The New Space Race - <AUTHOR> https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-impact.aspx?num=5152 <comment><USER3> I think the more important step is that SpaceX has broken the "credibility ceiling" for private space ventures. When they started competing for the CRS and Commercial Crew contracts a number of important voices in Congress were amused but not convinced, and when it became clear they were going to deliver something on their promise they actively campaigned against such "risky" ventures, and trusting someone other than NASA & the original space contracting collective (Lockheed, Boeing, Aerojet, Etc.) with the ability to actually launch. There were the incredibly bogus "export licenses" which were code for regulating launches, there were outsized estimates of risks, amazing requirements for "proof" of competency. But now we're on the other side of that cloud and SpaceX, Orbital, and perhaps soon Blue Origin will be part of the "club". Pretty exciting times for the new kids, scary as heck for the previous club members (like ULA).

<comment><USER4> I was going to chime in that even Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan were opposed to it but it turns out that may not have been the case. [0]

0\. [https://www.quora.com/Why-were-Neil-Armstrong-Eugene- Cernan-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-were-Neil-Armstrong-Eugene-Cernan-and- Neil-DeGrasse-Tyson-all-opposed-to-SpaceX)

<comment><USER5> I also remember reading or hearing one of the original astronauts being ideologically resistant to private companies rather than civic supported programs being at the forefront of space exploration. However, here is the closest I can find, from Buzz Aldrin in a Reddit iAMA:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2a5vg8/i_am_buzz_aldr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2a5vg8/i_am_buzz_aldrin_engineer_american_astronaut_and/cirs2i0?context=3)

<comment><USER4> That's interesting, but a distinctly different topic. In the 60 Minutes show referenced in my Quora link, which is where I got the idea in the first place, Armstrong and Cernan were portrayed as being against private development in the manner of SpaceX because the profit motive would undermine safety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a bit off-topic, but the section on asteroid mining reminded me to recommend 'The Expanse' on Syfy: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/)

</comment><comment><USER7> > In fact, if Earth were 50 percent larger, with a correspondingly stronger > gravitational pull, no form of chemical propulsion would contain enough > energy to launch a spacecraft into orbit.

This is quite a strange statement. Not even with multiple stages? Not even Saturn-V would be able to lift a cubesat - with necessary extra stages? I'd like to see numbers which support that.

<comment><USER8> As I understand it, it's a practicality issue: with enough extra stages you can always escape, but the payload size rapidly approaches zero. (See: [http://space.stackexchange.com/a/5383](http://space.stackexchange.com/a/5383))

The size, complexity, and costs of extra stages make it impossible once you add in the actual real-world constraints. As said in Terr_'s link: " _Rockets at 85% propellant and 15% structure and payload are on the extreme edge of our engineering ability to even fabricate (and to pay for!). They require constant engineering to keep flying._ "

<comment><USER7> Thank you for your reply - and thank all the others who replied.

This is a link on a NASA website :) and that organization is known to err in questions related to space. Seriously, guys - Don Pettit wrote it for general audience, and skimming the article I spotted this -

> Hydrogen-oxygen is the most energetic chemical reaction known for use in a > human rated rocket. Chemistry is unable to give us any more.

This can be understood in a certain way - but also can be argued, as here - [http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/hydrogen.html](http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/hydrogen.html)

> The highest measured Isp ever achieved with chemical propellants was with > LH2/LF2/LLi (yes, liquid lithium), at 542s in vacuum.

Next, 15% structure certainly doesn't apply to some first stages - particularly recent Falcons from SpaceX.

The point which I was trying to make is I doubt that big of a difference. Sure, it's pretty hard to get to orbit from, say, Jupiter-like planet. However orbital speed for a planet with constant density is linear by the planet radius, and to get to New Horizons' ~16 km/s delta V as orbital speed the Earth would have to be 2 times bigger - 8 times heavier. And New Horizon's ain't cubesat either.

And, on top of that, we still have other readily available tricks up our sleeve. So I think even with rather large variations of Earth size we'd get in time to the stars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Being in the midst of all of this, I can vouch for the palpable excitement within the industry: at least if you stay away from talking to traditional prime contractors. There's a real sense that disruption is right around the corner. The biggest problem is that there have been no significant exits to prove investors right. This makes it difficult to raise capital.

Also, traditionally, external capital has sought out downstream opportunities. We've been focussing on upstream tech and it's much harder to prove the case given the long time horizon.

I've seen some incredible applications being pitched, but I think the real test will be whether they are able to generate significant exits. I, for one, hope that the next five years spells a period of immense productivity in the sector, generating profitability all along the value chain. If we're able to ride that wave, I think that there are many more applications that will pop up that make use of space infrastructure.

<comment><USER9> What areas are these applications in? Mining keeps getting tossed around but nobody's put out a clear roadmap / business model for it

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of applications are much closer to home. For instance, I've seen a few teams pitch the idea of building a robust, small-satellite network to serve as a platform for Machine-2-Machine messaging. I think enabling the global IoT industry is really going to unleash some spectacular applications. Internet everywhere is of course a popular idea that's being worked on. I particularly like the low-data rate, low monthly charge model that I've seen pitched. Seen teams pitch internet anywhere for as low as a couple of bucks a month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had expected more due-diligence before publishing the article by HBS - <USER2> they have included a promising piece on Escape Dynamics without bothering to check that it has already closed down! [http://escapedynamics.com/](http://escapedynamics.com/)

<comment><USER11> Looks like we are decades away from using external energy and propulsion sources. Looks like chemical propulsion is the way to go in the near future.

<comment><USER10> I don't think so. It seems like it was not because of lack of technology that failed a startup like escape dynamics but rather unwilling investors who were concerned about near term financial gains. Also, ground based for microwave driven IMHO is not the way to go if you are looking for reduced cost per kg per launch. No offense to the team, but they should be looking at orbital based techniques for similar power transfers - relyin on reduced atmospheric interference and much stronger power generation from direct sunlight.</comment></comment></comment>


The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a25644619/soldier-weight/ <comment><USER2> Ah, an article I can comment on. I was an Infantry officer for 6 years and did all the normal schooling and a deployment.

This is a pretty well done article. Here's some general ideas to keep in mind.

\- Most dismounted missions are run from trucks or an established forward operating base, so you don't carry a huge rucksack most of the time because you can just go back to your base.

\- Like the article states, even a day pack with body armor gets you up to 70lbs quickly.

\- Ammo is really heavy, it being made of lead and all. 100rds of 7.62mm ammo weighs about 7lb. You want at least 800rds per M240B.

\- Rucksack weights are sometimes inflated because it's a way to brag.

\- The Marine infantry officer course requirement for 152lb load is excessive. At that weight, you can only do an admin movement on a road. All the anecdotes I found about combat loads that heavy were for an initial, short infil followed by a stationary mission.

I think the article nails the root cause towards heavier protective equipment. Public perception and the news cycle makes the death of American service member a bigger deal than in past conflicts.

It will be a long time before we get electronic mules in the Infantry. Adopting the mules adds a huge complexity budget to a simple movement. The Army decided some years ago to give every Company (~140 people) a Raven drone for recon. However, it's a huge deal if it gets lost (if the GPS guidance were to suddenly fail), so no one ever uses them to avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment.

<comment><USER3> > Ammo is really heavy

Wouldn't it be possible to carry the same amount of kinetic energy with lighter ammunition? One inherent limitation of firearms is that all the energy is released inside the weapon, which has, then, to dissipate the heat and remaining gases and particles. If bullets are self-propelled, a larger part of that output can be released outside the weapon, allowing it to be faster and impart more energy on impact. Unfortunately, it may make following the source of the bullet easier.

> avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment.

That a combatant needs to worry about paperwork is the cruelest thing I heard in a long time.

<comment><USER4> From the few known examples, self-propelled ammunition accelerating outside the barrel means it's relatively slow when leaving the barrel, which both makes it less effective at short ranges and causes accuracy issues.

Caseless ammunition is maybe a closer thing, but also tricky (heat dissipation is harder, difficulties in making ammunition robust enough). H&K made a military variant once, but no military adopted it (Germany almost did, but with the end of the cold war it wasn't considered worth the cost)

Even adopting improved versions of existing systems is a big process for militaries, switching to something entirely new for something as fundamental as the standard rifles needs to have really big and obvious benefits to be considered.

<comment><USER5> Yep, the G11. Turns out with all its other problems caseless ammo is brittle, so if you drop a round it breaks. Not super practical in the field.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGKcvM2Hh4g&t=328s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGKcvM2Hh4g&t=328s)

<comment><USER6> Yes! _Forgotten Weapons_ is an amazing channel. I love Gun-Jesus (Florida-Man Edition), aka Ian. His simple, clear, engaging style is fantastic. The deep dives into engineering and history are fantastic. Infinitely bingeable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sounds insane. My hobby is medium distance hiking in (say, 250 km/155 mi na week) in the Scandinavian Arctic, so I have to carry all my food. I'm a fan of ultralight hiking, so my whole summer baggage weights around 10 kg/20 lbs excluding water. I invested some money in lighter equipment, yes, but most of my weight savings is stuff I simply do not take with me, or things that serve in multiple roles (eg. my hiking poles double as tent poles). A common piece of advice in the ultralight community is "don't pack your fears" – take only what you know you're gonna need, avoid redundancy (and be careful not to lose your crap), and consider what you can do without (an example: you don't really need a big ass knife).

Anyway, with 10 kg pack a trip is extremely physically challenging, but overall pleasant. I can actually enjoy the view, as opposed to just wanting to throw my backpack on the ground (I didn't get to my low weight immediately, I used to carry much more before).

Hiking like I do, but with 100 lbs of gear sounds like a nightmare. A soldier may not care about the views, but he should watch out for people who are trying to kill him. If my experience translates at all, the weight is interfering with that goal.

<comment><USER8> > avoid redundancy

That's really dangerous advice for anyone inexperienced in a particular endurance activity away from contact.

The military have a phrase: one is none and two are one. For anything that is life-critical, having only one is too risky.

<comment><USER9> That advice might be why there is so many SOS-calls from the swedish mountains every year, from hikers getting stranded somewhere in the wilderness. The phone coverage isn't great everywhere either...

<comment><USER10> I can't tell what you're trying to say. Are you being snarky and agreeing? Are you claiming that people are stranded because of redundancy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually wrote an essay that dug pretty deep into this topic, many years ago, after I finished my enlistment as a Marine infantry machinegunner - likely the most overburdened MOS. I'm surprised this didn't get a mention in the article, especially considering the latest developments: women in combat roles. The significant difference between male and female upper body strength is going to be impossible to ignore under combat loads.

<comment><USER12> I always felt bad for you weapons guys. We had a guy in our company that barely met the height requirement. He was like, 5'3" and 95lbs soaking wet. He was a machine gunner and he humped his heart out but it was painful to watch.

<comment><USER11> For a long time I was pretty irritated about landing in a line company instead of a mounted weapons company... but after a combat tour, where the majority of KIA was from roadside IEDs, I didn't mind walking so much. The loadout did get more and more ridiculous though - after some officer got shot in the heart through his armpit, we all got issued side SAPIs that added weight, interfered with room clearing mobility, and cut off circulation in our arms. Backpacker syndrome [0] was also pretty common.

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

<comment><USER12> At the end of a deployment, I had such severe shoulder pain that I could barely carry a weapon. Of course, the corpsman "couldn't find anything wrong". That shoulder pain is still with me. I've been to a number of doctors and therapists, but haven't found anything conclusive.

<comment><USER11> Hopefully it gets better with time for you. My complaint wasn't with pain, but numbness. I developed this problem very early on, in SOI, and kept it to myself because I knew that it would get me medically discharged. Thankfully I never had to explain to anyone why I'd go to the lengths I did in order to avoid handling grenades. After 2 years of civilian life my knees and lower back stopped bothering me, but 15 years later: my hands still feel like they're falling asleep.

<comment><USER12> I feel you. My toes went numb on a hump once and they've never fully come back. I've been out since 2012 and still have the shoulder pain and numb toes so I'm not holding out for that pain to go away.

<comment><USER13> Have your Sciatic nerve looked into. I had a pretty bad bike crash (doored going 30mph, bounced on pavement with left hip). I would have burning sensations about the size of a fifty cent piece in my upper back, numb toes, etc. After 10+ years it finally subsided. Chronic pain is highly correlated with suicide. So best to get that fixed.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm reminded of the O/R story of PMS Blackett and removing armour behind pilots. I know it's not the same but it's in the same space: armchair experts can easily "see" less weight would make for a more effective fighting force. Nobody in actual authority or chain of command wants to be the one turning up at a soldiers funeral saying "I issued the order to have less armour"

It's not that the economics/efficiency argument isn't clear. It's that we now value human life more than we did eg during the battle of the somme. "Attrition" is not an acceptable battle plan in public.

I've never been in harm's way. I've never had to make decisions about people going into harm's way. I don't for a minute assume it's easy to make these decisions.

That more people die (D-Day landings, parachuteists drowning due to surplus weight added before launch) is not surprising either. It's lose-lose decision making.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was infantry, USMC. I have sustained permanent injury just from carrying heavy shit around for years. It's pretty hard on your body.

<comment><USER15> Looking back, would you leave anything out of your daily loadout to avoid injury?

<comment><USER16> The largest weight I experienced in the service was Sapi plates and Ammo. Those are two things you definitely don't want to leave out, though it wasn't entirely uncommon for people to leave out plates when deployed, leading to forced inspections before movements.

<comment><USER12> I remember a kid putting a laptop in his flak jacket in place of a sapi plate...to watch movies on post or something. LCPL shenanigans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting to note: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomp)

The most famous yomp of recent times was during the 1982 Falklands War. After disembarking from ships at San Carlos on East Falkland, on 21 May 1982, Royal Marines and members of the Parachute Regiment yomped (and tabbed) with their equipment across the islands, covering 56 miles (90 km) in three days carrying 80-pound (36 kg) loads.

Wonder what their kit was in comparison to the article.

<comment><USER18> I don't think any of them had body armour. The weight would have been mainly ammo, food and batteries. But it was over soft marshy ground.

<comment><USER19> They didn't have body armour, no, and fewer batteries. You can get a fair idea of what how little they were carrying compared to current deployments from [https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194942](https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194942)

Allegedly RM commandos deployed in Afghanistan are carrying roughly twice the load ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I carried roughly 48kg in the field, on "easier" movements, it might drop to 35kg or so. I was an officer so I was a bit luckier than the guy carrying the MK 48. And God save us all when we had to go MOPP 4. (MOPP 4 is when you have to wear full-Chem-Bio protective gear.) Doing all that at almost 6000 feet makes it even less fun.

<comment><USER21> And you're being shot at. Nah the military is not for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here is how this worked for me.

First, some background. During my second deployment I was frequently traveling. If I wasn't traveling I wasn't working. I was based out of Bagram, Afghanistan in a two person team that visited the major US Army bases to asses the information security management position of the base, write a report, and recommend changes.

Secondly, you have to understand the nature of air travel in a conflict zone. Flag officers (generals and admirals) are on a list that allows them to schedule travel so that travel works for them. For everybody else there is a space available list. Grades E9, O6, and CW5 are considered VIPs and are automatically at the top of the space available list. There are some people who have special mission clearance so they just show up and bump other people off the flight. The rest of us have to wait for a flight, often for many days. That said, you have no idea how long a travel mission will take, so you bring extra gear. You also have to understand that there are primary travel hubs and relay locations, so often there isn't a direct flight.

I would pack double the number of extra under garments for the planned travel duration and one or two extra uniforms. It gets cold in Afghanistan, so I would pack my complete triple sleeping bag sleep system (which accounts for half my personal gear) and a tiny pillow. You also need your personal hygiene stuff. You were always sure to pack personal entertainment, which for me was two novels, my laptop, and all necessary laptop accessories. Finally you also packed survival gear, which for me were additional pens, spare boot laces, spare hearing protection, a multi-tool, and some other stuff.

So, that was just personal gear that filled my large rucksack. You also needed your combat gear: kevlar helmet, body armor with kevlar plates, weapon, ammo, magazines, and any additionally needed tactical gear. You rarely actually needed any of this, but it was absolutely necessary for riding on the bird should anything unfortunate happen during travel or should you have to take a land convoy.

We still haven't gotten to mission gear. I was the lower ranking member of our two person team so I carried the gear. I carried an assault pack (standard Army backpack but tougher and heavier) with three toughbooks. A toughbook was a heavy Panasonic laptop in a thick aluminum shell tested for advanced shock protection. These things were unnecessarily stupid tough and extremely heavy. My personal laptop at the time was a small plastic netbook that I treated far worse and it proved far more durable.

All this gear added up to about 120 pounds. I discovered that when visiting Kandahar, which at that time the air terminal was run by NATO and they weighed everybody before they let you hop on a bird. I remember wearing all this stuff and leaving my living area on Bagram late for a showtime at the rotary terminal (helicopter air terminal). I miscalculated how far away that terminal was from where I was living, because the fixed wing terminal was really close. I was trying to lightly jog that nearly 2 mile route with all that gear and its the closest I have ever come to feeling like a heart attack.

<comment><USER23> This is so interesting. Any thought on the cultural norms driving so much gear to be individual? Personal gear could be common gear instead, with perhaps a cost to hygiene and individual sensitivities. Combat gear (partially) as well, especially for non-combat roles. And being the designated carrier in a two-man team, that's cultural for sure.

<comment><USER24> "one man one kit" you own your gear and are responsible for maintaining it, knowing exactly where it is at any moment, and if it fails because you didn't take care of it, it's your fault. Plus, reduces cognitive load when you know your kit like the back of your hand, in stressful situations. It's your kit and you don't lend it to others, also. Otherwise you compromise your safety.

<comment><USER25> Which is back in the day cavalry had assigned mounts - you looked after your personal mount a lot better that way.

<comment><USER26> There's an RAF anecdote related to this in Most Secret War, in which the officer asserts that his unit is more effective than other similar units because it still assigns each specific crew to a specific plane, and so knowing "their" plane they are willing to fly it despite minor problems that in other units would cause it be taken out of service for repair.

I don't have the book with me, maybe somebody else will remember and dig out the quote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "King estimates that the average soldier goes into action with a hefty 20 lbs of batteries."

That seems insane. And to think that I don't even like to carry my 4 lb Macbook to the bus stop.

</comment><comment><USER28> This story reminds me of a scene from the movie Saving Private Ryan:

[https://youtu.be/inEY1dHXyGA](https://youtu.be/inEY1dHXyGA)

<comment><USER29> I cant find the particular scene, but in the beginning of Platoon, Elias goes through Chris's (Charlie Sheen) pack and just starts throwing unnecessary shit out after he nearly humped himself into being a heat casualty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised that these loads are carried on the body. Surely with 50+ Kg soldiers cannot climb walls or jump over trenches, so why not use something like a Chinese wheelbarrow, which would work even on narrow, bumpy paths? They could provide some cover as well.

<comment><USER31> >They could provide some cover as well.

Visual cover maybe. Rounds are going to pass through it as if it isn't even there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 2014 top NHL draft pick can't do one pull-up

[https://www.nhl.com/news/no-pull-ups-no-problem-for-top- nhl-...](https://www.nhl.com/news/no-pull-ups-no-problem-for-top-nhl-draft- prospect-sam-bennett/c-721393)

<comment><USER29> He gets paid to skate hard, handle a puck, and take a hit. Infantrymen are paid (fractions less)to take asymmetric warfare to the enemy in any environment and at any time, with the expectation of no resupply available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe it is time to reinvent the wheel? Put the heaviest/extra loads on a fat bike or a wheelbarrow or 1-2 wheel trolley to be dragged in turns. You are unlikely to go slower than with +50kg backpack.

<comment><USER29> How do you get over a fallen tree? How do you get over a 5 foot wall in an urban environment? It needs to be carried by the men on the ground to truly be versatile.

<comment><USER33> Same thing with a mule, robo-mule or a self propelled vehicle. Wait, I can detach the bags from a bike/trolley and throw them over the 2m wall with a help of a comrade/short rope. Then goes the 15kg bike or or the trolley. And unless we are talking about the jungle/fallen trees/mountain warfare etc., where probably anything non-human can not be used effectively, you will be faster and less tired reaching the destination. Last but not least: simple trolley is quite cheap, way cheaper than the load it can carry. You can throw it away when the going gets tough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I believe that the British Army's Land Rovers are being replaced at least partly because they can't take the weight of all the extra weight required.

So it's not just the soldiers struggling.

<comment><USER35> The problem for the Land Rovers is not that they can't handle the weight of all the infantry gear, it's that they can't handle the weight of their modernisation package.

They're soft-skinned light fast patrol vehicles, originally specced for use behind friendly lines and in Northern Ireland - up-armouring them for a modern battlefield, improving their radio gear and extending their range adds a lot of mass. It got to the point where the weight of the extra gear risked breaking an axle if they drove off-road at one point, iirc.

Thankfully the REME engineers are actually listened to when they say "this is provably unsafe, look", so they're getting new vehicles at long last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> In term of high-tech making the situation worse, I know a soldier in the French army, who have used the new high-tech system, FELIN ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%89LIN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%89LIN)), which is adding a lot of weight between the batteries and all the high tech gadgets. Apparently the added weight made that it was rarely used.

</comment><comment><USER37> I excerpted a thread about this ten days ago: www.unz.com/isteve/why-the- infantryman-is-still-a-man/. Read on if you want some soldiers' perspectives.

"Most infantrymen lift, but that's not the hard part. Civilians aren't used to carrying those loads on their backs, there are all sorts of muscles and callouses you have to build and nerves you have to kill in your shoulders and feet to be able to do it. This is why Infantry units ruck march weekly. My first ruck in basic was only with a forty pound pack, rifle and water for five miles. One of the worst days of my life. Within a year, I was running twenty miles in full battle kit with an eighty pound ruck. In country, 120-150 lb was common, but we didn't march nearly as far."

"In the long run it would help if we didn't torture the guys with excessive training for long road marches that never happen in combat. We spent a shitload of time getting good at moving by foot with everything we had for days at a time over miles and miles of terrain. That's fucking stupid. All you get out of that is a bunch of guys who have blown out knees and backs by the time they hit thirty.

We almost never moved miles and miles at a time with full rucks in combat, that's why god created blackhawks.

What we did do was a lot of patrols with half of our battle rattle and you trained so that when someone got hit you could handle all of your gear and theirs at the same time.

Oh and I can tell you guys something else that nobody wants to hear about women in combat. The fact is that by the third deployment they are no longer up against regular men, they are up against guys who have taken roids for the injuries they have and to get ready for the next deployment fast enough.

It's not enough to be able to get your body in condition enough to get through Ranger School or something like that. That's a one off situation where you put everything you have into it and that's it. Either you have enough or not. That's not how it works in real life. In real life it's like getting ready for the next season of football. Do we really think that women's recovery time is going to be good enough? Fat chance, that's why roids are a secret now. Nobody wanted to admit that even the MEN couldn't get the job done without them, but it was true. Sure some of the guys could hang without using them but the fact that a lot of guys felt they honestly needed them to survive should tell you a whole lot.

I'm not saying women don't belong in combat either. I just don't see the point when it comes to straight up infantry units. Now if they want to put together sniper teams with women, I'd be all for that. Some of them bitches can shoot, I'll tell you what!

Now aside from all the whoa whoah crap the best bet would be to stop this nonsense and worry about our own country for a change."

"I was a lot older (enlisted at aged 27) so was relieved to be able to ride in the Humvees. But, much to my chagrin, we still participated in a lot of humping (road marches). We always brought along the completed .50 cal system when we humped. For my unit, our basic combat load was 55lbs consisting mostly of our Alice/Molle packs, plus whatever weapon we were assigned (most issued M-16, squad leaders or gunners issued an M-9). Which by itself was a lot, but then you add in the .50 cal and it was a bit much. The receiver of the .50 cal weighs about 50lbs. The tripod was 44lbs and the barrel was 24lbs. We would distribute the system among each other. With one Marine starting out with the receiver, one with the tripod, and two Marines each with one barrel (spare). Put them up front and the rest of the Marines fell in behind them (we typically went on humps with two complete systems) and as they tired they would yell "Barrel Right!" or "Receiver Left!" and the next Marine in line would run up to them and take over carrying duties. We would do this the whole hump. So, depending on what piece you were carrying our weight was as low as 55lbs, then would jump to 79lbs with the barrel, 99 with the tripod and 105lbs when carrying the receiver. The tripod's were later replaced with a better/lighter version. The barrel was fine to carry lighter weight and could sling across the pack quite comfortably, but the tripod and receiver were nasty.

The Marines value physical fitness. We had a lot of PFT studs who could kill it on the PFT test. I was fine with fitness always more athletic than strong. Always scored a first class PFT score (not that hard to do really and I got the old man discount). But in my platoon (and many other CAAT platoons) the real mark was what you carried on the humps. We "conditioned" up to 25 miles so we would do about 1-2 humps per month, culminating in the 25 miles hump. I never fell out. Always there at the end, never ignored the calls from my brothers when they could no longer carry their piece. The was the true test of toughness in my platoon. Not PFT scores, not book knowledge, but what you did on the humps.

We had some strong fellas. It was about the back and more importantly your heart. I only did 7 years in the Corps but it wore me down a bit. "

Why we use heavy infantry like this:

"Wikipedia gives a fair answer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_infantry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_infantry) Roughly speaking, heavy infantry can destroy a lot more than light infantry, but (a) can't go everywhere and (b) doesn't have the infantry to search an area in detail. So, the opposition lives where (a) heavy infantry can't go, because of its equipment, or (b) hide in inhabited areas where heavy infantry can't search effectively enough to find them. On the other hand, light infantry eats troops, both during and after combat. If we're in an attrition war (as tactics indicate), why use light infantry? The answer to that has been obvious since the Port Arthur attack by Japanese forces in the early AD 1900s. Light infantry eats troops, don't use light infantry in attrition wars. If you have an attrition war and you can't stand attrition, you've lost. Make the best of it, try to win the peace negotiations, lose your table stakes, and rebuild. Don't throw your society into the furnace. Simple as that, and as hard to face.

Disguising light infantry casualties by over-use of body armor, which produces joint injuries that aren't attributed to actual combat, is an attempt to deceive the public, as is the "They serve so you won't have to" advertising slogan of a few years ago was. "We have casualties, but they don't count because . . .". But they do. Each is a member of your society, as are that person's relatives. You need them."

From the same commenter:

"As I've said in other posts, our side isn't good at attrition warfare. That's a consequence of having a K society, one that invests a lot in its members and relies on competent citizens. Each infantryman that dies means an important function not performed. Other societies have many completely non-functional citizens, crunches they can lose in war and never miss them. The West used to be like that as recently as the Napoleonic wars. People who could earn a living in society strongly tended to remain out of military service, and there was no legal conscription (barring press gangs and the like, small scale affairs mostly). Mass mobilization for WW I left participating societies without the people they needed to keep existing, and with considerable ill feeling from those people left sound after the conflict.

So, to paraphrase myself in a couple of other posts, don't get into an arse kicking contest with a porcupine. If attrition is the only way you can win, then lose and save what you can. That or use area weapons and disintegrate the opponent's society (that was the threat of the Cold War that prevented most attrition contests with Russia). Either is better than disintegrating your own society...

Or better yet, live in peace and fight wars only in video games. If possible."

A little more about body armor.

"Former infantryman here – answer is yes, they do lift, but in my experience the big lifting craze started after 2001 and all the deployments. Very likely had something to do with lugging all that armor around, but coincided with the crossfit / free-weight renaissance. The lifting is a good thing, but I'm less certain about the armor.

20 lbs doesn't sound like much, but it matters when you're trying to run, jump or dive. The ballistic plates especially really bounce up and down, seriously impacting the body's natural motion. Add weapon and everything else (I was almost always carrying at least one radio in my one Iraq tour) and the struggle is real. It slows you down significantly. The experience gave me sympathy for breast-reduction patients. Also – and this isn't much discussed – it affected my marksmanship. It's just harder to tuck the stock into your shoulder and draw a sight picture with all that bulk.

If the conflict had involved lots of movement and close combat, maybe the armor wouldn't have been worth it. In an environment where most casualties are caused by unexpected explosions and sniper fire, armor is probably worth it. But it's miserable to wear."

"Current high coverage body armor was required by US Congress, not the Army, during the early stages of the current round of Middle Eastern warfare. Congress didn't want large casualty numbers, and required more coverage than the Army wanted. Current loads minimize combat casualties, but cause joint injuries that manifest in later life — injuries Congress doesn't much care about as they don't affect the next election."

</comment><comment><USER38> I've got 16 years in as a Light Infantry Senior NCO.

I've also led and conducted Lean StartUp focused sprints to work this specific problem, internal to defence

Weight carried by soldiers is a critical problem.

I've carried in excess of 50kg on Operations, verified.

During my Infantry Platoon Commander's Course we carried in excess of 50kg for weeks, verified.

I'm 78kg and carry 25kg for 50-70km per week(in 10-20km increments, done for over 1 year) on the beach for fitness.

My own long term personal experience mimics the article linked Project Payne.

Carrying 1/3 body weight is easily trainable and sustainable.

Carrying 2/3 body weight, especially over undulating or complex terrain is a recipe for long-term joint/orthopaedic disaster.

I have peers in their 30's who have had hip replacements due to injuries sustained from sustained carriage of too much weight in training.

The article mentions 2 things:

1)"Soldiers carry 100 pounds of the lightest kit possible"

2)UK Army Project Payne, too much weight carried "just in case"

New capabilities particularly around communication networks carried by all subunits(dismounted section/squid level) are increasing weight significantly. The "weight carried" modelling has been done, and their is no current solution.

In my experience, the ever increasing weight carried by dismounted Infantry is not risk aversion as stated in the article, but risk shift.

While it's not a tortoise versus hare binary choice, it is a continuum of weight carried.

Turning dismounted Infantry soldiers into armoured tortoises not only shifts the risk towards increased long-term orthopedic/muscular/skeletal health risk of soldiers, but increased risk in lower operational capacity/capability due to reduced speed/range of operation.

In light of politicised efforts to nudge induction of more women in combat arms, the increased average weight carried combined with decreasing average stature and fitness levels of soldiers is a guarantee of increased long-term health consequences.

But the risk of crippling 100 soldiers tomorrow is viewed as acceptable over 1 soldier killed on Operations today.

I would suggest a machine learning system to log and analyze weight carried both in training and on operations that incorporates all known environmental and operational factors to recommend what is carried and what is left behind, to reduce the "just in case" factor, but I believe culture would have to change as well or risk a Patrol/Section/Platoon NCO filling the void again.

Personally, I'm for starting from scratch again and looking towards the highly effective RLI of the 1970's, at least in terms of counter insurgency.

Rifle, 5 magazines, two water bottles, two grenades, wearing shorts and high top sneakers.

More hare, less tortoise. Much like current modern special operations direct action doctrine applied to conventional forces.

But as we shift from counter-insurgency focus back towards peer or near peer combined arms capable threats, this is not going to happen.

We will continue to carry more weight unless senior leadership, unit command, and subunit NCOs we can trust rapid "just in time" battlefield logistics.

</comment><comment><USER39> PSA: the linked article is so riddled with obvious errors it's as if it wasn't proofread at all.

</comment><comment><USER40> By reading this article the solution seems simple: mule robots only carrying the "just in case" items.

<comment><USER41> It's been tried. Legged Squad Support System.[1] Got far enough to be field- tested by the USMC. Too noisy.

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

<comment><USER40> I mean the wheeled ones mentioned in the article, where the argument was that it became a single point of failure and easy target due to it carrying all the ammunition etc. However, the article later argues that too many items carried by soldiers are "just in case" so my thought is why not combine these two and get rid of both problems?

<comment><USER42> When you combine you get both problems.

<comment><USER40> How so? The soldiers don't need to carry the "nice to have" items and if it get struck it's not such a big deal.

<comment><USER43> 1\. Being OK to lose doesn't fix the problem of it being noisy.

2\. There aren't many truly "It's OK to lose it" items, as they'd all have been lost by overburdened soldiers already.

<comment><USER40> The wheeled mules I'm talking about are not noisy though. From the article:

> Although quadruped robots like BigDog from Boston Dynamics is no longer in > the running (it turned out to be a bit too noisy), there are numerous > wheeled alternatives.

Regarding your second point the article seems to come to a different conclusion:

> A British army study, called Project Payne, found that far too much of what > is carried is "just in case" and that the amount of ammunition carried by > troops is excessive.

<comment><USER25> Ah yes the cant trust the squaddie with to much ammunition line from the Quartermaster - no such thing as to much Daka Daka</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Passing on the IPO: The benefits of staying private - <AUTHOR> http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/08/21/passing-on-the-ipo-the-benefits-of-staying-private/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this isn't discussed more. Going publicly is often a red flag to me. Certainly there is a time and place for it, but often the big cash influx is used to buy into loosely related markets (often at a hefty premium), rather than make significant gains in the company's core competency.</comment>


LEGO built a life-size, drivable Bugatti from over a million Technic pieces - <AUTHOR> https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2018/august/technic-bugatti-chiron-build-for-real/ <comment><USER2> There is a PDF "fact sheet" explanation here: [https://www.lego.com/r/www/r/portals/-/media/themes/technic/...](https://www.lego.com/r/www/r/portals/-/media/themes/technic/2hy2018/apollo/downloads/fact- sheet.pdf)

It says that the car is not built entirely from LEGO parts: there is a steel frame, axles, and many other non-LEGO things in it.

<comment><USER3> Also, "LEGO Technic" is an ill-defined term. The various kits contain an repertoire of custom pupose-designed pieces whose category appears to be open- ended. It seems that almost any conceivable chunk of plastic whatsoever (or perhaps another material) could be included a "LEGO Technic" kit. Thus if something is built out of "LEGO Technic", what exactly does that mean? It needs to be qualified, like built only with the pieces available in a particular kit available to consumers (as many instances of that kit as required).

<comment><USER4> Not sure if you are a specialist who is nitpicking or simply not well informed, but lego technic is pretty much well-defined (mostly as "every part present in a set branded as `LEGO Technic`"). See [1] for part lists. The afol community has nerdy tendencies (no judgement, i like it) and everything is pretty much well-defined, even more for crucial questions such as "what parts are valid to use" or "how can we combine them". For the second question see [2] for a presentation on illegal builds.

[1] [https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego- parts/technic](https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego-parts/technic) [2] [http://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress- bf06.pd...](http://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pdf)

<comment><USER5> How does this address the unique parts that LEGO created for this specific build? For example, they created interesting screw-adjustable beams to mount the curving outer skin.

<comment><USER6> It's highly probable they'll re-use the custom piece designs in future sets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> more details here: [https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti- chiron/med...](https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/media) (including a 714mb zip with images which I am still downloading)

Some facts:

        Over 1,000,000 LEGO Technic elements in total
        339 types of LEGO Technic elements used
        No glue used in the assembly
        Total weight: 1,500 kg
        Engine contains:
        2,304 LEGO Power Functions motors
        4,032 LEGO Technic gear wheels
        2,016 LEGO Technic cross axles
        Theoretical performance of 5.3 HP
        Estimated torque of 92 Nm
        Functional rear spoiler (using both LEGO Power Functions and pneumatics)
        Functional speedometer built entirely from LEGO Technic elements
        13,438 man hours used on development and construction

Edit: images are meh, just press shots. Was hoping for more on how it was built

<comment><USER7> "...using 58 types of Technic custom-made elements", anyone have a information on what those pieces are? They really spent an incedible amount of hours and effort on this. 13k+ man hours...

<comment><USER8> Crazy budget, just at $20 dollars an hour that is $~260k. Hope it paid off!

<comment><USER9> How many Bugatti's does this piece of marketing have to sell to justify the cost? I'm guessing not many.

<comment><USER10> Like the other poster says - this doesn't really sell any cars because they are spoken for as soon as the plans to build one are revealed (ie Bugatti often sells through their entire planned-to-build cars years or even decades before the car is actually built)

Often luxury car companies will refuse to build any more because each additional car built reduces the value of all existing cars.

So the answer is 0. This marketing doesn't need to sell any cars to justify the cost.

<comment><USER11> AFAIK, the Chiron production run is only about 60% sold last I heard.

<comment><USER12> It's the Divo that is sold out but that's an even more limited run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are two things that really amaze me

      No glue
      Powered by lego electric motors

I can accept that there is important subframe and wheels not in Lego. It's still masterful and essentially a work of art.

<comment><USER14> a much fairer and better response than the snarky current top comment. who'd deny this is amazing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If this thing is ever in an accident I hope first responders are wearing thick soled shoes.

</comment><comment><USER16> And the best part is it's modular, so you can reconfigure it into a minivan for your daily commute!

</comment><comment><USER17> Link to the story without all the Oath tracking: [https://www.slashgear.com/life-size-lego-technic-bugatti- chi...](https://www.slashgear.com/life-size-lego-technic-bugatti-chiron- actually-drives-30543860/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Fascinating stuff and a pretty amazing accomplishment! Good job Lego.

I've built a number of robots out of Lego Technic pieces and the only way to keep them together was often to glue pieces together. There was a MIT interstitial class (6.270) that was pretty influential in the hobby robots scene during the late 80s and one of the fallouts of that was a great building techniques guide that was notes on how to make things like power plants and load supporting beams.

That said, supporting the weight of a person and a car in the air across the distance between the front and read axles would have seemed pretty impossible to me. Now if you looked underneath and there was a row of wheels keeping the middle of the car supported that would not have surprised me. And then a top speed of 20km/h ? That is almost 20' or 6m/second, that is fast for even a small Lego car much less a huge one.

<comment><USER5> > supporting the weight of a person and a car in the air across the distance > between the front and read axles would have seemed pretty impossible to me

Yeah, there is a core steel chassis for that. The main LEGO stuff is the body and engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder about the size of the step-by-step instruction booklet.

<comment><USER20> Not to mention the size of the box it came in !

<comment><USER21> Ikea could sell it because it probably could fit in a car

<comment><USER22> "Sorry, my car broke down. Luckily I have a spare in the back, give me a few days to assemble it."

<comment><USER21> for most people, it would probably take a few months to assemble

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you're not a person who's spent much time with legos, it might be hard to grasp why this is considered an "engineering feat". LEGO is a system of modular building after all, right?

However, the kind of weight that 1,000,000 Legos is (in this case, north of 3,300 pounds) means that they had to use pieces, none of which (I believe) exceed 8" in length, to form the support structure of this vehicle. I would _love_ to see the "chassis" of this thing. Probably some gigantic rail structures holding it all together.

<comment><USER24> [https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti- chiron/med...](https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/media) has a link to a "How We Did It" video. There are clips of the chassis and some of the parts that weren't Lego. It shouldn't detract from the feat; the motor is a matrix of Technic motors, the door hinges are Technic pieces, and the skin was adjustable with a tool that also was made of Technic parts.

<comment><USER23> Bummer. It's honestly a bit disappointing because when it comes to Lego large structures, the support structure tends to be the most impressive part (if done in all Lego).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What blows my mind is aside from the frame, wheels and batteries the whole thing is LEGO

<comment><USER25> Not even the frame - "This is also the first-time load-bearing parts were built purely out of LEGO."

<comment><USER26> That doesn't mean that all load-bearing parts are lego. It has a steel frame, as the article states.

<comment><USER27> Exactly. No matter what your engineering skills are, the thickest Lego bricks cannot withstand a grownup man sitting on them.

<comment><USER28> I regularly sit on creations out of my daughter's duplo.

<comment><USER27> Put wheels on it and drive it 18mph we see then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For some reason the video widgets are unclickable for me on firefox, so here's the direct link to the video for anyone else who might've had the problem

[http://legoexternal.23video.com/v.ihtml/player.html?token=96...](http://legoexternal.23video.com/v.ihtml/player.html?token=96120d3e2bf694f3e8f56a1dfba622f2&showDescriptions=0&source=share&photo%5fid=35403689&autoPlay=1)

</comment><comment><USER30> There's some nice close-ups in the images.zip downloadable from here:

[https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti- chiron/med...](https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/media)

The patterns of the bodywork are ingenious and quite pretty as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> Looking at the car it reminds me of the replicators in Stargate SG-1.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow, this is just incredible. Was anyone else hoping there would be a head on collision crash test between the two cars?

<comment><USER33> You'd probably be torn to shreds in the lego one by the flying pieces and/or die when you try to leave the car and step on the million pieces lying around.

<comment><USER34> They don't usually perform crash tests with a real driver.

<comment><USER33> Crash dummies have feelings too. Especially when being shredded by lego pieces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Aside from shape, the LEGO one or the "real" one share other thing: they're still both toys!

<comment><USER36> It is only a toy if it has no purpose beyond being a toy (see "art"). The bugatti can get me to work and back.

<comment><USER37> > The bugatti can get me to work and back.

So can a jet ski depending on where you live, but it's still very much a toy.

<comment><USER38> Not if you live on an island. The same as snow machines are actual commuter mobiles in places in Alaska.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> For me, this is even more impressive than a real Bugatti.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is that the first Bugatti EV?

Joking aside, isn't it weird for LEGO to associate itself with a gaz-guzzler while simultaneously trying to distance itself from fossil fuel-based materials? Does anyone know if there's a commercial deal behind this project?

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/energy- environme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/energy- environment/lego-plastic-denmark-environment-toys.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I am sure you've read before if all modern tools and factories were to disappear we would need to rebuild almost from scratch because you need more precise tools to build even more precise ones. In that vein:

> There was an extra electric screwdriver build to adjust the cylinder > pistons. It is made completely out of LEGO Technic pieces. It was needed > because an actual screwdriver has too much torque. The LEGO one uses Power > Functions motor, simple gearbox and custom-designed switch.

</comment><comment><USER41> Which is more expensive?

<comment><USER42> Good question. A Bugatti Chiron MSRP is about 2.5MM, the lego version could be more expensive, if you add all the bricks, the steel frame, the (real) Chiron wheels (40k for the set, I estimate) and the 13,500 (!) hours of work it could get really expensive, really fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I hope they capitalize on it more and produce a few videos with build walkthroughs and engineering behind it. For all its "markety" feel, there's a lot to learn and engage folks interested in building with first principles in mind.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder how the "Functional speedometer built entirely from LEGOTECHNIC elements" works. Do technic pieces have springs/magnets, or they're using elasticity of the plastic pieces somehow...

<comment><USER45> Probably magnets.

[https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-speedometer- works.html](https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-speedometer-works.html)

It wasn't _that_ long ago that all speedos were mechanical.

<comment><USER46> It could also be optical (various LEGO computers have optical sensors and timers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's not quite as fast but in my opinion the Ferdinand GT3[1] is a much cooler vehicle.

[1] [https://youtu.be/GaQB_tgS7f0](https://youtu.be/GaQB_tgS7f0)

</comment><comment><USER48> > developed using over 1,000,000 LEGO Technic elements and powered exclusively > using motors from the LEGO Power Function platform. Packed with 2,304 motors > and 4,032 LEGO Technic gear wheels

So in other words, it costs more to build this model in parts (not including 13,000 hours of labor) to build than the original hypercar its replicating?

Not saying this isn't super cool, but something to keep in mind for perspective!

Update:

Not comparing retail prices, as obviously the LEGO version isn't for sale, talking about cost of building (not including R&D).

</comment><comment><USER49> I like how it has a detachable steering wheel just like a real race car. I was wondering if the driver had to just press it onto the studs to install it.

</comment><comment><USER50> A crash-test video would be nice :)

</comment><comment><USER50> I want to see what's under the hood!

</comment><comment><USER51> Unfortunately it costs 10x the price of the Bugatti if you add up the pieces

<comment><USER52> One assumes they didn't pay retail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> 2,304 little tiny motors!

</comment><comment><USER54> Quite an amazing feat, but an even more amazing marketing campaign.

</comment><comment><USER55> Unfortunately, the Lego pieces cost more than the original car.

</comment><comment><USER56> I WOKE UP IN A NEW ... Bugatti?

</comment><comment><USER57> Elon Musk should take note

</comment><comment><USER58> Honestly the original source is probably better than the techcrunch link. No ads, more writeup.

[https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news- room/2018/august/tec...](https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news- room/2018/august/technic-bugatti-chiron-build-for-real/)

<comment><USER59> of which requires flash to view the embedded video, shame they can't embed like TechCrunch did.

<comment><USER60> That page doesn't require flash to play the video. It's a JavaScript video player using a <video> tag.

<comment><USER59> that's what was sent to or rendered by your browser anyway

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> honestly, from these pictures at least, the lego version is more beautiful than the original!

i hope they do a crash test with it when they finish showing it off at various events :)

</comment><comment> village-idiot That's actually kind of dangerous to drive, even a very slow speed impact would absolutely shatter and leave the driver not only exposed to the other car/barrier, but also the ground and everything else. People ejected from cars via windows/sunroofs tend to fare very poorly, and the same is true if your car stops being a car all around you.

Good thing it's probably not very fast. Or road legal. Still neat though.

<comment><USER62> 20km/h top speed, driven by an "Official Bugatti Pilot" wearing a crash helmet on a closed circuit.

I think they did their risk assessment.

<comment><USER63> > Official Bugatti Pilot

Clearly, somewhere down the line I picked the wrong career.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are .net Domains Still Popular or Relevant? - <AUTHOR>

It's been many years since I recall seeing .net domains as the default destination for a website, but nowadays, they just seem like an extra expense to thwart domain squatters.<p>What is the state of .net domains in 2011? <comment><USER2> As long as your product/service rocks you can definitly get away with a .net domain. Most users simply don't care about what the tld is.

Relevant article from SEOmoz: "Do Search Engines Give Preference to Certain TLDs (Top Level Domains) Than Others?" <http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-tld- debate-revisited>

</comment><comment><USER3> There are two use cases.

1\. I want to own my own name: "Noah Clark" noahc.net was available and the best I could do. In that case it makes sense to go with .net or .org as in sivers.org. Erica of Erica.biz is a big fan of the .biz domain name. I personally hate it, but it works for her.

2\. Say you're creating a service or website. If you're not tied to what your parents named you or an already existing business, I would pick a name I could get a .com for. I would not use any other domain. I'd also buy the .net and .org as well, but not before making sure I could get the .com

</comment><comment><USER4> No. For the most part they are only good for SEO-based businesses. Anyone trying to build a brand should avoid them (except to prevent squatters).

</comment><comment><USER5> my understanding was they were created for companies that provide network services... like isps etc.</comment>


Show HN: Biden vs. Trump statistical forecast model: polling and search trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.pluralvote.com/article/2020-forecast <comment><USER2> That floating popover is 100% unusable when the map is near the bottom of the window. It moves itself under the mouse and then it's no longer possible to hover over a state.</comment>


From machine code spec to high level compiler in two days. Bravo Jonathon Vogel - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/dcpu16/comments/rvo2g/tenc_a_highlevel_language_that_compiles_to_dcpu16/

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like 'Blecki' checked in a repo at the same time of another C like language:

<https://github.com/Blecki></comment>


Occam programming language - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language) <comment><USER2> Occam may not have become mainstream, but it showed Hoare's CSP channels in a programming language. Now days we see channels in Go, whose "select" is similar to Occam's "ALT".

Fun fact: In contrast to process algebras like CSP, there is the Actor model. Instead of using an intermediary channel, the Actor model sends messages directly to a recipient process. These two message-based models of concurrency have influenced each other for decades.

<comment><USER3> I really wish Go's select had guard clauses. The need to nil channels feels like a hack. However I haven't actually had much need for them but haven't written many things that would need them.

I do miss PAR's synchronization semantics, which Go programmers know as the "sync.WaitGroup" idiom. Given the number of times I see Go developers asking about synchronizing goroutine termination perhaps having some form of concurrent control structure atop 'go' could help. Or maybe not - they'd just start asking about their inability to terminate :) At least PAR is easy enough to simulate (I wrote myself a little 'par' package to hide the WaitGroup manipulations with functions/closures as the [CSP] process bodies).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember reading about Occam around 1987-89 in an Atari ST World magazine. Atari hade just announced the Transputer and the article introduced Occam as a way to program its parallel processor. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation)

I was a teenager at that time and I remember that the Occam code made little Sense to me

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone else here use ST's video decoding hardware with a Transputer as the controller in the mid 90's? All the coding I did for this device used C, but ST's supplied development tools included an Occam compiler and occasionally the C reference docs would allude to an Occam construct.

</comment><comment><USER6> Our course was still using the occam-π revision, listed in the article, to teach concurrent programming ~10 years ago.

In a world of docs on tap and Q&A forums aplenty, learning an esoteric branch of a small, ageing language provided a crash course in concurrent programming and a DIY mentality to problem solving that our Java assignments maybe didn't insist on.

It doesn't look like much has changed but it was nice to re-read all the same!

<comment><USER3> I did a lot of occam in the 1980s working with transputer-based machines (I wrote a sort of OS for the system our company was building to target TV/film animation). At the time Inmos marketing came up with the line "We want to make occam the FORTRAN of parallel processing." My response, referring to occam's lack of data structuring, was, "You have."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any other XMOS developers here? I first encountered elements of Occam when using XMOS, David May's successor to Inmos. Was surprised later to see that Go had inherited various features too.

Great platform for embedded audio! www.xmos.com

</comment><comment><USER8> Long ago I spent a week at a compiler workshop (on what was then the relatively new SSA form) and one of the other attendees worked on the occam compiler.

He told me about the language over dinner and it seemed really interesting but I think he left me with the impression at the time that it was not for mainstream everyday programming.

Yet as others have pointed out, CSP has survived and is now embodied in 'go'.

</comment><comment><USER9> Occam was introduced as part of my Computer Science course at Edinburgh University (graduated 1984) - interesting times!

One of my classmates went off to Inmos - though unfortunately lost touch with him...

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, I also used Occam-2 in the nineties, and no, the referenced Wikipedia article is not new.

<comment><USER11> It looks like the topic is new to HN, though, in the sense that we've never had a thread about Occam the language.

At least I couldn't find one. Anybody?

<comment><USER10> That leaves some Wikipedia articles that have not yet been posted here.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure I follow. If a topic is interesting, it's fine to post it here, even as a Wikipedia article, though of course more specialized sources are often more interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Raneto – Markdown Knowledgebase Platform - <AUTHOR> http://raneto.com/ <comment><USER2> My favorite for now stays mkdocs ([http://www.mkdocs.org/](http://www.mkdocs.org/)). For relative small ones with the material theme ([http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs- material/](http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/)) and bigger ones (because of top bar) with bootswatch theme ([http://mkdocs.github.io/mkdocs- bootswatch/](http://mkdocs.github.io/mkdocs-bootswatch/)). It works the same, just builds a site from your MD files but creates a static site which can be hosted anywhere (e.g. github/gitlab pages via auto CI). Editing and creating your own theme is also easy and documented.

Installation is easiest I found for docs sites (pip install mkdocs) and it's blazingly fast. Comes with good themes and proper responsive design (saw some issues in Raneto on my ios). Has proper live reloading and build in serve functionality.

For large projects (enterprise size) we have made our own version based on what I learned from the Polymer docs ([https://github.com/Polymer/doc](https://github.com/Polymer/doc)) but removed the GAE requirement. Also, we are considering if using SO Enterprise is a good solution. Personally I'm in favor for in house docs and knowledge sharing for that. It's so flexible and people are already used to it. But that is a different ball park considering the OP.

To end with a positive note. Raneto seems to support much of the same as mkdocs or any of its alternatives. It looks good and whilst static site is something I want I understand it is not a deal breaker for all. In addition, Raneto mentions authentication is built in which is a nice thing if I want to host for internal stuff on a public domain so external customers can also use it without requiring a VPN account. Overall, nice work! Not for today, but I have bookmarked it.

<comment><USER3> I'm the author of the Material theme which actually has a top bar, a feature called tabs, see [http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/getting- started/#...](http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/getting- started/#tabs)

<comment><USER2> Great! Thanks for letting me know. You made a great theme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> drew-y Looks great! One thing that would be nice would be the ability for Raneto to act as a static Docs generator. Looks like you have to use nodejs as the server as it stands. I'd like to be able to use a simple static http-server.

<comment><USER4> I've been using Phenomic [https://phenomic.io](https://phenomic.io) for my personal site [https://www.aizatto.com](https://www.aizatto.com)

<comment><USER5> It looks like something that could be handled just as well using Heckle by Marijn Haverbeke. It reads content and layouts from a Jekyll-like directory structure. Naturally, it uses CodeMirror for syntax highlighting.

[http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/heckle.html](http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/heckle.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what makes this a _knowledge base_ as opposed to a flat file CMS?

A few months ago I left Evernote for my own implementation because I felt that Evernote gave me too little expressive power: No hierarchy, no typed relationships, no plugins. Basically, I was looking for a combination of outliner and concept map, combined with easy image handling. Plus, I wanted to easily add _applications_ like an ebook library, journaling, timelines of events, and generation of static websites and presentations.

I am a huge fan of simplicity and even toyed with PicoCMS by the same author as Raneto. Ultimately though, at least for me, a combination of a simple mysql database with markdown as content format gave me the power I wanted for my personal knowledge base, [https://knowfox.com](https://knowfox.com)

<comment><USER7> > knowledge base

I just figured this was a new term for a searchable FAQ. What do you think the difference is?

<comment><USER8> The term has a long history - as the Wikipedia page [0] points out, "knowledge base" was used to distinguish systems that could actively reason about data using rules (and a rules-engine to run them) -- e.g. expert systems -- from databases, where the data just sits there. However, these days, it's used differently:

From the Wikipedia page[0]:

 _Knowledge management products adopted the term "knowledge-base" to describe their repositories but the meaning had a subtle difference. In the case of previous knowledge-based systems the knowledge was primarily for the use of an automated system, to reason about and draw conclusions about the world. With knowledge management products the knowledge was primarily meant for humans, for example to serve as a repository of manuals, procedures, policies, best practices, reusable designs and code, etc. Of course in both cases the distinctions between the uses and kinds of systems were ill defined. As the technology scaled up it was rare to find a system that could really be cleanly classified as knowledge-based in the sense of an expert system that performed automated reasoning and knowledge-based in the sense of knowledge management that provided knowledge in the form of documents and media that could be leveraged by humans_

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been starting to suffer from Markdown fatigue and investigating tools that support RST or asciidoc. I wonder if this system might support those tools in the future?

<comment><USER10> Any reasons for the markdown fatigue?

<comment><USER11> Having used a lot of markdown and reStructuredText, I can see the arguments that the lack of common standards in markdown is a huge pain. There's still a lot of variety between markdown implementations and while Common Mark and open GFM standards are helping to a point, you still can't always count on a markdown engine to have things as basic as definition list support or HTML anchor support (linkable ids for sub-headings), and there are still some weird subtle implementation differences in those things.

There's also a lot to be said about the way that reStructuredText provides standard plugin spaces in the markup. While it may look over verbose at first glance, it is a great thing when you start to pick up that a lot of reStructuredText is based on the same plugin markup and there's a consistent way to work with new plugins. Something like that could be hugely useful to Markdown, and probably could have stymied some of the complications in standardizing things like Common Mark and GFM had that consideration been baked in from early on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832991)

</comment><comment><USER13> I love markdown! A similar project but without the need for a custom buildchain or serverside software is MDwiki.

```

mkdir my-site

cd my-site

curl [http://mdwiki.info](http://mdwiki.info)

echo "# Hello World" > index.md

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

```

Now visit [http://localhost:8000](http://localhost:8000) in your browser and it's live. Publish to Github Pages and you're golden.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why something like this instead of—for instance—a wiki?

<comment><USER15> A wiki would require a backing database and server process (I think). This platform is flat files.

<comment><USER16> Dokuwiki is flat files only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Shameless plug, I'm working on Github flavored Markdown editor with graphing plugin[0]

[0]: [http://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown- editor/](http://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown-editor/)

<comment><USER18> Your app gobbled up all available RAM and caused my laptop to slow to a crawl. I had to switch virtual terminals to kill the tab responsible for your site.

I'm running Chrome 59.0.3071.115. Fedora 26 64bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What makes this a knowledge-base rather than a lightweight CMS?

</comment><comment><USER20> For people who value full control and self hosting, Raneto looks like a good starting point to build from.

After having had to build knowledge bases in each company I worked in or go through the pain of implementing something bloated like Zendesk, I built a SaaS version of what I really wanted: the simplest knowledge base out there that stays out of your way.

[https://HelpSite.io/](https://HelpSite.io/)

Don't have Markdown support (yet) but we have a generous Free tier including custom domain (CNAME) support.</comment>


Astro Boy Gets the Hollywood-Blockbuster Treatment - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/17-09/pl_screen?currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> I always have concerns for these type of projects. They almost seemed forced to balance the style of the original, to suit the nostalgic audience, with the demands of the modern movie-goer.

Usually, they fall flat somewhere in the middle. Why not focus on one (the nostalgic audience probably doesn't value the payments to Jackson, Cage, Sutherland and Theron; spend less, increase ROI), or the other (new, schmick robot boy movie unrestricted by accuracy to a 60's anime)?

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with the comments on the linked article, I liked the Speed Racer movie too. On the other hand, I thought the Lost In Space movie was worse than the original series. I was a kid when all three of these Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and Lost in Space were originally out, so we'll see how it goes. What's next though, Marine Boy, that's the only other __major __cartoon from the 70s left, that I can remember. Or maybe they'll do an Ultraman movie rather than the pukey Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers that supposedly evolved from it.

<comment><USER4> They've yet to have their way with the cold corpse of Star Blazers.</comment></comment>


Hallelujah! CloudPull successfully scrapes "tag" data from Google Reader - <AUTHOR> http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been looking everywhere for a way to save all of my tags from Google Reader. I can verify that CloudPull preserves all tagged data and the links to the websites that have been tagged.

If you were worried about losing all of your bookmarks through Google Reader, this should put you at ease.

Now I hope Feedly and OldReader and any other Google Reader replacements incorporate tags, so that they can eventually re-incorporate my current tagged data.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is there a windows (or Linux command line) equivalent that will backup Google- based data?

<comment><USER3> The closest thing I know of for other operating systems is BackupGoo. <http://www.backupgoo.com/> BackupGoo does not back up Google Reader, but it does back up other Google services.</comment></comment>


Tumblr Adds $25 Million in Funding - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/12/17/tumblr-funding-4/ <comment><USER2> For a moment I thought that they'd just received _more_ money, but it seems like it's just a confirmation of earlier rumours: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1941227>.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone knows how they make (or plan to make) money? They don't put ads, and I don't see premium services offered at sign up?

<comment><USER4> You can also buy paid placement in their Directory tool (which is like a really nicely curated "suggested user to follow" dynamic).

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Although, it doesn't strike me as a scalable business. At least not to the point of justifying such big investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's actually $30M -- TechCrunch has an update at [http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/17/confirmed-tumblr- raises-25-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/17/confirmed-tumblr- raises-25-million/)

Current investors Spark and Union Square went in for $5M each and Sequoia took $20M.

</comment><comment><USER6> Let's hope they spend it on some well needed server infrastructure.

See: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/17/ok-tumblr-this-is- getting-j...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/17/ok-tumblr-this-is-getting-just- a-little-embarrassing/)

<comment><USER7> Let's hope they spend it on finding a way to actually make money (other than receiving donations) so I can keep using Tumblr. I like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Will they use that money so that they can let readers post comments?</comment>


Start-ups: Here's The Difference Between a Product and a Feature - <AUTHOR> http://blog.intercom.io/where-to-draw-the-line/

<comment><USER2> Great piece, but I feel like I've read it before.</comment>


Event frequency analysis without arbitrary windows - <AUTHOR> http://databozo.posthaven.com/deep-in-the-weeds-event-frequency-analysis-without-arbitrary-windows <comment><USER2> The only "Bayes" I can see is the author starts with a uniform prior and applies Bayes rule in one of the examples, and in fact the whole thing is kind of all over the place.

His approach of dragging a cut point across the data and asking "is it significant here? how about here?" is going to be prone to all sorts of false positives: if you set your threshold to 0.05, you'll expect one positive every 20 looks at the data. (He's looking for overlaps of credible intervals; this is going to work out to be the same thing).

Here are a couple useful links for doing this kind of problem: [https://qualityandinnovation.com/2015/07/14/a-simple- intro-t...](https://qualityandinnovation.com/2015/07/14/a-simple-intro-to- bayesian-change-point-analysis/) [http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.3742](http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.3742)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for commenting! The whole technique is foundational Bayes. Doesn't use MCMC, but still bayes even with the use of credibility intervals. I don't make much of a use of priors to your point and that can definitely be seen as somewhat controversial, but each window is aggregating information on all of the hypotheses given all of the data. That's why I qualify it as "bayesian". How do you typically qualify bayesian vs not?

To your point of the issue with false positives... yep! :) It's a very simplistic naive approach. I read over the article you linked to and I think the results are fairly similar except that my (again very simplistic) technique finds many change points if they exist... and possibly even none. So what I'm doing generalizes more.

The sequential nature of what I'm doing bothers me too, so I'd love pointers to other articles doing something similar.</comment></comment>


CodePush by Microsoft – update your React Native and Cordova apps instantly - <AUTHOR> http://microsoft.github.io/code-push/ <comment><USER2> Freaking awesome.</comment>


Darpa Has Seen the Future of Computing ... And It's Analog - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/upside/

<comment><USER2> _Note_ \- The article is about probabilistic chips. The use of _analog_ is incredibly misleading. As can be seen in the interesting but nonetheless unrelated discussions on various types of analog computers.

This type of chip which will save a lot of energy and still be correct in the sense exact answers are not needed. Non-deterministic computations invloving sampling for example. This particular chip is better for many types of bayesian and or _generative_ machine learning algorithms. Not the multi-layer perceptrons most posts are referring to.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, if you look at it the other way around, "probabilistic" is a good way of describing analog output. Something I read many years ago on computer history claimed that one of the reasons digital technology displaced analog was the inherent lack of "exactness" in analog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > By definition, a computer is a machine that processes and stores data as > ones and zeroes.

No, of course thats only true for digital computers. Otherwise, what would be the point of the headline? Not a great article but interesting news.

I could imagine specialized computer for artificial neural networks (ANN) being commercially successful in the future. Not sure if this is what the people in this DARPA project are working on. As far as I can tell, there are a lot of breakthroughs in ANN's at the moment, especially in the realms of pattern (e.g. image) recognition: Ng: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmNOAtZIgIk> Hinton: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4403662>

<comment><USER5> > No, of course thats only true for digital computers.

Not even that. Computers with ternary instead of binary logic are possible:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer>

Quote:

"The only modern, electronic ternary computer Setun was built in the late 1950s in the Soviet Union at the Moscow State University by Nikolay Brusentsov […] IBM also reports infrequently on ternary computing topics (in its papers), but it is not actively engaged in it."

<comment><USER6> Which brings up a question I've always had. If a Quantum computer uses bits that are on, off, and both, can't this be simulated with a Ternary computer?

<comment><USER7> You need more classical resources to model a qubit in generality. This is because a qubit can be in the "0" state, the "1" state, or in _any_ superposition between them. For a single qubit, you can describe an arbitrary superposition by two angles [1], each of which is a continuous real number. While you can't extract both of these parameters from a single measurement, a classical computer has to know both angles to simulate that qubit. Thus, it's more like that you need two floats to simulate a single qubit.

When you have more than one qubit, the requirements get much worse, as you can have superpositions over all of the possible classical states. When you work through the math, you find that you need a vector of 2^n - 1 complex floats to model a register of n qubits in full generality. Going from a classical bit to a classical trit does nothing to help with that exponential scaling.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloch_sphere>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was younger and less of a technophile, I often wished analog computing would somehow overtake digital computing. I suppose from my naïve perspective I found it unsettling that our model of computing is discrete while the space- time we exist in is continuous.

Being much more into technology today than I was 10 years ago (but equally naïve :-), my perspective seems to have flipped. I question whether reality is really continuous or whether it is just our limited perception of it that makes it seem that way. Obviously, my growing interest in digital technology has had a profound impact on how I view the world in which we live.

In any case, I'm glad DARPA is looking more seriously into analog computing. I think there is a lot to be learned from revisiting the issue in a field that is still very young.

<comment><USER9> Funny, I came to the exact opposite conclusion: It's unsettling our models of physics are based on continuous functions while the space-time we exist in is obviously discrete. Considering them as continuous is a simplification to make the math easier, but not correct.

<comment><USER5> "Obviously discrete"?

<comment><USER10> From my understanding, the Planck length is the smallest length there can be, and every other length has to be an exact integral multiple of the Planck length [1]. I believe the same applies to the other Planck units [2]- they are fundamental units. Similarly, every charge has to be an exact integral multiple of the charge of the electron. These fundamental units seem to to indicate that our universe is not continuous, but quantized/discrete. With that said, there are some theories stating that these fundamental units only apply to our universe (and even in our own universe, the fundamental units may change over long periods of time), and that other universes may have different fundamental units. So depending on how you define the universe, the answer to whether the universe is continuous or discrete could change.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units>

<comment><USER11> Quarks carry fractional charge (e/3) [1]. And Quasiquarks seem to be able to carry any fractional charge with an odd-denominator (e/3, e/5, e/7, ...) [2,3] which would seem to indicate that the universe has quantized space yet has no lower bounds.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#Electric_charge>

2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_quantum_Hall_effect>

3\. [http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/1997/oct/24/fractio...](http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/1997/oct/24/fractional- charge-carriers-discovered)

<comment><USER10> Fair point. Depending on how you define it, all charges are an integral multiple of e or e/3 (see below). Either way, the relevant point to this discussion is that charge is quantized/discrete.

As for the Fractional quantum Hall effect, based on a quick glance, it seems that thus far only quasiparticees with charge e/3 have been discovered. So, while the theory could be correct, we will have wait and see if the other predicted fractional charges are detected.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

From the Quark wikipedia page you cited: What is the quantum of charge? All known elementary particles, including quarks, have charges that are integer multiples of 1⁄3 e. Therefore, one can say that the "quantum of charge" is 1⁄3 e. In this case, one says that the "elementary charge" is three times as large as the "quantum of charge". On the other hand, all isolatable particles have charges that are integer multiples of e. (Quarks cannot be isolated, except in combinations like protons that have total charges that are integer multiples of e.) Therefore, one can say that the "quantum of charge" is e, with the proviso that quarks are not to be included. In this case, "elementary charge" would be synonymous with the "quantum of charge".

</comment><comment><USER12> This comes up every few years. Please, guys, before you conclude that probabilistic computers are the future, think about what it would be like debugging a program running on one. Speaking as someone who has implemented a probabilistic version of 'git bisect'[1], I think it would be hard.

That's not to say that the idea is completely dumb. A probabilistic GPU would be useful, although it would go against the trend of being able to use them for general computation.

[1] That is, one that looks for probabilistic bugs, not one that runs on a probabilistic CPU. See <https://github.com/Ealdwulf/bbchop>

<comment><USER13> "Please, guys, before you conclude that probabilistic computers are the future, think about what it would be like debugging a program running on one."

Most of today's software is already probabilistic. Most bugs occur because the software is run on the wrong hardware. Therefore, once we have probabilistic hardware, most existing software can easily be ported, and most bugs will instantly disappear.

<comment><USER14> Err, what?

Most bugs occur because the software has bugs, as in broken logic or edge- cases that aren't handled. To quote from "No Silver Bullet" [1] ...

        I believe the hard part of building software to be the
        specification, design, and testing of this conceptual
        construct, not the labor of representing it and testing
        the fidelity of the representation

Hardware has nothing to do with it.

[1] [http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBulle...](http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Check out [http://pruned.blogspot.com/2012/01/gardens-as-crypto- water-c...](http://pruned.blogspot.com/2012/01/gardens-as-crypto-water- computers.html) to see a Soviet water-based computer. I don't know the details of it, but it appears to be able to solve PDE's by mapping the PDE you're solving to a hydraulic system. Since the flow of water is governed by PDEs, once you've mapped the problem to the computer you can just make some analog measurements of water flow to get the answer you're looking for. (Is this right?)

I have to wonder, thought, whether this is can really be called a computer. If you do, don't you also have to consider a simple integrator circuit one?

Error correction must also be somewhere between a total PITA and impossible, right?

<comment><USER16> Instant error correction and a solution for memory leaks: Just add water!

<comment><USER17> buffer overflows could get messy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "One of the things that's happened in the last 10 to 15 years is that power- > scaling has stopped," he says. Moore's law — the maxim that processing power > will double every 18 months or so — continues, but battery lives just > haven't kept up.

Has everyone just given up now on the original Moore's Law about transistor count, and just decided that the law is about computing power (per the David House quote)?

<comment><USER19> Moore's law is now commonly understood as referring to the best transistor density we can do. But in the original paper Moore was talking about the density of the least cost process. With the original meaning Moore's law stops not necessarily when the density stops increasing, it can also stop because the new finer process remains forever more expensive than the previous one. With the old definition some expect Moore's law to stop at 28nm. Some even say it already stopped at 40nm (which is still less expensive than 28nm, so we'll have to see). The difference matters, because of economics. New fabs are always more expensive, but up to now the resulting chips were both better and cheaper. So everybody moved to newer process eventually, and the addressable market also increased. If the original Moore's law stop due to increasing chip cost, you can still get better perfs, but now it's more expensive. As a result, all the applications where performance is good enough and price matters more (embedded applications, ...) will stay on the now cheaper bigger processes. So the new fabs will still be more expensive but will address a shrinking high perf market. This will have consequences.

<comment><USER20> Was it actually about _density_? I always thought it was about transistors per dollar. Sure, density is a very effective way of lowering costs, but the maturation of technology at a specific process size will work just fine too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Probabilistic chips will be the next generation of computing; it's great to see initiatives on this front. PCMOS (I assume this is the same thing) itself is patented, so I'm not sure how much it affects the progress. Original and more comprehensive article of the PCMOS technology (2009) <http://phys.org/news153398964.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting, I would have to say though I can't really imagine how you begin programming an analog cpu. I'm assuming is is some type of neural network right (b/c of the metioning that transistor states are not pure on/off)? any help here? it sounds fascinating but I have never read anything on the topic or worked on an analog cpu.

Also how does analog use less energy (i.e. how can aynthing compute at a reasonable speed without some sort of power charge)? Obviously, my pc has a lot of power dissipation compared to any microcontroller on the market, which according to the article is the main reason they're going analog. In a standard case, I would have a multi-core (for less dissipation) and need to program multi-threaded. Are there any paradigms for analog? Or is this something completely new (at least since the 50's).

<comment><USER23> I don't have a picture of general anolog programming, but a concrete example is devising a strategy to hit some balls in a game of pool. Like in a neural net, this can take the form of turning a few knobs until you get the right result.

The reasons it can require less energy includes error tolerance, as mentioned in the article. The foundation of digital computer is error correction, so this trade-off could be the fundamental difference between the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't believe that the power required for computing is significant when compared with power of flight.

<comment><USER25> I find myself unable to offer an opinion, let's find out.

NOTICE: maxs points out I missed a x1000 on the barrel count, the following is off by three orders of magnitude:

In 2008 the world consumed 5269 barrels of jet fuel per day. 42 gallons in a barrel, 6.8 pounds per gallon, 0.45kg/pound, kerosene has 43MJ/kg… that is 29 terajoules (or I made a mistake). [1] [2]

Spread 29TJ out over the day and that is 29TJ /24/60/60 and you get 337 megawatts (or I made a mistake, this feels low, but I'll go with the calculation). [3]

Google's data centers drew 260 megawatts in 2011. [4]

So, there you go. Google's data centers alone use three quarters as much energy as all jet airplanes combined.

EOM

[1] [http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=jet- fuel&g...](http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=jet- fuel&graph=consumption)

[2] <http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/glover2/>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt>

[4] [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google- details-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google-details-and- defends-its-use-of-electricity.html)

<comment><USER26> You're off by 3 orders of magnitude. 5269 barrels a day did sound too little to me. In the link you cited the quantity is given in thousands of barrels. The daily use is 5269000 barrels a day.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for finding that. The result seemed odd.

So 337 gigawatts for jet fuel instead of megawatts. That will dwarf google, we'll need to compare to something bigger.

Lets convert to annual kilowatt hours, 337GW _24h_ 365= 2950 billion kWh.

In 2007 it was estimated that the total power consumption of the internet was 868 billion kWh. [1]

So now we have three times the energy in jet air transport as in powering the internet. I have to say this feels better.

EOM

[1] <http://uclue.com/index.php?xq=724>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When I was an EE major I distinctly remember designing an APU and thinking what a convoluted cluster f __* the whole thing was -- taking electron flows, pouring then over specific transistor arrangements (transistors are not binary, they are amplifiers) that take time to flow over a transitor set for each binary digit, and design it so it had the right answer at the exact time of the next clock pulse. I wanted to just take two signals and let them superimpose and let nature to the instant addition. Of course the "context" between the analog and electron stram with a clock "digital" just wasn't possible on the process of the day. Or today. Maybe someday in all optical computing. Or something else...

</comment><comment><USER28> This is not what the article was talking about, but back in the 1800s, Charles Babbage designed a completely mechanacal computer. There are currently plans to actually build it, <http://plan28.org/>

As a side note, this machine also doesn't work in binary, it works in decimal. I think this is to reduce vertical space requirements.

<comment><USER23> To be clear, that means it's a digital computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not really described as the future of computing. It's targeted at applications where a few incorrect bits are OK, like image processing on a drone. What if they could add some redundancy or parity though so we could achieve 100% accuracy?

<comment><USER30> 100% accuracy does not exist in real-world systems. 99.99999% accuracy might be good enough, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "brand-new way of doing computing without the digital " - Analog computers have been around for 70 years+. They are based on OP-AMPS and, at that time, were made out of tubes.</comment>


Ask HN: SEO Question - Domain-Based Versus Path-Based Site Structure? - <AUTHOR>

Over the last few weeks we've had a brewing debate over the best way to structure a new site we're working on from an SEO perspective. Basically, we're planning for the site to become very big over time and want to make sure our structure is giving us the biggest bang for our SEO buck. Below I have linked to a post on our blog that outlines a perspective from a key member of our the team. Clearly a more descriptive context as to what type of site we're working on could be helpful, however my question to you is this: which structure - domain-based (topic.company.com), path-based (company.com/topic), or a hybrid - will deliver the most value from an SEO standpoint? If you have an opinion on the matter, we'd love it know it!  Thanks!<p>http://roachpost.com/2010/05/19/seo-question-domain-based-topic-company-com-versus-path-based-company-comtopic-site-structure/ <comment><USER2> Path-based. Subdomains are treated as separate domains.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503079>

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't claim any real seo chops, but after reading the full post I tend to agree with the view of going hybrid</comment>