the loss of the recent diver has shown.

<comment><USER33> Little is known about why he died. I see many people go full tryhard when a child is in danger, doing dumb stuff.

I can see a scenario where he wanted to rush it, potentially cuttin corners, because of doom rainfall scenarios. This makes his death more a psych problem than a dive problem.

Another is age/shape. I used to be a fine skater, did a trick I could do in my sleep at 14 at 30 and fell hard. These kind of coordinations need to be maintained and he was explicitly retired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pods are onsite and rescue operation has started according to news conference #thailandcaverescue

</comment><comment><USER34> Whether this has a chance of working depends on the exact diameter of the narrow portions of the submerged route. My impression is that they were _very_ narrow, perhaps too small for a rigid container containing a human?

<comment><USER11> Indeed. The "submarine" is more like a duffel bag with air tanks and weights. It isn't rigid.

I think it might work. It helps that they are very young and small and athletic build (and now, unfortunately, really skinny due to not eating much food for the last couple weeks).

<comment><USER35> I am thinking of the obviously watertight and airtight flexible, yet very tough material used for collapsible diesel fuel bladders... Fitted out with an air tank supply and ballast weight mounting positions?

[https://www.google.com/search?q=diesel+fuel+bladder&num=100&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=diesel+fuel+bladder&num=100&client=ubuntu&hs=KOh&channel=fs&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy4OH3to7cAhWOITQIHTChBycQ_AUICygC&biw=1473&bih=951#imgrc=_)

<comment><USER36> According to the Time article someone linked they are made of the polyurethane used to make inflatable river rafts and the like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Context from the article on who "those boys" are:

12 young soccer players and their coach who've been trapped in a cave in Thailand since entering it June 23rd, after which they became trapped by rising floodwaters.

</comment><comment><USER38> Original Tweet:

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015657378140704768](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015657378140704768)

</comment><comment><USER39> unless this is ready now it's not being used, they are apparently going to mask and dive with the children at this point

</comment><comment><USER40> Also, an inflated "bouncy castle" tunnel. [http://abc.net.au/news/2018-07-06/elon-musk-sends-spacex- to-...](http://abc.net.au/news/2018-07-06/elon-musk-sends-spacex-to-help- rescue-thai-soccer-team/9950934)

<comment><USER41> That was a tweet and a pretty ridiculous one. These sorts of caves are famously full of razor sharp rock that would puncture such flimsy inflated underwater structures.

<comment><USER42> I don't like Elon much (I think he's an ass to his employees), but he still sent engineers for free to Thailand and is donating materials that are probably not very cheap (rocket parts for the mini-sub thing). At least he's trying to help!

<comment><USER32> He's doing it for free? Where did you read that?

<comment><USER43> He is of course getting a lot of attention and it might be one of the reasons he is doing it, but he is definitely helping and he isn't receiving money, is he? I think attention is fair price to pay to Elon for his help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Hell if they make it...

I'm praying for them.

</comment><comment><USER45> The kids would need to be in the bag for 6 hours. I don't see how that is any better than them going directly.

Maybe Musk should send a giant pump to get that water out. Don't they have large pumps at space X to fill those rockets?

<comment> crooked-v > I don't see how that is any better than them going directly.

It means they don't need to keep themselves oriented in an underwater 3D maze while operating unfamiliar breathing equipment.

<comment><USER46> I'd imagine two or even four divers taking each kid in between them. I assume there's a line, so no one is navigating and the route is fully supplied with any additional air needed. People go on intro dives all the time where an instructor does everything. Obviously the element of the long and narrow passages makes things a lot more difficult but it's doable. You just take your time. This completely unknown new technology seems riskier to me... Full face dive masks take most of the "tricky" don't breath in through the nose out of the equation. I'm a sport diver.

That said, there's always some people who "lose it" during a dive course or even newly certified divers. Though I've yet to hear of anyone who decides to stop breathing air and opt for water, usually they bolt to the top, which isn't an option here. That risk can be mitigated by doing "pool" dives right where the kid are and perhaps short stays in the adjacent cave areas. Maybe some relaxing music can be played as well... Another possibility is adding some "rest stop" by creating air pockets along the way.

<comment><USER28> Things you are ignoring:

1- We're talking about kids who haven't dove before and probably don't even know how to swim

2- The visibility is 0. Some would be uncomfortable walking through tight dark spaces, let alone having to dive through them.

3- They're kids.

<comment><USER47> > probably don't even know how to swim

I find it surprising that clearly sport-oriented children from a fairly popular tourist beach destination don't know how to swim.

<comment><USER28> If you are poor living away from the beach, it's perfectly natural that you spend your entire childhood without even seeing the beach let alone learning how to swim. Thailand is not an island.

<comment><USER47> I live in a landlocked country and nearly everyone I know can swim. People usually swim in public pools, lakes or ponds. Swimming is also very often part of the PE middle school curriculum here.

<comment><USER48> Good of your country. Many cities in SE Asia have none of three. If you are in upper middle class, you can afford private swimming pool membership. Less then .1% schools have swimming pool. Rivers are polluted enough and have no infrastructure in place for swimmers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> If it fits, it might work.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'd imagine you'd have to sedate the passenger? That would be far too scary and long a trip to risk them panicking when there is nothing you can do.

<comment><USER51> I'm not sure it would be safe to sedate someone and then leave them in an inaccessible location for a few hours.

Better to take a chance on ordering the boys to lie there and DON'T MOVE!

Could also help to make them stay awake for a long time, then transport them - they'd likely fall asleep in the dark quiet.

<comment><USER52> I doubt they would fall asleep, as the experience of being wrapped up likely would still produce plenty of adrenaline.

And would it be quiet? I would expect sounds of air bubbles, breathing apparatus, scratching along rock in the tightest passages, etc. Nothing high- volume, but it would certainly be audible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> They already evacuated 6 boys without submarine.

</comment><comment><USER54> I cannot fathom this as a publicity stunt. Instead it strikes me as kick-ass can-do attitude of the best kind.

<comment><USER55> I hope it's not an arrogant really-don't-understand-the-problem attitude. Tech people are very prone to think they know better.

<comment><USER54> That is possible; but then the guy on site can just say thanks but no thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> They have started to take the boys out and so not in time. But also it looks like the opening is tiny in places.

There is zero chance I would crawl through such a tiny hole even without the water. I would freak.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm........skeptical about all of this. Kid-sized sub built from rocket parts in a matter of hours?

<comment><USER58> It's mostly just an inflated kevlar bag with some valves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> It looks like they're going in to rescue the kids based on the current conditions. I'm guessing this submarine solution could potentially be a back- up in case something goes wrong. I doubt it's a PR stunt - Elon doesn't care about PR (remember his April fools tweet).

<comment><USER60> > Elon doesn't care about PR

From recollection, that does not seem true at all. All of Musk's initiatives have benefited from his intuitive ability for hip and technophilic branding. See the naming of "Tesla" and "The Boring Company". He also likes to frame his companies' activities in the context of techno-utopian contributions to civil society, and this is nothing new. Outside of the obvious main electric-cars mission of Tesla, they have also built a battery power reservoir in Australia as well as dabbled in solar panels.

As SpaceX, sending a Tesla into space was great PR.

As the Boring company, they sold overpriced flamethrowers as great PR to the technophile crowd.

Whenever a safety incident regarding a Tesla car occurs, Tesla issues a heavy- handed, highly defensive piece spinning their cars to be among the safest, with a constant undertone of shifting all possible fault elsewhere. The April fools tweet sends a sort of "haters gonna be haters" message to his Tesla fans.

So Musk is indeed highly aware of marketing and branding, and this proposal is highly consistent with Musk's branding and strategy. It has the Musk elements of proposals that

1) seem prima facie simple 2) seem prima facie feasible 3) solve a longstanding big or deep problem, that 4) the layman does not think has been seriously considered before as a solution to the problems it tries to solve, 5) where the problem is currently being addressed by a very different solution that seems technologically uninteresting or costly.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you drive leads to your side project - <AUTHOR> How do you hackernews folks with side projects drive high quality leads to it, and what is your conversion rate so far. <comment><USER2> From the main project - Generally side project is more or less related to one or other ways to main project. It's easy to put an announcement for those related product on showcase and ask people to see, if they are interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if they are not, how do you then drive leads.</comment></comment>


Is DaVinci Resolve 16 the Final Nail in Adobe Premiere's Coffin? - <AUTHOR> https://arador.com/is-davinci-resolve-16-the-final-nail-in-adobe-premieres-coffin/ <comment><AUTHOR> It is for me, I find Resolve much faster to get things done. What say you?</comment>


JavaScript Loop Performance - <AUTHOR> http://jsperf.com/while-vs-for-queue

<comment><USER3> What exactly is this trying to test? This headline seems to imply that it's testing the performance of the different sorts of loops in JavaScript, but it's not a valid test for that, because the for loop does considerably less work than the do and while loops.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree with you saying this isn't a valid test but added [http://jsperf.com/while-vs-for-queue/4](http://jsperf.com/while-vs-for- queue/4) for your convenience.

<comment><USER4> The for loop uses array access "items[j]", and the while loop uses "items.shift". At the end of the for loop 'items' is still the same, at the end of the while loop 'items' is empty.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. The context of this problem was a discussion with a colleague about using this in the order of a queue where the items array would represent transformations to apply to another object. Point taken, though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The do and while loops are unfair comparisons they should have done something like this:

var i = items.length; while(i--) { total += items[i]; }

and

var i = items.length - 1; do { total += items[i] } while(i--);

I think those would compare differently to the for loop.

Turns out I was wrong and I made the for loop faster: [http://jsperf.com/optimal-loops](http://jsperf.com/optimal-loops)

<comment><USER6> I believe that do-while will also miss summing the item at index 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Array shift is O(n). Using pop instead gives a better comparison: [http://jsperf.com/while-vs-for-queue/18](http://jsperf.com/while-vs-for- queue/18)

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. Great to see the performance increase. Obviously pop() is for the last element so a FIFO would have to be constructed with this in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please don't just post a link like this. Apparently I'm expected to run it in chrome and see that do is 10x slower than the other two options.

But I ran it in firefox and got completely different results, namely the for loop handling hundreds of millions of items per second, and the loops with .shift() being handled literally and going at the speed of sludge (it reports 0.25 items per second).

</comment><comment><USER9> This is stupid. The for loop doesn't mutate the list while the other do. What is the point of this?

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the point is the while loop runs faster in Chrome. But the for loop is inefficiently written; it checks the array length every time. Change it to `for(var len = items.length; j<len; ++j)` and it's faster again. tl;dr - <USER2> written for loops are slow.

</comment><comment><USER11> Correctly me if I'm wrong but, even if mutation is neglected, isn't shift() an O(n) operation because of array reindexing? Doesn't that completely defeat the purpose of the while/do while loop since they'd be O(n^2)?

</comment><comment><USER12> Just for fun added test case for reduce and forEach, in order to show how slow it is. [http://jsperf.com/while-vs-for-queue/3](http://jsperf.com/while-vs- for-queue/3)

<comment><USER13> One thing to note though is that forEach and reduce can both be /theoretically/ faster; for and while loops both imply an order in processing the list, whilst forEach and definitely reduce don't; in theory, the JS interpreter can take the array, split it up into chunks (one for each core / thread), and process the list in parallel, which would / could produce results faster.

But, atm, functional operations on lists are still executed single-threaded. Wouldn't mind seeing a WebWorker implementation, for example. Although somehow I think the overhead for a relatively simple calculation like this would negate the results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Also it is in fact testing the shift() function indirectly (and array access).

</comment><comment><USER15> jsperf test cases like this don't produce valid results.

The amount of work done in the test case is very small (actually dwarfed by the setup part of the test), making it subject to huge variance due to factors like task switching, GC pauses, etc.

The result of the benchmark is also never used so it is possible for a valid JS runtime to partially or completely optimize it out.

Benchmark actual code doing actual work. Code reduced to this level of meaninglessness does not allow you to draw meaningful conclusions about actual JS performance.

<comment><USER16> It's not valid to see that do while is tenfold slower than while, across the board? Or the total lack of native forEach performance?

These are the sort of results that I'd think would be good to keep in the back of your mind, and little else.

<comment><USER4> 'while' is actually faster than 'for'. But in this example the while loop does extra work (mutating the array). while loops are always faster than forEach, as they simply do less work.

<comment><USER16> There is an example that doesn't mutate the while. For still seems to be faster in certain browsers (Safari.) I think the bigger takeaway here for me is that mutation has little to no performance hit. In fact, the while shift() example was faster than the non mutating while version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not a valid test.

Two of the test cases destructively modify the list, while the first does not. Of course they will be slower.

</comment><comment><USER18> lol none of the loops do any work after the first time. Hence why they run 200,000,000 times (this would be 10 trillion additions/second if the loops were actually running). Epic fail.

<comment><USER19> It took me a while to understand what you meant by this. It was obvious to me that the loops under test _do_ do work (the shift/increment) every time through. But we're talking about different loops.

For others trying to understand this comment: the _TEST_ loop which runs the code being benchmarked is short-circuited in the 'do' and 'while' cases because the setup code does not get re-run, so on the first test loop, it sums up an array of random numbers, and on subsequent runs, it sums an empty array. This also gave me the 'aha' that explained why the huge difference between 'while' and 'do': in the 'do' case, we execute the loop at least once in every one of the hundreds of millions of test runs, whereas in the 'while' case, the loop is executed 0 times in all but one run.</comment></comment>


Man opts out of porno scanner and grope, told he'll be fined $10K - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2010/11/13/man-at-san-diego-air.html

<comment><USER2> Already being discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1902015></comment>


Pain Points in Pivoting from the Humanities to CS - <AUTHOR> https://lord-left.github.io/posts/two-pain-points.html <comment><USER2> "I graduated from Boston College in 2011 with a degree in Political Science and began a second BA from Columbia several years later."

Most people cannot afford the direct and indirect (lost earnings) cost of 8 years of college. Is it typically possible to get the second BA in fewer than 4 years, just taking classes in the major?</comment>


Ask HN: Why is GitHub's "Landing page" so weird? - <AUTHOR> It's been bugging me for a while. When I go to github.com and I'm not signed in I get my username and password auto-filled into the "Sign up for Github" form with my username in the email text box, my password in the password box and the username field blank. This is strange enough as most websites I can think of present a login form with a "Sign up" link for new users, but I  actually have to scroll up for the sign-in link.<p>I don't really care, but today I had a few minutes and figured I'd post a question on HN just because I'm genuinely curious why someone would design a login experience this way. <comment><USER2> From my personal experience, I rarely travel to github.com directly. I either go to a link of some repo I'm interested in, or I have github.com/login bookmarked so it goes to the login page. Normally I am still logged in too, so github.com goes to my dashboard(?) page anyway.

I think you have to ask, if someone is going to github.com, what are the chances they don't have an account and so signup is more applicable. Rather than users who probably have somewhere specific to go or are logged in already and will bypass that page.

Just my two cents.

I do understand where you're coming from and vaguely remember thinking the same when I first started using github.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I suppose you're right. I rarely go to github.com directly as well, but today I have already read all of HN first three pages and my next move (if I have time) is to go to github.com and "explore" as I like that they recommend repositories based on what I have "starred".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here, just realized I didn't post the details of my setup. I'm using a Razor Blade Stealth with Windows 10 and the latest stable version of Firefox.</comment>


Super-secret debug capabilities of AMD processors (2010)  - <AUTHOR> http://www.woodmann.com/collaborative/knowledge/index.php/Super-secret_debug_capabilities_of_AMD_processors_!

<comment><USER2> [https://web.archive.org/web/20120612142529/http://www.woodma...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120612142529/http://www.woodmann.com/collaborative/knowledge/index.php/Super- secret_debug_capabilities_of_AMD_processors_)!

<comment><USER3> That link doesn't seem to work for me, Google's cache is also not returning anything.

<comment><USER4> There's an exclamation point at the end of the URL, and the HN parser leaves it out. Try:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110120044901/http://www.woodma...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110120044901/http://www.woodmann.com/collaborative/knowledge/index.php/Super- secret_debug_capabilities_of_AMD_processors_%21)

<comment><USER3> Ahh, thank you for that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "OpenDNS has blocked www.woodmann.com due to a security threat that was discovered by the Umbrella Labs.

If you think this shouldn't be blocked, please email us at security- firstname.lastname@example.com."

Bah. Humbug.

<comment><USER6> Didn't woodmann.com host a mirror of searchlores and +orc cracking tutz back in the day? Maybe that's why it's blocked. They want to prevent the spread of knowledge!

 _puts on a tin foil hat_

<comment><USER7> what is searchlores and +orc cracking tutz?

<comment><USER8> Docs for reversers and searchers.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this "feature" available in new AMD processors or I must find an old one (pre-2010) to use it?</comment>


Flathub, the home of hundreds of apps which can be easily installed on any Linux - <AUTHOR> https://flathub.org/home <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I'm involved with the Flathub project (I've developed the new website)

I use Spotify and some other programs from Flathub and they work great on Debian stable. It's a great way to have updated software on non-rolling distros.

Setting up instructions for many distros can be found here [https://flatpak.org/setup/](https://flatpak.org/setup/)

Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Show HN: Radio - My first Mac app - <AUTHOR> http://www.radioformac.com <comment><USER2> You might also want to add the fantastic stations over at Intergalactic FM, some of the best electronic music on (and off) Earth:

[https://intergalacticfm.com/](https://intergalacticfm.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice to see a list of radio stations you currently support on your website before purchasing.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea. Will try and get that up there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure public radio stations would love it if you integrated some sort of donations thang into Radio so that listeners can directly donate to {{station}}.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice app! Although it suffers from the same problem that iTunes has, when playing a radio stream: I have a very unstable DSL internet connection, the connection drops every 2-3h for a few seconds or more. It's like unplugging the network cable for 5 seconds and re-plugging it in. So when the internet connection drops, it says "buffering" forever, so I have to manually click stop and play to resume the stream. Would be very nice, if the app would automatically try to reconnect (i.e. restart the TCP connection) after short timeout, or something like that.

As a workaround to the missing media keys support because Apple won't allow it: You could provide a little AppleScript interface, so that everyone could configure own global shortcuts with FastScripts. If that makes sense. Don't know if that's possible to implement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Applescript know in place @ [http://www.radioformac.com/#mediakeys](http://www.radioformac.com/#mediakeys)

Thanks for the suggestion.

<comment><USER5> That's great, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> When clicking the "add new station" button on the favourites tab, I would expect the newly added station to appear in my favorites (as well as the stations tab).

It doesn't - After adding it (on the favourites tab), I have to go to the stations tab, search for it (which causes UI lag), then mark it a favourite.

Also: lose the spaces between the labels and the ellipsis ("...") on the edit and delete buttons.

Also: Make the "Ok" button the default (enter) on the add new station pane

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback thanks. Agree with it all and working on the UI lag issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Lots of UI lag when typing the first character into the "all stations" filter/search field, and again when deleting the last character remaining.

<comment><USER6> Yes, this is the only "bad" thing I find with the application. Hopefully it gets fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks very similar to Radium : [http://catpigstudios.com/](http://catpigstudios.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a bit. Menubar radio players will all seem similar. I was a Radium user myself. It was the "record" function of this app that prompted me to make it. I wanted to record radio shows, budget speeches and a specific Dutch trance music show I listen to and I couldn't find an easy way to do that. There were ways, but nothing one-click and resident on the menu bar.

<comment><USER8> Can you explain how recording works? Do you parse the song title and cut a new MP3 whenever it changes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, we don't do that. Its just a simple MP3 file that lasts for as long as you are recording a station. The problem with parsing the song title is that firstly, not all stations support it, and secondly, a lot of stations will push the station name into the stream at periodic intervals. It would make cutting up a continuous stream into accurate individual songs quiet troublesome.

But for some well behaved stations, its doable, if people wanted it enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Via Little Snitch, I noticed it contacts your radioformac.com webserver on port 80 on launch. I didn't sniff the traffic but presumably this is for a list of stations or something?

Could you please update to use SSL/TLS (https) instead? It's for the server authentication, not so much the transit security.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed it is to get latest stations. I will update to SSL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bought it, works great :)

Might like to see description listed next to stations in the fav list drop down from menu bar.

(edit: also, sort by description in All Stations list doesn't work: [http://cl.ly/image/3l3M030n1D2m](http://cl.ly/image/3l3M030n1D2m))

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems great. Can I suggest you add this list of stations? [http://www.abc.net.au/radio/listenlive.htm#shoutcastaac](http://www.abc.net.au/radio/listenlive.htm#shoutcastaac)

Australians will be forever grateful

<comment><AUTHOR> Will defo do that. Radio connects to a plist file on startup so we can push new stations to it. Thanks for the links.

Getting a decent list of stations was one of the most frustrating aspects of the project. That and catering for WMA based streams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My main issue with Radium is that it does not support the play/pause/fast- forward/rewind keys on my MacBook. Does Radio support these?

<comment><AUTHOR> It does not at the moment. And not from the want of trying! Unfortunately the App Store sandbox does not yet allow you to detect the media keys being pressed. The old way of doing it uses a very low-level function that is not available for security reasons (its essentially a key logger) within the sandbox..

Its common problem across all App Store apps, for now. Drives me crazy as well!

<comment><USER11> That's a shame. Perhaps someone needs to build a small library that exists outside of the App Store that notifies App Store apps when those keys are pressed. :P

This reason alone is what keeps me using VLC for radio playlists.

<comment><USER12> This seems like a great idea. Build some sort of universal bridge for media keys that any compatible app can hook into? Or would the OS X sandbox prevent that, too?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a great idea and should be possible so long as Apple is willing to approve an sandboxed app that accepts incoming connections (listens) on a port against the local interface.

<comment><USER13> The bridge could be the listener, and the sandboxed apps could open a connection to it. This is probably preferable design anyway.

The apps should request subscription to a set of keypress events, the bridge should get approval from the user (maybe only if the app requests keys other than F keys and media keys?). The bridge should be discoverable by local bonjour rather than running on a known port.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are you considering adding alarm support to wake the mac and play a radio station in the morning? I would love a reliable mac program to do this!

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it possible for non-apple developers to integrate with AirPlay? Because that would be a really nice feature to have!

<comment><AUTHOR> It is and its on our list (actually its on a git branch). Just didn't make it across the line for v1.

As a stop gap we have this in our FAQ:

Radio currently doesn't directly support Airplay.

However, if you'd really like to stream Radio via Airplay, here is a trick you can use:

Hold the Alt-key and click on the Volume icon in the menu bar, a menu will appear showing any available Airplay device. Select your Airplay device and all your sounds will play over Airplay.

<comment><USER2> In the Appleverse, we call it Option, not Alt.

(I know the key says "alt" too, but it's smaller type for a reason.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why the Mountain Lion requirement? What tech. are you using that is present in OS X 10.8 only?

<comment><AUTHOR> Objective-C literals, that's all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Love the app. One feature request: add scheduled recording (one-off, repeating, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Does it support FLAC streams?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at the moment, but possible in future. Can you let me know of an example stream?

<comment><USER18> Okay, good to head. Unfortunately I don't know of any public ones, no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't think Rdio is going to like this. [http://www.rdio.com](http://www.rdio.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was pretty pleased that Apple had no issue with the name!

<comment><USER20> US Patent and Trademark Office won't have any issue as well. Consider to apply.

<comment><USER21> I struggle to believe you can trademark 'Radio' for a radio app - it's completely generic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> fantastic. May I ask, what was your reasoning for calling it such a generic name?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. Nothing sneaky or anything like that. We were of course tossing around app names. Anything but "iRadio" :-)

Nothing was sticking and people were asking me how we were getting on with the "Radio" personal project. I always kinda of imagined the project as making a menubar radio player that "should have shipped with my Mac". So when we noticed that "Radio" itself was available in the App Store, it just resonated with us and stuck.

<comment><AUTHOR> And getting {radioformac dot com} was just plain luck. Cost us €5.99. Try getting _any_ dot com domain with radio in the word is just nuts. So again, we saw that as a sign!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love it, own it. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks awesome.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice! Thanks!</comment>


Ignore Everybody - <AUTHOR> http://gapingvoid.com/books/

<comment><USER2> Good things here but for that troublesome first bullet... I think better advice would be something along the lines of:

"Ignore everybody who is directly competes with you, has any stake in your failure (especially through the sin envy), doesn't understand the topic very well, fails often themselves, or that you do not in general respect. And then pay special attention to all of the opposites of those."

<comment><USER3> That won't fit on the back of a business card. Let's stick with Ignore Everybody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just from the bullet points, I like "22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself."

I am working on a project aimed at protecting the environment(check it our on my website if interested). It's a research project and we're short of funds. Tried applying to different grants, none worked so far.

People always ask me if I think it will succeed. And I always answer that odds are it won't, but even so, it was a nice ride and the important thing is that I tried.(I wanted to prove to myself that I can do something similar)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hugh MacLeod is awesome. He's like an artier cross between Vaynerchuk and the new brand of generic business advice from 37signals - except, he's been preaching it longer. His comic strips are only the start of it.

</comment><comment><USER6> my favorite: "Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether."

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd put it differently.

Listen to everybody. Ignore most of them.

</comment><comment><USER8> A Summary of Hugh Macleod's Ignore Everybody [http://bighow.com/news/39-great- lessons-for-creative-people-...](http://bighow.com/news/39-great-lessons-for- creative-people-a-summary-of-hugh-macleods-ignore-everybody)

</comment><comment><USER9> 7-Keep your day job

31-Remain frugal

37-When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams

</comment><comment><USER10> Why isn't there an absolutely definitive guide of advice to individuals who need such advice? After all it seems to me that there must be a finite number of them.</comment>


Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions - <AUTHOR> https://fs.blog/mental-models/? <comment><USER2> mental models are terrible. This entire farnam street /rationalist culture is terrible, fallacy screaming falls into the same category.

The reason why it's terrible is because mental models are like a sort of jumbled set of tools, copied over from somewhere else. Deep and genuine knowledge is tacit, integrated, incorporates experience and is organic. It's acquired through training and expertise and often can't be verbalised or formalised.

Relying on mental models is a sort of crutch. Maybe a good comparison is chess playing. If you're a new chess player you learn that pieces are worth X points, and that such and such squares are important, and that's basically like these sorts of models. Really good chess players don't consciously think like that, at least not in a sort of pronounced way. They've incorporated knowledge and play by intuition. They can make 'good moves' in a second or two.

I don't know why these 'fallacies' and 'mental model' things have taken off so much within certain circles, I feel like it's because people do nothing else other than reading these blogs. Real expertise or knowledge isn't gained by sitting around and 'thinking through stuff', it's by coming into interaction with the real world and immersing yourself in what you want to get better at.

<comment><USER3> I agree with what you said, but I don't think it invalidates the usefulness of "mental model" thinking. I like that you used the word "tacit," because I think that's exactly what somebody like Charlie Munger would point out: when dealing with complex issues, people often rely on their tacit knowledge and, because of their own limitations and biases, miss some of the most fundamental and obvious aspects of their problem. An example he uses is the introduction of New Coke: Munger describes a number of extremely basic biological and psychological concepts that could have predicted the failure of New Coke, things that are part of every 100-level course in those subjects, and yet the executives at Coke still managed to completely fail to integrate that knowledge into their decision-making. I'm not all on the hype train, but I do think the idea of applying a broad set of concepts to complex problems can be really, really useful, and sometimes will produce better results than relying on your tacit knowledge. There are of course problems where this is not true, and knowing the difference is important. Mental model thinking will probably not generate the next big breakthrough in some highly technical field like math or physics, for example. But that doesn't mean it has no value.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I think your comment adds some interesting ideas.

Following the original chess comparisons, we could also say that new players will learn more and faster when given some models of what are good and bad moves, than if they need to learn from scratch with nothing else. Eventually they will outgrow that and their knowledge will exceed what can fit into a "mental model", but models are not useless. But still with chess, there's also the so called Kotov syndrome, which is "a situation when a player thinks very hard for a long time in a complicated position but does not find a clear path, then, running low on time, quickly makes a poor move, often a blunder". Overthinking, getting too deep into a certain path, can also be a problem. Intelligent people sometimes make obvious mistakes due to getting lost on deep thoughts. And this is a problem related to deep knowledge, not just models. Nothing is foolproof.

What I think is productive here is to distinguish between different types of models: if a model can help you acknowledge certain problems or patterns, that can be pretty useful; but if it tries to be the all-encompassing explanation to something, then it's probably wrong and might lead you the wrong way more often than not, constraining your vision instead of expanding it. You need experience to make good decisions, not just be given a model, but experience is also not enough or not always there, and models can help fill some of those gaps too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So why are "mental models" the best way to make intelligent decisions? What other ways to make intelligent decisions exist? The blog post failed to explain that, it largely appears to be marketing material.

<comment><USER6> I think most people use mental models to geht to decisions. It is just that these mental models are usually _implicit_ — so if you would ask somebody what their mental model behind a specific decision was they might not be able to tell you.

These mental models are _explicit_ , this is good because it moves a process that was subconscious into the light of day.

And why is this good? Because we all encounter situations in which our existing ways of thinking and deciding will fail. Isn't it good to then be able to shape the direction of your own thoughts in such a situation? Of course this takes a little practise: especially in stress situations most people wouldn't think about the way they are thinking even for a moment, because it is maybe a bit too meta and needs to be thought on purpose.

In my experience this is the best thing you can do in stress situations (unless it is a matter of life and death) is to give yourself a moment, observe yourself from the outside and actively decide which way you are going to think about the solution.

So mental models can be a way to break up your own thinking and avoid doing something out of reflex or because you always do it that way. Of course blindly following mental models and applying them to everything can also be a bad thing, like every tool could if you just use it wrong enough.

<comment><USER7> The overhead of explicit mental models means their terrible for any complex decision making process. Try an apply them to an extremely well studied problem like say chess and you still get stomped by people with even basic skills. Less obviously all real world problems you need to actually consider end up being complex with a huge number of subtle interactions.

What's actually useful 99.9% of the time is either external models that can run on computers, or implicit models developed by synthesis of knowledge and practice.

PS: Mental models can be useful in extremely stressful situations where there is no need to act quickly or come up with complex solutions. There is a hurricane forecasted to hit this area in 5 days doesn't need a great solution just a set of reasonable choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is true that mental models are a natural way to think about the world. I think it's so natural that it doesn't need to be called out. It's better to focus on honing your models than it is to look at the meta-process surrounding the existence of models, I think.

I mean, for example, why worry about filling a perceived gap in your mental models (e.g., ponder the existence of the Overton Window as a model of group decision making and political discourse), when just learning about the Overton Window (without all this mental model meta-tagging) is already a useful thing to think about when making decisions.

I'm glad that the "General thinking concepts" are not being cast as "mental models", that would be a meta-classification error. (Aphorisms != Models the same way as Information!=Data or Knowledge!=wisdom).

But seriously, this is just a book marketing page that keeps getting re- written and re-posted over and over.

</comment><comment><USER9> I posted this comment in an earlier thread on Mental Models but here it goes again.

Remember when someone is pushing something ask yourself - what is their agenda? Farnam Street's Shane Parrish is the newsletter and subscription business, just like CNBC is in the financial infotainment business not in the investment or wealth creation business. They want you think of them as the authority by peddling ideas from an place of authority without actually providing a track record of success. CNBC's Jim Cramer's stock recommendations on evaluation had a worse than S&P record and subsequently pulled from his site.

Mental model are quite interesting to read but applying them is another matter. It like asking Tiger Woods for golf lessons. I have been reading mental models for a couple decades now. I decided to pick one model and focus on applying it - invert always invert. This one simple rule has been really hard to apply. One, it is really really hard to remember to apply in the heat of decision making. Two, you cannot just _apply_ it. That requires practice _with_ an expert practitioner like an apprenticeship (guilds), extended internship (law/finance) or residency (medicine). You cannot just pick it up by reading a damn article or book.

Let me give an analogy of trying to reason about physical properties from first principles which is another "mental model". This is another popular exhortation - think from first principles just like Feynman or Fermi. Apparently, Fermi figured out the yield from the first test nuclear blast by tossing paper confetti over his head and calculating the yield from the scatter from the blast wave. I can think from first principles in one extremely narrow field where I happen to have half a decade of education and 20 years of experience. To reason from first principles like Fermi or Feynman in a broad domain like physics requires a world class mind, a world class education and a world of experience. Seriously, WTF.

Most mental model writing is akin to consuming youtube fitness porn. It looks easy to do, you look cool doing it and the end results are just spectacular. However, like Arnold or David Goggins it requires an inhuman dedication, purpose, ability to withstand pain, bounce back from trauma and just keep sacrificing attitude for a couple of decades with a healthy dose of failure. Most of the time the only person benefiting is the video creator from the ad- roll.

I appreciate the posts but I now believe these mental models are incredibly hard to do and like most of the self-improvement/growth hacking genre is just good for entertainment and commerce 99.99% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Definitely useful in my experience. Mental models provide a flexible framework for so many types of thinking that it becomes an extension of your mind that sublimates into the background.

<comment><USER11> What's an example, cause they seem awesome on paper but I wonder if they change the decision in real life because of the emotional or I like this aspect

<comment><USER10> A clear example would be the mental model of an animal cell's functions. In reality it's such a sophisticated construct that no one could actually understand everything about it in entirety, there has to be a reduction, an abstraction so to speak, somewhere along the way. And voila, turns out mental models are the best way of doing this.

The best areas for applying this in general are the areas simply too complex without reduction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This book talks about in mental models in depth, "Deep Survival" by Lawrence Gonzales [1]. Mental models can contribute to death in survival situations because they are biased by past experience. Being adaptable and practicing resilience is a much better survival strategy. A dark sense of humor helps too.

It's a really great read on how the brain works. It helped me understand some of my own fears about the COVID pandemic. It also helps me understand (but not agree with) why some people are so resistant to wearing masks when it might keep their loved ones alive.

The book gives examples of mountaineering accidents. The mental model says that the group is roped in together. Symbolically, everyone is a team, in it together. But guess how much physical force is generated by gravity when 150+ pounds of person and gear when a fall reached the end of a 50ft rope? More than what physical strength and crampons can support. That one mental model comes up a lot in mountaineering accident reports.

[1] [https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0393326152](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0393326152)

</comment><comment><USER13> These are not what I would call mental models. These are strategies (in various forms) and, as such, relatively vague strategies for assembling mental models.

Mental models live on a continuum ranging from directly incorrect to accurate. You always have them, mostly the incorrect ones early on in your career. With wisdom comes the accurate mental models and I would kill (not literally of course) for obtaining the good ones :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I very much enjoy mental models. A close friend and myself have a weekly mastermind where we go over what's happening for us on both a personal and professional level. It keeps us both in check and allows us to come to conclusions more effectively.

For the past couple months we've introduced going over a mental model every week as well. We'll summarize it in our own words, discuss examples of how we can use it - or when it makes sense to avoid it. They're not end-all-be-all, but they're a great thing to use as a starting point.

</comment><comment><USER15> Fallacies are mental models too.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd like to take a moment to thank the author of this blog post for some of the most engaging content I've read in a long time. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER17> I am working on wisecharlie.com and mental models are really valuable.

</comment><comment><USER18> If mental models are so great, why is most software refusing to give us one for how it works?</comment>