Only Apple and Google are skating to where the puck is going - <AUTHOR> http://weiranzhang.com/blog/2013/2/chromebook-pixel <comment><USER2> Sony, Asus, and Lenovo are a particular type of company. They make the computers that they think consumers will buy in the next 12 months. If that's low end netbooks, mid range ultrabooks, desktop replacements, whatever.

That's not a high margin business model. But it is a _valid_ one. It's also the model which supplies computers to most of the population. Its the model which has brought down the price of computers year after year.

It does't inspire cliche images of technological innovators 'building-the- future' by "skating to where the puck will be" but they _are_ an important part of the landscape. To me the tech map looks great right now. Better than ever. We have real competition among OS makers. We have serious innovation in devices. We have competition between chip makers. Competition between commodity component manufacturers is pushing prices down.

Sony, Asus, and Lenovo are doing their part. Repackaging the innovations of last year for the mass market at half the price. They're an important part of the mix.

It's great that Google are trying this new stuff with ChromeOS. It's great that Apple is out there creating new products and setting the standard in industrial design. But we don't need all companies to be Apple.

<comment><USER3> This is a great comment and I agree completely. If the business model doesn't work, things will work themselves out and companies will perish, change, or survive in whatever way they know how.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shockingly short-sighted post. Apple does not make it's profits from feeds & speeds (e.g. Retina display). It makes its profits, and delights its customers through its vertical integration; its excellence at every point of the customer experience from design, to supply chain management, to manufacturing, to distribution, to marketing, to advertising, to retail, to sales, to post- sales, to support, to software, to services.

To assert that, from a business perspective, that the "puck" that Google (or Apple) worry about is ludicrous. These two companies do not even compete on the same rink. Their competition is asymmetric. Apple's profits come from 'high margins at retail, paid up front'. Google's profits come from 'the consumer is the product, the advertiser is the customer'.

It is fun to try to compare the micro-actions of these companies, but it is not business or strategy analysis.

<comment><USER5> Except that in this particular case:

\- Google is vertically integerated, at least to as high a degree as Apple is with Macs

\- Google is trying to sell a physical product at high margins

\- Google is heavily rumored to be setting up its own retail presence

Honestly, you'd think that at least when we're discussing a $1300 laptop, the lame "you're the product" cliche could be avoided.

<comment><USER6> >Google is trying to sell a physical product at high margins

Reference?

The Chromebook Pixel is still heavily geared towards Google's services, be it Docs or Storage. 1TB of Google Drive storage currently runs $600/yr if you get it by itself which comes to a $1800 subsidy for a $1300 laptop!

That either means their Drive storage is horribly overpriced, or that they're heavily subsidizing the Pixel.

<comment><USER5> Somebody buying 1TB of Drive space presumably intends to use it, and Google won't make a huge margin on that. (Don't know their cost structure, and wouldn't reveal it if I knew). But most people getting "free" Drive space with a laptop is not going to use most it.

Additionally it's unlikely to amount to $1800 subsidy. Storage costs decrease exponentially, so the value of 1TB in 3 years is much lower than 1TB now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Microsoft are really holding back higher resolution displays.

I mean 125% on Windows has now essentially become a requirement to use Windows on any monitor made in the last few years, and we're almost up to the point where 150% is required. However the problem is that 150% seems to break MANY Windows applications (both third and first party).

I'm really hopefully that when displays become just slightly higher resolution we will see some third party software which can "scale" Windows up so that it works the same as Retina displays on the Macbooks do (i.e. real resolution and relative resolution aren't locked together).

</comment><comment><USER8> TL;DR: high resolution displays are the future of laptop computing. Only Apple has a good one, Google is trying.

<comment><USER9> You forgot to mention the price and the battery life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use an old MBP that I'd like to replace soon, but there's no way I can get the Pixel - it just doesn't do _stuff_.

I think Chrome OS needs a great virtualization solution - just how chrome handles PDFs and Flash fairly well. I want to be able to open a "windows" tab or an "ubuntu" tab, use them normally.

<comment><USER11> Don't they include a Citrix/RDP client? I thought that was one of their main features when they pitched ChromeOS to the enterprise. With that and VNC, I'm sure it would be possible to roll your own virtualization. I think there are just too many variables for them to deploy a generic system.

 _unless_ you want Google to host the VMs as well. That could be interesting.

<comment><USER12> I've had good luck with Chrome Remote Desktop:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote- desk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote- desktop/gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp?hl=en)

It works from two instances of Chrome, which could be on any platform (not just Chromebooks).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems like the author sees where Apple is skating, and assumes the puck must be going there also.

<comment><USER14> I totally don't see why it is important to have absurdly high resolutions, when sometimes what matters is something else.

For example, I want a machine that is reliable (both in software and hardware), fast enough for my purposes and with good usability.

The only point where the Pixel scores in that is their 3:2 screen, that make much more sense than those crazy widescreens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >but the old Windows desktop has never supported high DPI displays, and I don't think it's about to.

Except it has. I've been using it like that for 7 years on my lounge TV which is scaled to 175%. On my old Z series for 3 years which had a high PPI screen before anyone else was pushing that way (colour rendition suffered a bit I felt).

The problem is lots of software doesn't play well, they use dodgy code, assume its always 96 dpi screen. Even VB devs given twips managed to mess it up with hardcoded assumptions all over the place.

However, all the main apps I use support it, if one doesn't well you can set that apps option indevidually.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just a quick check on komplett.no, a leading online dealer in Norway for computer equipment.

\- Laptops with ssds start at 6000 nok (1057 USD).

\- Laptops with IPS screen start at 6000 nok (1057 USD).

\- Small screen (11.7") laptop with IPS & full hd (189 dpi) & SSD starts at 9795 nok (1718 usd).

\- Macbook retina 13" starts at 11490 nok (2015 usd).

A year ago there were hardly any laptops with IPS screens or cheap laptops with SSDs. A lot has changed. I still love my retina macbook pro 15".

</comment><comment><USER17> Some context for non-hockey fans:

"A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be." - Wayne Gretzky

<comment><USER18> Let's continue this digression.

Fun fact I learned recently about guided missiles (I have diverse interests), modern ones don't adjust to aim directly at the target, they adjust to keep the target at the same relative angle (the same position on the imager). This has the effect of leading the target and flying an intercept course instead of a following course, which is more efficient and effective.

<comment><USER19> Interestingly, the fun fact is something any mariner could have told a missile designer. We call it CBDR; Constant [relative] Bearing, Decreasing Range.

Stay in CBDR for long enough and you're pretty much guaranteed a collision.

<comment><USER20> Dogs catching frisbees employ a similar methodology: [http://digitalunion.osu.edu/r2/summer06/maynor/journal_artic...](http://digitalunion.osu.edu/r2/summer06/maynor/journal_articles/Dogs%20Catching%20Frisbees.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Apple and Google are able to take risks because the companies are all but guaranteed revenue every year. Google specifically does not really need a lot of their hardware to succeed because of their massive revenue from search. They are able to make risks on products that would result in more people online if they succeed because if it works they make more money off search, and if it fails they have a lot of revenue to fall back on. Companies like Sony, Asus, and Lenovo (while I do maintain that they are innovating in their own ways) can't take these risks because if they get a rep for making bad laptops they have nothing to fall back on. Hardware is an expensive game and it's difficult to justify taking risks in it if you have no solid revenue stream to fall back on if it fails.

</comment><comment><USER22> The mass market for which Sony, Asus etc are producing is not really interested in super high resolution displays. However, they all offer 1080p displays in their top the line laptops which i find more than enough on a Laptop.

Most people are fine with their 24inch display sporting 1920x1200 resolution but then suddenly on a 13" notebook or even a smartphone 1080p isnt enough ? Its ridiculous!

I have used a Macbook Retina and to me it was not much of a revelation. Yep, the display is nice, text is super sharp and everything is crystal clear but i didnt have the feeling that i would absolutely need this, and i would consider myself a hardware geek and pro user.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hi-res is the future of laptops because the future of laptops is to become specialty tools for content creators. Everyone else will be using phones and tablets for mobile computing.

So I don't understand the purpose of a hi-res "cloud" laptop. The hi-res screen is ideal for high-end photographic and video work--the two areas of content creation that are still struggling to move to the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER24> tl;dr: The low-margin OEM business is different than the high-margin software/integrated systems business.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Other laptops can't use high definition displays because Windows would not look and feel nice on them.

MS behaved as if they can ignore the display progress forever, and now it's finally bites them and their minions in the rear, which is lovely.

</comment><comment><USER25> Do we really need retina displays? Or are they just trying to make something new for us to spend money on? Right now Sony ASUS and Lenovo are doing fine. Nice headline. You got me to read the first paragraph or so.

<comment><USER26> I'd say we don't "need" retina displays (much like we don't need unibody laptop shells).

However, it's really nice to have them as a luxury "standard". It's been too long that computer displays have been held back by 720p/1080p inertia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> tl;dr: this article wastes your time

</comment><comment><USER28> can't one just install a different OS? or is the chromebook pixel using some weird hardware?

<comment><USER29> Chromebook used to be locked down iirc. Anyway it isn't anymore, so yes you can install *nix or whatever on it.

<comment><USER30> Chromebooks never used to be locked down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> >Sony, Asus, and Lenovo all have notebooks at similar prices, but none have a high density display and none have only solid state storage.

Huh what? A lot of ultrabooks have only SSDs, has the author been in coma for the last year?

Sony has a Vaio Duo 11" with a 1080p display. Lenovo and Asus also have or are about to have high density displays.

All in all, an empty uninsightful fluff piece.

Also, please get some contrast and test how your blog looks on the machines that aren't (retina) Macs.

<http://contrastrebellion.com/>

<comment><USER32> I just purchased an Asus UX51VZ with 2x128gb SSDs and a 15" 1080p display that weighs less than a Macbook Pro Retina, for $400 less than the Macbook would've cost. The Retina has a couple of big wins over the UX51VZ (battery life and higher resolution display) but I wouldn't put them in different classes, or claim that Asus isn't even trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How did this end with so many votes? It has nothing to do with the puck, but with money. Pay up and they'll add a 42 inch screen to your Windows 8 laptop, battery hour 36 seconds :). They are many tradeoffs, that's all.

<comment><USER34> First, this is about resolution and not the size of the screen. Second, Apple has managed to give Retina Macbook Pro a 7-hour battery life despite it's screen. Third, the article states that "Sony, Asus, and Lenovo all have notebooks at similar prices".</comment></comment>


Estimating the temperature of a flat plate in low Earth orbit (LEO) - <AUTHOR> http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/estimating_the_temperature.htm

<comment><USER2> To simultaneously demonstrate my lack of training in physics and save you the Google that I just performed:

      394 K = 249.53 deg F
      394 K = 120.85 deg C

To me, that temperature was a surprise.

<comment><USER3> It's a surprise because it's wrong. The author used an emissive power of 1,360 W/m^2 -- the intensity of direct sunlight -- as so:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=(1,360+/+(5.67+*+10...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=\(1,360+/+\(5.67+*+10^-8\)\)+**+\(1/4\)&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

But this isn't the right number to use. The physics of the system is: when the plate is oriented facing the sun, 1,360 W of solar energy are absorbed per m^2 of plate area; and when it is at thermal equilibrium, the same amount are emitted. However, the sunlight is only incident on _one_ side of the plate, while thermal radiation is emitted in both directions! If the plate reaches a uniform temperature (if it's not thick and insulating), then equal amounts of radiation will be emitted from both sides -- twice as much emitting area, with half the radiated power density (680 W/m^2). With this factor-of-2 correction, the equation is:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=(1360+/+2+/+(5.67+*...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=\(1360+/+2+/+\(5.67+*+10^-8\)\)+**+\(1/4\)&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai==)

For an equilibrium T of 331 K -- a more reasonable 58 deg C. And what's more, this is assuming a perfect blackbody -- a perfect, black, absorber of light at all wavelengths. A light-colored disk could be far colder. Check out the discussion on the wikipedia article (particularly the "earth's blackbody temperature"):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law>

For a black earth (with no atmosphere), the equilibrium temperature would be around 278 K. (Note it is different from that of a flat disk. With a sphere, the ratio of emitting area to absorbing area (that is, the cross-sectional area of the earth projected onto a plane -- the plane normal to the direction of the sun) is 4 pi R^2 / pi R^2 = 4. So twice as much emitting area as a flat disk.)

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=(1360+/+4+/+(5.67+*...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=\(1360+/+4+/+\(5.67+*+10^-8\)\)+**+\(1/4\)&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

But with the earth's albedo accounted, (says wikipedia) the equilibrium T is 255 K, 24 degrees colder than the blackbody. Likewise, the temperature of the satellite disk would be very sensitive to its color. (edit): This source says (p. 26) a white _sphere_ in LEO would be 90 K colder than a black one!

<http://www.tak2000.com/data/Satellite_TC.pdf></comment></comment>


Tell HN: I live in Moscow and I want to give away some cool books - <AUTHOR>

Hey, guys! I have a bunch of cool books that I want to give away to good people.
>>>> Tech and Programming
- Practical Common Lisp
- Pragmatic Programmer
- Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus Thompson
>>>> Nonfiction
- The Personal MBA
- The Element by Ken Robinson
- Long Walk to Freedom (autobiography by Nelson Mandela)
- So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport
- The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
- A Briefd History of Time
- The Google Story
>>>> Fiction
- Atlas Shrugged
- The Fault in Our Stars
- The Hobbit
- Rose Madder by Stephen King
- A Storm of Swords (Game of Thrones 3rd book)
And a bunch of great books on writing comedy and screenwriting.
Besides, if you're interested - I have Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and a little robot-platform building kit, you might find it useful =)
My phone: 8-919-726-00-15
Call/text me if you're interested =) <comment><USER2> Are you emigrating from Russia and getting rid of the old stuff you are not going to be taking with you?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I've just bought myself a tablet and figured that from now on I will do all of my reading on it. I like the idea of having as little "stuff" as possible, ideally - just laptop, tablet, some cloth, and backpack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can i have Atlas?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sure. Text me, I'll give you my address.</comment></comment>


WhatsApp India limits message forwards to only 5 users/groups to curb fake news - <AUTHOR> https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000647/More-changes-to-forwarding <comment><USER2> Today i noticed some messages contained the notice 'forwarded' on top. Was wondering why. So this is it. I do not understand how this will curb fake news though.</comment>


Perl 6 Introduction - <AUTHOR> http://perl6intro.com/ <comment><USER3> I've got to say, perl6 is really, really fun to play with. (and I say this as someone who had not used perl before)

So far I've gotten the impression it's made by a bunch of smart, friendly hackers who care about quality in their software.

To anyone reading this, I'd strongly recommend casting aside any preconceived notions about perl and giving perl6 an honest shot.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to take perl6 for a spin. However, other than playing with it I'm not sure how it compares to say python or ruby in terms of strong sides. I mean what are the cases perl6 would shine in comparison? (NOT TO FLAME! I'm asking for ideas to when perl6 would be an interesting tool for the job. AFAIK it had a good string manipulation ~ also I'm still reading the tut and currently it feels very bash and somewhat ugly (although helpful) with the % & @ prefixes).

<comment><USER3> A few upsides I perceive:

\- optional, well-integrated gradual typing system.

\- perl6 is the first mainstream(ish) dynamic language to not suffer from a GIL of some kind. You can do real concurrency and parallelism in perl6.

\- perl6 is both equally as powerful, and much more simple than previous versions of perl.

\- a bunch of good ideas stolen from other languages. go-routines are in there, pattern-matching, gradual typing, classes, etc. Plus, functional programming is a first-class-citizen of perl6. There's so much good stuff in there.

\- overall, I think perl6 has the potential to become a very powerful (and yet robust and well engineered) hacker language, where you will not be constrained by implementation details of the VM the language runs on (I'm looking at you, GIL).

I'd also recommend reading Curtis Poe's answer to a similar question:

[https://www.quora.com/Perl-programming-language-1/Should- I-b...](https://www.quora.com/Perl-programming-language-1/Should-I-be- interested-in-Perl6)

<comment><USER5> > \- perl6 is the first mainstream(ish) dynamic language to not suffer from a > GIL of some kind. You can do real concurrency and parallelism in perl6.

I went digging to try and understand what this meant, and seems it's referring to syntactic support for promises, which in at least the Rakudo implementation amount to a wrapper around a forking multiprocessing system (like the Python multiprocessing module).

From my perspective this concurrency isn't any more "real" than equivalents available in existing languages, but maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing - you mention global interpreter locks, and usually they refer to threading.

Does some implementation of perl6 have non-GIL threading?

edit: from <[https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/day-11-parrot-t...](https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/day-11-parrot- threads/>):

> The solution for these problems implemented in hybrid threads is to sidestep > them altogether by disallowing write access to shared variables. The > programmer (or in most cases the compiler) is obliged to declare a list of > all shared variables before a newly created task is started. The interpreter > would then create proxy objects for these variables which the task can use > to access the data. These proxies contain references to the original > objects. They use these references to forward all reading vtable functions > to the originals. Write access on the other hand would lead to a runtime > error.

> In other words, all data is owned by the thread creating it and only the > owner may write to it. Other threads have only read access.

> For threads to be able to communicate with their creators and other threads, > they still need to write to shared variables. This is where green threads > come into play. Since green threads are light weight, it is feasible for a > thread to create a task just for updating a variable. This task is scheduled > on the interpreter owning this variable. To reduce latency, the task is > flagged to run immediately. The data-owning interpreter will preempt the > currently running task and process the new write task. Put another way, the > data-owning interpreter is told what to write to its variables, so other > threads don't have to.

<comment><USER6> GIL stands for the Global Interpreter Lock, which python has been criticized for a lot. I don't know whether perl5 or other languages have one, really.

<comment><USER7> > GIL stands for the Global Interpreter Lock, which python has been criticized > for a lot.

It's pretty clear the GP knows what a GIL is, he's wondering if Perl 6 is truly GIL-free, or if it "just" abstracts out the GIL using language primitives for a forking multiprocess system (already, that's a nice step, but it's not "GIL-free").

I'd like to know the same thing.

<comment><USER6> (Side remark: it seems the comment has been edited, expanding it a lot. It was not clear to me initially. And anyway, it is good to have acronyms expanded for other readers.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great (basic) introduction with exception to the regex chapter because it felt like an introduction to regex instead of the regex features of perl6.

Some things I found interesting (in addition to what s_kilk mentioned and linked to and others have already mentioned some of them) * Gradual typed! * Multi subroutine * Hyphen in variable names * @numbers.=sort * .WHAT * Catch blocks * .defined * Unless

It will be fun :)

I however don't understand the reason for the naming of eg elsif, my, slurp/spurt?? (instead of else if or local or fread/fwrite) Is it a perl culture thing? Because they mention in the tutorial that Perl 6 belongs to the C-family languages (and then call the "for" loop in C "loop").

<comment><USER8> > I however don't understand the reason for naming of eg elsif, my, > slurp/spurt??

Yes, it's for historical reasons. "elsif" is spelled that way in Perl 5. Perl 5 has both "my" and "local" to specify lexical and dynamic scoping, respectively, so Perl 6 using "local" for lexical scope would be confusing. "slurp" is a common term for reading the entire contents of a file at once.

<comment><USER9> "my" arrived after "local". The former is true lexical scoping, the latter isn't quite.

<comment><USER10> Right. As gp says, "local" is _dynamic_ scoping.

It's available as long as the declaration stays on the call stack. It more-or- less allows globals to be temporarily redefined.

<comment><USER11> Think locally, act globally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am so happy they've included kebab-case identifiers :-) I've always thought they made more sense than camel or snake, because there's no shift key involved. It also brings fond memories of fun in lisp land.

<comment><USER13> I'm so happy to learn the term kebab-case (and agree that it's very usable and supremely typable)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really like the fact that Perl6 has a proper type system.

I like even more that you can mix static and dynamic typing, so to speak. After taking their sweet time, I am not overly confident about adoption of Perl6, but I hope I'm wrong.

At least, from what I can tell so far, Perl6 manages to keep the spirit of Perl, while fixing a number of things that were wrong, or at least problematic, in Perl5.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish programmers could break away from "tutorials" and "introductions" that are just lists of syntax and keywords.

I want short examples, brief explanations of those, and then some problems to solve.

<comment><USER16> Have you looked at the synopses (1)? That's how I've learnt Perl 6, and I've never been convinced by any other kind of Perl 6 documentation. To me the synopses are complete and explanatory enough. As far as problems to solve, there are the various entries in rosettacode (2).

1\. [http://design.perl6.org/](http://design.perl6.org/)

2\. [http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Perl_6](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Perl_6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> monthly-salary = daily-rate * working-days

Wow. This will make a few people happy who think underlines and camel case are ugly.

<comment><USER18> Adding the missing $ sigils will uglify it quite a bit, though.

<comment><USER19> They don't need to be "missing". my \working-days = 200; Creates a working- days variable that you can't change.

<comment><USER20> Isn't that sort of a mis-feature that we don't expect to see in code very much? I thought mainly people would be using sigils, and ideally the correct sort of sigil to indicate if it is a single thing, list of things, hash of things, callable thing, etc.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't call it a misfeature. I think especially in math stuff it would be useful. I've used Δ in my math for Color module and it both has the natural mathematical meaning and must not change after I calculate it: [https://github.com/zoffixznet/perl6-Color/blob/master/lib/Co...](https://github.com/zoffixznet/perl6-Color/blob/master/lib/Color.pm6#L231)

What is a mis-feature is you can't assign-create to these variables when they're part with sigil-bearing variables, so, for example, here I ended up using a sigiled-Δ, which isn't as pretty :) [https://github.com/zoffixznet/perl6-Color/blob/master/lib/Co...](https://github.com/zoffixznet/perl6-Color/blob/master/lib/Color.pm6#L142)

<comment><USER21> Aiui it's for any time a coder prefers that a noun's name does not emphasize/convey the basic nature of the thing the noun refers to.

Fwiw you can assign to such "raw" nouns if you declare that the raw noun you're declaring refers in turn to a rw container. For example, a plain `$` is a container (an anonymous Scalar):

      my \Δ = my $ = 100;
      Δ = 200;

I came up with the following idiom when pondering snippets on twitter and the fundamental problem that twitter treats strings of the form `@foo` as twitter handles which messes up the formatting of tweets containing `@` sigil'd nouns:

      my \array =@= 1,2,3; array[2] = 200; say array;

displays

      [1 2 200]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does Perl 6 have fundamental features that don't exist in other languages ? Just curious.

<comment><USER23> I don't know if any of these features are really unique, but the combination of having them all is certainly unique:

* Strings that are made of Unicode grapheme clusters instead of codepoints or bytes. This means that a substr() operation for example can't even accidentally rip a apart a base character and a combining character on top of it

* Grammars as a language feature

* Gradual typing

* A built-in meta object protocol

* Concurrency based on high-level primitives (promises, queues, supplies, ...) with syntactic support (instead of threads and locks; which are still available if necessary, but discouraged, because they don't compose well).

* Lazy lists

<comment><USER24> Yea, grammars looks simple-the-unique thing other languages don't have in 2015, 2016 and, I bet, 2017 too. Maybe even longer :)

<comment><USER25> That's only at level 1, until you realize Perl 6 code is parsed by a grammar written in Perl 6.

Its power is amplified by the part Perl 6 regexes are better than anything there is out there.

Even better, this extends beyond ASCII and applies to Unicode too. And will work with other powerful control structures.

I'd fix that date to something like 2027.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This guide is gorgeous; the choices made for fonts, styling, and formatting are just perfect. I wish more online documentation looked this good.

<comment><USER27> Peeping at the source code, looks like this may have been generated by [http://asciidoctor.org](http://asciidoctor.org) (in case you would like something similar for yourself).

For Perl-folk, there is a module to convert between POD and Asciidoc:

[https://metacpan.org/pod/Pod::AsciiDoctor](https://metacpan.org/pod/Pod::AsciiDoctor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm looking for several Perl developers in Berlin for a full-time permanent position:

[http://valbonne-consulting.com/job/perl-or-lua-software- deve...](http://valbonne-consulting.com/job/perl-or-lua-software-developers- real-time-bidding/)

</comment><comment><USER29> At first sight I find amusing comparing Ruby to Perl 6. (a=. sort) (a.sort!) (a.what) (a.class) (say a) (puts a) (for @a=>item) (a.each {|item| ..} ) and the similarities, push, shift, splice, ...

I see nothing new here. But I must say that Perl 6 seems to be easier to learn than Perl 5 for beginners.

<comment><USER27> This is just a little intro cheat sheet, it's not supposed to be scary - <USER2> the opposite, in fact. Easy things should be easy.

The magic is in the more advanced parts of the language. The, "hard things should be possible" parts.

<comment><USER29> Show me the more advanced parts of the language, are they transducers, monads, functors, natural transformations, auto-compilers, self-replicating systems, high AI in action, ML, NLP. What is the honey spot for this new language?

<comment><USER30> Here's a short list of some interesting things: phasers[1], lazy evaluation, feed operators[2], grammars[3], meta/hyper operators[4], subtypes[5], multiple dispatch[6].

1: [http://design.perl6.org/S04.html#Phasers](http://design.perl6.org/S04.html#Phasers)

2: [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Perl_6_Programming/Lazy_Lists_...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Perl_6_Programming/Lazy_Lists_and_Feeds)

3: [http://design.perl6.org/S05.html#Grammars](http://design.perl6.org/S05.html#Grammars)

4: [http://design.perl6.org/S03.html#Binary_hyper_operators](http://design.perl6.org/S03.html#Binary_hyper_operators)

5: [http://design.perl6.org/S12.html#Types_and_Subtypes](http://design.perl6.org/S12.html#Types_and_Subtypes)

6: [http://design.perl6.org/S12.html#Multisubs_and_Multimethods](http://design.perl6.org/S12.html#Multisubs_and_Multimethods)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love that Perl 6 has a proper REPL now.

<comment><USER21> A note of caution; it's way better than nothing and will get where it needs to be one day, hopefully in 2016, but it currently uses some awful hacks that make it suck for a lot of stuff.

<comment><USER31> I know but I am really glad that they went this route.

<comment><USER32> For perl5 I'd commend unto you Reply, which manages to learn from most of the mistakes I made in Devel::REPL

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> When is Perl 6 going to be a standard installed package for the Linux distributions (Debian, CentOS, Ubuntu)?

<comment><USER23> I don't think anybody can predict the future well enough to answer that.

Languages become part of the standard installation by having very commonly used toos written in them.

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure ruby isn't part of a standard Debian installation, and neither is lua, for example. Ruby is very popular for web apps, but you don't need web apps to boot the computer, start a GUI and install packages, so it's not part of the standard installation.

But it's only an 'apt-get install ruby2.1' or so away, and so is rakudo (the current Perl 6 implementation). The debian package in stable is outdated, but work on newer versions is in progress. (Don't know about CentOS, sorry).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am curious, what's the use of learning perl6 in 2015?

<comment><USER14> Well, I can tell you what's the use of learning Perl 5 and that I suspect most of it will apply to Perl 6 as well:

Perl, more than any other language I know, sacrifices nearly every other property in the name of being useful. It's not a conceptually clean language, or an elegant one, or a simple one, but if you need to get stuff done, _now_ , there is very little that can compete with it. (At least for some rather specific values of "stuff" \- Perl, IMHO, really shines at small-ish scripts that need to convert data from some format to another, or merge data from different sources, especialy when lots of text-handling are involved). Parsing a log file, or matching user accounts from a Windows domain with employee records in an ERP system's database are two examples that come to mind because I had to do those things not too long ago.)

Perl 5 has problems though, especially when it comes to writing large-ish programs. While you can write readable und unreadable code in any language, Perl makes writing unreadable, unmaintainable code easier than, say, Python. Perl 6 tries to fix a lot of this while remaining as useful as Perl 5 (or at least trying to).

<comment><USER8> > Perl, more than any other language I know, sacrifices nearly every other > property in the name of being useful.

Another factor that mattered back during Perl's heyday was the insane lengths it went to for maximum portability. The Perl porters shouldered the burden of making it run on DOS/Windows, Mac OS, VMS, and all the weird Unices that existed at the time. This doesn't matter as much nowadays, but it was crucial back then.

If you had a text-munging or scripting problem, and wanted to solve it once and for all, Perl was the perfect tool.

<comment><USER35> FWIW perl __currently __builds and __passes tests __on z /OS, under straight EBCDIC: [http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2015/11/ms...](http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2015/11/msg232907.html)

<comment><USER8> And this is why Perl is awesome: IBM mainframes are the opposite of sexy, but some people use them, and Perl will work there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For those looking to get started with Perl6 in Docker -- here is the related Docker Hub page:

[https://hub.docker.com/_/rakudo-star/](https://hub.docker.com/_/rakudo-star/)

And its GitHub repo:

[https://github.com/perl6/docker](https://github.com/perl6/docker)</comment>


Ask HN: will you validate my idea. history wiki - <AUTHOR>

wiki for history. based around cities. main content will be user gen'd stories, videos, pics<p>idea came from talking to old people about the town i grew up in and wishing there was some place where all of it was <comment><USER2> I see what you did here with the polling options (once I realized that andys627 was also the original poster). That's a pretty clever way to emulate a poll on HN without polling options.

But be aware that no one but you can see the number of points each option has. Assuming they get a few votes at least, can you report back the results to the rest of us?

BTW, re. the idea, I think it could make a good website and but a bad business. Is this meant to be a project or a business?

* - Specifically, here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3331859> and here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3331857>

<comment><AUTHOR> 1 point for each haha! thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a reasonable idea. It might not be a big business, at least not for quite a while. It might overlap a bit with:

<http://localwiki.org/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> don't do it

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> do it</comment>


Modern Perl - <AUTHOR> http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/

<comment><USER2> Bought it, have learned from it, wish the code were in larger or bolder face-- those of us who broke in with Perl 4 don't necessarily have best near vision these days. It is a good book.

<comment><USER3> I wish that too. I'll see what I can do to improve the code font size in the next edition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/pdf/HigherOrderPerl.pdf></comment>


Researchers Use CRISPR to Detect HPV and Zika - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/15/crispr-detect-hpv-and-zika/ <comment><USER4> This is huge!

Imagine affordable STD test kits adjacent to the pregnancy testers on the shelves of your local store.

The prostitution story looks a lot different if every encounter can realistically incorporate a predicated broad-spectrum STD test of both parties.

Edit: Usual dating would be a lot less risky as well. Has it become standard practice for couples to both get tested before becoming intimate yet?

<comment><USER5> >The prostitution story looks a lot different if every encounter can realistically incorporate a predicated broad-spectrum STD test of both parties.

Disease spread is such a drop-in-the-bucket among the (moral, ethical, personal, societal) issues surrounding prostitution that I have a hard time understanding how this news changes the story.

It's great news; but prostitution is an issue that deserves a lot of time and discussion -- and likely the solutions will be social, not technological.

<comment><USER6> Given that heterosexual dates are typically paid for by men and husbands typically make a lot more than their wives, it could be argued that the overwhelming majority of heterosexual sex is some form of prostitution. Yet when I criticize dating on that basis, I get called a nutter.

When men and women have some kind of parity where women are not routinely considering their bottom line when deciding how much crap to take in an unhappy relationship, then you can talk to me about the immorality of prostitution. Until then, wow, what a way to put on blinders as to how the vast majority of relationships work.

<comment><USER7> That's an absurd comparison. Most women have sex with their husbands willingly because they like sex and they like their husband. Prostitution is a quid pro quo business arrangement. Of course, sugar-daddy type relationships _do_ exist, but they are not the norm. Consider the example of your own parents. Is your mother akin to a prostitute because she had sex with your dad at the same time that he may have been providing for her material needs?

<comment><USER6> _Is your mother akin to a prostitute because she had sex with your dad at the same time that he may have been providing for her material needs?_

This is a dirty tactic. It is not good faith engagement.

I'm a woman who has a strict _no dating_ policy, by which I mean that I don't establish romantic relationships based on some man spending money on me. I am entirely satisfied with the positive impact that policy has had on my life.

From what I have read and heard over the years, no, most women don't have sex with their husband because they like him. There are relationships like that, certainly. But the financial factor pretty clearly poisons quite a lot of relationships.

I often think this should be the foundational argument as to why men should be more invested in helping make gender parity happen. If you are a well paid man and tired of feeling like women only date you for your money, fostering a world in which women have money of their own on pat with men is the single best antidote to your dating problem.

As just one supporting citation, this article talks about the fact that pro athletes frequently marry their high school sweetheart because you can't trust that women who met you after you struck it rich really like you. They may just be there for the money. (The article does not use those exact words, but that is the gist of it.)

[https://www.si.com/vault/2009/03/23/105789480/how-and-why- at...](https://www.si.com/vault/2009/03/23/105789480/how-and-why-athletes-go- broke)

There are also rap song lyrics about how poor men from the hood can't get a date, but once they strike it rich "it's a puss buffet."

I have read articles where, for example, a guy lost his job and his wife quit having sex with him. He stated that he learned his paycheck was the most attractive thing about him. A friend of a friend lost his well paid job and his wife left him because "it wasn't any fun anymore."

The term _gold digging whore_ is a gendered term. It exists because men typically make a lot more than women and a lot of women are primarily interested in finding someone to pay their bills. This is compounded by the difficulties women face in pursuing serious careers of their own.

While I was homeless, no one wanted to open doors for me career wise. But lots of men wanted to offer me money or a place to stay if I would sleep with them.

In my experience, this problem runs shockingly deep. If your romantic relationships are unaffected by it, count yourself lucky.

<comment><USER7> > _This is a dirty tactic. It is not good faith engagement._

It's not a dirty tactic, it's an analogy meant to snap the reader out of reductive thinking. It's easy to throw out these kind of generalizations when you reduce people to animals, but when you're forced to consider individuals from a human perspective (like in the case of your own mother) suddenly there is a wave of humanizing rationalizations to explain why characterizing marriage as glorified prostitution doesn't really apply in grandma's case.

> _most women don 't have sex with their husband because they like him_

Neither one of us can prove what is in the head of most women when they get into bed with their husbands, but it seems absurd to _generally_ ascribe a financial motivation for married sex-life. Women like sex too, some more than others, it doesn't make a woman a whore if she also enjoys financial support (and you know, all the other qualities that people care about in lasting relationships.

> _If you are a well paid man and tired of feeling like women only date you > for your money, fostering a world in which women have money of their own on > pat with men is the single best antidote to your dating problem_

This simply isn't a problem for the vast majority of people. Most eligible bachelors do not make enough money to such an effect where they have to be worried about goldiggers beyond the normal common-sense signs.

> _As just one supporting citation, this article talks about the fact that pro > athletes frequently marry their high school sweetheart because you can 't > trust that women who met you after you struck it rich really like you_

Individuals with multimillion dollar salaries are clear outliers that have to contend with the impact of their wealth in _every_ personal relationship, trying to generalize that example to the general population doesn't make sense.

> _There are also rap song lyrics about how poor men from the hood can 't get > a date, but once they strike it rich "it's a puss buffet."_

Once again, if you become rich and famous you are an outlier that is pointless to apply as a general rule. Also, as someone from the hood, where almost every individual is poor, I promise you that there are LOTS of dates and LOTS of sex, even for broke guys, the most common distinction between guys getting dates and those who are not is confidence, looks, and a sense of humor.

> _a guy lost his job and his wife quit having sex with him_

Yeah... nobody is saying that doesn't happen, but that is obviously not a common occurrence as any married man who has been unemployed can attest to.

> _While I was homeless, no one wanted to open doors for me career wise. But > lots of men wanted to offer me money or a place to stay if I would sleep > with them._

The fact that men have solicited you has means nothing with regard to the nature of sex within marriage.

<comment><USER8> Please don't "snap the reader out of reductive thinking" by using personally abrasive rhetoric on HN.

Thoughtful conversation works better on a peer basis anyhow, not when one party presumes higher consciousness than the other.

<comment><USER7> Dang, I have the greatest respect for your efforts to improve discourse on the site, but I have to disagree that this is "personally abrasive rhetoric"; the personal aspect is a critical component of the logic within my argument, it is precisely the fact that when we consider our own loved ones in the context of the GP's stated position, it becomes clear that the reasoning is not consistent (because we offer our loved ones a more humanizing outlook when considering the nature of their circumstances rather than describing our mothers and sisters as prostitutes). On a personal note, I am a little surprised that my comment has been flagged as "personally abrasive" but the GP's rhetoric suggesting that married women in general can be likened to prostitutes is not similarly flagged as inflammatory. I am not asking for permission to continue debating this thread, I am only asking that you consider the nuance and context of my reply before judging it as abrasive. Thanks for your hard work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Their system uses several CRISPR enzymes, including Cas13 and Csm6, and can > be loaded onto a paper strip, making it incredibly easy to use.

Using CRISPR for low cost detection of disease would be a tremendous accomplishment. I wonder if Bill Gates had something like this outcome in mind when he invested into Editas (co-founded by Feng Zhang). It would seem to fit with inexpensive detection approaches he has pursued over the years.

</comment><comment><USER10> We've been hearing about CRISPR for a couple of years now. Any idea what's the approximate ETA to the market of this kind of technology, and are there any other obstacles except for the human trials? (Don't say "ethical questions" because it's a non-issue, there will be always multiple countries who'd ignore that.)

I hope it won't become another graphene, a discovery with enormous potential that would never leave the lab.

<comment><USER11> CRISPR cancer therapies are in clinical trials in China, with American and Europeans trials starting in the next year.

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609722/crispr- in-2018-com...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609722/crispr- in-2018-coming-to-a-human-near-you/)

[https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-therapeutics-plans-its- fi...](https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-therapeutics-plans-its-first- clinical-trial-for-genetic-disease/)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-unhampered-by-rules- races...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-unhampered-by-rules-races-ahead- in-gene-editing-trials-1516562360)

<comment><USER10> Perfect, thanks!

So I guess it means about 2-3 years from now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We've collected a number of the various Cas variants into Pinecone if anyone wants to play around with the proteins [1]. In this article they speak of cheap detection, but in some sense those are the natural technological requirements or outcomes of their much more powerful editors (you have to be able to 'see' the results of what you've edited in order to more efficiently edit). In order to better edit, nice readouts were required to be invented.

The Cas systems are 'pointers' or 'cursors' to locate a _specific sequence_ of DNA or RNA - and once you have a good pointer, you can bring to bear all the rest of biology's tricks at that location. Multi-fluorophore systems are great, and gels are easy. It's a super creative effort to utilize those cheap reagents and assays in the context of a creative 'DNA locator' system in order to amplify a single genomic signal to one that is readable by eye, in the field. And that capability makes the debugging of the editors themselves at the more cheap and easy. Our collective 'toolkit' is now becoming complete enough that the creative and combinatorial usage of existing tools will very quickly explode our capabilities.

YC's own Benchling also has the sequences (and is cited in the papers' supplements): [https://benchling.com/s/seq- arzpsupZEzGu3ghBDhtv/edit](https://benchling.com/s/seq- arzpsupZEzGu3ghBDhtv/edit)

(Shame on Science Magazine for publishing a supplemental PDF with Benchling links that you cannot click on and sequences that are not copyable (pg 24). It's 2018!: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2018/02/14/s...](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2018/02/14/science.aar6245.DC1/aar6245_Chen_SM.pdf) (and Benchling, if your target audience is printing out links, you might want to not use both O and 0 in your UIDs))

Our protein based design software: [1] [https://serotiny.bio/pinecone/](https://serotiny.bio/pinecone/) (search Cas13, REPAIR)

<comment><USER13> What is Pinecone? Can I hack around with it as an individual?

<comment><USER12> Pinecone is our public protein design software. Feel free to play around. Feedback is welcomed. We're trying to build an abstraction layer above DNA sequences so you can build genetic tools to fulfill particular capabilities without needing to know how to build DNA.

Or just to help teach what useful designs others have put out there - <USER2> some of the 'magic' of current gene therapies or genetic editing tools. Some interesting examples: [https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/)

<comment><USER13> Neat! What sorts of design decisions did you have to confront when designing this language? Have you found it useful as a toy modelling space, _i.e._ where suitably replicating real-world protein X in "code" reveals interesting things about X?

<comment><USER12> A bit of a late reply, sorry, but it's a great question.

We found many design decisions we had to confront - more than we expected. The largest two include 1) the decision to use an amino acid sequence as ground truth (and _not_ DNA), and 2) the decision to make the language universally proscriptive (at the cost of being universally descriptive).

Anything you build in the system can be altered, broken apart, and itself be part of a larger whole - all while being manufacturable. But that comes at the cost that there are certain highly complicated overlapping synergistic type designs that just can't be made. Whereas with an entirely descriptive language one can describe the multi-layered fugue that is the HIV genome - but the construction rules become so lax that they lose their instructive capabilities, and can no longer logically guarantee constructibility.

The most interesting (and surprising?) thing we learned is that we now have the only data-structure that can reliable and efficiently answer questions of the sort of, "show me any/all designs that utilize the protein, _GFP_".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These are really great use cases. That said, the article is totally missing the fact that these labs are aggressively developing alternatives to the Cas9 protein to dance around the ongoing CRISPR patent battle...

<comment><USER15> With CRISPR such a promising technology, have the patent holders considered relinquishing the patent?

<comment><USER16> Not so far.

[https://www.nature.com/news/bitter-crispr-patent-war- intensi...](https://www.nature.com/news/bitter-crispr-patent-war- intensifies-1.22892)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How do you get information out of a living cell without destroying it?

Right now observing neuron function within our brains is limited to tools such as magnetic resonance imaging. But molecular recorders, such as the Crispr Camera system demonstrated here. Provide a mechanism for cells to log their own history. With storage space extensible to a petri-sized population of bacteria totalling billions of gigabytes!

I think the vision is more than data storage however. Synthetic biological constructs typically involve complex and precise steps. By encoding the recipe in biology. It ushers in the path for automating the laboratory workflow.

Movie Replayed From Living Cells' DNA Debuts "Molecular Recorder"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK3dcjBaJyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK3dcjBaJyo)

<comment><USER12> > How do you get information out of a living cell without destroying it?

Using the existing systems of sensing/data-exfiltration already used by life. Fireflies produce light, jellyfish glow, plants curl up in darkness, fungi bud, flowers blossom, you blush, you sweat, you get hungry, etc.

Couple those outputs to a similar biological input: sensing DNA damage, presence of particular DNA, small molecules, proteins, sugars, etc., sensing of temperature, magnetic field, particular atom/ion, etc.

Couple them: if cold -> glow; if Iron -> blossom, if low blood sugar -> emit light.

The recent "Chimeric Antigen Receptor" approved by the FDA is exactly one such designed way to act on information within a cell; if cancer-like -> kill cell.

These CRISPR tools are similar; if presence of particular DNA -> change DNA, or cut DNA, or activate response.

<comment><USER17> There is an inherent poetic quality to the inner workings of nature and living beings. Certainly synthetic biology should reflect that ;)

I also think you've hit upon something fundamental. The use of light and photons as the lowest common denominator in biochemical function. Not just in the optogenetic sense. But as the basic building block in biophysics.

<comment><USER12> And electrons. Amplify an energy difference/transfer to a shift in protein conformation, to the cellular-scale presence/absence of noticable molecules, to actions of cells that are collectively organized to respond, to tissues, to organisms.

Optigenetic tools are just the most clear abstractions from photon->gene, but the same principles apply to thermo-, mechano-, chemo-, etc-, protien sensors (i.e. all of them).

They're all an amplification cascade from photons and electrons upwards. It is elegant in how general that description is (and how it suggests an approach to synthetic designs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Article 1:

Multiplexed and portable nucleic acid detection platform with Cas13, Cas12a, and Csm6

Jonathan S. Gootenberg1,2,3,4,7, _, Omar O. Abudayyeh1,2,3,4,5,_ , Max J. Kellner1, Julia Joung1,2,3,4, James J. Collins1,4,5,6,8, Feng Zhang1,2,3,4,†

Abstract Rapid detection of nucleic acids is integral for clinical diagnostics and biotechnological applications. We recently developed a platform termed SHERLOCK (Specific High Sensitivity Enzymatic Reporter UnLOCKing) that combines isothermal pre-amplification with Cas13 to detect single molecules of RNA or DNA. Through characterization of CRISPR enzymology and application development, we report here four advances integrated into SHERLOCKv2: 1) 4-channel single reaction multiplexing using orthogonal CRISPR enzymes; 2) quantitative measurement of input down to 2 aM; 3) 3.5-fold increase in signal sensitivity by combining Cas13 with Csm6, an auxilary CRISPR-associated enzyme; and 4) lateral flow read-out. SHERLOCKv2 can detect Dengue or Zika virus ssRNA as well as mutations in patient liquid biopsy samples via lateral flow, highlighting its potential as a multiplexable, portable, rapid, and quantitative detection platform of nucleic acids.

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/02/14/scien...](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/02/14/science.aaq0179)

</comment><comment><USER18> Article 2:

CRISPR-Cas12a target binding unleashes indiscriminate single-stranded DNase activity

Abstract CRISPR-Cas12a (Cpf1) proteins are RNA-guided enzymes that bind and cut DNA as components of bacterial adaptive immune systems. Like CRISPR-Cas9, Cas12a has been harnessed for genome editing based on its ability to generate targeted, double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) breaks. Here we show that RNA-guided DNA binding unleashes indiscriminate single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) cleavage activity by Cas12a that completely degrades ssDNA molecules. We find that target- activated, non-specific ssDNase cleavage is also a property of other type V CRISPR-Cas12 enzymes. By combining Cas12a ssDNase activation with isothermal amplification, we create a method termed DNA Endonuclease Targeted CRISPR Trans Reporter (DETECTR), which achieves attomolar sensitivity for DNA detection. DETECTR enables rapid and specific detection of human papillomavirus in patient samples, thereby providing a simple platform for molecular diagnostics.

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/02/14/scien...](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/02/14/science.aar6245)

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a VC funded company working on this (in the Bay Area) - <USER3> Diagnostics [http://www.mammothdiagnostics.com](http://www.mammothdiagnostics.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> Wonder where test blood comes from? For the past year or so, whenever I've donated blood, there's an extra page in the donor materials that explains how a sample of each unit goes to research for developing new tests for Zika. (It's a different Zika research project, I'm sure.)

If you want to help researchers developing new blood tests for emergent diseases (or need another reason to donate blood), it's here and it's easy and free. I think that's cooler than anything I'll ever do with technology.

</comment><comment><USER21> Having close to 0 understanding on the subject can't CRISPR theoretically be used to "cut out" the virus DNA to actually cure HPV and other viruses.

<comment><USER4> I don't know how significant this [1] is a barrier to such treatments, but it seems likely to be more of a potential problem for cures vs. sensors w/potential false positives.

[http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2017/05/30/crispr- gen...](http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2017/05/30/crispr-gene-editing- can-cause-hundreds-of-unintended-mutations/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a deep learning researcher. I wonder if my skills could be useful in the context of CRISPR. It sounds like a terribly promising area

<comment><USER12> Companies using similar(-ish) technologies as applied to CRISPR directly:

Synthego: [https://tools.synthego.com/](https://tools.synthego.com/)

Desktop Genetics: [https://www.deskgen.com/landing/](https://www.deskgen.com/landing/)

Open Source Community using deep learning for all sorts of biochemical and genetic capabilities:

Deepchem: [https://deepchem.io/](https://deepchem.io/)

<comment><USER22> thanks jfarlow. do you recommend any of them specifically?

<comment><USER12> Those are all run by great people and they do great work, pointed in particulary interesting and different directions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd wished they'd use <abbr> tags with a tooltip on all those abbreviations... damn.</comment>