The High Cost of Free Parking (1997) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf

<comment><USER2> Before anybody gets all twisted in knots about the title, this is a paper concerning urban planning, not suburban or rural planning.

If you live in the burbs or a rural area, you probably _already_ avoid patronizing downtown businesses because of all the hassles involved _and_ the arm and leg it costs you to park. Those businesses assume that loss in exchange for doing business in a higher density locale. They literally have more foot traffic walking by to more than make up for the dozen free parking spaces they might be able to afford on the ultra high land prices in the city.

Other business people, thinking the same as you, then buy up a dozen acres somewhere and toss down a strip mall with plentiful parking and work out a deal with the county government to expand the road around their new mall to 3 lanes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read the paper. Or the abstract. Or at least the seconds sentence in the abstract!

</comment><comment><USER4> This paper is old news in the municipal and university parking circles. Most of the ideas in it have already successfully been applied in most medium to large municipalities and almost no university over 5,000 students offers free parking anymore.

Parking is one of the largest sources of revenue for universities, and is a substantial source for municipalities as well. A well researched, well-priced parking plan encourages reasonable use of parking and can actually lower costs for parkers (the parking industry's analog to users).

<comment><USER5> I don't object to paying for parking, but universities can make the arrangements a little more flexible.

For example, my apartment is down by Wayne State and there are two WSU parking lots adjacent it to it (one literally beside my building and the other across the street). Buying a pass with WSU would allow me to park overnight in the close-ish parking structure on the other side of Cass but not access it at night/weekends, or park in the structure on the other side of campus and have access at night and on weekends. Nothing was said about the lots adjacent to my building, but last I checked they weren't available at night either. I think that's pretty silly, since the only thing keeping me (or someone else) from my car if I park in a WSU structure/lot is a simple programmable barrier gate. Since I'm not a student at WSU (I room with two students however), I'd have to pay $415 to park during the Winter 2015 semester.

Contrast this to the gas station on the other side of Woodward, which is always open and offers parking for $65/month (recently increased from $50/month). If it was still $50/month I'd never consider switching over to WSU, but if WSU would allow me to access my car whenever, I'd pay the tiny increase in price it would cost to switch.

<comment><USER4> > the only thing keeping me (or someone else) from my car if I park in a WSU > structure/lot is a simple programmable barrier gate.

Those gates aren't as simple as you think :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congestion is a similar issue. Pricing the congestion, like parts of London have done, on a dynamic basis allows for optimum efficiency. It has the same rationale that Uber does for using surge pricing.

</comment><comment><USER7> They could start testing this on our governmental representatives first to measure the impact.

</comment><comment><USER8> What this paper ignores is the economic benefit of a parking space. If there is no parking at all, what would be the economic loss suffered? Does that loss exceed the cost? This would vary by municipality of course. But, I am more likely to spend money and buy things if there is easier parking. For example, grocery shopping. If I have two kids and have to have the stroller plus carry my purchases home on a subway, that is a disincentive compared to a place that offers adequate parking. If freezing in the cold waiting for a bus is my only access option for office space, then I am disinclined to rent that office space. This is highly simplified of course, but a major flaw of the paper is completely ignoring the benefit side of the equation.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't ignore that; in fact, it recognizes it by saying that this benefit confers economic value on that parking space, and that charging a fair price for that parking will ensure it is used efficiently.

Also, you may be more likely to spend money, but that's anecdotal. Lots of people don't own cars (myself included) and excessive parking dissuades me from patronizing a business because it correlates to difficult access.

<comment><USER10> "benefit confers economic value on that parking space"

Another way to look at it, is it increases demand for land in the burbs, where there's free parking.

There's no obvious inherent benefit to shopping downtown where I work or in the burbs where I live. Theoretically centralization would benefit everyone. However no one shops downtown if they can avoid it, the parking situation is horrendous and high rents mean higher prices. So all my retail shopping is done in the burbs. Which means higher land demand in the burbs (both for the stores, and the free parking).

There are ancillary cultural effects. If you partition an area into "you only go there because you have to go there because there's no free parking and no retail" vs "you go there because you want to, and there's free parking" the coincidence sets up inappropriate beliefs, like free parking is a universal good or paying to park is a universal bad. Reality is its more like a circus ride where if your land prices exceed $X/sq foot then both free parking and retail are inherently economically inappropriate in those areas, if at all avoidable. Stick a super expensive office building on that land instead, etc. Shoppers and their freely parked cars don't belong in areas that cost $2000/sq foot, especially if $20/sq ft is a ten minute drive out of the city.

<comment><USER11> Not all shopping has to be done with a SUV in a large parking lot. Retail does not require parking if there is a large population within walking/easy public transit access.

I'll give my neighborhood as an example. I live in a small city, outside of the most urban part, where most buildings are houses on 1/10 of acre lots. Population density is about 10,000 per square mile. Pretty much everyone has a car, however most local businesses don't have any off street parking. The side streets tend to have free parking (there's always enough), and the main streets tend to have metered parking. Plenty of people come here from the suburbs to shop, because there are unique, local stores you're not going to find at a mall, and there's plenty of good places to eat and drink.

The businesses don't have to provide nearly as much parking, because they have several thousand potential customers within a short walk.

<comment><USER12> The setup you're describing is, if at all urban, only barely so. Really on an area average you've just described a suburbs which happened to develop with a dense enough core that there is little or no 'free parking' for the businesses.

It would be like me picking out the area called 'west Seattle' (one of the near by suburbs of Seattle) when I should really be talking about Seattle as the urban environment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Gene Tests Pose a Threat to Insurers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/health/new-gene-tests-pose-a-threat-to-insurers.html <comment><USER2> In the long term i think new gene tests will pose a threat to every person with a condition the insurers will not insure for.

I feel fairly confident that insurers will in the future at some time force people to be tested for every test available if people want insurance against any possible scenario.

So in the future I can see how the whole purpose of insurance being undermined.. ie "everyone chips in together" to care for those few in need...

Whereas in the future I am sure people will only be able to get insurance against deseases they are unlikely to ever get leaving the desperate few sufferers without any care.</comment>


Last episode from the former BCG consultant in Dubai - <AUTHOR> http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N19/dubai.html

<comment><USER2> The one detail I found most interesting is the historical point:

"The executives I met all showed pictures of their youth, reminding me that just a few decades ago, their country was nothing more than sand, tents, and simple stone."

The idea the "capitalism/democracy/natural resources" is what make the USA a world power is a limited analysis. There are huge cultural and social forces that can not just be bought. He suggested 'human capital' would have been the best investment, but it is only princes that are provided with advanced education and it's likely only a few of those are interested in slogging through the trenches of starting a real business. Educate non-royal-family citizens and you will be financing some type of revolution, not something the Dubai power structure would ever allow I suspect.

<comment><USER3> This quote stuck out at me and I found myself revisiting the article just to find it. Here's the thing in full:

"The executives I met all showed pictures of their youth, reminding me that just a few decades ago, their country was nothing more than sand, tents, and simple stone. Maybe they held on to the pictures to impress upon me the great progress Dubai has made, maybe they held on to them to reassure themselves that life would go on even if they had to return someday to their tents. Personally, I took the pictures as a reminder that the men running Dubai's gargantuan companies had been given an upbringing that could not prepare them corporate management."

I couldn't help but think that if he had built something comparably substantial in his life, he would know that the executives are showing him the pictures out of pride for their accomplishments.

And what does it mean that their upbringing couldn't prepare them for corporate management? Why shouldn't the people who transformed their country from sand, tents, and stone into skyscrapers be able to manage corporations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't realize their oil was gone, but hey, it's still one heck of a tax haven, right? Isn't that why Rodger Federer lives there?

<comment><AUTHOR> It means Dubai is an even bigger tax haven than Switzerland (Federer is Swiss). That's impressive.

Maybe they are trying to be successful in the Swiss way: no oil or ressource whatsoever, but still plenty of money.

<comment><USER5> Switzerland might not have much mineral resources - but you might want to compare the skiing in Switzerland and Dubai to see one small area where the Swiss have a lot more going for them than Dubai does.

And yes, there _is_ skiing in Dubai.

<comment><USER6> I recall seeing an indoor skiing hall megastructure on discovery, so you're right :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _[..] a steel mill, run poorly, is a terrible investment._

 _Why not simply take the money made from selling oil, and invest it?_

 _There is a natural resistance to simply investing oil wealth in a sovereign wealth fund that I don't entirely understand._

This is the same guy who had written:

 _It was hard to sit at a laptop and crank out slides when all I seemed to be accomplishing was the transfer of wealth from my client to my company._

 _My moral system is organized around a utilitarian principle of greatest good for the greatest number - that which adds value cannot be wrong._

Dissonance, much?

<comment><USER8> Sorry maybe I'm dumb but I don't see the contradiction?

<comment><USER9> The statement about making money without actually making "things" or a helping people conflicts with his advice to Dubai which is to simply invest the money in the 'market' which some would argue creates nothing for society.

I guess maybe _for him_ simply shuffling paper and money isn't acceptable but he feels comfortable advising the same technique for Dubai because of their inability to make 'things'?

Maybe he is a great consultant after all?

<comment><USER10> There is no contradiction. While _some_ might argue that investing money in the 'market' creates nothing for society, it is fairly clear to me that he believes that investment can create sustained economic growth for the benefit of all.

As for the previous installment, it was clear to me that he had no objection to shuffling paper and money. What he disliked was pandering to people, offering them bad advice that they wanted to hear so you could take their money. He would have been quite happy to charge the same amount or more for offering good advice that left them better off, and was frustrated that he didn't have the ability to do so.

Both positions are perfectly consistent with an idealistic believer in free markets who genuinely wants to what is good for everyone in the long run. Since that is the impression he leaves, I find no dissonance at all within his belief system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Personally, I took the pictures as a reminder that the men running Dubai's gargantuan companies had been given an upbringing that could not prepare them corporate management"

Am I the only one who finds this not-so-subtley racist?

<comment><USER10> After spending the better part of a year dealing with these men and seeing first hand how poorly they were doing corporate management, I'd take his observations (if not conclusions) seriously.

Note that he goes on to make it clear that he doubts he would do any better if he had their background. And one of his suggestions is that they invest in education. Which says that he did not think they were lacking in innate ability, and does not come off to me as a slight against their race. Only their circumstances.

Rather than racism, I would fault him for having too much confidence in the value of his formal education. But he redeemed himself in the following paragraph, which I think is an insightful description of the dangers of giving people great wealth and responsibility with little regard to ability and competence. Perhaps he will see things as I do once he is old enough to have seen people succeed despite having little formal education, and rich brats fail despite having had access to every educational advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For the benefit of those who haven't seen the prior parts: Can someone link to parts 1, 2, and 3?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here you are:

<http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N16/dubai.html>

<http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N17/dubai.html>

<http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N18/dubai.html></comment></comment>


BBM Could Be Worth Billions If BlackBerry Can Copy The LINE Playbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/10/25/bbm-could-be-worth-billions-if-blackberry-can-copy-the-line-playbook/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just when most people think BB will not survive.... BB has found a new way to survive.</comment>


How Will the Coronavirus End? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/ <comment><USER2> What a coincidence that we should submit the same week old article within 3 minutes. Neat. It's a pretty good read.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR: The same way the H1N1 Swine flu and Ebolavirus outbreaks ended.

A vaccine.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you build in anticipation of scale? - <AUTHOR> How do you design/build an app with the right foundation such that if it takes off you're able to scale? I've been thinking about this as I'm about to start a project. I know chances are that I'll just die in the early phases and that premature optimization is the root of all evil, but I'd like to do anything possible now that would pay dividends if we do scale. So for example do I run containers but only have one container per service? Do I use citus instead of postgres? I know this is app specific so let's say for discussion's sake it's just a crud app.
Also what are some good resources on designing distributed systems using today's IaaS solutions?
Edit: how do I get this sorted under Ask? <comment><USER2> Don't do this. You shouldn't be thinking about containers or distributed systems, you should be thinking about getting users and make a product they can use. You can worry about scaling later (and there's reasonable chance you'll never need to.)

<comment><AUTHOR> what part of

>I know chances are that I'll just die in the early phases and that premature optimization is the root of all evil

don't you understand?</comment></comment>


A monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/ap25mr/a_monad_is_a_monoid_in_the_category_of/ <comment><USER2> Knowing that a ring (in abstract algebra) is equivalently defined as "a monoid object in the category of abelian groups" is not going to help you with your first abstract algebra course. It makes things that are glaringly obvious from the usual perspective totally opaque, and means you have to define things like the tensor product of abelian groups properly before you can even define a ring. I don't know of a professor who would even mention this perspective during a first abstract algebra course. You get much a much better intuition for what rings are by just using them.

Mathematicians who work in category theory have often seen many, many examples of algebraic structures before they get abstracted away to "a monoid object in the category of blah", and many mathematicians still find it an exercise to unpack these compact definitions back to something more intuitive, or more familiar. And even so, most of the time identifying your favourite object as some abstract category thing doesn't bring anything new or useful to the table for the study of that object. (It can help spot patterns between objects though).

I say this for any aspiring Haskell programmers: don't feel like understanding this statement will make you a better programmer. The best way to get better at using monads is to just use monads more, and play around with them. Tracking down all the definitions in the statement is a neat exercise, though.

<comment><USER3> On the flipside, knowing that a ring is "like a group (which we already covered), with another operation that follows these axioms" is useful, and still mostly rigorous.

It's better than "eh just use it a lot and you'll figure it out."

<comment><USER4> True, but that likeness is normally taught in abstract algebra without requiring category theory. For example this: [https://i.redd.it/yqnbigi032i11.png](https://i.redd.it/yqnbigi032i11.png) doesn't require any category to understand.

<comment><USER3> Not my point.

For education, there is a happy medium between providing theoretical context and hand-waving over technicalities and learning by example.

Very nice diagram though.

<comment><USER4> To give credit where it's due, that diagram is from a /r/math thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/99y547/my_digram_of_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/99y547/my_digram_of_abstract_algebra_and_other_stuff/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My rule of thumb for explaining things to people is "start specific and generalize."

This goes the other direction. Which is sometimes useful, but can be hard to follow unless every step is meticulously explained _and_ its necessity is justified.

<comment><USER5> I think this is very personal and you shouldn't assume this for everyone. I personally find general -> specific MUCH better, in fact this is how I learn mathematics. I first learn group in abstract, then I study dihedral group, symmetry groups etc... If done the other way around I'm always confused as to what are rules of the game.

<comment><USER6> Same. I generally prefer to see the forest first, then understand how all the different trees fit into it. Similarly when looking at a map, I very quickly want to zoom out and see where in the bigger scheme of things is the small thing I'm looking at situated.

Same with more complex concepts in math or CS - it helps me understand and retain them better if I know where they fit into a bigger scheme. Category theory is particularly interesting in this regard, as it serves to connect different branches of math into a mesh of Categories and Functors describing their interrelationships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most people learn inductive, not deductive.

They know how to map an object into an array or an array into another array. Many even know how to flatMap promises that resolve to promises.

But they don't know that they follow general rules that make their behavior predictable.

<comment><USER8> On another note, I suspect that the main problem everyone faces when explaining monads to someone who is not familiar with the term is "caused" by the dominance of C++-like programming languages.

Monads and functors are not really all that complicated per se, but because C++ templates and Java-style generics are not able to operate at their level of abstraction, people that are only used to thinking in these terms fail to map them into their "comfort zone" and usually give up. And instead of pointing out that monads are on a higher abstraction level, you get statements like "monads are like burritos"[1] which only confuse people further.

The explanation that finally made sense to me was when someone didn't only explain things in the abstract and them link them to the next ridiculous non- programming thing, but instead laid out the basic operations and then pointed out that options, lists and asynchronous tasks are monads _because they support those operations_. I was basically in the exact situation you describe.

Of course, that people can't agree on a single terminology to save their lives doesn't help either (return vs. lift, bind vs. flatMap vs. SelectMany). From the outside it's like one of those math papers where you spend a day figuring out which non-standard notation they used in order to understand the equations in it.

[1]: [https://blog.plover.com/prog/burritos.html](https://blog.plover.com/prog/burritos.html)

<comment><USER9> > because C++ templates and Java-style generics are not able to operate at > their level of abstraction, people that are only used to thinking in these > terms fail to map them into their "comfort zone" and usually give up.

That's what "patterns" are for, in C++/Java and any low-level languages that don't provide the level of abstraction you're after. Functors and monads are patterns in these languages, just like subroutines are a pattern in assembly language but not in C, and "objects" or "closures" are patterns in C but not in C++/Java. Monoids are usually called the "Composite pattern", hence saying that monads are monoid objects is just stating that they share analogies with the Composite pattern at a higher level of abstraction. So what's the problem?

<comment><USER8> > That's what "patterns" are for, in C++/Java and any low-level languages that > don't provide the level of abstraction you're after.

Keen observation. If you read through most explications for monads that float around the internet, though, you will find that design patterns are usually introduced to the reader with much more didactic care. Texts explaining, say, the Command Pattern will usually try to lead the "average" (or even junior) Developer to understanding by providing motivation ("let's write an Undo feature!"), introducing new concepts in the context of some simple, but usually tangible scenario ("let's say we have this editor…") and explain things in terms of the stuff the reader can be assumed to know already.

Even if you look for explanations of monads aimed at non-FP developers, usually they start with something like "For some monad `M`, …", followed by either mathematical expressions or some very abstract function signatures in Haskell (which a majority of readers has probably never seen before). At that point, you already have lost 90% of the audience.

I have yet to try to explain the concept to an unsuspecting colleague, but if I were to try, my approach would be to start with familiar things. For a C# dev, this could be LINQ, for example. In this case, you could even get people pretty far, since the inline query syntax is pretty much just a do notation that was bludgeoned with an SQL hammer. If you then point out how other things than IEnumerables and IQueryables (IObservables or Tasks, for example) work in similar ways and could be treated the same way, I suspect you should be able to nudge the average C# dev along far enough to give them a basic understanding of the concept and some of the upsides without instantly resorting to single letter type signatures.

I'll really have to try that sometime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> (The problem, in fact, is that the significance of monads in Haskell in terms of the side-effect model has nothing to do with category theory. The "side- effects" quite literally occur outside of these theoretical constructs.)

<comment><USER11> The laws are important though. They ensure that the "statement-like" things we build out of expressions do behave like statements.

For example, it would be weird if we had three statements A B C that wrote to console, and sequencing A with B and then sequencing the result with C resulted in a different program than sequencing B with C and then sequencing A with the result.

Or, for non-IO things: it would be weird if we had three levels of nested lists, and concatenating two times "from the outside" resulted in a different list than concatenating each inner list first, and then the outer list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Further reading (at a much slower pace): [https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory- for-p...](https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for- programmers-the-preface/) Has examples in C++ and Haskell.

<comment><USER13> His videos on you tube are also very informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought I was smart before reading this.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure this would be something you could learn for yourself as well. Category theory/logic/universal algebra/etc don't require any magic; they do require you banging your head against them for some time though...

<comment><USER14> I got it now. It's burritos all the way down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Its offputting to me trying to learn these things when Im lost at the very first sentence of the explanation.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thus is a great exposition on some of the relationships between the entities of the theory and Haskell, which a lot of papers that exploit CT don't always make clear. Bravo on that score.

I wish some of the category theory driven Haskell tutorials would swap out their "prove the laws" exercises with implementation exercises. While it's great to be able to prove the laws yourself, part of benefit of using an existing theory as an underlying model is that you get to take advantage of the laws (and long history of proofs and developments it took to ascertain said laws) to create implementations or gain particular insights—it seems like it'd be a more useful exercise for programmers to implement some programms utilizing the ideas rather than proving te laws yet again—this seems like a more expedient way to develop insights as to how you would actually use these structures.

</comment><comment><USER18> A similar "joke" in mathematics is that "a sheaf of groups is just a group of sheaves" (meaning that a sheaf of groups on a topological space X is a group object in the category of sheaves of sets on X)

<comment><USER19> Here's a fun puzzle: concretely, what is a group of groups?

<comment><USER18> An Abelian group

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I suspect that constructing your models with these logical rules and running them and their interactions through a proof checking compiler like Haskell's could help with concurrency, security, large code bases, refactoring and more. And yet what we get are solutions to problems that we don't really have.

</comment><comment><USER21> What are the steps to learning category theory? Preferably something with solutions so I can check my work?

<comment><USER22> I would highly recommend the book by Lawvere and Schanuel: "Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories". It is a very down-to-earth introduction to category theory, written by two masters of the field.

<comment><USER23> I second this recommendation! I agree with the sentiment expressed by some in these comments that intermediate category theory probably isn't going to help you too much as a programmer. However the introduction to Category Theory in "Conceptual Mathematics" caused me to understand sum types, product types, algebraic data types, finite state automata, logic, and functions as objects in a new way. Additionally "Conceptual Mathematics" isn't arcane or inaccessible they mention in the introduction (or maybe it was a review of the book) that a motivated high school student could use the book for self study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Basically what's going on:

with monoids, you can combine things, and then monads result from choosing a clever combining operation in a certain contexts

<comment><USER25> That makes them sound like union types to me, but I'm guessing they're not like union types, otherwise that's what they would be called.

<comment><USER26> Union/sum types don't combine things though? you can only have ever one variant at a time. it's a misnomer. monads and monoids combine things in the sense of joining them. e.g. lists are a monoid because you can concatenate (they're also a monad for the same reason).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> funny, I was recently looking at a very smart algebra (Guibas and Stolfi) that was making really easy to express transformations I absolutely did not care about, but not that easy for what I wanted.

<comment><USER28> I notice that's the same Stolfi that runs the r/buttcoin subreddit, as a cryptocurrency guy I've had arguments with him before LOL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is.</comment>


Turkey charges pianist Fazil Say over Twitter posts - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/world/europe/turkey-charges-pianist-fazil-say-over-twitter-posts.html

<comment><USER2> It can happen here.

I made a joke over Twitter and the cops seized a $15k firearm collection and I racked up $15k in legal bills.

No warrants, no charges, no actual investigation. Lots of tricks, lies to my lawyer, backtracking, etc.

I'd love to have my day in court because the joke was taken out of context from a long discussion of Just War Theory (which was being read and enjoyed by dozens of people, including some First Ammendment lawyers), but even in the US the authorities have the ability to leave you hanging in limbo for years.

Footnote:

<http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-am-tjic.html>

<comment><USER3> If you threaten a US senator, and you have stockpiled this many weapons, I think you really should have seen this one coming.

<comment><USER2> > If you threaten a US senator

Absolutely agreed.

If some nut case puts up a website with the home address of someone, rants about a bounty on their head, etc., by all means, have an investigation and perhaps charges.

...but there's a difference between saying "This SOPA bill is insane. Rope. Lampposts." and driving to a person's house with a noose in the back seat.

<comment><USER4> ... and there you go doing it again.

There's not much room to joke about assassination and lynchings in a country that has a very recent history of assassinations and lynchings.

It's in bad taste, it can incite violence, and given your statements here, as well as those you've made elsewhere, I'm unsurprised that the law came down on you.

<comment><USER2> > ... and there you go doing it again.

No, there YOU go doing it again. That comment was in a long thread of context, and you willfully ignored that. The comment was also non-actionable and was clearly political hyperbole.

> There's not much room to joke about assassination and lynchings in a country > that has a very recent history of assassinations and lynchings.

Sure there is.

It's little thing called "the first amendment". Perhaps you've heard of it? Read it closely. It makes no reference to "...unless there were lynchings in the last century".

<comment><USER4> > _No, there YOU go doing it again. That comment was in a long thread of > context, and you willfully ignored that. The comment was also non-actionable > and was clearly political hyperbole._

Not really, no. SOPA actually exists, and you joked about hanging its supporters. The only context that would have made it remotely appropriate is neutral one, in which it was clear to any observers that encouraging the hanging of SOPA supporters (even 'jokingly') was _not_ your position.

> _It's little thing called "the first amendment". Perhaps you've heard of it? > Read it closely. It makes no reference to "...unless there were lynchings in > the last century"._

Then let me rephrase: There's no room to joke about lynching elected representatives (or anyone) in _civilized mature discourse._

There is also a long history of case law that restricts "fighting words", despite the first amendment.

My only take-away from your repeated reference to assassination/lynching is that you're someone who is likely to incite if not participate in violence, and beyond that, you personally decrease the overall quality of rational discourse in US politics.

You may not be enough of a nutcase to try to assassinate a politician -- I'm honestly not sure, given your remarks here, and your ownership of the tools to do so -- but your seeming need to joke about assassination contributes to a culture of political violence that may very well incite someone to do what you won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It reminds me of the Fabrice Muamba case [1]:

 _A student has been jailed for 56 days for posting offensive comments on Twitter about the on-pitch collapse of Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba._

 _District judge John Charles told Stacey: "It was racist abuse via a social networking site instigated as a result of a vile and abhorrent comment about a young footballer who was fighting for his life. At that moment, not just the footballer's family, not just the footballing world but the whole world were literally praying for his life. Your comments aggravated this situation._

How can a tweet aggravate someone's medical condition beats me.

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17515992>

</comment><comment><USER6> Scary, because Turkey aims to join the EU. I hope they won't be accepted as long as such things are going on.

Sadly I think some countries that are dominated by radical Christians have already joined :-(

<comment><USER7> I think the pro-Islamic government has clearly shifted policies after 2005 accession talks. Nevertheless Islamic fundamentalism is nothing new in Turkey [1].

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sivas_massacre>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Turkey is in a transition process which will turn it into an islamic piece of shit country like Iran. Secular holly crap :) From the perspective of current prime minister of Turkey Atheist = Thinner-addict

</comment><comment><USER9> I know Islam is the cry-baby of organized religions, but the Turkish state (specially the secular military junta tha runs the show) uses these sort of thought crimes to both silence opposition, and also to pander to the right- wing factions.

<comment><AUTHOR> This has nothing to do with the secular military. In fact, the current pro- Islamic administration has imprisoned more than 10% of the generals in the military (trial ongoing for four years); and recently started "cracking down" on liberal journalists, NGOs, artists, professors, and so forth. This trial seems to be a continuum of those crack downs.

<comment><USER10> This. The ongoing "Ergenekon" case is the poster child of jail without prosecution.

We think you're guilty, so we'll toss you in jail. But we can't come up with your charge right now because we're in the process of writing it. But you're a flight risk so it's okay.

I'm fine with people being punished for crimes but a lot of people were kept in for years before they were even charged. Some of them barely maintained their health and sanity. This is the sort of fascist-style suppression AK and Erdogan regularly engage in to make an example of people.

This is not very comprehensive but okay: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergenekon_(organization)#Debat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergenekon_\(organization\)#Debate_on_Ergenekon) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suspects_in_the_Ergene...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suspects_in_the_Ergenekon_investigation)

Meanwhile, I get extremely angry when Erdogan and his gang enjoy hero status in the Western press because they have taken steps to allow headscarves in government institutions. They did this not because of human rights, they did it to appeal to their heavily anti-secular constituency. Never mind the Ergenekon case and other horrors that AK is part of!

For a long time, he's vocally sought to increase tax on or ban alcohol, he's also suggested that everyone have multiple children, and recently his administration has spoken out against abortions, saying that he shall ban them. Whether this will happen is doubtful but I hope it sheds some light into what sort of people we're dealing with.

<comment><USER11> First, I don't see Erdogan et al. being styled as heros in the Western media (except for the self-hating, more left-leaning ones). We know very clear that their politics isn't about human rights but re-islamization.

Second, they run a pretty Nazi-like agenda: pure Turkish blood ideology (when it comes to marriages), supporting demographic pressure, strict top-down government, militarization, ideological intolerance, brutal assimilation of Kurds and other minorities, one can even count their recent anti-Israel doctrine and their attempts to establish themselves as the protector of Muslim interests and their volkisch politics to protect the Turkish immigrants in Western Europe (where they clearly influence politicians of Turkish origin and use their network of mosques and religious institutions to steer "their" population). It's a neo-Osmanic power game similar to what the Nazis did in the 1930s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is something terribly wrong with this country! Fazil Say is not the first:

[http://www.cartoonistsrights.org/recent_developments_article...](http://www.cartoonistsrights.org/recent_developments_article.php?id=24)

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought Turkey was a secular country?

<comment><USER14> Is there such a thing as a Muslim dominated country that's secular?

<comment><USER15> Think the equivalent to the Republican party in the US.

<comment><USER16> Because only the democrats have seen the light? Just because republicans pander to ensure they get votes from a certain base does not mean all republicans are fundamentalists. Some of us vote republican because there isn't a viable libertarian candidate.

<comment><USER15> Ah, but not all AKP voters are Islamist. The similarity is that both are primarily a union of social conservatives and pro-business voters (primarily -- Libertarianism as such isn't really common in Turkey from what I've seen, and analogies are rarely perfect.)

But if you don't think that the discourse in the Republican party isn't heavily influenced by Christianists...

(And the two countries' opposition parties are quite different.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a citizen of Turkey and in this lovely country the religion has often been used as a tool for achieving secular aims. That's just another example of it.

<comment><USER14> Turkey and its people look really nice on TV shows/documentaries! It sucks that your government is the way it is; anybody who values their freedom and exercises their right to free speech against anybody/anything would be too scared to visit regardless of how much they'd like to experience your culture first hand. (me included)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> when did this happen? circa 1500 A.D.? oh, wait...

</comment><comment><USER19> I may hate what you say but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it.

</comment><comment><USER20> He's an atheist, so nothing wrong about it for those in 'MURICA.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nobody has the right to never be offended. Y u no understand that, Turkey?

</comment><comment><USER22> Flagged. Every country has its own laws. News at Eleven.

This guy always had provocative speeches just for the sake of being provocative and the center of attention. More debatable and provocative stuff is circulated by columnists in everyday papers. It's just this guy is a little bit more prolific and annoying. Probably some district prosecutor just took a jab.</comment>


Apple exited the home Wi-Fi market at the wrong time - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2018/12/30/apple-wifi-wrong-time/ <comment><USER2> On the contrary, I think Apple exited the home Wi-Fi market at the perfect time. They had a premium-priced product that didn't have the features that the new premium products were about to offer.

I bought the Eero during their 3-pack pre-order and have been using it since their first batch shipped to their first customers. It's a wonderful product and I tell everyone who asks how much I like it.

But... I can't help but get the feeling that they are having trouble building a sustainable business. They've kind of set themselves up as a service company that sells one-time-purchase hardware. I get sales emails from them all the time trying to get me to buy into their "subscription" service, which is offering things that I couldn't care less about. And at the same time, I have a nagging feeling that they are collecting data about me and will someday monetize it when they are desperate for cash.

If Apple is observing the market, they could sweep in with a product that offers everything that people want while respecting privacy and has a sustainable business model. Just because they left the market doesn't mean they have to stay out.

<comment><USER3> I replaced an aging Apple Airport system with eero and I've noticed the same. They are somewhat aggressive about trying to upsell subscriptions (malware protection, filtering for kids, etc).

I hope they have a sustainable business on hardware alone because it's the only system I was able to get working in this house and it's very reliable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Still running a 2009 AirPort Extreme at our house. I haven't yet brought myself to replace it, even though I'd probably see a significant benefit from 802.11ac support and better ipv6 support

It has been reliable for nearly a decade with barely a few thoughts. Much more than I can say about any previous router I had.

I can't decide whether to go as open-as-possible-but-more-expensive, or with something like Ubiquity, or what.

<comment><USER5> It depends on the home. I use 2.4GHz and disable 5GHz because it causes a lot of issues.

The latest issue I have is where the phone I'm writing this on keeps switching from 2.4 to 5GHz when in the bedroom. However, when it switches from 2.4 to 5 it becomes unusuable due to the poor SNR ratio. I wish I could pin it to 2.4GHz, instead I keep having to wait for it to drop the connection and renegotiate on 2.4GHz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have wondered why homepods don't include the ability to act as a network extender, at least for just Airport networks. From a hardware perspective, it obviously could serve this purpose, and adding in a functionality like this would help justify the high price.

My guess is that future versions of homepods will offer additional features like this, and hopefully the long-distance charging that Apple seems to be working on: [https://www.computerworld.com/article/3234911/mobile- wireles...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3234911/mobile- wireless/apple-just-bought-its-own-wireless-charging-company-heres-why.html)

As an aside, I just bought my second homepod and was disappointed to learn that one cannot use a linked pair of homepods to listen to anything from a Mac other than iTunes content. This is bizarre because a pair of homepods can be used as the output device for any app on iOS. But if you want to watch that youtube/hulu/netflix video on your computer? Tough luck — you can't use the homepods as a stereo pair.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought this would be a simple "hey mesh routers now cost more" but the author thought of some interesting use cases that they have forgone.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apple made the only router that my parents could setup. I'm guessing the Google WiFi probably has a similarly friendly user experience, but I'd rather not sell them out to Google.

It was a shame that Apple abandoned the airport.

<comment><USER9> My personal experience: I got 2 airports express for my parents. Both of them died within a year (permanent orange LED meaning the circuit was fried). Now they are on Google Wifi, and so far it works.

<comment><USER8> Fair enough. I'll have to read their privacy policy in detail. I'd love the trust I have in google for security updates, but am wary of the potential data collection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apple does seem to be in a good position to advertise network privacy oriented features on their devices. This made me feel nostalgic for a time when Apple made complicated things simpler.

</comment><comment><USER11> The iPod is history, except that it lives on inside every iPhone. I wonder if Apple considered including a full-featured AirPort router inside the 2018 Mac Mini?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure this would work. Many people that I've noticed seem to hide their networking gear, usually in whatever room the service comes in from the ISP (which is more often than not basements), because that's the most convenient place without running wires all over the place. People are typically using their systems everywhere _but_ those rooms, because WiFi makes it simple to put a system wherever it is most convenient. Even if assuming, say, 40% of users have their main system in the same room as the modem/router, it's unreasonable to expect a lot of those users to use such a feature. Adding the cost, complexity, and size to a system for a feature very few users would use seems almost ridiculous.

Although, you could probably argue it already has one - macOS has native capability to share your ethernet connection wirelessly. No idea how many devices this could support, and it obviously lacks any features you would find in a router (firewall, port forwarding, etc.), but it's certainly an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Converted my house from slow, intermittent apple wifi system to google wifi. Night and day better. Apple makes consumer products, google makes hi-tech "cloud" services.

<comment><USER5> You'll need to explain it more than that.

How was the Apple Airport slow? What kind of diagnostics did you do? What does the Google WiFi do different that makes it work so much better?</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made my first NES emulator, written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/scottferg/Fergulator

<comment><USER2> Very awesome!

It would be great if at some point you wrote up a quick overview of how someone who isn't super familiar with NES emulators could start going through your code to explore/learn!

What parts of this project were made easier/harder by choosing to do it in Go?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Emulators are pretty tricky to learn, especially if you've never written one before. Between <http://emu-docs.org/?page=NES> and <http://nesdev.com/> you'll find all the information needed.

If you look in the video and controller code you'll see that Go makes handling the concurrency there very easy. It also made testing really simple to add in without a ton of effort. Couple that with the fact that it's super clean and runs really fast on every machine I've tried on, it's held up pretty well for this type of project.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I'm less interested in writing an actual emulator but more just interested in understanding your approach and the code in general at a high level..

But I will take a look! Thanks again for sharing your work

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I hear you. It can be difficult to follow if you're unfamiliar with the landscape is all. Maybe start things off by watching how the CPU works. Both the CPU and PPU work via a Step() function that is the entry-point for their respective functionality.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Optimizing Your Google Analytics Setup Made Easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.insightswebanalytics.com/setUpOptimizer

<comment><USER2> What's that? When I click on "Get Started", it brings me to accounts.google.com.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best advice you've ever read on killing Procrastination? - <AUTHOR>

Or Videos <comment><USER2> For me, procrastination often comes from overestimating the pain involved in performing a task (fear). To overcome it, I promise myself I'll just "take a look at the problem", then I convince myself that I'll just do this quick small task (ex: change a label, do a lookup query) and stop, but pretty soon, I see that this isn't scary at all... and I JDI.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say:

1) First thing in the morning, don't check your email, Hacker News, or any other distracting sites. Not even for a minute. You can spend a bit of time figuring out your tasks / biggest rock(s) for the day (see #2); but after that, the next thing you should do is get to work.

2) Set a 1, 1.5 or 2 hour timebox where you get your "Biggest Rock" of the day done first (it's okay to split this across multiple timeboxes.

More on the Big Rock stuff here: [http://zenhabits.net/big-rocks-first-double- your-productivit...](http://zenhabits.net/big-rocks-first-double-your- productivity-this-week/)

3) Work on your email in batches. So, when you open your email, set 45 minutes (or whatever) to reply / respond to whatever is in your inbox. Then close it until it's time for your next email batch.

4) I haven't gotten into this one yet, but I think it would be good to deal with each email once it's opened. Don't mark it as unread or leave it in your inbox. Respond to it or archive it (or do _something_ with it that would make it "done.").

Yeah, I think those would be my best tips at the moment. The biggest one being #1.

I hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER4> "First, care"

<http://www.43folders.com/2010/02/05/first-care>

</comment><comment><USER5> For me, start small and work my way up to big tasks. If I try and do something big right away, I'll get distracted halfway through.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just worry about dealing with it tomorrow.</comment>


Google is doing things the CIA cannot do - <AUTHOR> http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/5222

<comment><USER2> Seriously? "Google Ideas Director Involved in 'Regime Change'" is quite a bit different than "Google is doing things the CIA cannot do". It's as if you didn't read the article: Jared Cohen is a loose cannon, he's doing things on his own that Google did not explicitly approve of. Cohen is going places that Google is urging him not to go. "Google" per se is not doing things. Jaren Cohen is doing things. It seems debatable that Cohen does things the CIA can't. The CIA has a large employee base, Cohen is one person.

A junk article, in short, written from a very paranoiac viewpoint.

</comment><comment><USER3> STRATFOR is evil.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/28/wikileaks- intelligence-industrial-complex)</comment>


Ask HN: What cool browser extensions have you created to simplify your tasks? - <AUTHOR> I just want to know how you automated or made your work simple through a browser extension. <comment><USER2> I created [https://cazadescuentos.net](https://cazadescuentos.net), which let me track products I want to buy if the price were smaller, it notifies me once the price drops.

Also, it's useful after buying an item, if the price drops, I can use the price get some money back, I have a guarantee service provided from my credit card doing that, but most times, it's simpler to just buy the item again, and return the first one.

It's funny cause the idea was from my wife, and I ended up using it far more than she, most stores are from Mexico with some international ones.

It's worth adding that, notifications are browser only as the app doesn't require you to register any personal information (like email/phone).

</comment><comment><USER3> Not related to work, but tiny automation.

[https://github.com/Hemmingsson/Quick- Preview](https://github.com/Hemmingsson/Quick-Preview)

Before i built this extension i needed to click play on every Soundcloud track/mixtape that looked interesting and then manually click on the waveform to quickly skip trough to see if it was something worth listening too.

Now i can just hover any play button and it will automatically play sampels from the track/mixtape. See it in action here: [https://youtu.be/DwsNiXsCZvo](https://youtu.be/DwsNiXsCZvo)

Extra: Thought it was kinda hard to differentiate normal tracks from mixtapes on Soundcloud, so this extension helped me with just that. [https://github.com/Hemmingsson/Mixtape- Highlighter](https://github.com/Hemmingsson/Mixtape-Highlighter)

</comment><comment><USER4> I made a plugin called Focus.me - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focusme/jdkgogfonl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focusme/jdkgogfonlaifeigkgbkfamcihablemc) \- Although it doesn't automate a workflow, I use it to stay productive during a workday. Focus.me blocks a list of websites in fixed time increments: The press of a button adds time to a timer, blocking sites until the timer expires. I find myself instinctively flipping between Youtube, HN, reddit etc. in a loop, and the plugin helps break this cycle and get the ball rolling quicker when I need to focus.

I made the plugin because I wasn't satisfied with other productivity/website blocking plugins which often contain URL tracking and other telemetry. Focus.me is completely local and doesn't record any information of any sort.

<comment><USER5> I'd love to give a try if you have its Firefox equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I made [https://www.checkbot.io](https://www.checkbot.io) to test websites for common SEO, speed and security problems, like broken links, duplicate titles and unnecessary redirects. It tests multiple of pages at a time as well as localhost pages so it's useful for identifying site wide problems and confirming you've fixed them.

I developed it for myself while working as a consultant then released it as a general tool. It's saved me a lot of time in putting quotes together, code review and confirming fixes are complete.

</comment><comment><USER7> I developed an addon[0] for myself to avoid online distraction. It has a small price tag so that I don't get overwhelmed by support requests :)

If you have any feedback or suggestion on the addon then please do let me know at the email listed on the addon.

[0] [https://switchoff.neocities.org](https://switchoff.neocities.org)

</comment><comment><USER8> An extension to correctly parse out citation information from an UpToDate article. I'm not sure about the current state of Zotero's extractor, but it was simply not working at the time on UTD links.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uptodate- extr...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uptodate-extractor/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I use my [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) for collaborating on online research (bookmarks, notes, highlights, and tree-style history). The browser extension code is open source: [https://gitlab.com/histre/browser- extension](https://gitlab.com/histre/browser-extension)

</comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a extension to treat the URLs entered in the location bar as relative instead of absolute. It is much more useful, I find. I also made a extension to add a "view source" option to the popup box that appears to ask where to download a file or if you want to open it with some program, since often it is a plain text file that I want to view.

</comment><comment><USER11> When I write, I often want to make my writing more sophisticated. For that purpose I built an extension which find synonyms for words.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/synonyms- deluxe](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/synonyms-deluxe)

</comment><comment><USER12> I made [https://markr.app](https://markr.app) to highlight & capture content which come across interesting to me when surfing on the web.

I like to organise all the interesting pointers at one place and refer them in future when I want to.

<comment><USER13> Now, this seems like something I would happily use! Is it possible to somehow export the notes (highligths included)? Do you also plan a Safari version?</comment></comment>


Show HN: A year worth of side projects - <AUTHOR> http://arcanis.fr/a-year-worth-of-side-projects/

<comment><USER2> Interesting way to get some value out of projects without necessarily finishing them.</comment>


Tell HN: An idea on karma - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
I was wondering about karma on HN and other sites, like stackoverflow, which are community driven. The essence of karma is to be a self-controlling mechanism which empowers users based on their past contributions.
One aspect of this is to award 'power' to users (like moderating and downvoting) after certain karma point thresholds. My idea is to speed this process up by promoting 'powers' in a more flexible way.
How it would work - a 'predictive karma algorithm': Analyse usage patterns of members with higher 'ranks' (i.e. more 'power') and try to match those usage patterns to new members' behaviour to determine if they qualify for an early promotion in the 'ranks'.
This could entail giving dummy access to all functionality to new users, like downvoting and deletion. The dummy buttons would not actually do anything but the actions are stored in a DB to be used in the usage pattern comparison algorithm.
Some advantages: - Members can climb the 'ranks' faster which satisfies peoples' thirst for power (who doesn't like being promoted). - It would show full site functionality at an earlier stage so users can see the site's richness immediately. - Speeds up members' site loyalty.
Some disadvantages: - Could become complex to create a well balanced algorithm - Measuring any comparative advantage over using thresholds is difficult.
It is just a seed of an idea but I would think some kind of a 'predictive karma algorithm' could further improve the user experience.
Your thoughts? <comment><USER2> Karma is a tricky thing. I've been playing around with a toy version of HN for a couple of days now to see if I can somehow find a better way to use the 'votes' in order to maximize the user experience on the site.

Karma is only one aspect of that.

Every time a user votes a submission (or a comment) up or down there is a complex relationship between the two users.

It is based on any combination of the following factors:

\- quality

\- like / dislike

\- agreement / disagreement

\- mood of the voting user

To mine all those from a single click it is necessary to track those clicks over many interactions. Only that way does it become possible to get a sense of what is on the users mind when he/she clicks that 'vote' link.

Votes on urls that are submitted are not subject to the 'agreement / disagreement' element, but all the others apply.

Allowing people to 'climb' faster based on click patterns is a very complex data mining issue. The 'dummy buttons' idea is an interesting one, to some extent this already happens on HN (the up/down vote buttons do not always work the way you think they do).

One hard thing to achieve is to get rid of the effect simply measuring karma has on HN. Because the users see the points and the karma they collect there is a feedback loop in HN that tends to get out of hand.

Comments posted early on in a thread will get some karma regardless of how good they are in the longer term.

Ideally a 'good' user (so one that in the long term will acquire access to all the features) should be identified early, but then that would open the door to gaming the system even further. The road up the hill is pretty quick anyway for most users, as far as I can see you get all the goodies from 200 points upwards (other than administrator privileges), an active user could collect that in a week, and by then will be reasonably well versed in HN etiquette to not abuse these powers.

</comment><comment><USER3> >> Some advantages: - Members can climb the 'ranks' faster which satisfies peoples' thirst for power (who doesn't like being promoted).

That's a huge disadvantage. I used to run a site that had a karma system, and the more karma you had, the bigger the impact when you gave someone else positive or negative karma. That "thirst for power" just got bigger and bigger and bigger, and it ended up almost ruining what had previously been an extremely good community. When we (the other admins and mods) decided to drop the system, it only returned to normal after a lot of the previously-helpful senior members were given temporary bans so they could 'cool off' for a while.

The more complex karma becomes and the more people keep obsessing about it and wanting to improve it, it's just going to impede the real progress of the community.

</comment><comment><USER4> The greatest danger of a karma system is for it to become a means unto itself. I think you've fallen headlong into that danger. You don't have a single sentence about how your system would make the site better, which leads me to the conclusion that it isn't even a goal of yours. Without that as a goal, you're not going to create a decent design except by sheerest accident.</comment>


Mathematical and physical models toward building a more perfect flying vehicle - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-10-merging-mathematical-physical-vehicle.html <comment><USER2> This appears to be the source paper, but it's not nearly as interesting as I had hoped, and I'm at least already aware of how to project principle stress tensor components.

[http://nonlinearstudies.com/index.php/mesa/article/view/1723](http://nonlinearstudies.com/index.php/mesa/article/view/1723)

 _A unified bending /shear beam (spar) theory has been formulated by merging a number of previously completed theoretical segments into a comprehensive analytical treatment of linear non-homogenous viscoelastic Timoshenko beams (spars) with stochastic properties and random dynamic loads including shear center and neutral axis spatial and temporal motions due to bending, and including realistic physical starting load transients._

</comment><comment><USER3> What's this article about - computerized testing of aircraft? Because that's been going on just about as long as there's been computers.</comment>


Thoughts on the Cpp Graphics Proposal - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeremyong.com/c++/graphics/2018/11/05/thoughs-on-the-cpp-graphics-proposal.html <comment><USER2> There is WebView library currently proposed to the Standard which is exactly the linked article author wished for.</comment>


Mailgun ~finally~ gets a visual update - <AUTHOR> https://www.mailgun.com/blog/opening-the-envelope-on-mailguns-new-ui <comment><USER2> It seems their site has been hacked? Link redirects to 3rd party sites!? (edit: see link to twitter thread) [https://twitter.com/Mail_Gun/status/1115904832274141184](https://twitter.com/Mail_Gun/status/1115904832274141184)</comment>


Loading an x64 register, how hard could it be? - <AUTHOR> http://c9x.me/art/notes.html?9/19/2015 <comment><USER2> Is this really that crazy? A 64-bit immediate value takes 8 bytes. So of that 10 byte instruction, 8 bytes of it are the value to load into the register. Similarly, a 32-bit immediate value takes 4 bytes, so 4 bytes of the other instructions are the 32-bit immediate values. Taking this into account, we see that the non-immediate overhead is 1 byte for movl, 2 bytes for movq, and 2 bytes for movabsq.

I don't really think this is as crazy as the article is implying.

<comment><USER3> I think the author is saying what's crazy is the lack of 64-bit immediates in a machine that contains 64-bit registers. There's an instruction to add a 32-bit immediate (and I believe 8 and 16 as well), but not a 64-bit one.

<comment><USER4> It's rare for programs to contain integer constants that don't fit in 32 bits, and they aren't needed for 64-bit code/global memory references due to the introduction of addressing relative to the instruction pointer.

Also there is a 15 bytes instruction length limit that would have to be extended if 64-bit immediates were allowed on all instructions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Populating x86-64 floating point registers is also an amusing subject.

The obvious instruction for loading a (64-bit) float into an xmm register is movsd. With a memory source operand, the higher part of the register is zeroed, which is what you want. No problem.

Now the fun part: if the source is not memory but another xmm register, the higher part of the register is _not_ zeroed. This induces a false dependency on the previous value of the destination register that can cause performance issues. To avoid this problem, such register-register copies should be done with a packed move instruction. (Or vmovsd, but that was added much later.)

The obvious packed move instruction for 64-bit floats is movapd, but we can do better than that by using movaps - it is still a float domain instruction but is a byte smaller.

So the optimal way to move a single double from one register to another is to use a vector move of the wrong type.

</comment><comment><USER6> > "it is impossible to add 2^33 to rax using one instruction only."

This can in fact be done, with a memory operand. I'm not sure about the performance compared to a 64-bit load immediate followed by an add, but this will do it (NASM syntax):

              add rax, [rel the_constant]
              ...

      the_constant:
              dq 8589934592

<comment><USER7> This is the right answer.

This is what ARM does a lot of times (their 'immediate' value ops allow you to pick an 8 bit number and rotate it a bit)

[http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc....](http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dui0473l/dom1359731145835.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those wondering what he meant by the "data dependency" issue that zeroing out the upper 32 bits avoids, the first answer to this SO question does a decent job of explaining it: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11177137/why-do- most-x64...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11177137/why-do- most-x64-instructions-zero-the-upper-part-of-a-32-bit-register)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's actually 7 bytes, not 6, to load a sign extended value into a register.

            48 C7 C0 FF FF FF FF    mov     RAX,0FFFFFFFFh

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I fixed that. In my head I knew a REX prefix was necessary and thought it was sufficient, but i386 has shortcuts to load an immediate into a register that are not available in 64 bits version!

Thanks for mentioning that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Makes one miss the 6502.

<comment><USER11> A better example is the 6809. LDA #$FF takes two bytes and two cycles. LDX #$FFFF takes three bytes and three cycles. "Isn't that crazy?" Sigh.</comment></comment>


Source: Apple Is Behind Mystery Event at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium - <AUTHOR> http://hoodline.com/2015/08/source-apple-is-behind-mystery-event-at-bill-graham-civic-auditorium

<comment><USER2> Not really newsworthy until something interesting actually happens.

<comment><USER3> You're right. I think this falls into the "announcement of an announcement" category.</comment></comment>


Most Obvious Yet Ignored Concept About Programmer's Concentration - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brunomiranda.com/post/5085184979/most-obvious-yet-ignored-concept-about-concentration

<comment><USER2> His comments are provably false. There are countless scientific studies showing the benefits of various strategies for increasing productivity as well as increasing your enjoyment of your work. (e.g. how to make masturbation feel better, how to make programming more addictive, how to enjoy yourself while doing the dishes, etc etc)

He even suggests time-boxing, a very popular strategy for countering procrastination.

Suffice to say, he is yet another unqualified non-expert giving opinions on stuff he doesn't know anything about.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those who like to have music playing while they work, I've found that albums can be a nice way to pace the work day, and to account for time.

Open up my editor, start an album that fits in with my current mood so it will service its purpose of covering up outside noise but will not distract me, and start hacking away.

When the album ends, I get to a good pause point, and take a break to plan my next move, and pick the next album. Good time for a stretch, or a snack, or a check of HN. Then start the next album and back to work.

This naturally breaks my day up into the kind of concentrate/break cycles that many recommend. At the end of the day, if I need to account for my time, It's easy to check iTunes and see how long each album was, and therefore how much time I spent on that phase of my coding.

</comment><comment><USER4> On the other hand, here are some organic ways that I've found useful for strengthening my level of concentration, independent of my programmming focus:

\- working out regularly, especially running long distance

\- playing games competitively (eg: chess, bridge, go)

\- training your mind/memory or practicing mental arithmetic

\- eat blueberries daily (random tip from Nelson Dellis, the current US Memory Champ: [http://climbformemory.com/2011/01/05/blueberries-rock-my- bra...](http://climbformemory.com/2011/01/05/blueberries-rock-my-brain/))

</comment><comment><USER5> This is just wrong. Sometimes you run into a knotty problem that requires you to hold a lot of things in your head while you try to fit them together. A conversation in the next cubicle can prevent that from happening.

</comment><comment><USER6> The post reminds very much of the "Back to Work" podcast by Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann:

<http://5by5.tv/b2w/10>

</comment><comment><USER7> off topic: I like the fact the content renders perfectly on my phone, as opposed to most others with tiny font and fixed width.

</comment><comment><USER8> Inflammatory stuff by someone who seems to have never dealt with burn-out near the end of a project, or the fact that sometimes work is work, and you just have to push through it to get back to the things you find exciting.

<comment><USER9> I didn't really interpret it like that. While there's certainly situations where one feels burned out and lacking motivation, I think his point was more about entire fields of work that you find demoralizing.

For me, this is mostly doing design work. It's a necessary evil on small projects, but I really struggle with it a lot of the time because I'm not especially good at it, while I think I have a pretty good eye for what looks like shit and what doesn't. With programming, even the most menial tasks I can get lost in much easier.</comment></comment>


The Tech Co-Founder Deal You Should Be Getting - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@paultyma/best-tech-co-founder-offer-i-ever-got-e0c05d8274cb#.y07z5lai8 <comment><USER2> My point being if you work for Co-Founders who does not value tech as equally as other things,its not worth it.

My friend(CTO) and another two non-technical founders(CEO &COO) started this company and he is not treated well.And he got only a quarter of percentage of shares other two have.</comment>


What makes long term personal goals so damn hard? - <AUTHOR> https://www.amplenote.com/blog/what_makes_long_term_personal_goals_so_damn_hard <comment><USER2> I am using Things for a couple of years but have never found a way to make it for a daily habbits so I have 2 apps. One for tasks/projects and the other for daily habbits.</comment>


Building your own email server - <AUTHOR> https://www.misumasu.com/building-your-own-email-server/

<comment><USER2> I considered doing this myself, but I read the biggest challenge is making sure your emails are not considered spam.

Your private ip might be part of a larger network where your fellow "VPS" users might be considered spam.

How do you ensure your emails won't go into the spam box because you host your own box?

As opposed to gmail or mailgun building the relationships to ensure mail from them is not categorized into spam.

<comment><USER3> If you're going to do this, you need to make sure you're putting yourself in the right neighborhood. If you don't have a direct allocation of IPs, you want to get IPs from an organization that does a good job of responding to spam requests, and has a high barrier for entry, so that you're not associated with spammers. You also want to make sure that the only way for you to lose your IP is through some action on your part; you're going to be establishing its reputation, and you don't want to lose it because of an extended outage or something.

I've had good luck with using a static IP from my residential ISP (Sonic.net): they respond quickly to spam reports, and you need to live in the area to have residential service, so spammers are unlikely to use it. Also, I've had no problems using dedicated hosting as well (SoftLayer), they also have a good spam response team, it's easier to get an account, but the servers aren't cheap, so spammers will go to cheaper pastures.</comment></comment>