Hacking your food supply - <AUTHOR> http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/12/hacking-your-food-supply-perennial.html

<comment><USER2> Neat post. Erin and I have the same problem. Question: you're chopping and freezing garlic, onions, fresh green veg --- I get that the protein freezes just fine, but doesn't the rest of the dish suffer?

The major timer saver we have is a slow cooker; throw a frozen package of chicken thighs in before we leave for the office, and when we come home we have a better protein than we would if we started from fresh thighs in the evening and an hour to cook them. Thighs, brisket, ribs, chuck, potatoes, all work well.

You're a foodie; have you looked into sous vide? You can vacuum-bag a protein and some accompanyments and leave them cooking to a precise temperature for 4, 8, or 30 hours, and you're going to end up with a perfectly cooked protein. No thaw at 5:30PM, just a quick sear and you're off.

<comment><USER3> I stumbled on that too, but I don't think he meant he froze them individually.

<comment><USER2> I didn't think he was freezing packages of minced shallot --- although it would rule if you could do that --- but regardless of how you package it, doesn't it kill the veg to freeze and thaw like that? Freezing creates ice crystals that tear cell walls.

<comment><USER3> I freeze some stuff in my vacuum saver bags and don't get that sort of thing at all. Plus I buy frozen veggies and they're fine.

<comment><USER2> Frozen veg: (1) are flash-frozen instead of slowly frozen in your freezer, (2) are only available for some vegetables (garlic? leeks? green onions?), (3) taste significantly worse than fresh (except for peas).

<comment><USER3> I see what you mean.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, the topic interests me; not trying to be a contrarian message board nerd.

<comment><USER3> No, makes sense. I hadn't really thought of it that way. I assume those things must freeze well or he wouldn't do it, but I am curious why.

I guess perhaps the reason you can't find frozen garlic is that refrigerated garlic lasts forever. Other stuff I'm not sure about though. There are definitely some vegetables that perish quickly yet I've never seen frozen, and some not even in a can.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of our recipes tend to involve making marinades for meat, and then the meat in the marinade. Some marinades work better than others; it seems that acidic marinades that have lemon or vinegar in them tend to cook the meat while they're frozen, however.

Other times, we package the sauce, meat and vegetables separately. For instance, one of my wife's recipes is for a stir fry. For that one, we freeze the sauce, meat and frozen vegetables separately. We also buy flash frozen vegetables for that one. We combine them while cooking, and they hold up better.

There's a whole art and science to freezing and preserving food which my wife, my mother and mother-in-law are much better at than I am. There is a orchard in Morgan Hill that has the most amazing heirloom peaches. So, we'll buy a couple of flats when they are at peak and freeze them. We also do the same for strawberries, blueberries, cherries and raspberries. Peaches need a preservative; strawberries don't do great unless they're sugared. Raspberries, blueberries and cherries do well when frozen whole on a cookie sheet and then vacuum packed after they're frozen. It's a couple hours of work a piece, but eating frozen heirloom peaches on Dutch oven pancakes at Christmastime makes it worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't do the whole month thing because I actually enjoy cooking as a side hobby, but I do make one big dish that lasts us (girlfriend/I) for at least 2 days (dinner / lunches for work)

It's easy to get a list of recipes you'll enjoy throughout the various seasons. For example, right now it's a mix of Beef Stew, Spaghetti, and Risotto dishes throughout the winter and in-between I cook whatever I bought from the market that weekend

<comment><USER3> Yeah, me too. I'm sure I'd be surprised at how many dishes hold up well in the freezer, but I still couldn't limit myself to that few. I love a good home made Jambalaya every now and then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> i feel like use of the word 'hack' has become a little bit too liberal

<comment><AUTHOR> This was the spirit in which I used the word:

 _Hacking might be characterized as 'an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick- and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it._ From: <http://catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html>

<comment><USER5> I mean, I agree this idea is great and very helpful. its definitely practical and useful but personally I just don't think its a 'hack'.

<comment><USER2> The problem isn't the word "hack", it's the word "food"; he's not "food hacking", he's "meal hacking". In a book of "meal hacks", this would be a keystone chapter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This strikes me as sort of being the opposite of "hacking" your food: instead of finding a creative, new way to prepare your meals, you build a repertoire of a handful of reproducible dishes, and make them over and over again.

I understand that this may be a gain in efficiency, but I can't see how anyone who calls themselves a foodie could enjoy eating the same eight dishes on a slightly-randomized schedule for months at a time.

"What's for dinner, hon?"

"Oh, we're having #7 tonight."

"Hooray! #7 is my _favorite_."

etc.

<comment><USER2> For a lot of people --- maybe _most_ people in America, and almost certainly most hackers, the alternative to a strategy like this is simply eating out every night. There are certainly a lot of ways to engineer variability into planned, pre-prepped meals, but be that as it may, the "hack" here is to allow yourself to cook at all when you have a lifestyle that almost demands nightly Thai takeout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somewhat related: the best place to buy cheap fruits and veggies is at a Chinese or Indian market. Typically half the cost for most items.

</comment><comment><USER8> Really interesting. I don't like cooking either, and this seems like a good middle ground. The lost freezer space is probably not as big a deal also, since I'm guessing you don't ever need to put frozen chicken etc in there unless it's already prepackaged in a meal.

I recently discovered the same thing: that food preparation is a pain and takes too long. My solution (which people also enjoyed on HN) was to avoid cooking altogether and hire someone off craig's list for $60 a week to do it:

[http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/the-price-of- my-d...](http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/the-price-of-my- dreams-60-a-week)

<comment><AUTHOR> I really liked your article, actually. We're getting to the point where we'd like to do all the planning and buying, and then hire someone off of Craigslist to help prep the food. We're not quite at that point yet, but hopefully in a couple of months we'll be able to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do this on a less formal scale by always cooking 6-8 servings on each Saturday and Sunday nights, tupperwaring the leftovers.

Disposable Tupperware is god's gift to hackers.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a little unclear on what you do. My understanding with OAMC was that you cooked the meals (once a month, obviously) and then just reheated them on the day. Reading your post it sounds more like you just prep the ingredients once a month and then cook them on the day you eat them. Have I read this wrong?

I'm certainly not doing OAMC but I'm moving in this direction. Mainly with ingredients though rather than complete meals. My main limitation is freezer space.

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually just do the food prep and then we cook the meal the day we're going to eat it. Meat tends to dry out if they're frozen after they're cooked.

<comment><USER10> In that case it sounds a lot like what I'm doing but on a bigger scale.

I would definitely be interested in seeing your recipes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll work on posting them after we're done cooking this weekend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Neat... the recipe database sounds like grounds for a quick recipe app.

<comment><USER12> Couple thousand creative-commons licensed recipes with a social networking twist: <http://www.opensourcefood.com/>

<comment><USER13> dude that site is sweet - I just wish the recipe ingredients were normalized!

<comment><USER14> Seconded!!! Then you could make a nice recipe api....and the world is open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My fiancee and I are in a similar situation.

We've taken a less radical approach, we simply cook twice a week and make enough to cover the rest of the week with some to spare, which we freeze. It doesn't usually take much extra time to double or triple one recipe at a time.

Then, when a week is too busy to get in 2 cooking nights, we just start pulling from the freezer.

Meals that work especially well with this approach are soups, chilis, and fish dishes. Frozen salmon + herbs and lemon sauce, wrapped in parchment and frozen by the dozen, is our fast food. Just throw it in the oven for a few minutes and you've got a healthy, decent meal with no cleanup.

</comment><comment><USER16> By far the easiest way to get started is something like Dream Dinners or Dinner A'fare, as mentioned. The price and convenience are both somewhere in between cooking yourself and eating out.

They've got a bunch of recipes you can choose from, and they do the shopping for the ingredients, so it saves a lot of time.

The one downside - if the one near where you live is like the one near where I live, it might be a bit awkward being the only guy there.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've done this on a smaller scale and with fully cooked food. I work full-time and have class 2 or 3 days a week at night. I try my best to avoid fast food, so if often involves cooking double portions for the days that I'm away all day. My wife is starting law school next fall and when that happens, we'll probably switch to a system like this.

Fresh ingredients are great but the time saved is generally worth the loss.

</comment><comment><USER18> Curious, I thought that people who did this cooked the meals prior to freezing. Cooking is usually what takes a while, prep can be done really quickly (especially if you do it often). I guess it all depends on the recipes, but it doesn't seem like a real time saver to me.

Either way it's not for me, cooking is my release. I gladly get off the computer and onto the cutting board.

</comment><comment><USER19> I lived in a communal house with about 15 other people for about a year, and this is more or less exactly what we did.

The process works _very_ well for keeping multiple people with possibly different eating schedules fed, and minimizes the amount of crap that people shove down their throats - which in the above situation can lead to not having any food :(.</comment>


"J.K. Rowling and the Chamber of Literary Fame" - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-07-19/j-k-rowling-and-the-chamber-of-literary-fame

<comment><USER2> From 2013.</comment>


Flash exported as native app, distributed via app store 21:22 - <AUTHOR> http://cs5launch.adobe.com/?promoid=FDKBR

<comment><AUTHOR> At 21:22 the guy says you can export flash as a native app and have it distributed via the app store. Is Adobe not backing down on this claim?

<comment><USER2> As for right now, pre 4.0, I believe that you can.</comment></comment>


An introduction to agent-based models: simulating segregation with Python - <AUTHOR> https://www.binpress.com/tutorial/introduction-to-agentbased-models-an-implementation-of-schelling-model-in-python/144

<comment><USER2> Nice.

If you have also used NetLogo, how different/difficult was it as compared to that.

I had used NetLogo a few years back in college to study tax evasion behaviour from agent based models, it worked out quite well to match IRS figures with similar policy variables with not much time spent in coding up the logic. But a major problem I faced then was dealing with a few matrix operations, for which I had to write out a lot of code. So I figure it would be fun to replicate it in python now, hence the question to gauge difficulty in porting that code to python...

<comment><AUTHOR> Schelling segregation model is included in Netlogo. [http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Segregation](http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Segregation)

Personally, I prefer to code in Python. The logic was straightforward to code, and Python has different visualisation libraries such as Matplotlib that makes building custom graphs very simple.

Tax evasion behaviour from agent based models sounds very interesting!!</comment></comment>


Why I'm Learning Morse Code - <AUTHOR> http://burakkanber.com/blog/why-im-learning-morse-code/ <comment><USER2> I spent nine years as a naval communicator and am fluent in morse. It's been a few years so I would definitely need a bit of practice to get back up to 12 words a minute on a flashing light.

I can speak three languages and morse was similar to learn. From the first day of training they gave us sheet of paper with the alphabet and the morse translation and told us to memorize a couple of letters. Then they sent us outside to spend hours staring at a flashing lightbulb.

When you recognize a letter your writer (someone with a clipboard standing facing you and away from the light) would write it down, and when you didn't recognize the letter you said "MISS".

The first day was spent saying "MISS... MISS... MISS..." It was extremely frustrating, the same way being immersed in a new language can be. It felt useless... as if I would never get it. Every day we'd spend the morning staring at the light, and little by little we started to get more letters.

Once we mastered it (100%) they would turn up the speed and we'd be back to where we started... "MISS... MISS... ECHO... MIKE... MISS... MISSS..." until we perfected that speed and were moved up again.

It took about three months of daily practice to get up to the military's standard.

I catch myself years later spelling out words in morse in my head.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love anecdotes like this. Were you taught Morse purely visually, with the flashing bulb? Do you find it easier to watch a bulb or to listen to a tone?

<comment><USER2> It was always visual. It seemed useless at the time, spending hours out in the pouring rain on a ship, sending a message with a flashing light to another ship, but they always reminded us that even with all our technology and cryptography, flashing light is still the most secure method of close ship-to- ship communications because it's directional when using focused light.

<comment><USER3> Ahhh, the days before a $250 quadcopter existed to provide a plausible attack vector.

I wonder if Navy personnel are flashing base64 (base36?) encoded GPG encrypted Morse code messages to each other?

<comment><USER4> Ship to ship laser communication fixes that :) Good luck finding the beam.

<comment><USER3> Dust, mist, and/or Rayleigh scattering means I wouldn't need to be in the beampath to "see" it, but I guess if you've solved the problem of aiming a collimated laser beam from a moving ship to another moving ship, and reliably hitting the "receiver" at the far end, you can probably do it at low enough power levels to make that very hard…

<comment><USER4> Or do it with infrared.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't help - the quadcopter's cameras don't _need_ to be only sensitive to the human-visible spectrum.

(having said that, Rayleigh scattering is frequency dependant, if I recall my high school physics correctly, IR will scatter lees than visible light – I doubt thst matter though, in ship-to-ship communication there'd be more than enough mist/water in the air to scatter enough IR for a suitable camera to see the beam)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been licensed as a ham radio operator since I was a kid (had an odd, early fascination with radio) and recently got back into it a few years ago.

I find using morse code extremely relaxing b/c it taxes your perceptual system in a way that is fairly uncommon in today's world. Either b/c it is being sent very fast or b/c of a weak signal and ionospheric noise, it's a "full brain" immersion exercise that leaves me feeling relaxed and contented (yes I know it sounds a bit odd).

I recommend it highly. Even for those not interested in radio, there are competitions for high speed morse (it's big in eastern Europe)... check out some of the training software:

[http://fkurz.net/ham/qrq.html](http://fkurz.net/ham/qrq.html)

and

[http://www.rufzxp.net/](http://www.rufzxp.net/)

Of course, real ham radio contests offer the best combo of adrenaline and strategy...

</comment><comment><USER6> >> This brings me to my fascination with Morse code. Granted, learning Morse code today may be a futile exercise. After all, I don't know a single person who speaks it!

From what I understand, ham radio operators still use morse code, although they phased out the requirement to be proficient in Morse code somewhat recently. So I don't think it is completely futile to learn.

"Demonstrating a proficiency in Morse code was for many years a requirement to obtain an amateur license to transmit on frequencies below 30 MHz. Following changes in international regulations in 2003, countries are no longer required to demand proficiency.The United States Federal Communications Commission, for example, phased out this requirement for all license classes on February 23, 2007."

Link: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio)

Ham radio operators also perform duties in emergency situations, including disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

"More than a thousand ham operators from all over the U.S. converged on the Gulf Coast in an effort to provide emergency communications assistance. Subsequent Congressional hearings highlighted the Amateur Radio response as one of the few examples of what went right in the disaster relief effort."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_emergency_communi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_emergency_communications)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're 100% correct. There is definitely an amateur radio community out there, and many of them are fluent in Morse. I guess I was just trying to say that nobody in my "natural" social circles knows Morse. But if I start hanging out with the right types of people, I'm sure I could communicate in dahs and dits all day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you think Morse code is cool, and it is, what is say is cooler, in my very humble and probably worthless opinion is this; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu,The](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu,The) Inca, over 500 years ago, encoded information in binary format using knots on a rope. Think about that. Cool, I think. What do you think?

<comment><USER8> Working link: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ex-ham and ex-military radio operator/tech here.

Morse code, (CW), is a semi-valuable skill for radio operators, especially hams that do HF and weak signal work. It takes experience, but at a certain point the letters become words and the words become phases. It's no longer a requirement for a amateur radio license, but it's still used and useful. (If you want to learn, I suggest the Koch method.)

With the advance of radio technology, especially computers, DSP and SDR, digital modes modes other than CW have better performance. You can decode a whole band of signals digital/CW with the combination of a SDR receiver and software on a decently powered computer.

But the advantage of CW is that you can use really "primitive" inexpensive radios as transmitters and flexible humans as encoders/decoders.

<comment><USER10> And as a teenager with almost no money this was important to me. I built the classic "Tuna-tin Two" transmitter from the schematic I found in the high school library and most of my money went to buying the $15 brass and plastic transmitter key from some (probably long defunct) store in downtown Brooklyn, NY.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not really into morse/CW, but I'd strongly encourage people to try out ham radio. You can buy an adequate radio for $31 on Amazon ([http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-136-174-400-480-Dual- Ban...](http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-136-174-400-480-Dual- Band/dp/B007H4VT7A)) and can get licensed in about 2-4 hours for $0-30.

There was a period of maybe the 1980s-2000 where radio was dying (it was all old people who were defending their turf), but in the past 13 years it seems to have really turned around -- more activity on the 2m/440 HT scene, disaster stuff, etc. You can do crazy things like run 1500W wifi. Operate RC. Work space stations (satellites, the ISS, etc.) Weird propagation stuff (sunspot related, meteors, the moon...).

The only lingering problem I have with amateur radio is the ban on crypto, but you can get around that by developing encrypted protocols but publishing the keys in routine use, or moving the equipment to non-ham bands with secret keys later.

<comment><USER5> I agree with this except would encourage anyone interested to check out HF communication before investing even $30 in VHF :)

<comment><USER11> VHF (2m) is going to be vastly more useful for emergency communications than HF in most urban areas, and for people who live in apartment buildings, etc., VHF is going to be a lot easier to actually use. I'm using a Yaesu 8800 mobile in my car now so I can cross-band repeat UHF to VHF as well, which would probably work pretty well for disaster communications.

(I'm personally most interested in UHF/EHF, myself, mainly satellite and point to point. I ran an iDirect TCP/IP Ku-band commercial/government/military network for a few years, and would love to buy some space segment on Ka band or possibly X and get back into it at some point. But I don't have a home/office with space for a dish farm right now, nor the $1-5k/MHz to lease transponders.)

If I had the ability to put up a tower or even a patio for antennas, I'd probably get a home HF station, true.

<comment><USER12> google for "hf mobile" or just ask at a nearby club meeting, there's enough people doing HF mobile that surely someone will give you a demonstration.

I have a "trailer hitch mount". So I can install or remove whatever I want, relatively easily and quickly. Its a slight step up from the magnet mount technique. Using the quick disconnect on the antenna I can stick a 5/8th wave 2M vertical on if I want, or a shortened 20M hamstick-alike, or whatever I want.

My favorite part is my neighborhood has enough RF smog to make HF operation basically impossible (even weak signal 6M sometimes), but a RF silent park parking lot is only a short drive away. This tends to make up for the inherent disadvantages of a small mobile HF installation.

You don't need to start with a $500 all weather autotuner or $700 screwdriver antenna and elaborate mounting plans... a simple $20 stick-type on a temporary magnet is good enough to see what its like, or basically "free" if a local will loan you some gear to see what its like (weaksignal VHF+ rovers are like that, but some HFers are like that too).

Also its a lot harder and more expensive to build an installation that will survive snow and thunderstorms at 85 MPH down the interstate and survive for years outside 24x365 than to park somewhere and slap a magnet mount on the roof and run the cable thru an open window... you'd never drive around like that, but you don't have to, so .. don't. It also cures the ignition noise puzzle... shutting off the engine in a parking lot tends to eliminate ignition noise pretty effectively LOL. Only operating while parked tends to eliminate the "distracted driving" problem too.

Like all things in ham radio, if motivated and knowledgeable you can do quite a bit quickly for free, or you can spend years and thousands if you want. Both are fun.

I found this all very entertaining when I was living in the apartment building.

The other advice I have is keep everything in a big plastic bin, so you don't forget the radio 12 volt power cable at home, or forget your logbook, or whatever else you need. And when you come home, throw the full bin in a corner of the apartment until next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are practical reasons to learn it, if you do radio operations. A morse signal doesn't require the same bandwidth that a voice signal requires, so you're able to focus the power of the transmitter into a tighter bandwidth, and broadcast with more power than a voice signal. In addition, you can understand the information in a morse signal in the presence of much more interference than you can understand a voice signal. So it's actually quite practical when doing radio operations to use morse, even today.

<comment><USER14> In many cases, you need only a few watts (5 or less) and with a good antenna can transmit globally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I learned Morse Code as a 12 year old while working towards my ham radio license. It was a challenge, especially getting to 13 WPM. The 20 WPM requirement of the Extra class was the main reason I didn't go for that one at the time.

Even to this day, over two decades later, I can still generate and recall Morse (albeit slowly). This is one reason I urge young people to study something meaningful and lasting while they're still in school. I wish I had an adult who had told me that when I was young. I still know a lot about electronics, RF, antenna design, etc. but I wish I had internalized mathematics fundamentals or a foreign language instead. I still believe that one reason Richard Feynman was so facile with physics and mathematics was because of the notebooks he and his friend kept while they were kids.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool article! "Code" by Charles Petzold[0] talks about morse code while covering ways that we encode data. May be a good read for anyone interested in this topic.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Softwa...](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Software/dp/0735611319)

</comment><comment><USER17> I learned Morse Code as a Girl Scout and became fluent for the intellectual challenge. I'm definitely no longer fluent but could get by in an emergency with a quick refresher.

</comment><comment><USER18> Like many of the others in the thread, I first learned CW in order to upgrade my ham license (I started as a "No-Code Tech" and wanted HF privileges, which required passing a Morse Code exam).

> As you develop proficiency in receiving–or "copying"–Morse, you start > hearing the characters rather than the dashes and dots.

I was attempting to explain this to someone else a long time ago and they had trouble really understanding what I meant until I described it another way -- think about how toddlers first learn to read. They initially begin by learning each individual letter, then how a couple letters in a specific order make a specific sound and form different words.

As your reading comprehension increases, you no longer read letter by letter. Instead, your brain recognizes a sequence of letters as words. As you are reading this post, you are reading _words_ , not the individuals letter that compose them.

When trying to increase the speed at which you can "copy" Morse Code (which is done simply by reducing the space (time) between characters), you stop hearing the dits and dahs and instead learn to recognize individual letters. After a while, you'll even begin to recognize (some) words just by their sound.

Past the age of 17 or 18, I've never "used" Morse Code for anything practical but it is still stuck in my brain and I can still "copy". At least I know that if I were to ever become paralyzed and unable to speak or move my appendages, I could at least still communicate with others (by "blinking" the dits and dahs).

</comment><comment><USER19> I got an early start in morse code thanks to my grandfather, who was a Navy radioman in World War II and later became a ham operator.

Sadly I never got my ham license, but it was my grandfather's obsession with radio which got me into electronics and, ultimately, software engineering. I still practice coding now and then, and morse is my go-to "hello world" for playing with new microcontrollers:

[https://github.com/markshroyer/msp430-morse/blob/master/mors...](https://github.com/markshroyer/msp430-morse/blob/master/morse.ino)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's too bad we don't teach this as part of language development at the primary school level. As someone who's tried to teach programming to lay persons, I can't help but think that having first-hand practical knowledge of how language can be encoded in a kind-of-binary (quinary, according to Wikipedia) system would be an extremely useful abstract concept to have in mind.

It's certainly more useful than learning cursive.

</comment><comment><USER21> Morse is not all in the past tense, as you write.

I have learnt it, a bit, for amateur radio, where it is still used. There are lots of wee applications for it too, like showing status messages on a small electronic device using a single LED.

There have been times I have wished more people know it, for example for communicating with light accross a mountain valley, or communicating underwater.

</comment><comment><USER22> In amateur radio, the characteristics of someone's CW (morse code) is called their "fist". I used to be able to do 5 WPM and one year I participated in field day (the annual ham competition to contact as many people as you can, etc) with it -- that year was magical because I used morse code for my first time to talk to someone. The feeling of dits and dahs coming across the airwaves actually being communication from somewhere far away? It was brilliant.

So: kudos for learning an aging and mostly deprecated form of communication. Some folks still do it for hobby (I've lost all skill by this point), and I highly recommend the experience.

If nothing else, find a local ham group and go poke around in late June and see if they're doing anything for field day. It's worth checking out.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure if deprecated is the right word. When the zombie invasion comes, I do not feel confident in my ability to get the cellular network back up running. I could easily build a spark gap transmitter though, using spare parts that can be found anywhere and high-school level electrical engineering. In seriousness, it seems somehow foolish to deprecate an extremely reliable, cheap and time-tested form of communication. That said, I never got far in my own attempts to learn Morse code :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If any of you are already fluent in Morse, I'd love to hear from you! Were you able to hear full words or phrases "natively"? Did you ever have the experience of being able to identify the person on the other end merely by accent?

<comment><USER24> First I want to answer one of your other questions -- could a skilled Morse operator identify a person by his sending style, what we called his "fist". The answer is yes, absolutely. But there's more to it than that -- each CW (continuous wave) transmitter had different characteristics, in the days when most of them were built by their operators -- some of them changed frequency slightly during each dash, some of them had noticeable clicks caused by too fast a transmitter activation and deactivation around each Morse element -- these helped one identify a specific operator along with his personal sending style.

A few years ago, about the time that the FCC abandoned the code sending/receiving requirement, I assumed that CW was dead. But lately, listening to the ham bands, I see there's a surprising amount of CW activity still present.

> Were you able to hear full words or phrases "natively"?

Over time one begins to hear entire words, especially at high sending rates. This is especially true for common words, words that are part of every contact ... example "Name is (name)": "-. .- -- . .. ... .--. .- ..- .-.."

Here's a sample:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ad6oibxzhzk4rvy/morse_example.mp3](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ad6oibxzhzk4rvy/morse_example.mp3)

As this example MP3 shows, in modern times we can avoid the quirks of manual keying by letting a computer create perfectly shaped Morse characters for us. :)

<comment><USER25> I encourage any hacker to take a look some time at the beautiful 'bugs' still (!) made by Vibroplex [1].

I have wanted to learn Morse ever since I read _The Victorian Internet_ by Tom Standage [2]. I know people use keyboards nowadays---and even software to read Morse and translate it automatically into text---but I want to learn to send it by hand. Do you recommend a straight key or a bug to begin with? (I just love the look of those beautiful machines with tiny pendulums and jewelled bearings and neodymium magnet 'springs'...). I also wonder about electronic keyers with paddles. What works best for a beginner who wants to develop a good 'fist'?

[1] [http://www.vibroplex.com/](http://www.vibroplex.com/)

[2] Standage, Tom. _The Victorian Internet_. New York: Walker and Company, 1998. ISBN 978-0-8027-1604-0.

<comment><USER24> > Do you recommend a straight key or a bug to begin with?

I'm biased because (before the computer era) I never used anything but a straight key. I recommend a normal telegraph key for beginners -- they're easier to control and they produce an appreciation for the simplest possible form of radio and wired communication:

This picture --

[http://www.mtechnologies.com/ameco/k4a.jpg](http://www.mtechnologies.com/ameco/k4a.jpg)

\-- is of a real antique, but one still available today. Unchanged, it dates back to the land telegraph era, during which one operator, when finished sending, would throw the switch visible at the top center, thus closing his end of the circuit and allowing the other end to reply, in what was a simple two-wire one-battery telegraph circuit.

Interestingly, in 1859, there was a huge solar and geomagnetic storm, much bigger than anything that has happened since, and one of the few contemporary indications was that the telegraph system went crazy:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859)

A quote: "Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases shocking telegraph operators. Telegraph pylons threw sparks. Some telegraph systems continued to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies."

It is estimated that, were such a storm to occur today, it would bring modern electronics -- and society -- to its knees.

> What works best for a beginner who wants to develop a good 'fist'?

Well, one, listening to good sending certainly helps. Also not trying to send too quickly at first, and listening more than sending until one acquires a sense of what good telegraphy sounds like.

<comment><USER12> I agree with your remarks and extend them such that bugs and keyers usually are not built to operate slowly enough for folks starting out to use them.

Start with the straight key, and at some point you'll be able to hear faster than you can comfortably send for long periods, and start wondering what technology would allow you to send quicker... that's the time to start looking at bugs and paddles and electronic keyers and memory keyers and morse keyboards and all that kind of stuff.

Maybe bad analogy time is learn to type on a classic traditional keyboard (model M?), then start looking at the infinite array of ergonomic keyboards.

<comment><USER25> Thank you! I'll begin with a traditional key, and listening.

My keyboard is an IBM Model F [1] through an interface from Hasgstrom Electronics. It has the Control key and Escape key in the old places, essential for vi.

[1] I bought the Model F from [http://www.clickykeyboards.com/](http://www.clickykeyboards.com/)

[2] Pre-PC/AT keyboards won't work directly with PC/2 or USB adapters; you need a protocol converter from [http://www.hagstromelectronics.com/products/ke_xtusb.html](http://www.hagstromelectronics.com/products/ke_xtusb.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> when i used to walk an hour to work (and another back), i considered using morse as an interface to a portable computer (for editing and playback of text). it's easy to hear and understand, even when there's considerable ambient noise, and data entry would only require a single button (plus perhaps a rocker switch or similar to scan through existing data).

at the time i had no real idea how to implement it. now i think i could do something with an arduino or similar. but thankfully i now work from home...

<comment><AUTHOR> I've also thought about a pocket-sized clicker device that you could use to send Morse to your friends, perhaps interfaced with your phone. Or maybe, as you said, you could use it as an input device. One day when I have some extra time on my hands I'm sure I'll sketch one out. But I've got to learn Morse first! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I tried learning in middle school and just memorizing all the letters was a pain. At that age it's just not that exciting, at least for me it wasn't. I can totally appreciate the value of it now, the ability to send messages around the world with just an antenna. My wave is bigger than yours, or something like that, LOL.

<comment><USER13> It's easier to just memorize, say, 2 letters, then practice telling those two letters apart from each other. Then you add another letter...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder, given that Morse Code is pretty old, are there any better (for humans) codes for text as a binary stream?

I mean better in different ways - easier to learn, less error prone, shorter,..

</comment><comment><USER29> It seems like the sort of universal, deprecated but never gone, sort of system of communication that would be useful in a post-apocalyptic scenario.

</comment><comment><USER30> Titrate is invisible.

</comment><comment><USER31> well, if i knew morse code, i could drive and text easily. or type an email in the middle of a meeting without anyone noticing. looks like a good skill. considering learning it.

</comment><comment><USER32> .._. ..- -.-. -.-

<comment><USER14> [http://www.livephysics.com/tools/mathematical-tools/morse- co...](http://www.livephysics.com/tools/mathematical-tools/morse-code- conversion-tool/)</comment></comment>


Eric Fischer maps the top 40 US cities by race, using 2000 census data - <AUTHOR> http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/colour-code/ <comment><USER2> I am trying to find out a bit more about the methodology he used. Best I can find so far is page giving a bit of description about Bill Rankin mapping Chicago which Eric says inspired him to do other cities: <http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots>

Looks like the dots are at the block level.

<comment><USER3> You could ask, you know! Yes, it is block-level data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are actually 102 cities in the photo set.

<comment><USER3> I originally posted 40 and then added the others in response to requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These maps are mostly disheartening.</comment>


A Developer's view on iOS development… - <AUTHOR> http://sdk.org.nz/2011/01/06/a-developers-view-on-ios-development/ Dear Ycombinator,<p>I've been meaning to share some of my experiences as an iOS developer for some time now. This is just a small glimpse into the wide world of what's happening out there. <comment><AUTHOR> This is some of my experience as an iOS developer that I would like to share with you.</comment>


Craig Newmark on how to integrate fact checking into news - <AUTHOR> http://jimromenesko.com/2011/11/28/craig-newmark-i-want-to-have-news-again-that-i-can-trust/#more-1235 <comment><USER2> I think the idea of superimposing fact-check results on pages that contain checked phrases is pretty cool. It would certainly be more welcome than the "mouse-over ads" that some sites currently employ!

Spoofing could be a problem. Right now there are misspelled domains registered, pages that look almost identical to real pages from banks, and plenty of other scams. Something would have to ensure that the authentic browser add-ons and fact-check results would be very difficult to fabricate (otherwise a disreputable site could simply make itself look reputable).</comment>


Melbourne Hackernews Meetup, Wed 3 Nov - <AUTHOR>

A few of us are catching up to shoot the breeze arising from this HN Offer
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1837408
Where: Match Bar and Grill, 279 Little Lonsdale St, corner of Swanston, Melbourne
When: 3 November, 5:30pm onwards
It's short notice, but hope to see you there. Should be a great chance to meet like-minded
people and get feedback on ideas and startups. I'm on 0433 507 750 if you need to track us down.
Please upvote to bring this to people's attention. [edit: thanks guys, hitting the front page should be sufficient] <comment><USER2> People interested in Hacker News (and based in Melbourne) may also be interested in some of these upcoming events and meetups...

<http://thehive.org.au/> Monthly networking for entrepreneurs, with a guest speaker who talks about their startup. The podcast from the session with Steve Sammartino from Rentoid.com has some interesting anecdotes on how he publicised his startup.

<http://siliconbeachaustralia.org/> Fortnightly meetups to discuss tech startup ideas (the Melbourne website is broken, so I am not sure if this is still happening).

<http://www.tedxmelbourne.com/> (November 20th) TEDxMelbourne is an independently organised TED-like event under license from TED.com

<http://www.ruxcon.org.au/> (November 20th, and 21st) Ruxcon is the premier technical security conference in Australia. Like Defcon, but held in Australia.

<http://groups.google.com/group/mclbb> (first Tuesday of the month. Next one is on November 9th due to the Cup Day public holiday) Interesting technical talks held at lunchtime in. The next ones are on Hadoop and Python games.

<http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/440359/> Melbourne Association of Software Testers (last Wednesday of the month) Monthly meetup at Beer DeLuxe to talk about software testing and related topics (and drink beer). Some Agile testing enthusiasts guaranteed to be at each meeting.

<http://trampolineday.com/> (next one is expected to be sometime around March 2011) Trampoline is a self-organising un-conference for those who find the world interesting, have something to offer and share, and have an inquisitive mind.

Hopefully this comment is not too off-topic for Melbourne-based readers. I have already met several of the commenters from this HN story at some of these events. If you have any more, please post them in a reply to this comment.

<comment><USER3> Also you could sign up for Melbourne's Startup Digest fortnightly enewsletter - it does the curation for you... <http://startupdigest.com/>

Silicon Beach Melbourne has pretty much died in the arse.

There are also many user groups worth attending depending on your skills/interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can I also suggest that we all wear white t-shirt or something that we can easily identify each other rather than blindly walk up to anyone in the bar IMO?

</comment><comment><USER3> The last meetup in Feb was great. FYI – there's a bit of a community around the @ycmelb Twitter account - <http://twitter.com/ycmelb>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. Do you think someone with access to @ycmelb could tweet a link to this?

<comment><USER3> Not sure who holds the account password - it might be @nedwin. I actually work at the Melbourne-based YC startup Adioso.com. The cofounders Tom and Fenn led the last one a bit.

These threads are worth viewing for info on previous meetups:

February 2010 – <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1091571>

October 2009 – <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=849668>

<comment><AUTHOR> I met nedwin and kiwidrew at the last one I think. There must have been at least 30 people. I'll look him up. Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a similar thing for Sydney?

<comment><USER6> I am also in Sydney atm.

If anybody else is Sydney side and would be interested in a meetup, reply here, or upvote, the parent, or something.

<comment><USER7> Add me to the list of curious.

<comment><USER8> ditto

<comment><USER9> same here (Manly)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm in, it would be great to meet all the talents out there in Melbourne. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Brisbane might be a little too far to drive :)

</comment><comment><USER11> What time do you folks intend to stay till? There is an Android meetup going on at the same time and I am in a dilemma

<comment><USER12> Yup, I'm heading there as well [http://ausdroid.net/2010/10/01/android- australia-pro-am-get-...](http://ausdroid.net/2010/10/01/android-australia- pro-am-get-your-dev-on/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Guess we'll just see how it goes. What time is the android thing finishing up?

<comment><USER11> I don't know. It starts at 6pm. I'll probably stay there till 7.15pm and head towards Match Bar and Grill and should be there before 7.30pm, or skip the Android altogether

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll set up a meeting in Alice Springs, All Welcome

Bojangles at 5PM Sunday

</comment><comment><USER14> Would love to have a google calendar or similar for this kind of thing so that they can go in my schedule automatically and not have to rely on me happening to read Hacker News at the right moment!

</comment><comment><USER15> Gotta get out of Perth :/

<comment><USER16> Amen... I think there are about 4 of us on here!

<comment><USER17> Yep, probably. Moving in Melbourne in January though.

<comment><USER18> moved here a year ago! woop woop

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looking forward to it!

</comment><comment><USER20> ouch.. Overlaps exactly with Googles Android promo event - <http://groups.google.com/group/android-australia>

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm in.

<comment><USER21> ... and I'm back out again. I have a day job contracting and a side project, & it's looking like I'm not going to be finished until _late_ tonight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I'm in town I'll be there for sure!

</comment><comment><USER23> +1, all going well.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am so in!</comment>


JetBrains rebrands - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/12/10/the-drive-to-develop/ <comment><USER2> A video on top of their entire website? I have to click an X to "Skip Video"? What in hell are they thinking? That is an insane practice for a web page!

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally don't like it... but their IDEs are great, so, I don't care much.

</comment><comment><USER4> lol, did they hire the Slack designer?</comment>


The World's Most Inspirational Iceberg Is a Fake - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/the-worlds-most-inspirational-iceberg-is-a-fake <comment><USER2> I was curious if there were any real iceberg pictures. I think I found a few:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthpicturegalleries/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthpicturegalleries/8893850/The- ethereal-beauty-of-melting-icebergs-captured-by-photographer-Paul- Souders.html?image=2)

[http://www.divephotoguide.com/underwater-photography- special...](http://www.divephotoguide.com/underwater-photography-special- features/article/underwater-iceberg-photography)

</comment><comment><USER3> > We're still making sales. It's approaching $1 million. I get about 40 > percent of that. It put my kids through college.

Wow. Can a stock image still achieve that kind of earnings in today's commodified market?

<comment><USER4> It started selling way before digital photography, that could explain a lot of it.

<comment><USER5> Just found another article which describes other popular stock photos that continue to sell and most of them are older, pre-digital photos as well.

>The record for a single sale, he says, was about $35,000. "It still brings in some hefty money," he says. [1]

[1] [http://www.pdnonline.com/features/Stock-Photos-That- Ke-1294....](http://www.pdnonline.com/features/Stock-Photos-That- Ke-1294.shtml)

<comment><USER6> As a supplement to that article, here is a blog post linking to it that contains those pictures:

[http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.de/2010/12/shelf-life-for- sto...](http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.de/2010/12/shelf-life-for-stock-images- running.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a video with the photographer about the image:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NeyTEO_JP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NeyTEO_JP0)

</comment><comment><USER8> I never saw that image before, and it's obviously fake. You just can't see through that much seawater.

<comment><USER9> I've seen the image several times, and I'd always assumed it was a painting, using photo-realist techniques.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I thought it was someone that does the background painting for movies. The physics of taking that photograph just didn't seem possible.

<comment><USER8> It would be a real challenge to actually photograph the entire underwater part of an iceberg. It's probably never been done. If you could find one in clear water, and set off some enormous set of flashes underwater, it just might be possible. That would be a good project for National Geographic.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure the local whale population would be too happy with setting off something underwater to generate that much light. Would be interesting, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gene-h Now the interesting thing to do would be to take one of these iceberg pictures for real. Since we can't see through this much see water the thing to do is make a huge grid of cameras and put it directly up against the iceberg.

Alternatively, once could lower a line of cameras to scan the iceberg.

<comment><USER11> "see water" heh

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> icebergs turn over quite often, as the seawater eats away at the bottom until they become top-heavy. When they do you get that really strange brilliant blue color which comes from dense glacial ice which has had all the air bubbles forced out.

<comment><USER5> Here was a funny recent story regarding different iceberg photos with that effect: [http://petapixel.com/2015/02/03/contest-copyright- controvers...](http://petapixel.com/2015/02/03/contest-copyright-controversy- crazy-coincidence/)

<comment><USER12> Ha I love that story! Very postmodern

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Fake" is a little strong. As he says at the end of the article, you couldn't capture an image like that with a single photograph. He strove for accuracy, but who knows how close he got - the article doesn't go into that. His clients thought it was realistic enough and evocative enough to give him $1m.

<comment><USER14> Other than being fake in every photographic sense it's also scientifically fake.

Obviously icebergs don't have that much under the water and they look significantly different in the underwater section.

I couldn't see it getting much faker.

<comment><USER13> > _Obviously icebergs don 't have that much under the water_

The popular notion that 90% is underwater is approximately correct: [http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=iipHowMuchOfAnIcebergIs...](http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=iipHowMuchOfAnIcebergIsBelowTheWater). Or are you claiming that the picture in question doesn't represent a 10/90 split?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If it looks too good to be true ...</comment>


Do It Yourself Porsche  - <AUTHOR> http://911nation.com/2011/01/stories-do-it-yourself-porsche/

<comment><USER2> "Pedal-Powered..." This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third- party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including: [Funny or Die, Inc.], [Forbes.com LLC], [Audible, Inc.]

Somehow, I'm not surprised.

<comment><USER3> Here is a working video of it on the streets of Vienna: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8Xo7OvM4A>

It's novel but not fast or practical. I would like to see this with an electric motor assisting the pedal power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was a neat post... Last year, on Reddit. I'm not sure that it's newsworthy today, especially Hacker News-worthy.

<comment><USER5> HN is turning into a Reddit clone, with all the karma mongering included.

<comment><USER6> Please refer to: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Specifically the passage "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit."

I know I sound mean quoting guidelines, but this happens surprisingly often and I can't help myself whenever it does :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone interested in real, gas-powered DIY sports cars, look for Caterham (genuine kits, the best quality) or the multitude of Cobra spin-offs.

<comment><USER8> Or for that matter, most any Lotus 7 replica kit

<comment><USER7> I think Caterham started off as a Lotus 7 replica. If I remember correctly, Lotus 7 was one of the only models that "open-sourced" their designs. That, and their "well-rounded" nature (cheap, sporty, easy to make), led to their huge popularity with the DIY community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some 911 replicas built on VW chassis: <http://www.covin.co.uk/home_page.htm> You'd probably be further ahead buying a real one though...

I bought mine over 10 years ago for <$10k: <http://www.octanenation.com/matt/cars/22/>

</comment><comment><USER10> That's not a DYI Porsche. That's literally a pedal powered car with a Porsche shaped body.

<comment><USER11> Had me fooled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> First Porsche that isn't allowed to drive on the german Autobahn!</comment>


5G to Come to India Soon - <AUTHOR> https://www.startupstories.in/news/5g-to-come-to-india-soon <comment><USER2> India is taking long strides under BJP government, otherwise Indians would have remained stuck to 4G for forever in a case if there was 5G scam similar to 2G scam. I don't know if there should be any reason to delay the auction of next generation spectrums, given such auctions are online now and bring lot of money into government treasury.

Kiddos to PM Modi for staying ahead of the curve.</comment>


Ask HN: What is calculus used for in Computer Science? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
This might sound like a stupid simple question to most of you, but I'm currently learning computer science theory and Calculus comes up very often. I was wondering why it is and what is the relationship between algebra and computer science in general. (I'd like to develop a broader vision of the field)
Thanks in advance
EDIT typo. <comment><USER2> I don't really understand your question, since you say you are 'learning computer science theory and calculus comes up' it would appear that you have the answer to "What is calculus used for in Computer Science?" already. In the interest of trying to be helpful, I'll provide some of my some of my thoughts after completing a Computer Science degree at a large research university in the US.

The vast majority of computer science THEORY involves discrete math, at least at the undergraduate level. There are numerous APPLICATIONS that use calculus and some of them have already been mentioned. Initially I thought it odd that we were required to complete multi-variable calculus for our degree, which seemed to have little to do with the 'discrete' math world and more with 'continuous' math topics. However as time went on I encountered topics in advanced courses where you were expected to be familiar calculus at that level. The notable exception to the lack of calculus in computer science 'theory' that I recall relates to Probability, as it is used in algorithm analysis. Hope I didn't misunderstand your question completely.

</comment><comment><USER3> This story about Feynman using calculus and continuous functions to analyze and approximate discrete systems sort of answers your request for a broader view. [http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection- machine...](http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/)

"By the end of that summer of 1983, Richard had completed his analysis of the behavior of the router, and much to our surprise and amusement, he presented his answer in the form of a set of partial differential equations. To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a bit strange. Feynman's router equations were in terms of variables representing continuous quantities such as "the average number of 1 bits in a message address." I was much more accustomed to seeing analysis in terms of inductive proof and case analysis than taking the derivative of "the number of 1's" with respect to time. Our discrete analysis said we needed seven buffers per chip; Feynman's equations suggested that we only needed five. We decided to play it safe and ignore Feynman.

The decision to ignore Feynman's analysis was made in September, but by next spring we were up against a wall. The chips that we had designed were slightly too big to manufacture and the only way to solve the problem was to cut the number of buffers per chip back to five. Since Feynman's equations claimed we could do this safely, his unconventional methods of analysis started looking better and better to us. We decided to go ahead and make the chips with the smaller number of buffers. Fortunately, he was right. When we put together the chips the machine worked. The first program run on the machine in April of 1985 was Conway's game of Life."

</comment><comment><USER4> in convex optimisation, often machine learning, gradients (partial derivatives) are used. In deep learning an approximation of the chain rule is used in backpropigation.

</comment><comment><USER5> The interesting part about Calculus, at least in the US, is that it is held in such high esteem. As if it is the pivotal accomplishment in a mathematical career. Calculus in many other educational systems is actually taught much earlier as a normal part of a mathematical curriculum (early high school in Russia, for example). Basic calculus is the look at a rate of change or a sensitivity to change as it relates to a change in the variables of a system (derivative). In other words an instantaneous rate of change would be a good example of a derivative (how fast does a rock fall from a building after it was dropped +2 seconds, or some such). The other area that is studied early is the idea of displacement, aka integrals. How much area is under a curve. More practically you can find things like the velocity from the rate of acceleration.

I know, I haven't answered your question yet. I have used Calculus, even much more advanced calculus, in computer science applications such as using it to calculate the salient region of interest in a photograph, for example. But in reality, I rarely use it. That being said, studying calculus and higher forms of mathematics have given me a broader sense of how to best solve problems. They give me the ability to see a problem and realize that brute force isn't the only answer to the problem. Mathematics shows that solutions can be nuanced and beautiful. Calculus is a good start in seeing that. Applying that ability to look at a problem and find nuanced and beautiful solutions is key to good software development.

Again, I am not sure that actually answers your question. But I find calculus to be mind expanding. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I have.

Now if you'd like to see an actual application of calculus being used in computer science you might want to read about Richard Feynman at Thinking Machines Corporation: [http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection- machine...](http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/) . One of the quotes from the article always makes me smile: "By the end of that summer of 1983, Richard had completed his analysis of the behavior of the router, and much to our surprise and amusement, he presented his answer in the form of a set of partial differential equations."

There is also a rather funny urban legend/joke about teaching Calculus in the US versus other countries:

"A certain well known mathematical from the USSR, we'll call him Professor P.T. (these are not his initials...), upon his arrival at Harvard University, was scheduled to teach Math 1a (the first semester of freshman calculus.) He asked his fellow faculty members what he was supposed to teach in this course, and they told him: limits, continuity, differentiability, and a little bit of indefinite integration.

The next day he came back and asked, 'What am I supposed to cover in the second lecture?'"

Enjoy learning Calculus!

<comment><USER6> The US high school curriculum tries to provide different courses in a way that may be great for creative subjects or languages, but simply doesn't work well for math. The level of interconnection (eg uses of calculus in probability theory and geometry) means that basic calculus (limits, continuity, one- variable derivatives and integrals) really should be an integral (sorry, couldn't resist) part of a curriculum in which it is largely ignored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Algebra means symbol manipulation. I'm sure you can see how manipulating symbols is essential to computer science. Calculus isn't used much because it depends on infinite processes. But numerical approximations, based on results from calculus are. For example, the trigonometric functions are implemented using Taylor polynomials which we, thanks to calculus, know are good approximations of them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Mostly just for overly-complex interview questions.

</comment><comment><USER9> Calculus is a low level tool that you need to know in order to effectively think and communicate about problems that deal with numbers. Signal processing is probably a big chunk of these problems. That can be things like, computer vision, audio DSP, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you see it coming up often you might want to catalog the ways in which you see it coming up.</comment>


Ask HN: How was the Kinect hacked? - <AUTHOR>

I've been seeing lots of cool videos on what people round the world has been doing with the Kinect hooked up to their PCs.
My understanding about the way 'hacked' is being used around here is that people have figured out how to hook up the Kinect to a PC and write software to utilize it.
My question is then, when you get a device like the Kinect, what's the process to hack it such that it can work with your PC?  How do you understand it enough such that you can write your own driver? <comment><USER2> Well, the biggest hurdle is being capable of writing a driver at all. Your average joe isn't going to just "hack" this thing. These are people who are already familiar with programming peripherals to be used with computers.

If you have that knowledge, there are several ways. 1\. Open it up, look what hardware is used, find documentation for that specific hardware set on the net. Write code to the specifications of the people who made the components.

2\. sniff the communication. This is what Adafruit did (see iantimothy's post). Once they see that communication, they break it down to see what is necessary to make things happen.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found one link.

[http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/09/kinect-hacking- video...](http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/09/kinect-hacking-video-and- data-dump/)

It talks about data dump. Anyone know of good resources to learn about understanding this data.</comment>


Negotiate Like or Against a Pirate - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/how-to-negotiate-likeor-againsta-pirate

<comment><USER2> What a misleading title.

<comment><USER3> Yup, no information in this one on how to actually negotiate like a pirate.

<comment><USER4> lol</comment></comment></comment>


Zynga "appeals to the same psychology as gambling" - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2011/08/12/zynga-appeals-to-the-same-psychology-as-gambling-says-analytics-expert-jeff-tseng/

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I wrote a follow-up blog post here. Comments welcome <http://betab.ly/oiuOrA></comment>


The Big Truth - <AUTHOR> http://stilldrinking.org/the-big-truth

<comment><USER3> I think this misses a huge issue with the internet,

* There is a lot of content being pushed in front of people * There are a lot of click-baity methods/headlines to get people to the content

A tl;dr also distills the article down in a way the headline can't - <USER2> delivering a sentence closer to the true content than a headline. If I see tons of articles posted, why should I read tons of paragraphs if the headline offers no clues to what it's about (or is flat-out lying to get clicks). There's only so much time in a day to read, why should it be wasted on shitty content?</comment>


Samsung Caught Using Apple Watch Design Figures in a Recent Patent Filing - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2016/08/samsung-caught-using-apple-watch-design-figures-in-a-recent-patent-filing.html <comment><USER2> Here's a better, less rabid article: [http://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/04/samsung-patent-apple- wat...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/04/samsung-patent-apple-watch- images/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats actually where I saw it, but it cited the one I posted as the original. Wasn't sure which to post.</comment></comment>


European startups and US software patents: Threat or Opportunity? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hashtagify.me/2011/08/04/european-startups-and-us-software-patents-threat-or-opportunity/

<comment><USER2> _[T]o become a global player in software, success in Europe is not enough: You need to be validated in the US._

Why?

Sure, the US is a big place, so if you're making general purpose software aimed at an English-speaking consumer market then you'd probably want to sell there. On the other hand, in the Internet age, the US is still only one potential market, and depending on your niche other markets might be far larger.

Moreover, the US legal and regulatory environment, including the intellectual property framework, doesn't appear to be very welcoming. For some professional insurance policies and the like, I've even been asked whether my company did business in the US or simply been told outright that work in the US is excluded from cover.

I don't want to overstate the case, but it would certainly be possible to run a successful global software business, based in Europe or otherwise, without having anything to do with the US at all.

<comment><USER3> OP here. My point is that today in software - especially consumer software - the USA is the reference market, the one the whole world looks up to to understand the most current trends.

Do you think that, for a Chinese, hearing that software X is the most successful in the USA is the same as hearing that it is the most successful in the EU? I don't think so (whatever I could like to think).

<comment><USER2> _My point is that today in software - especially consumer software - the USA is the reference market, the one the whole world looks up to to understand the most current trends._

And my point is that I don't necessarily accept that premise. I think you're overgeneralizing.

For example, I'm working on a start-up right now that provides an on-line training aid for ballroom dancers. Obviously that's a niche market, and it turns out that this kind of dancing is insanely popular in some countries and almost unknown in others. Here's the kicker in this case: there are two major variations of ballroom, which are known as "American style" and "International style", for much the reasons you'd expect. If you're looking for trends, you have to take that difference in the prevailing culture into account.

Of course most markets won't have quite such an obvious and US-centric polarisation as we happen to have in our field. I'm just trying to illustrate that in any kind of specialist market, you have to look at the local culture in different places, not just the language they speak and the size of the population.

<comment><USER3> Problem is, that if you have to look at the local culture in different places, becoming globally famous becomes much more difficult anyway.

However, I didn't want to mean that it's impossible to become global without being validated in the US. Just that it's much (very much, imho) more difficult.

<comment><USER2> _Problem is, that if you have to look at the local culture in different places, becoming globally famous becomes much more difficult anyway._

Sure. No-one said running a business with a global market was going to be easy. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So when is an Europe based company actually considered as entering the us market and fall under us patent laws?

(edit)The question is about web companies, located outside US but selling to us customers(software,web apps, ebooks ... - digital products).

<comment><USER5> Define, what do you think in "entering the us market". Europe based companies can not (even accidentally) fall under US laws. US laws apply only on US soil.

<comment><USER6> Isn't that the point of the TVShack extradition? A UK citizen running a site hosted in Sweden (I think) is extradited for breaking US copyright laws?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This whole "Europe could become the new center of the world" sounds like wishful thinking to me. Asia seems a far better bet.

<comment><USER8> People seem to forget Europe is the largest economy in the world. It has the talent, is mostly developed, with free trade laws and no software patents.

The main thing holding Europe back right now is language. With a unified language Europe would be an amazing market to aim for.

<comment><USER2> _[Europe] has the talent, is mostly developed, with free trade laws and no software patents._

Unfortunately, while we have so far kept EU-level legislation legitimising software patents off the books, the price seems to be a continuing lack of consistency in patent rules across Europe. They may not be called software patents, but that doesn't mean there haven't been patents granted in some jurisdictions that you or I might describe in those terms.

Whether any such patents would be enforceable in practice is another question again, but now we're back to whether you have the stomach to get into a lawsuit over it, and a largely unquantifiable threat to software businesses.

 _The main thing holding Europe back right now is language._

Well, that and the fact that it's still relatively difficult to accept money from customers on-line. We've been looking into this lately, and in some ways the situation does seem to be improving. However, for whatever reason our payment services market here still seems to be lagging several years behind what is available in some other places, notably the US. To us, this is a far bigger practical problem than any theoretical concerns about software patents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are software patents really hindering innovation in the US? What startups were stopped because of software patents?

<comment><USER3> I (OP) was talking about a trend, not a current problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Europe has its advantages and the US too. But what keeps startups from going to an island state where some of these problems aren't even in their dictionary?

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone one know the state of software patents for Canada?

<comment><USER12> Relevant: <http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Canada></comment></comment>


How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data - <AUTHOR> http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql?

<comment><USER2> I probably should write up the (very similar, but with a few significant differences) my design for the never-executed Delicious backend datastore.

<comment><USER3> That would be very interesting to read.

We're looking at implementing a tagging system for navigating through a large proprietary datastore of oil and gas well data.

The problem we're running into is scaling conjunction queries without blowing- out our hardware budget -- 100's of tags per item with tens of millions of items, updated daily.

<comment><USER2> The right data structure for tagging is probably an inverted index. Look at Lucene, Solr, or Sphinx for this.

<comment><USER3> You're absolutely right.

I hacked up a prototype last night that creates a reverse index of:

tags => item GUID's => a precomputed bloom filter for all tags in that GUID

Each tag has its own reverse-index, which is stored in a separate file assembled using O_APPEND. The entries in each file are pre-sorted based on a predefined ranking algorithm.

Queries are mapped to cluster nodes using a CRC32 hash modulo across the number of cluster nodes.

Tag conjunction queries are run by computing a bloom filter for the tags in the query. The tag with the fewest GUID's is determined (approximately) through a LUT stored in main-memory. The query bloom filter is then sequentially compared using a bitwise-and with each of the bloom filters in the appropriate reverse-index file.

After 10 matches are found, the results are rendered.

No check is done for false positives.

The problem I'm having now is in prepending new entries to the start of a reverse-index file. This operation is not performant. Since it's out-of-band with the query stream, it's tolerable for the time being.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> this was discussed 413,442 posts back

<http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=496946>

<comment><USER5> That strange feeling you sometimes get: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2eUopy9sd8>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This matches all my intuitions about how I was going to do this; now I have a cookbook (several recipies!)! This is why Hacker News is so valuable. Nothing beats experienced advisors.

</comment><comment><USER7> I tried this method for my app. But it turned out that I needed a lot of fields to be in their own columns since i would have to use them with queries in the WHERE clause or ORDER clause.

So be careful while choosing the columns you would like to serialize or json- ify and dump.

Just my 2c.

<comment><USER8> Part of this article talks about the index tables they use. The rationale for having separate index tables is they can create or drop them without locking tables or anything like that. It takes a little more manual work to keep things updated though.

I too use a hybrid approach on my site. Only columns that aren't specifically referenced in indexes aren't kept in the serialized attribute hash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Check out a open sourced version written on top of SQLAlchemy. <http://github.com/bickfordb/waffle></comment>


Preserving and celebrating Latino cultures in the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/topics/arts-culture/preserving-and-celebrating-latino-cultures-us/ <comment><USER2> Latino cultures already control all but two of the thirty-something nations of the Americas, do we really feel like they're under threat?</comment>


Ask HN: Customer endorsements / use of customer logos on website - <AUTHOR> This post [1] created an interesting discussion that seemed like it should have its own Ask HN. It seems that quite a few young sites will post the logos of its customers (potentially implying endorsement / commercial relationship).  Are there best practices for doing this (if at all) and what advice would the HN community have for a startup seeking to promote itself by use of customer logos.<p>1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998632 <comment><USER2> Tricky, and very much depending on the details. Observations from a software field with individual, large contracts with customers: Customer attitude to this varies wildly, from "and $largeSum is your contract penalty if your official communications ever mention that you worked with us, and here's an NDA for every person touching our data/code" to "sure, we'll be a customer showcase at trade shows and ship you stuff and people for that".

As a reader, I'll give a lot more weight to something with details attached. A medium-detailed blogpost about why a small company is working with you and what that gave them, or something I can see/confirm being used in practice, is worth a lot more than a meaningless Fortune 500/FAANG logo on the front page where I'll assume that "ok, one person with a corporate mail address signed up for that product, or maybe one small team uses it".

</comment><comment><USER3> Would say it comes down to what risk you are willing to take.

If you use a logo without permission especially from a larger corp, you might run into legal issues or maybe even jeopardize a deal that is in the making with your company.

Some public record clearly stating that a company X is using you can help to migitate the risk (public Job posting, article, webinar, etc.)

And of course always take down the logo if someone from the company is complaining. The very best is always to get permission from the companies marketing, business, legal or sometimes even hiring department, depending on the market you are in. Would recommend to go for case studies highlighting them and their solution and then get the logo that way.

Hope I could help a bit...

</comment><comment><USER4> Get their permission, preferably in writing. If they love your product, you might also ask for a testimonial.

The last company for which I worked usually added a clause stipulating that they could not be identified as a customer without explicit permission.</comment>


How not to run a hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://www.brianckeegan.com/2013/08/how-not-to-run-a-academic-hackathon/

<comment><USER2> I believe that having self-selected teams results in the best results at hackathons -- at the expense of having a bi-modal distribution of results (i.e. the best teams do better, and the worst teams do worse). In general, considering the externalities involved in hackathons, I expect that most organizers will prefer to have the bi-modal distribution than one in which everyone produces equally mediocre results.

With regards to your other points -- they _seem_ reasonable, but your post would be more _useful_ to hackathon organizers if you instead focused on how _to_ run a hackathon (i.e. what things they should do to keep participants and volunteers happy -- like having lots of food and/or clear expectations about BYOB).</comment>


How did you valuate your startup? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Real revenue.</comment>


How to succeed with your IT department - <AUTHOR> http://marcusblankenship.com/post/55659546590/how-to-be-20-times-as-successful-with-your-it

<comment><USER2> Corporate IT guy here, and I think the general idea of the post is right, but maybe not the way of going about it.

He's right that IT consists of people too, and not automatons. It's not through sheer malice that we don't answer your support tickets, it's because there's 100 other support tickets also up in the air. There's very few IT people dedicated to projects, most of us have to mix our projects with the cries for help. The more interrupts we get, the harder it is to do productive work.

On the subject of tickets, the thing that will earn you IT gratitude is to file good tickets. The difference between "I'm getting X when I do Y" and "Is Y broken?" is immense. I explained it once to a user that if you went to the auto mechanic with "My car makes a noise", they'll be more than happy to find your noise, and they'll charge you for the time they spent finding it. If you add just a little bit more detail, they can get you on your way faster. The only difference is that you're not paying me out of pocket like you would the mechanic, so you can't tell how much time I spend tracking down nothing.

If you make it easy to work with IT, we'll make it easy to work with you. We want to work together, not against each other. If you're constantly demanding, not making clear requests, changing requirements, or dropping bureaucracy on us, then we'll concentrate our limited time on other projects with higher ROI unless there's been some kind of edict from above. With Marcus's Scott example, we want to work on his projects since they historically demonstrate high ROI. It's a win-win all around (Scott, the IT guy, and the business).

<comment><USER3> As a developer/manager I completely agree with you and have always had good relationships with IT for this specific reason.

However, I think many non-technical people (and let's be honest, they are the ones causing a lot of the issues) simply assume that "the computer guys know what's going on" because they just assume it's all magic anyway. The idea that we aren't wizards and actually have to figure stuff out may not even occur to them.

That, and some people are just dicks.

<comment><AUTHOR> hvs, I think both are true. I'm interesting in helping the first group (well intentioned, but clueless) learn how to use IT better. Have you ever been able to do that?

<comment><USER2> That's why I brought up the car analogy with the user. Most people aren't car experts either.

I haven't found the perfect answer, other than refusing to work on the ticket until more detail is provided (of course, sending them a nice note asking them to explain more).

Maybe in the ticketing system you could have 2 explicit text fields, "What are you seeing?" and "When do you see it?". The what are you seeing could let them type or upload a screenshot, since people like sending screenshots.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think FogCreek does a really good job of this. When entering a ticket, they asked three simple questions:

1\. What did you do? 2\. What did you expect? 3\. What happened instead?

Just these three questions really help focus the task of entering a problem ticket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This proposed plan has two major issues:

First, it doesn't solve the underlying root problems for everyone, it just gets someone special attention. It's a workaround, not a solution.

Second, you should strive to have good professional relationships with everyone in your company. The odds are high that even if you work with thousands of people, you really only work with a tribe's worth in any given year. Take the time to get to know all of them. It's much more valuable in terms of building cross-connections and sharing insights than it is in terms of cronyism and special favors.

<comment><AUTHOR> dsr, that's true. It is a workaround. But I wasn't writing to IS Management who can change the system, I'm writing to those trapped (on both sides) of a broken system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So... schmooze? It may be part of the answer, but it seems awfully condescending. It implies that the IT department could always do a better job, they simply don't care about you that much. Again, this is a hypothetical IT department, so it may sometimes be true.

Nowhere did I see suggestion for a change in how projects are communicated, which I would assume is the #1 issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you choose to see it as schmoozing, you missed the point. It's about valuing the people you depend upon, and making an effort to be humble, thankful, and to get to know them.

If you're only doing this to get better service, stop doing it. That's an douchebag move.

Hmm... maybe I need to add that to the post! ;-)

<comment><USER5> > If you're only doing this to get better service, stop doing it

But... the whole point of the article is how to get better service from your IT department.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I already have too many people coming by and trying to talk and be my friend. That just prevents me from getting work done. Of course being nice to people is always a good thing to do, but it's not going to solve IT problems.

Here is what you can do: understand your needs, communicate them clearly and have realistic goals. That's it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know non-technical people that can do this well and consistently? How do they do it?

<comment><USER6> Yes, a few. They do it by being competent and aware. The point I'm trying to make is that if you don't understand what you need an IT person isn't going to be able to solve your problems by just throwing technology against a wall. You don't need to understand the technology, but you have to have a very clear understanding of what you need to accomplish and then communicate that clearly.

Everyone should try to be friendly and professional, and clearly being rude won't win you any favors, but you shouldn't get moved to the front of the line because you stopped by to talk about last nights game or how my kids are doing. That's not a solution that can scale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone should, I agree. And maybe I'm delivering IT a backhanded-compliment, which I don't intend.

My have tremendous fondness for people that work in Corporate IT. I've worked there in the lowest levels, managed them, protected them, fought for them, and ultimately have seen that the larger system at play works against them. I believe they are usually the smartest, hardest-working, most creative, most driven people in the company.

I should have set the context of my comments for those working within dysfunctional companies where IT is at the bottom of the pecking order. In my experience, this is when the need for strong relationships will go the farthest.

If things in an IT org are great, professionalism is key. Otherwise, I stand by the idea that being _nice_ is more important than being _clear_.

<comment><USER6> I get where you are coming from, however, if being nice gets you better service from IT then, yes, you work at a dysfunctional company. Maybe changing the culture of the company would be a good idea. From my perspective what you are doing is a workaround to the dysfunction, not something that will solve the problem long term.

<comment><AUTHOR> John, I agree. It's a hack for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Try not to be a jerk but we don't need to be friends. Most IT staff are professional enough to do their jobs. Personally I value clarity over attitude.

How to work with IT: Communicate your needs properly and get buy in from people who write the checks. Make it so your IT staff only has to solve technology problems not political ones.

<comment><USER8> This is overly idealistic. Some part of working in a business situation (no matter the industry) is dealing with other people. You might be able to get pretty far, but you won't be able to avoid politics forever.

I think the advice in here is solid and is something that's been forgotten by too many. While the "jocks" in high school were getting this right, the "nerds" never had to learn. This is great advice for those of us where it doesn't come naturally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! As a nerd, I know I had to learn it the hard way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This pains me to even mention it, but conducting yourself in a professional manner around the office, will not only help you succeed with your IT department, but the entire company! This should not be news to anyone. However, I think this advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I have been on the receiving end of someone trying to jump the work queue by slipping in some simple and then gradually bigger requests. Is this professional on a continuing basis? Sure, everyone wants to help people out by putting in that extra effort, but don't abuse the system. Use the golden rule once and a while ;) Do not make your lack of planning my problem! This applies to all departments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol, do you have a sign that says "Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency for me."? I think if people feel someone is gaming the system, it will work against them. It has to be sincere, and holistic in approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a hard time gleaning the tone of this piece. At first I thought it was facetious, since the list of purportedly annoying responses from IT actually seemed quite reasonable. The last one in particular, "You never said that is what you really wanted. We did what you asked for.", seems hard to argue against.

Yet the rest of the piece is clearly sincere. Perhaps that just goes to show how wide the chasm is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. When I was in IT, I said these things. Yet when I left there, I heard people complaining about getting these responses. I believe the chasm is great, and most non-IT folks feel 100% of the fault lies with IT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You should obviously be as nice as possible to people and treat them with respect, but that shouldn't be a prerequisite for them performing their jobs.

<comment><USER12> In a perfect world, this would be the case. Unfortunately, you end up working with people who are both secure in their position and lazy. They can do the job, and you need them to do the job, but they don't really feel like doing it.

I have such a person in my own job. She's perfectly capable, but she gives zero fucks and is happy to let it pile up until someone orders her to do her job.

My remedy? Show up, in person, with the request form in my hand and say hi. Chat with her, ask about her day, etc. She deals with idiots on the phone all day faxing things and then calling ten minutes later complaining that they aren't done. By showing up and chatting, I get my work pushed straight up to the top of the queue.

Personally, I wish that I could fax my stuff in and get my response back promptly. Instead, I make do with what I have.

Unfortunately, this leads to my boss calling her my girlfriend and joking about the hot steamy affair I'm having whenever I go over to her office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like no one else could get anything done because everyone was too busy working on stuff for Scott.

<comment><USER14> works in IT, would do more for someone who gives me donuts and makes me look good in front of my boss. The rest of you can queue and go through normal channels.

Sorry, I'm a person, not a robot (who likes donuts and coffee if you can spare it). I do my job and do it damn well, but I'll make time for you if you treat me nicer. I might even work evenings and weekends, but that might require steak and beer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! Stuff4ben, does it motivate to you to know you're "helping save the company $1M" or to feel like "your digging the same ditch, different day"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The best way to get your IT staff to do things for you is to treat them like human beings?

Shocking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shocking, but unusual in my experience...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sadly, nobody outside of IT will ever read this article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Where should I post it? Somewhere that those hair-gel-using, dockers- wearing, matching-socks douches in Marketing can find it? :-)</comment></comment>


Scale PHP on EC2 to 30k Concurrent Users - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/__z9ia

<comment><USER2> Stop using APC and switch to the "new" Zend Opcache.

It can serve 10-30% more requests per second than APC and has several layers of optimization.

It's bundled with PHP 5.5 but will work just fine with PHP 5.3 and 5.4

ps. also turn off file stat in the opcache on production servers

pps. make sure you are using PHP-FPM

</comment><comment><USER3> Title is misleading, when only 3% of requests hits PHP, you don't "scale PHP".

<comment><USER4> Furthermore, extrapolating from artificial load tests is also not "scaling"</comment></comment>


Show HN: TypeSafe HTML templates in TypeScript. Why learn a template language? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nicojs/typed-html <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HackerNews!

This is the result of a small side project. I needed an html templating language but didn't feel like learning mustache/handlebars. I'm using TypeScript, so thought: why not have it native and type safe in my language.

Interested in your feedback and thoughts. \-- nicojs</comment>


Landscape with Beavers - <AUTHOR> https://placesjournal.org/article/landscape-with-beavers/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. This came up in the local paper a while back: [https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/6536506-151/building...](https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/6536506-151/building- dams-to-help-beavers-return)

<comment><USER3> Aha, I had noticed a peculiar construction project near John Day recently, which may have been the early stages a BDA's. Here is another article from around the same time-frame as the one you linked, slightly east.

[https://www.bluemountaineagle.com/news/mimicking-nature-s- da...](https://www.bluemountaineagle.com/news/mimicking-nature-s-dam- builders/article_121d53b8-19c8-51e5-97ec-e9bf15afa19d.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A podcast called The Wild covered this topic recently: [http://forthewild.world/listen/ben-goldfarb-on-beavers- compl...](http://forthewild.world/listen/ben-goldfarb-on-beavers-complex- inter-weavings92)</comment>


Reasons Why Your Startup Needs A Fully Built Out Blog - <AUTHOR> http://leostartsup.com/2011/06/why-startup-needs-blog/

<comment><USER2> I fully agree that having a blog is a must, and not just for startups. On a side note,

<shameless-plug>I'm writing a book that will help developers and startups build successful blogs. It's going to be published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf. You can signup here: <http://technicalblogging.com> </shameless-plug>

<comment><USER3> I don't really see why people felt the need to downvote, it seemed like he was doing a shameless plug entirely appropriately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oddly enough at a TechStart meeting on Friday I also heard that a Twitter account was pretty much mandatory. Guy who was the target of the advice tried to duck out with the 'I'm not a tech guy' but was bullied into it by the rest of the crowd :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, that is an interesting one. I think you are absolutely right, the Twitter account which goes together with your blog is absolutely key.

We launched our Twitter account simultaneously with our blog and it is our biggest driver of traffic :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one bothered that the bullets are out of order?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, thanks for the heads up, just changing it now! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Self promotion, but at Blogic we hope to make it super easy to add a blog when your startup has a site already (we'll match your site theme automatically).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Alan,

Just checked out Blogic, I think it is a brilliant idea, have you had any customers yet?

<comment><USER6> We don't have the product ready for testing yet, but we have heard from people who expect to use it once it's available.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, I think this could really be a fantastic way to help more companies to get into the blogging habit with ease, will look forward to promote you once it is ready! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>