Richard Feynman's Integral Trick - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jackebersole/richard-feynmans-integral-trick-e7afae85e25c <comment><USER3> Here's a Feynman mystery that I've asked about for years:

[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._

How do you analyze boolean circuits using partial differential equations?

What else can you accomplish with this technique?

No one seems to know how he did it.

<comment><USER4> There's an idea used in the analysis of error correcting codes, to set up a polynomial where the coefficients are the number of codewords with each Hamming weight. It works out the same as adding up all the codewords, where you replace each 0 by x and each 1 by y. So a code

      010 101 => xyx + yxy = x^2y + xy^2

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

Then you can use real (or even complex) analysis on these polynomials. There's a thick book of things you can prove about sets of binary words using those techniques: [https://www.elsevier.com/books/the-theory-of-error- correctin...](https://www.elsevier.com/books/the-theory-of-error-correcting- codes/macwilliams/978-0-444-85193-2)

And Noam Elkies' course notes on it: [http://www.math.harvard.edu/~elkies/M256.13/index.html](http://www.math.harvard.edu/~elkies/M256.13/index.html)

<comment><USER3> _mic drop_

Thank you. This was a legendary answer. I really have been hunting this question for years: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764917)

This seems like how he did it. Error correcting codes are a natural domain for questions like "What are the fewest gates gates required to transmit some information?" But the missing puzzle piece was that you can analyze them with polynomials.

<comment><USER5> Error correcting codes, coding theory, etc. is an old, serious, and deep field. Once I took a grad course in it. The course was heavily abstract algebra, especially finite fields.

A respected text is

W.\ Wesley Peterson and E.\ J.\ Weldon, Jr., {\it Error-Correcting Codes, Second Edition.\/}

Last I heard, there has been some surprisingly good progress in the field. Might look up, say, "turbo codes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article points out that the trick can be applied to integrals to which it doesn't seem applicable, by introducing a new parameter to the integrand which was not there before.

In general, that kind of tactic gives me hope someday mankind might find short, easy solutions to problems that currently seem hopeless (P=NP, Riemann Hypothesis, the 3n+1 problem, etc.)

For example, maybe someone will define spaces P(x) and NP(x), depending on a parameter x, with P(1)=P and NP(1)=NP, and then they'll show (in some simple way that makes us all kick ourselves) that P(x)=NP(x) for all x>=sqrt(2) and P(x)<>NP(x) for all x<sqrt(2). "And thus, P<>NP."

It makes you realize we really don't have a good sense of distances in the space of mathematical proofs. It's so high-dimensional, a solution that seems light-years away can actually be right under your nose, if you just turn your nose in the correct direction.

<comment><USER7> Do you already have awareness of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameterized_complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameterized_complexity) ?

<comment><USER6> I was not aware of that, but it looks pretty obviously related to what I wrote, lol! Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > A given problem, such as the integral we just computed, may appear to be > intractable on its own. However, by stepping back and considering the > problem not in isolation but as an individual member of an entire class of > related problems, we can discern facts that were previously hidden from us.

A professor put it this way: "the more you assume, the more you can prove"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> While we're here, I think that anyone who enjoys this article will probably like this answer to a question on math.stackexchange: [https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/562694/integral- int...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/562694/integral- int-11-frac1x-sqrt-frac1x1-x-ln-left-frac2-x22-x1/565626#565626).

The asker has an integral for which Mathematica and Maple both failed to resolve a closed form solution. Then they use a symmetry to break up the integral from 0 to infinity into two parts, substitute, integrate, substitute again and finally apply the residue theorem.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Differentiation is mechanics; integration is art."

<comment><USER10> As I was studying math, I noticed this as a trend: somebody defines addition, and everything works fine until somebody comes along and suggests "inverse addition" which introduces this whole new class of numbers that we call "negative numbers". Somebody else defines multiplication and everything's fine, it can even be worked to account for negative numbers... until somebody suggest inverse multiplication which introduces the complexity of this whole new classification of numbers called rational numbers. Somebody defines square roots and now we have irrational and even _imaginary_ numbers. And, of course, somebody defines differentiation and everything is completely straightforward until somebody else defines inverse differentiation and we have this whole class of, while not numbers, problems that are intractable.

<comment><USER11> It's a nice thought, but I recall reading elsewhere that integration was developed separately to differentiation (to find areas and volumes) until they were found to be related.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Differentiation under the integral sign needs a theorem with a proof. There are several versions of the theorem. The best proofs I know of are from the dominated convergence theorem of measure theory.

For the Putnam exam, yes, it's challenging. It's so challenging that doing the work to do well on the exam is comparable with creating and publishing peer reviewed original research in math, and such a publication will likely do much more for the academic progress for a student than the Putnam.

Indeed, soon enough in math graduate school at a good research university, a student learns that everyone admits that no one can carry all the library around between their ears and doesn't try to. Instead, the three most important measures of progress are, in no particular order, research, research, and research.

Finally, IIRC, how to do integration of algebraic expressions in closed form has long been a solved problem and long ago was coded up in some software -- IIRC, the software will report the result or state that no closed form solution exists.

<comment><USER12> _Finally, IIRC, how to do integration of algebraic expressions in closed form has long been a solved problem and long ago was coded up in some software -- IIRC, the software will report the result or state that no closed form solution exists._

Are you thinking of indefinite integrals? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risch_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risch_algorithm)

This article is about a trick for definite integrals. If you can do the indefinite integral you can do a definite one, but not necessarily vice versa.

<comment><USER5> You are no doubt ahead of me on this.

With a little review (the Internet, Google, and Wikipedia are a new world), I recall that I was thinking of

Macsyma

with apparently a nice description at

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

Apparently the software is still available, likely better than the original which apparently goes back to the MIT project MAC.

The Wikipedia description early on mentions indefinite integration.

IIRC the software implements algorithms that "solve" the problem of indefinite integration, calculus course "anti-differentiation".

I'm plainly passing out what I remember, some of it confirmed by the Wikipedia page, and memory of hearsay.

But likely now could download a copy of the software with whatever documentation they have and see how good it is, how much it claims, and that's a lot more than I could do the last time I heard anything about Macsyma.

I'm not going to set my startup aside and rush to have fun with Macsyma, as much fun as I have had with calculus, but I will make a note in my little system for such chunks of information!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for this great link! Richard Feynman, always so pleasant and inspiring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I like to collect mathematical "tricks" like this. This was on the /r/math subreddit a couple of days ago and many people were expressing surprise that they'd never encountered it.

It seems most people encounter this either as a brief coverage in real analysis or in full emphasis in mathematical physics or quantum field theory courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _It turns out [Leibniz integral rule is] not taught very much in the > universities; they don't emphasize it._

To be sure, this is typically touched for the first time in advanced calculus at the undergraduate level, which--at least with my alma mater--isn't mandatory for anyone except math majors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that "advanced calculus" course part of the university's formal calculus sequence, or is it more of an analysis course? If it's not an analysis course, what topics are covered that aren't in the lower calculus courses?

<comment><USER14> It's a 2-semester analysis requirement for math majors, with a dual elective track for the rest of us _engineers and scientists_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So how about a situation in which the trick doesn't work? I think an integrand with some singularities might do it. Some variation where the integrand ends up being x^3y/(x^2 + y^2)^2 should do it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is that the one where he bounds between exponential growing trapezoids? I recall it being used by his student Jack Lutz like crazy in his complexity theory classes.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not 100% sure why f(1)=0...

I ran it in Mathematica and it checks, but I just can't see why at first glance... Any help here?

<comment><USER18> I had the same question. Not sure, but if you look at the plot of the indefinite integral, you can see it appears to have period 2pi ([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integral+log(2-2cos(x))](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integral+log\(2-2cos\(x\)\))). The indefinite integral for log(3-3cos(x)), for example, is not periodic - <USER2> value 2 inside the log seems to be a critical point, so I guess it was chosen deliberately to force f(1)=0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Offtopic, but when did medium start with a soft-paywall? 3 articles per month?

<comment><USER20> It looks like authors have been able to opt-in to the paywall since late 2017:

[http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/10/starting-today-anyone- who-p...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/10/starting-today-anyone-who- publishes-something-on-medium-can-paywall-it/)

But I think this is the first paywalled Medium article I've actually seen (and I think it was free when I came across it on r/math a few days ago)... but I've developed a bit of a reflexive avoidance of Medium content anyway.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to use a mentor - <AUTHOR>

I'm a recent graduate (< 2 years) and have a mentor at the company I work for. He's a senior dev.
I'm not quite sure how to make best use of him and learn/grow as a developer.
Anyone have any experience being a mentor/mentee?
He suggested that we could do a number of things like, go through code reviews, design problems (lets architect Instagram type of problem), or even interview type of questions.
Any suggestions for exercises/discussions that I should be having? <comment><USER2> What are your goals? How can you utilize your mentors talents / abilities / experience to help achieve them? What can you provide back to your mentor, which provides value to them?

A good mentor should be looked at as somewhat avuncular; they aren't always available, but they make time for you and they can steer you towards the next step (even if they could actually do it for you).

As a mentor, my goal is to help develop the tools and provide the context for my mentee's success. Every once and a while, I'll even take on a small action item.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do what your mentor suggests. Block out some time for a code review. Ask what first steps you should take on the architecture exercise.

Etc.

A mentor is not something a mentee uses. A mentor is someone the mentee knows and trusts from beyond their peer group. If you don't trust your mentors advice, they're not really your mentor. If you don't more or less except your mentor's guidance, you're not really a mentee.

Good luck.

</comment><comment> taarlik-baaak Ask 3 points by nemant</comment>


Programmer George - <AUTHOR> http://www.programmergeorge.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.supergeorge.com/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> click on interests (lower left) then click on aviation, once you are there click on www.JetPictures.com once you get there click on first (left center) AUG 1971!!!</comment>


Show HN: 8-bit Sounds – Studio2600 for the VCS (Atari 2600) - <AUTHOR> http://www.masswerk.at/rc2018/04/studio2600/ <comment><AUTHOR> For a bit of technical background see the project blog (it's about a game): [http://www.masswerk.at/rc2018/04/](http://www.masswerk.at/rc2018/04/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, that's really neat.

I knew the sounds to be wrung from the VCS were quite varied, but they really did hit a pretty good set from pureish tones to heavy distorted noise.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is excellent - thank you for sharing! Is there any (easy) way to make it play through each variation automatically? Maybe a "demo mode" you could trigger? Ideally, I'd like to sample each sound and create a instrument in Ableton that allows me to select tone and frequency (and then pitch shift). Not sure how I'll do it yet, but getting high quality samples would seem to be the first step! (Obviously I can just do it manually, but I thought it was worth asking!)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really just a tiny test application made to find sounds for a game, and about similar to what you describe, but to be run directly on the Atari 2600 . However, if you want to sample the sounds, best get a native emulator like "Stella" [1] and run the ROM-file in this one (see the downloads section).

The best way to get a full walk trough of the tones and pitches would be to write a tiny Atari ROM file for this. (It's really just about setting three registers.)

[1] Stella documentation and downloads (Win, Max, Linux, and sources) [https://stella-emu.github.io/](https://stella-emu.github.io/)

<comment><USER3> That sounds like a good plan, thank you. I'll run it in Stella and grab the audio output from that. Not quite sure I'm up to the coding of the ROM TBH, so I'll do it manually :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go to row E, pick a spot in the left fifth of the row, lean on the spacebar while using the left and right arrow to slide the dot left and right a few spots.

Groovy.

</comment><comment><USER5> The description of some of the tones is a bit cryptic.

I'd be interested in a deeper explanation of div 15 -> 4 bit poly and 5 bit poly -> 4 bit poly

I'm making a fantasy console, so I ended up spending quite a bit of time designing my own 8 bytes to describe a full range of tone/freq/volume/envelope/bend. Packing expressiveness into a limited number of bits is quite a fun game.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "TIA-1A Hardware Manual" [1] states: "This circuit contains a nine bit shift counter which may be controlled by the output code from a four bit audio control register (AUDC), and is clocked by the frequency select circuit. The control register can be loaded by the micro- processor at any time, and selects different shift counter feedback taps and count lengths to produce a variety of noise and tone qualities."

[1] [https://www.atariarchives.org/dev/tia/](https://www.atariarchives.org/dev/tia/)

There is an "about 30KHz" base frequency, so "div 15" suggests a 2KHz waveform; "4 bit poly" and "5 bit poly" are probably two of the "feedback taps", "and" a logical multiplication of these signals. But this is just my interpretation.

[Edit] For technical details see: [https://alienbill.com/2600/cookbook/music/stolberg.txt](https://alienbill.com/2600/cookbook/music/stolberg.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Row #3, column #11 is the sound of Lex Luthor's flying propeller backpack in Superman.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fun track based on the 2600 sound set: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rKkpHLl1Ew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rKkpHLl1Ew)

</comment><comment><USER8> Can this chip only use the harmonic series as the tuning, or is it only specific to this rom's interface?

<comment><AUTHOR> All frequencies are derived from an "about 30KHz"* base frequencies, which is divided the number of times given by the value in the 5-bit frequency register. (30KHz, 15KHz, ..., 30KHz/32) This "scale" is defined by hardware in the TIA Television Interface Chip (an Atari custom chip designed by Jay Miner), which is where all the "magic" of the VCS happens.

Edit: *) There is a 31,440 Hz clock frequency used to produce NTSC signals and 31,200 Hz for PAL consoles. This is probably also what is described as "about 30 KHz" in the manual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is extremely fun to play around with! My coworkers are looking at me funny, but it's worth it!

</comment><comment><USER10> this doesn't work in Chromium 66.0.3359.117.

I imagine it must be something wrong with the underlying emulator, but there's no audio output. visuals work, but not much else, which is sad for this bit of interesting code!</comment>


Hacker named to Homeland Security Advisory Council - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10258634-83.html <comment><USER2> It's about time the government gets those guys on our side instead of the other way around.

<comment><USER3> There are no "blackhats" or "whitehats"; only skilled labor, the former is looking but the later is employed :-)</comment></comment>


T.S.A. Agents Refuse to Work During Shutdown, Raising Fears of Airport Turmoil - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/nyregion/tsa-shutdown.html <comment><USER2> _In the wake of the 9 /11 attacks, airports became completely different places. Young people have no idea what an airport used to be like. They'll never know what it's like to travel without having to first submit to a humiliating security check. They'll never know what it was like to say goodbye to your friends and family at the gate, rather than at the front doors of the airport, or to greet them at the gate when they arrived._

...

 _To earn a living groping us, taking body scanner photos of us that can see through our clothes, patting-down our wives and children. The government shutdown is making it hard for the TSA to earn a living detaining us.

They're the victims._

[http://www.stationarywaves.com/2019/01/topsy- turvy.html](http://www.stationarywaves.com/2019/01/topsy-turvy.html)

<comment><USER3> But isn't this a problem with the actual TSA and its policies instead of the workers who just follow them? These are still real people who have to rely on their paychecks to live.

<comment><USER4> You surely aren't suggesting that these employees have no say in which job they get, right? I mean, I personally don't have a job that requires me to grope and/or detain people. I personally wouldn't seek such a job. That raises the question: what kind of person would choose that job over any other, especially when government shutdowns and foregone wages are a known risk of employment?

<comment><USER3> Now I am unsure of what field you are in, but not everybody has the same flexibility in terms of job availability. I agree with you in saying that I would never choose such a job but when it may be one of the few options available, with good pay, how could you say no? If you have a family to provide for, then you need to do it. What if these workers don't agree with the policies and joined the TSA to try and change it for the better? You are talking down to an entire workforce as if they all are actively behind its policies and actions.

<comment><USER4> Just so I understand you right, you're saying it's okay to violate people's rights, so long as the pay is good, your family really needs the money, and you hold some kind of internal objection to your own work?

<comment><USER3> I never said that anywhere in my statement above, if it was implied, please tell me where. I am saying people can disagree with the policies of their employer and still stay at their job. Sometimes this forced through financial, geographic, maybe social reason. If the worker is actively disregarding human rights, then that is a single issue with that worker. If you think it is TSA enacting these human rights violations, then blame them, not the people just following what their bosses say.

<comment><USER4> Let's suppose I want to "blame them [the TSA]." Okay, who should I be complaining about? Which TSA employees is it okay to hold responsible for forcing my daughter to have a nude photo of herself taken?

Supposing that every person _today_ who applies for a job _today_ with the TSA knows about the body scanners and the pat-downs and the unexplained detentions, to what extent are _new job applicants_ morally blameworthy for applying for a job that they already know involves all of these things?

At best, your argument covers people who applied for jobs with the TSA before anyone knew what the TSA was going to be doing at airports, and who have over the course of 18 years been unable to find work elsewhere. What share of TSA employees do you suppose that is? What's your guess?

<comment><USER3> The TSA is a federal agency so there are plenty of proper channels to complain through. My argument covers anybody that doesn't actively revel in these terrible things that the TSA does. There are TSA employees who never have to do or deal with these types of things. I can't give you a number, I don't even want to guess because that would be silly. You can complain to the woman/man at the desk who takes your ID all day long, but if they have never kept up with the latest TSA news then they are just showing up for a paycheck. I am saying it is extremely unfair to lump everybody into one category just because they work at a particular company/agency that you actively dislike. You don't know their thought process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All 51,000 agents should stay home for one week and bring the country to a grinding halt.

 _That_ would result in some progress from Congress.

<comment><USER6> > and bring the country to a grinding halt.

And if it didn't come to a grinding halt? They risk demonstrating how worthless their jobs are.

<comment><USER7> If their jobs are indeed worthless, then it's a win, in that we can save tax- payer dollars for worthless jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The irony... Trump closes govt because of national security concerns (border wall/terrorism)... TSA agents are pretty high on the list of jobs that protect us from terrorism, and I guarantee more important than a damn border wall.

<comment><USER8> Plenty of people see it as the Democrats in Congress who are holding things up. (After all, there is universal agreement that border security is important. Also, many prominent Democrats have pledged support for physical barriers in the recent past.)

I tend to agree with Cher, which doesn't happen often. She says that Democrats can be seen as heroes if they compromise on the wall to re-open the government. (But if they do not do this, Cher believes the Democrats will ultimately suffer for the fallout.) Time may tell if she is right or not.

<comment><USER9> >Plenty of people see it as the Democrats in Congress who are holding things up.

Yes, we call those people Republicans.

<comment><USER8> That's fair.

Both sides usually blame each other. During the Obama administration, there was a government shutdown as well. Democrats blamed the Republican congress, Republicans blamed Obama and the Democrats.

It really does (or should) take cooperation when things are as evenly distributed as they are. I only wish there were incentives for the politicians to work faster.

<comment><USER10> I agree, but I'd take work together to find common ground first over work faster. I think in some respects when they work faster or in complete agreement we get things passed that are not in the best interest of the american people/values (Patriot act comes to mind).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Survival of the Mediocre Mediocre - <AUTHOR> https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/04/24/survival-of-the-mediocre-mediocre/ <comment><USER2> This explained a lot about evolution and government that previously seemed paradoxical to me.</comment>


Every aspiring hacker and cyberpunk must watch these movies - <AUTHOR> https://hackermovie.club/ <comment><USER2> Not a movie. Not 'about' hacking, but there are some cool hackers-- Max Headroom.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom)</comment>


PHP as sexy as Scheme using lambdas and recursion - <AUTHOR> http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/map-and-reduce-implemented-in-php

<comment><USER2> I for one think this is awesome - particularly for those of us who sling php for a living by day and read programming romance novels by night. My contribution in a similar vein can be found here: <http://commonphp.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, it's been written somewhere that the longer you work on anything the bigger the chance that you'll have a bug-ridden implementation of lisp in there somewhere...

<comment><USER4> Greenspun's Tenth Rule (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_Tenth_Rule>):

      Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc,
      informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

<comment><USER5> Any sufficiently complicated Lisp program contains ad hoc, informally- specified, bug-ridden, slow implementations of the top 100 perl modules.

<comment><USER6> That sounds funny, but how true is it? Let me use <http://ali.as/top100/> as a list of the top Perl modules. #3 on the list is Pod::Escapes which I suspect is not implemented in very many Lisp programs at all.

<comment><USER5> I think it's pretty true. That list is heavy on "plumbing" modules that are pulled in as dependencies. I don't know a good one that's more indicative of what programmers deliberately pull of the shelf for a project, which is what I was talking about.

Let's remember Greenspun used TCL for his commercial work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be honest, I'm not quite sure what this article is trying to point out; lambda functions (and functional-style programming) have been a part of the PHP language for a very long time -- since PHP4 to be exact. It may not be as "sexy" to look at as Lisp et al, but it's certainly been doable.

        $fn = create_function( "$a", "return $a * 2" );
        $list = array( 1, 2, 3, 4 );
        $double = array_map( $fn, $list ); // array( 2, 4, 6, 8 )

or

        function my_filter( $a ) { return $a > 10 ? true : false; }
        $list = array( 5, 10, 15, 20 );
        $less = array_filter( $list, "my_filter" ); // array( 15, 20 )

<comment><USER8> there's a real problem associated with using create_function:

It's not much more than a glorified eval(). Evaluation takes place at runtime, so you don't notice syntax errors until it's too late. Bytecode-Caches can't cache your function and as the function body is a string, you won't get syntax highlighting in most editors.

Also, create_function really creates a named (with a random name in the form lambda_number) function in the global scope. Functions in general are all globally scoped and come to life once the execution reaches the function declaration. So this actually works:

        function a(){
          function b(){ echo "gnegg\n"; }
        }
        a();
        b();

Whereas

        function a(){
          function b(){ echo "gnegg\n"; }
        }
        b();

wouldn't.

This also implies that no scope is captured and you can't access any variables of the outside body of code.

5.3 brings _real_ anonymous functions and provides a way to conserve the enclosing scope (thus allowing you to create closures), though the syntax is a bit awkward and variables of the outer scope you want to access need to be declared one by one.

<comment><USER7> Yes, every single point you made is correct, valid, and of much concern. My point was simply that everything the article covers was already completely doable since PHP4, even if it wasn't the most optimal solution. It was more a teardown of the article than the features of PHP 5.3, which I would be taking advantage of in a heartbeat if only people would actually upgrade their PHP installs in a timely manner...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "as sexy as Scheme"?! No way.

<comment><USER10> Seriously, it's ridiculous how long this is carrying on. It's the same debate heard in all ages, all political groups, etc. The debate against change. They're used to their PHP, and are, begrudgingly, willing to accept that LISP has some "neat things", but as of yet refuse to admit that their syntax is idiotic, and their language handicapped. So they try to "put lipstick on a pig."

I'm going down... I know. But it just takes so much more effort to translate the above into a well thought out, persuasive argument, and in the end it would have been ignored anyway by those who like to cling to their language just because they know it well.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is not to argue some kind of replacement of scheme for PHP. Or one language's superiority to another. The point is to show its possible to write functional, good looking PHP. Letting the "neat things" of LISP influence the way you write in other languages. Internalizing concepts that are first class in other languages by trying to adapt them to a language where they aren't first class is a great way to learn. Learning and being influenced by other's great ideas is how all languages and communities make progress. This is why Scala is such an incredible language to experience. It was shameless in its influences and its desire to merge OO and FP. Making connections between disparate languages like the layman's PHP and the academian's Scheme is exercise for the mind.

<comment><USER9> "The point is to show its possible to write functional, good looking PHP"

If you say curly braces and type prefixes can ever be pretty... ;-)

Lisp is not just a collection of neat ideas - it's a cohesive whole more or less found around those neat ideas. It's damn hard to take out those ideas and to put them in a language that was not designed around them without corrupting them beyond recognition.

And mind you I label myself as a Python enthusiast, not a Lisper. But I know what my tools can and what my tools can't do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1) It still has all those ugly sigils.

2) There is still a large body of "PHP coders" that don't code this way, don't expect others to code this way, and probably won't understand code written thus. The community _is_ the language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Re "and probably won't understand code written thus".

Rather than giving up on the masses of "PHP coders" by labeling them incapable of functional style programming, recursion, etc, why not try to show them? If they're capable of wading through the inconsistencies of PHP they're pretty damn capable in my book. Sure they may lack the rigors of a computer science background but that doesn't mean they're uninterested.

Showing a "PHP coder" a different paradigm of programming in a different language is going to be less effective than trying to express it in the language they know. Personally, I'm really enjoying the challenge of taking the beautiful concepts taken for granted in many other programming language circles and teaching/expressing them in a language understood by the "masses".

<comment><USER12> More power to you.

However as a former PHP programmer I had very good reasons to give up on the community. The biggest one being the sparseness of quality code. As a PHP developer trying to learn how to write good code you find yourself jumping from island to island of good ideas floating in a sea of crap. The community has the lowest signal-to-noise ratio I've ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> PHP, welcome to the early 80s. Who knows, soon you might have real datatypes!

Does the Zend engine do TCO? When I search, Google thinks I mean "Total Cost of Ownership". All I can find is <http://devzone.zend.com/article/1235>.

</comment><comment><USER14> This does nothing to address PHP's biggest problem, which is the user base's lack of motivation to migrate away from PHP 4.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's a quote about pigs and lipstick that might apply here.

<comment><USER16> Given enough lipstick, you can smother the pig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember fiddling around with PHPs recursion and having it get very bad very quickly.

Why use lambdas and recursion with PHP when there's tons of languages that do it better?

<comment><USER18> Sometimes it is more practical to update a codebase than to rewrite it entirely in a different language.

From the comments here you would think it is _bad_ that writing clean PHP is possible...

<comment><USER19> You could also generate PHP code from Scheme or Common Lisp. That way you can write in the language you like and update the codebase.

<comment><USER9> I would prefer if such approach was taken to ease a gradual reimplementation.

The risk of this just making the codebase even uglier is enormous.

<comment><USER19> I thought about that too. There are programs that can handle making PHP or C beautiful. GNU indent is one of them I think, and there's another one called TidyPHP? Something like that.

So you just generate and then run the code through that if you need it to be human readable. I assume most companies don't give a shit as long as it works ;)

<comment><USER9> I fear a Scheme to PHP code generator would turn out PHP code that's ugly beyond what any code beautifier could hope to fix. It's not make-up - it would be akin to major surgery.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure it would only require indent fixing if coded properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> no

</comment><comment><USER21> 'false' still equals 0.

<comment><USER21> wtf?

You can't say PHP is as pretty as scheme when ("false"==0) evaluates to true. It just can't happen.

And if you think I'm some lisp dude slagging PHP, I wrote a PHP framework and work with the garbage everyday.

<http://getheavy.info/>

<comment><USER22> I think you're getting downvoted because your comment was irrelevant to the topic of lambdas and recursion. Your second comment uses a technique that I will call "ad hominem defense" from now on; upvoted for making me think of this amusing expression.

<comment><USER21> The title says PHP as sexy as Scheme.

It's like comparing McDonald's to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What would happen if the government shut down – and never reopened? (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/12/05/what-would-happen-if-the-government-shut-down-and-didnt-reopen/ <comment><USER2> >The federal government would "not look like anything" if a permanent shutdown kicked in, Rakove said. Instead: "You can imagine a radical devolution of authority to the states."

Amazing how decreasing the power and responsibilities of the feds is considered radical for a country that started off having a weak federal government on purpose.

</comment><comment><USER3> Disagree. Regulators would be first on the chopping block.

</comment><comment><USER4> there is still state government, which is apparently supposed to be the real governments. we are a union of states not a state of the federation.</comment>


Show HN: Scarf – Platform to help open-source developers monetize their work - <AUTHOR> https://scarf.sh <comment><USER2> I replied to a few comments, and will post my own now.

For those questioning the FOSS-ness of Scarf. Start with Wikipedia, then read a few more things for background.

Scarf itself is BSD3 licensed. You can do whatever you want with it. Even fork it and remove all the things it was designed to do.

There is nothing not-FOSS about this project. The goal (and I'm not affiliated with it in any way, nor do I know the author) is to _support_ FOSS developers. If you're a FOSS developer, you want that, right? And if you're not, do you know how at risk you are because FOSS devs are _not_ compensated consistently and well? That's the message we need to get out. Projects like Scarf are important, and this is a new space, because we need to raise awarenes about this issue and _solve_ it.

Will there be bad actors? You bet. Are there already bad actors? You bet. It's not about creating a perfect solution, but creating a better solution than what we have now. Which means creating _any solution at all_ for this particular problem at this point in history.

For every project that acknowledges and addresses this problem, I applaud you. We need stepping stones.

<comment><USER3> A customer who wants to get money to a FOSS developer, is hard enough for developers to manage. (One success of the Apple store is that it makes getting paid easy and is easily worth the cut off the top that they take.) The current state of the art is to drop a bitcoin address in the `Readme.md` and then customers just need to pay with bitcoin. Which to be real, is too high a bar for many a customer).

It's not the worst solution, either (not saying it's super great, mind you). For the developer, BTC has no server to sysadmin (btc miners are somebody else's problem). If you're a developer that's not in/near the US financial system, it can be very difficult to get paid (eg developer in the country of Georgia, Estonia, North Korea) (Never mind the legal/moral/political question, everyone want to get paid.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point about this not helping people who aren't near the US financial system, for now. I'm planning a feature for developers to be able to connect a crypto wallet that they could be payed out to. Package users could optionally pay with a cryptocurrency, or just with a credit card like you can now. The package developers should not need to deal with complexity like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Money is more likely to flow to open source developers if it is framed from the perspective of the person/company that is paying:

"Scarf de-risks your product by helping you pay a small monthly amount to ensure that your open source dependencies remain alive and healthy."

versus

"Platform to help open source developers monetize their work."

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted, I'll certainly be updating the copy/documentation substantially. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So from a developer point of view the more popular your package is financially the less insight into its use you get?

And a user point of view is that my usage data is now a bargaining chip to be used by an intermediary between me and a developer I think made a decent stab at a library I need.

I'm sorry I'm really failing to see any benefit for anyone in the deal apart from the middle man who will invariabley scrape all the usage stats and sell it

<comment><AUTHOR> From a developer view, you now don't have to give away your usage data just because you give away your software for free. You have more leverage to ask companies and commercial entities to pay for your software, while letting individuals use it for free.

From a user point of view, you have a way to contribute to the developers that give you free stuff without having to do anything additional. Because the developer gets anonymized usage statistics, this will ultimately mean higher quality software for the users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea; if someone wants to make some money off of customers who are more willing to pay than to make efforts to avoid paying, it's nice to have an easy way to do that.

But whereas "auto-magic" is a good characteristic in software, it's kind of off-putting in financial matters.

As far as the software goes, if it "just works", that's great. When it comes to the money, I don't want to know if it "just works". Within 2 minutes of arriving at the Scarf site, I want to know how much goes in one end, how much comes out the other end, how to set and change the prices, and how much (if any) leaks to the Scarf service. I'd like to know this by the second paragraph of the first page. Having skimmed the site, I still have no idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is useful feedback, thank you. There's definitely still a lack of documentation, and I'm working to improve that. Currently, Scarf takes fees only to cover the Stripe fees, it doesn't add any additional fees in an effort to encourage people to give it a try. Scarf will eventually take its own transaction fees but that exact amount isn't ironed out yet. I'll add this to the FAQ

<comment><USER7> What would also be great is to create a link to your terms of service so they can be reviewed before creating an account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I understand where this is coming from, and it's definitely from a good place, but honestly I think the solution is a bit naive. Developers are not going to be able to sustain themselves by simply having their software connected to a package manager that charges them when they install a package. You might as well just sell proprietary software at that point. We as a community need to be look at solutions like Tidelift [1] that will draw in real, serious and interested ENTERPRISE customers. That is where the revenue will come from and that it what will make it viable enough as a long term solution for both the developers AND consumers of FOSS. Note: I am in now way affialiated with tidelift other than thinking they are smart dudes who are approaching this very pressing issue correctly. [1] [https://tidelift.com/](https://tidelift.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Scarf also aims to help developers sell open source software to enterprises. The idea of leveraging telemetry by default in exchange for payments specifically targets companies, who can certainly pay for that use case. An issue with Tidelift is that it's more for libraries, but CLI tools are not necessarily included in your project's manifest that Tidelift would see. Tidelift and Scarf can both help open source devs from different angles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the idea of Scarf allot. This solves a very good problem of getting analytics on features that get released. And these insights would certainly help improve the software.

However, please correct me if I'm wrong but is this truly open source. If the developer intends to open-source his software then in-app purchases defeat the entire purpose?

Also, if the developer does want to release his software with the intent to make money, he can simply release a premium version with the added features.

I don't want to sound very harsh but as an open-source developer, this kinda defeats the ethics of what open-source software truly is.

Would love to hear alternative views...

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question. So I think this still is in the spirit of open source, because you can bypass scarf completely by just installing the package from source if you want to. For my own packages that are hosted on Scarf, I'm totally happy if someone chooses to do that, because then they're more likely to contribute code back to my projects, which is great. Scarf just gives devs a way to makes the path of least resistance for users a path that results in either usage analytics, money, or both. I hope that makes open source a more sustainable endeavor for the developers.

<comment><USER2> There is no need to bypass Scarf to align completely with FOSS principles. If Scarf is not encrypting the source, adding new license constraints, or hiding it in any way, when it adds its wrapper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some site feedback:

It would be cool to see popular packages on the front page. Otherwise it looks like there are zero.

Also, searching then searching again messes with back navigation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I'll fix that shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I haven't tried this yet, but poking around the site, I'm wondering what mitigations you have for potential abuse? I'm concerned specifically about transparency to the end user about the costs of the packages that they've installed.

Thinking aloud:

* My user chooses to install my package with scarf, either because I force them to (by not making it easily available elsewhere) or because they want to support me (yay!)

* I make money from their install, and/or their use of the package (is this correct?)

In that case, as Mallory, as a bad actor, I:

* Want to make a package that looks affordable but pulls in dependencies

* I want to make those dependencies cheap at first, but then I'm going to make them expensive later, when you are, well, dependent (ahem)

* I want those deps to be, as much as possible, me and my friends

I'm not even going to get into the abuse potential I can imagine would obtain by preying on naive good actors; e.g. convincing some well-intentioned dev to use my dep and then effectively taking rents from all of their downstream users.

I haven't had a chance to play with Scarf yet but I'd love to hear about how you handle scenarios like this on its website. Because I'm pretty sure these scenarios are why something like scarf hasn't shown up before.

(Personal belief/stance informing this worry: FOSS got big by providing easily-reasoned-about costing structure in an industry that had hitherto been beholden to things like on-site auditors, per-seat licensing, hidden costs, submarine patents, etc; our value prop was "you always know your cost is gonna be $0, plus installer and maintainer salaries", which is much better than "We decided this now costs double". We didn't so much cost less as cost _predictably._ )

<comment><USER12> I can't imagine using a package on this system as a dependency at all.

Not even bringing Mallory in. Just the ordinary use case of "Hi, my app is free or pay... and dep #1 is free or pay and dep #2 is free or pay and dep #3 is free or pay so now you have some choices."

<comment><AUTHOR> From the user's perspective, the price of the dependencies will need to be baked into the price of the package, the user should not need to deal with that. The developers shouldn't deal with it much either, really. Scarf can handle making sure dependencies are paid appropriately based on prices agreed to by developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> nice work! I have a similar project [https://ligit.dev](https://ligit.dev) we took the approach of letting the developer do everything as they usually would except for the license.

How are you guys thinking about Github's new package registry?

<comment><AUTHOR> ligit looks cool too! perhaps we should chat about collaborating? Scarf currently doesn't do much for the developer in terms of licensing.

Scarf could in theory install packages directly from the registry, but I haven't looked into it much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the high level monetization model is:

\- Free: metrics get sent to the scarf service

\- Paid: no metrics get sent to the scarf service

Is that correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, that's the current model! But Scarf can support much more flexibility, so ultimately the developer will have a variety of options. A package could be fully free, and payment through Scarf would be more of a donation. It even could be fully paid, and a user would have to purchase the ability to install or use the package at all. Leveraging metric collection to ask for payments like this seemed like a good thing to start with, so certainly curious for any feedback there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If the software is open-source, it will just get forked in a branch that removes usage metric uploading. If you want to make money with software, just release proprietary software, not sure what's so difficult about this.

<comment><USER16> Interesting that the three sibling replies here at present completely miss the point. Vortico is saying that nobody can make money this way as an OSS author/developer because someone else will just fork your code and release it sans payment mechanism. Or perhaps even with them as the payment beneficiary rather than you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I was addressing the fact that forking isn't even necessary here. It's true people can always go get the source if they want to use it for free. But someone just bypassing Scarf to use the source code directly makes them:

a) more likely to contribute code (since they have it), so fine with me! b) much less likely to be using it at an enterprise, which is the main target

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds of the internet explorer toolbars which counted installs, collected other stats and phoned that home. Those companies put wrappers around installs. Scarf also installs a wrapper around your package. Imagine if every npm package did this in a single project. You'd have 100s of sub-sub dependencies phoning home.

> [captured data] Sub-commands and flags that are passed on the command line

So it's parsing the command line which can have environment variables with passwords. eg `foo run -e CONTAINER_PASSWORD=""`

<comment><AUTHOR> > You'd have 100s of sub-sub dependencies phoning home.

This isn't implemented yet but Scarf will batch up the telemetry metrics calls so it won't actually be sending 100's of requests in that case.

> So it's parsing the command line which can have environment variables with > passwords. eg `foo run -e CONTAINER_PASSWORD=""`

Yes, but the actual arguments to those flags are not sent to Scarf, so in this example it would only send "run", "-e", and "CONTAINER_PASSWORD". It's straightforward to also detect things like url's, file paths, certificates, and other sensitive data, so that's not sent either. All of the CLI code is open source ([https://github.com/aviaviavi/scarf](https://github.com/aviaviavi/scarf)) so there is full transparency to what data is captured and sent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just wanted to mention that the site does not show anything at all with 1st- party JavaScript or 3rd-party JavaScript (stripe) disabled. It would be nice if there was some plain-old HTML ;).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I made the choice to make Scarf a single-page-app site, so yeah nothing really works without JS. Good to know this is a desire, will keep that in mind for future work :)

<comment><USER19> Please consider making it work without JavaScript, or at the very least label your JavaScript files so it will work with LibreJS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, check back soon for the updates :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome. I love open source projects and the developers behind them all. This is really cool and I'm installing now!

</comment><comment><USER21> Your search URLs return a JSON instead of HTML. I get this even when I press Enter in a search box.

[https://scarf.sh/packages/search/framework](https://scarf.sh/packages/search/framework)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm hitting enter for me right now does do the correct thing, what browser are you in? In any case, those routes colliding like that is an issue, I'll fix it shortly.

Thanks for the feedback.

EDIT: should be fixed!

<comment><USER22> In firefox, if I put something in the search box, press enter, it will search. If I press enter a second time (taking no other action) it will display json.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nearly every open source package that sees use will be added to free-as-in- beer repositories. I don't see how this gets any uptake.

<comment><USER2> Ignore Scarf's success for a moment, and focus on it's goal. Do _you_ think FOSS developers should be compensated for their work? If so, how do we make that happen?

<comment><USER23> I think Patreon-esque approaches + consulting is doing a decent job.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually disagree with this. Patreon doesn't target contributions from companies, only other indie developers for the most part. I've seen massive OSS projects that only get a very small amount of donations, so it's not a great solution for most developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does Scarf use Scarf?

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a terrible idea. I like the idea of paying money to not be spied on--I wish more companies adopted that model--but turning your opensource project into spyware and holding privacy ransom is just so evil. It's also incredibly naive and detached from reality. Most people are not going to be okay with this, so what will happen is that they will either fork you or create an alternative that respects your privacy rather than pay up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand where you're coming from. I think saying it's evil and holding privacy for ransom is inaccurate though. The goal of this is to give individual developers leverage to charge companies who profit from their work. People who wish to use your package for free and do it completely privately can still download your source code and run it. Scarf doesn't take away anyone's ability to do anything. It aims to augment existing software by offering a path for easy installation with telemetry and payments set up already. Nothing gets baked into the software, it's all at the distribution level.</comment></comment>


New algorithm shakes up cryptography - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140515163739.htm

<comment><USER2> This actually came out about half-way through last year. It's a good attack on DLP-based cryptosystems, like ECDSA and ECDA when they use small- characteristic fields.

Most EC crypto in use uses large-characteristic prime curve fields (often abbreviated as GFp) and is unaffected by these attacks.

Small-characteristic GF2^m curve fields seems a little more popular in embedded hardware, but I don't know any details. Relatively little software uses GF2^m curve fields either, though a notable exception is Bitcoin (I have no idea what this result meant for them).

Notably, the EC used in SSH and common SSL deployments use GFp keys and aren't affected by this result. It does make one wonder whether the DLP will fall more generally - it is only believed to be "hard" and AFAIK there is no proof that it is.

<comment><USER3> > This actually came out about half-way through last year.

What do you mean? I don't doubt you are right but the article doesn't seem to mention that anywhere.

<comment><USER4> He's referring to the previous work of Joux, such as this: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/095.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/095.pdf).

"Today's" result is an improvement over that and previous works. So what we know is that attacks on curves over GF_{2^m} are getting better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's some confusion going on here. This algorithm:

\- Has nothing to do with elliptic curves.

\- Has virtually zero repercussions in any real-world cryptosystem.

\- Is a mostly theoretical refinement of the 'cryptopocalypse' Joux algorithm, which only affects some special kinds of fields (namely small characteristic).

\- Is only being reported again now because the paper has just been presented at Eurocrypt.

Here are some previous threads on the subject: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240434)

<comment><USER2> AFAIK the relation to EC is that pairing-based cryptography is a popular (among academics at least) user of GF2m elliptic curves.

<comment><USER6> We're getting way past my comfort level, but the impact of the recent DLP attacks on pairing curves is because they involve mapping the curve problem into a multiplicative finite field, right? The DLP attacks themselves don't directly impact the ECDLP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The journal article in question (PDF):

[http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/400.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/400.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> So what does this mean exactly?

> it is likely to have repercussions especially on the cryptographic > applications of smart cards, RFID chips (2), etc.

It will be easier to bruteforce RSA/DSA?

<comment><USER9> For the time being, it only applies to elliptic curves. However, the curves in actual use are over fields of large characteristic, so this result does not break them.

Obviously, any advance in understanding the discrete logarithm problem may be a step forward in breaking elliptic curves, but as far as I know, this is not a reason to change anything for the time being - at least for non- cryptographers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> New crypto is scary and unproven, until it's not. [https://www.schneier.com/crypto- gram-9902.html#snakeoil](https://www.schneier.com/crypto- gram-9902.html#snakeoil)

</comment><comment><USER11> Gotta love these researchers who out their painstaking work in publications and papers rather than patents.

<comment><USER12> Alternative interpretation: Gotta love how European research funded by tax- payer euros enters the public domain — as it should.

Fwiw, on this side of the pond some are somewhat bemused by how e.g. US big pharma firms are allowed to patent research results that were funded by tax- payer dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Question to someone capable of understanding the paper; how screwed is ECDSA?

<comment><USER14> Not terribly, at first glance. Crypto generally uses fields with no subfields and large characteristic, whereas these attacks seem to generally be limited to fields with subfields and small characteristic.

It's interesting work, but not immediately alarming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What are the implications for Bitcoin?

<comment><USER16> None

<comment><USER17> see</comment></comment></comment>


Why we're updating the default typography for Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-03-26/Op-ed

<comment><USER2> By using serif fonts for headings and sans-serif fonts for bodies they have broken the page alignment: the serifs push the headings over by enough pixels to be really noticeable; this kind of design requires really careful attention to optical margin layout (which is, of course, really problematic in CSS).

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is interesting, you might also like to read the longer post by Wikimedia's Director of UX about the change. [https://medium.com/p/1724cb2b7402](https://medium.com/p/1724cb2b7402)

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought I was crazy when I popped in to check something earlier. Bolds look a bit lopsided, especially at small sizes. But it's probably a positive change overall.

</comment><comment><USER5> The bolded fonts look nasty in Chrome on Windows.

<comment><USER3> Do you have Liberation Sans or Arimo installed? Or are you on XP with ClearType off?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Typeface hipsters?

<comment><USER7> These are typeface hipsters:

[http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028615/the-beautiful- wikipedia-...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028615/the-beautiful-wikipedia- design-that-almost-was) [https://medium.com/p/1332a0f9eaf0](https://medium.com/p/1332a0f9eaf0)

You may never have thought it in your life, but apparently web users are "design-starved". That must be why Alt-V, Y, N is my very favourite Firefox key combo. Honestly, there's not enough Comic Sans in the world to deal with people like this.</comment></comment>


Young people struggle in eurozone's two-tier labour market - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/6ca9cfd8-9cc8-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb <comment><USER2> Personal and anecdotal opinion: among the many people I've left behind when I moved from the south of Europe (to the less-south of Europe, but this doesn't add much) there are a number of friends, most of my age (< 30 years old) that couldn't even concieve the idea of leaving the comfort of their home, not even temporarily.

Temporarily as in "long enough to attend a trade school somewhere else and then, once trained, go back to the comfort of their home and get a job or start a small business".

I can understand them and empathise, but only to a certain extent.

<comment><USER3> As someone roughly your age who moved within Germany, I can say I do not sympathise. Moved away for studying, also didn't return for work.

Productivity (aka where jobs are to be had) was and most likely never will be evenly distributed. That is a fact and one has to face it, whether one likes it or not.

Very informative Freakonomics episode on the topic of geographic factors of economies: [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/secrets-german-economy- steal...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/secrets-german-economy-steal/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> warning: the article is paywalled.

however, if you look up the title in google and then reach the article (at the same url) but with google as referral, you'll be let to read it.

Like this: [https://www.google.com/search?q=Young+people+struggle+in+eur...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Young+people+struggle+in+eurozone%E2%80%99s+two- tier+labour+market)</comment>


Mysterious great white shark lair discovered in Pacific Ocean - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mysterious-great-white-shark-lair-discovered-in-13234068.php?t=5c043f9ce3&f? <comment><USER2> It's a good article but existence of the _White Shark Café_ has been known for quite some time. I first read about it in _The Devil 's Teeth_, a book (the only one?) about the Farallon Islands (20 miles west of San Francisco) where they actively study Great Whites.

They've known it was there since satellite tracker data indicated that in the 2000s. I guess what the article is talking about discovering is the _Café_ part. They didn't know that there was food there or rather they didn't understand the food there.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Shark_Caf%C3%A9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Shark_Caf%C3%A9)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes I think it's better if some mysteries remained unsolved; can't wait until this is leaked to shark hunters and the "secret" habitat is decimated; humans are "wonderful" and "surprising" all the time...

<comment><USER4> This is a persistent problem in the world of journalism, one that is rarely, if ever, addressed, that being the spreading of sensitive information that can lead to the detriment of the main subject of the article. Whether it is shark territory, secret military bases, or archaic socio-cultural enclaves, these pieces have the potential to disrupt them. For intel black sites, most people applaud the effect. For Yazidis and sharks, not so much.

At what point does it become unethical for attention hungry journalists to expose things like Sharklandia?

<comment><USER5> Information should never be criminalized. Bad behaviors like poaching endangered species, however, should. Information may be able to enable some of that, but it also enables positive behaviors as well. It's the responsibility of civil society and governments to separate the two and prevent or disincentivize the bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everything about these fish is "mysterious". All we really know about them comes from behavior at the surface. Immature whites are rarely every seen. We don't know where the real tiny ones grow up. Mating behavior is a totally open book atm. Only recently have we learned that they move in loose packs.

I got a real kick out of a study that gave credence to the old surfer's adage "big waves, big shark". It turns out they like to recharge in the more oxygenated waters near breaking waves. Bigger and more territoriality dominant sharks hang out near the bigger waves.

</comment><comment><USER7> why would any website owner think it's ok to have self playing videos pop up on mobile in 2018?

<comment><USER8> The site was so abominably overrun with cruft and vicious pop-ups that I never even got to the auto-run video. Maybe after some ad-hunters go in and decimate the place, I might consider revisiting.

<comment><USER9> I went to the site with javascript turned off and had a good experience.

Sadly, the web has degraded to the point that I no longer think it a good idea to turn javascript on for any but the most trusted sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you enjoyed this article you may enjoy this video too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bc- Cv9C-E8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bc-Cv9C-E8)

</comment><comment><USER11> For mobile readers you might get a faster and cleaner view of the same article on SF Chronicle:

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Mysterious-great- wh...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Mysterious-great-white-shark- lair-discovered-in-13234068.php)

</comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one who thinks "White Shark Café" is a great prey for hipster bands and also needs to be protected. A trademark, maybe?

</comment><comment><USER13> And I thought itvwas Cape Cod.

<comment><USER14> Great whites have a hard time affording the passage fees for the Panama canal

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Lair" is more of a resting place than a gathering place.

<comment><USER14> A buffet may be both

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Relevant.

[https://youtu.be/Bh7bYNAHXxw](https://youtu.be/Bh7bYNAHXxw)

</comment><comment><USER17> > in a patch of open ocean about the size of Colorado, a place that looked in > satellite images like an empty, oceanic Sahara desert

So... Burning Shark.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for this. It made me giggle.

<comment><USER19> Unlike "Shark Cafe".

<comment><USER20> "She named it the White Shark Cafe even though she wasn't sure whether the sharks went there for food or sex."

In that case she should have called it "Plenty Of Fish"...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Quitting the Paint Factory (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.molvray.com/ebooks/Quitting_the_Paint_Factory_Mark_Slouka.html <comment><USER2> If you like idleness then be idle, just don't expect the same rewards as the productive. Also, if everyone had the same thought process as the author, the world would be a worse place in ways the author could not possibly foresee. But what if they could see it live? "This village of African children starved to death because the farmers lowered their yields by 50% for a more manageable lifestyle" "This person died of a heart attack because this cardiologist prefers a strict 9-5, and didn't have the energy for the attention to detail to foresee the calamity". "+50% car crash fatalities because rigorous testing puts too much strain on engineers". I wonder if the author would be embarassed, or even ashamed.

<comment><USER3> Did you prefer the converse headline "patient killed due to tired doctor", "bridge failure as workers installed supports badly", "power plant explodes as inspector missed system warning" etc.

We're on that side of the balance right now and not the other.

<comment><USER2> I don't consider rest for optimal work "idleness", in fact that's a big part of productive work. I think there's a huge difference between getting a full 8 hours of sleep and what the author is suggesting in the article, but maybe that's just me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it a little ironic the way W has slowed, softened and become more contemplative and introspective with the still life paintings and whatnot. Sort of counter to the narrative in the piece all these years later.

</comment><comment><USER5> _I recognize that work of one sort or another is as essential to survival as protein... I have compassion for those making the most of their commute and their cubicle; I just wish they could be a little less cheerful about it._

In one paragraph work is described as necessary, and then complains that people are happy doing it? How dare we be content with our lives?...

<comment><USER6> I think the point is that most commute+cubicle work isn't usually work which is essential to survival. The call to be a little less cheerful is a call for everyone to see through the illusion that commute+cubicle is meaningful, essential work. We might find a greater contentment if we aren't filling what could be idle time with nonessential work.</comment></comment>


Sonic CEO: I Welcome Being Regulated as a Common Carrier - <AUTHOR> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Sonic-CEO-I-Welcome-Being-Regulated-As-A-Common-Carrier-132800

<comment><USER2> I'm unsure why he welcomes something he still hasn't seen. Nobody really knows the regulations yet. They haven't been made public.

I even heard during the FCC live meeting that Mobile carriers would no longer be able to have 3G and 4G, it all needs to be the same speed. The reasoning is that the disadvantaged need equal access to the Internet.

This may not be in the actual regulations, but I am just going by what I saw live from the FCC.

How does this have anything to do with Net Neutrality? If things like this (that have nothing to do with Net Neutrality) are in the regulations, I can't imagine what more is in store for us.</comment>


PhantomJS 2.0 is getting ready for release - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/issues/12897

<comment><USER2> Great news! I use PhantomJS, and I'm going to use this Hacker News thread as a really thinly veiled attempt at advertising my startup!

We use PhantomJS as a headless browser, sometimes taking screenshots. I know, crazy. Anyway: [http://www.mystartup.com](http://www.mystartup.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Changelog: [https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/0352ddb502be9cb53cdb...](https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/0352ddb502be9cb53cdb173fd7d97e3764e0c222/ChangeLog)

</comment><comment><USER4> Very nice! I've been using PhantomJS 2.0 for a while now at my automated browser testing startup: [https://ghostinspector.com/](https://ghostinspector.com/) (It's been available to build from source for a couple months.)

It has a few lingering bugs (for instance, some issues with file uploads), but overall, it's a nice improvement over 1.9.x. The JavaScript engine is much newer and the rendering is improved.

</comment><comment><USER5> Excellent news.

We, AppNeta, use PhantomJS to perform Synthetic web-app monitoring

[http://www.appneta.com/products/appview/](http://www.appneta.com/products/appview/)

While PhantomJS has some limitation here and there, it is the _only_ headless browser our there AFAIK.

Disclaimer: I work for AppNeta (specifically for the AppView product).

</comment><comment><USER6> Happy to see this! We use PhantomJS in our CLI tool Pageres, but the fact that the bundled WebKit engine in PhantomJS 1.x is ancient has caused a lot of headake for us and our users.

[https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres](https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres)

</comment><comment><USER7> Excellent! I have used PhantomJS for web scraping but as that is always a gray area of legality. I'd love to hear any other major uses you've seen it used for. I always love it when I find that a tool I'm using can be used for other purposes.

<comment><USER8> I once wanted to do automated testing with it. But because PhantomJS used an old webkit version, I couldn't :(

But that's one use case where I would love to use phantomJS or any other headless engine to test the frontend. I'm aware that for headless testing to work, there should be a headless browser of every major vendor. Maybe it's an utopia.

<comment><USER9> Yes, my team ran directly into the old webkit version issue as well. Does this 2.0 still use an old WebKit? Having trouble finding out...

Edit: it appears to be WebKit 538.1, from May 2014. But this is based on a readme which is pretty old, so it could be outdated info

<comment><USER8> It uses a new version of Webkit(That includes DOM Mutation Events IIRC). But I believe that they always ship with their own version of webkit, which will always be behind.

For PhantomJS 2.0, I think they ship with a version of webkit that is > 6 months old.

<comment><USER10> They don't ship with their own version of webkit; they use qtwebkit (or at least used to?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The current release has no (very very limited?) flexbox support, making PhantomJS less and less useful for working with modern layouts. I'm very excited about this release.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's great. Couple of things that I had to battle with in the past should be fixed in 2.0, so - awesome news.

</comment><comment><USER13> PhantomJS is amazing. We use it to take screenshots of web sites on Neocities: [https://neocities.org/browse](https://neocities.org/browse)

<comment><USER14> Same here! It's saved us a tremendous amount of time for screenshots, especially when dealing with different sized viewports. Happy to see CSS3 is supported in 2.0 :)

A big thanks to PhantomJS devs!</comment></comment>


Study reveals stressed out 7-11 year-olds: School tests, global warming, terror = anxiety - <AUTHOR> http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2189504,00.html <comment><USER2> oh, gimmie a break. I survied communism, a revolution, in 91,another one in 97 *where I participated throwing stones at corrupt police, then rationed food, staying in line for bread, playing with guns, Ak-47 granades (I was only 16), coming to the US finishing high school, and getting a full academic scholarship, actually finding a job in 2003 in the middle of the bust, that was willing to sponsor me for an H-1B, working my ass off, and eventually moving to SF.

I think difficulties shape a person, hopefully for the good. At max, you will get a bunch of emmo guys, trying to be vegetarians and anti-comformist, mainly b/c they have nothing else to do in suburbia.

little stress in kids is good, so they don't become to complacient, and take everything for granted. A country filled with silver spoon fed kids, has no bright future.

<comment><USER3> I think this article and your comment can coexist under this thesis: the things kids are worrying about are increasingly more bogus. My personal opinion is that bogus problems have a powerful negative effect on people. You've lived the life of a street dog and grown up lean and strong, while these kids are living the yappy dog life and growing up neurotic. (I intend that as a compliment to you.) They're optomizing for nonexistent variables. The article touches on this idea:

"Researchers found that pupils in schools which tackled the problems they worried about, such as those with eco-clubs and recycling schemes to teach children about environmental problems, were happier."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Our parents got through the Cold War with "drop, tuck and roll," just fine. Plenty of British kids got through WWII with air-raids every other day. The more we treat children like fragile little eggs, the less able they will be to carry the torch.

Who said that children shouldn't be anxious? Was there ever a single moment in world history where children had nothing to worry about? Fear of real danger is as healthy a thing as I can think of.

</comment><comment><USER5> The backlash of it all will be even more apathy, which can be pretty dangerous. "We're all going to die anyways." Hence, a vicious cycle.

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one that finds irony in the fact that there's a newspaper article trying to make parents feel anxious about how anxious their kids are?

Isn't this too much cow bell? I mean, what's next? A TV report about the number of newspaper stories that try to make people worry about things?</comment>


Google Analytics Lies - <AUTHOR> https://code.krister.ee/google-analytics-lies/ <comment><USER2> Tracker blocking would explain some of this (though my experience is that it's <10% of traffic, though I'm dealing with a lot more than 20 visitors pr. day). Your JS solution is unnecessary though for first-party tracking, just parse your server logs.</comment>


Cloudflare Warp: Hide Behind the Edge - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cloudflare-warp/ <comment><USER2> This could be a useful way of exposing your local dev (or ci) server for testing via third parties. Seeing how Argo will be required it is likely not for all users.</comment>


Show HN: Taxi Fair - Your own personal taxi meter - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/taxi-fair-2/id693748797

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got a few tokens for anyone that wants to try it out:

[http://tokn.co/wa69ybv2](http://tokn.co/wa69ybv2) [http://tokn.co/j7tb9cd9](http://tokn.co/j7tb9cd9) [http://tokn.co/c4yha3sc](http://tokn.co/c4yha3sc) [http://tokn.co/amh5chnw](http://tokn.co/amh5chnw) [http://tokn.co/sxgdp2cx](http://tokn.co/sxgdp2cx)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle boreout?  - <AUTHOR>

I re-factored the spine of my start-up's code base to eliminate a code-smell, and in the process of fixing every test, I bored myself to the point where I don't have motivation to continue. I'm currently resisting taking the day off to play video-games. How do you cope with this? <comment><USER2> Take a whole week preferably 10 days off. Try not to resist the tempatation, you'll expend more effort feeling guilty, and that's equally non-productive.

I know from experience that it is completely counter-intuitive if you care about your project to just forget it for a while, but I also found that I was able to focus better on the real priorities when I dropped the ball, and had to restart.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those unfamiliar with boreout: <http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout> (I just learned about it when googling for burnout)

</comment><comment><USER3> Take the day off to play video-games!

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like you need a day off to play video games.</comment>


The Reign of Recycling - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html <comment><USER2> Not a topic I've really researched but even the article appears very misleading or biased.

There's the assumption that my regular trash goes to a landfill (it does not) and even if it did, maybe my goal is not to save money but to have fewer stupid landfills. I'm not really interested in how much open space is available to pile up trash, I just plain don't want it to pile up.

It then makes some odd argument about offsetting the carbon of airplane travel when I'm really just concerned about the carbon embodied in the plastic bottle.

Complaints about the annoyance of composting facilities seems plenty absurd just after talking about the abundance of open space to dump trash.

There's other bits and pieces strewn about the article but the whole thing reaks of "Nirvana Fallacy": the current solution isn't good enough so let's sit on our hands until we think of a better one.

<comment><USER3> The point was that landfills and incinerators work pretty well and that there's no rational justification to eliminate them. And landfills needed for 1000 years of USA's trash would take up about .1% of our grazing land.

Just because people might not like the concept of piling up trash doesn't mean it's an inherently bad idea.

Overall waste and recycling is low on the threats to our planet so I think doing nothing is ok (if by doing nothing you mean incinerating trash to generate electricity or responsibly burying it). The primary issue is reducing meat/dairy consumption and the next is transportation.

<comment><USER4> > The point was that landfills and incinerators work pretty well and that > there's no rational justification to eliminate them.

Incinerators have well known carcinogenic effects.

Landfills can easily pollute the nearby fields and water aquifers. And in most of Europe and Japan there is no more space for them.

<comment><USER5> Are we talking about classic incinerators (simply burn stuff) or plasma arc (gasification)incinerators? With plasma arc gasifications the temperatures are so high (2,200 to 13,900 °C) that all the waste and any resulting toxic byproducts, the very molecules themselves, are broken down to individual atoms. There are no toxic compounds left.

All that remains at the end is ash that contains various metals and syngas that is produced in the process. Which can be used for generating electric power.

I hope plasma arc gasification becomes the standard for managing and disposing municipal solid waste. It really works. But you do need a certain scale (enough waste) for it to be effective.

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

[http://www.waste-management- world.com/articles/print/volume-...](http://www.waste-management- world.com/articles/print/volume-11/issue-6/features/plasma-arc-the-leading- light.html)

<comment><USER4> > Are we talking about classic incinerators (simply burn stuff) or plasma arc > (gasification)incinerators?

In 2015 "incinerator" means classic burners. Plasma gasification is practically unused: there are less that 10 plasma gasification facilities in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of contradictions in this short screed.

Apparently fining people for putting their trash in the recycling is bad, but charging them for landfill waste is good. What will stop these people from trying to save money by putting it in the recycling instead? Fines perhaps?

Landfills are good because they give off methane, but recycling food and yard waste is bad. Yet isn't it exactly those parts of the waste stream that decompose to methane and can be captured directly?

Recycling trucks use too much fuel but locating landfills out in the country is sensible.

The recycling industry is just make work for special interests, yet we should stop recycling paper so that we can keep tree loggers in jobs.

</comment><comment><USER7> This mostly qualifies as "not even wrong" material.

Recycling may or may not be broken in New York or the US at large, but it's quite a no-brainer that you should not try to incinerate aluminum cans just to waste resources making new material. (Or paper. Or glass.)

With language like "indoctrination" there's no way to take this seriously. (Don't get me started on countries still using landfills. There's just no excuse for a modern society. The cost model won't make sense at all unless you do something with your trash.)

The examples in the article is also cringeworthy. "To offset the greenhouse production of a plane trip you have to recycle x cans" (where x is large). On the surface that tells us plane trips are very dirty, greenhouse-wise. Yet somehow the spin is how inefficient recycling is. But the greenhouse effect is not the main reason to recycle (also aluminum production is heavy on using renewables)!

<comment><USER8> > But the greenhouse effect is not the main reason to recycle

What is the main reason to recycle? I always assumed it was either for greenhouse reasons and/or landfill space reasons, but I might not really understand the goals.

If a goal is less greenhouse emissions, then I think the point of the water bottle / plane trip example is that at a macro level, there are much better ways to reduce greenhouse emissions. Refraining from a single plane trip reduces more emissions than a lifetime of bottle recycling. It seems akin to stating your goal is to save money, which leads you to spend a few hours recovering a handful of coins from your couch and then buying a new car. Yes, the coins you recovered did get you more money, but relative to your other action -- the new car -- it is insignificant.

<comment><USER7> > What is the main reason to recycle?

It saves resources. But it's also economically efficient, which is the main reason societies do it.

Landfills are completely dysfunctional in every way. Worst case, burn it and make use of the energy. The ashes are then much easier to take care of than what's seeping out of landfills.

> Refraining from a single plane trip reduces more emissions than a lifetime > of bottle recycling.

Even if that was the goal, nobody ever said "Shall I take a plane trip today? No, I think I will recycle plastic bottles instead!". It's completely orthogonal.

I like the parable about how saving a handful of coins is insignificant to buying a new car. In practice you pick up the dropped the coins from your couch, independent if you plan to buy that car or not.

It works both ways. To frame the problem the way as in the article, no one pours spare coins out the window because you just decided not to buy a new car next week.

<comment><USER8> > It saves resources. But it's also economically efficient, which is the main > reason societies do it.

I don't really think I agree that economic reasons are the only reasons to recycle. Some things like green house gas emissions are economic externalities that we should take into account even though they don't directly affect the economic bottom line.

From that logic if recycling was ever proven to not be economically efficient, then we should stop doing it. I think the article was basically saying that in many ways it isn't economically efficient.

> Landfills are completely dysfunctional in every way.

Not sure if I agree with that. In the USA, we have a lot of extra space. After a certain number of years, the landfill can be covered and the land itself reused. Seems just like another form of recycling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A completely neglected key factor is that it costs much less energy to manufacture recycled materials than virgin materials.

'A study ... found that it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. In contrast, the total energy for collecting, hauling and processing a ton of recyclables adds up to just 0.9 million Btu. The bottom line: We don't need to worry that recycling trucks are doing more harm than good.' \- [http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a3736/42...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a3736/4290631/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Tierney's original 1996 article had a huge impact on me when it came out, and I still get in arguments with my wife today when I don't recycle.

It seems obvious to me that the right answer to waste is to apply a Pigovian tax [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax) , which is what Tierney is suggesting with the $15 tax per ton of landfill waste. Then, materials that can be profitably separated (currently, paper, aluminum, and cardboard) would be exempted from the fee if you separate them.

The great problem I have with current recycling is that it is not based on any realistic theory of monetizing externalities.

<comment><USER11> Pigovian tax?

Tierney writes:

 _It would be much simpler and more effective to impose the equivalent of a carbon tax on garbage, as Thomas C. Kinnaman has proposed_

I already pay to have someone haul away my garbage, yard waste, recycling.

How is what you, Tierney, and Kinnaman propose different?

[Kinnaman's paper is paywalled.]

<comment><USER10> In New York City, it is against the law not to recycle. Paying for garbage removal (via taxes, or preferably, a per bag fee), but not for (realistically) recyclable trash removal, would be a good start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Moreover, recycling operations have their own environmental costs, like > extra trucks on the road and pollution from recycling operations.

Opposed to trucks driving to "rural communities"

<comment><USER13> Yeah, he's making a nitwit statement there. Recycling or landfill - it's the same quantity of mass that has to be hauled somewhere.

<comment><USER14> That's not in the slightest true. Recycling stations are very high tech, and very expensive. There are not many of them.

So you have to ship your recycling much much farther than your garbage.

<comment><USER15> As opposed to [for example] mining/milling/refinement/etc operations, which are also generally highly centralised?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's hard to take this article seriously - heavy on broad stroke attacks (it's cheaper to send to landfill) than data from third party sources.

On an unrelated note if a composting facility reeks that's a management problem not a fundamental issue of composting - that means there is too much "green" waste such as food scraps relative to "brown" waste such as soiled paper.

<comment><USER17> It is also worth noting how the author doesn't mind the landfills as long as they are in rural countryside. You know, where I grow my food and raise animals for their meat, not him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Although I've been a dedicated recycler for years, I'm glad to read this. It confirms an impression I had already received from various other sources, that the primary value is separating out metals (especially aluminum) and paper -- actually I didn't know that recycling paper made such a big difference -- and plastics are secondary.

Is it worth rinsing plastic to recycle it? I've wondered about this. Sounds like it probably isn't unless it takes only a small amount of rinsing.

<comment><USER19> > the primary value is separating out metals (especially aluminum) and paper

Especially cardboard. Cardboard is significantly more valuable than other types of paper.

> Is it worth rinsing plastic to recycle it? I've wondered about this. Sounds > like it probably isn't unless it takes only a small amount of rinsing.

The article argues that it isn't if you rinse in hot water, which was heated by electricity (not gas), which came from a coal power plant. That seems like a comparison which is set up to make recycling look bad. I've never had any problems just rinsing plastic with cold water or leftover dish water, in which case it sounds like it's still worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really liked this article. Even though we don't have access to the most relevant information (e.g. dollars per ton CO2 saved, or a cost benefit analysis using a shadow price of CO2), the author presents a lot of very compelling figures to show that recycling is overrated.

For example, given the overwhelming concentration of the benefits of recycling in paper and metal (as opposed to plastic and bottles), surely collections efforts and public education should be focussed on these.

And the author is exactly right to refer to "indoctrination" regarding recycling. At least that was my experience in primary school and high school.

I think the most important problem with the Green movement is not special interests per se (I doubt recyclers really that powerful) but the mindset that says that changing other people's opinion is more important than presenting them with the most accurate information.</comment>


Google News redesign: "a lovely example of personalization done poorly" - <AUTHOR> http://glinden.blogspot.com/2010/07/big-redesign-at-google-news.html

<comment><USER2> Agreed with the article. I begin to dislike this Google design and look, too busy for me, same with Reader.

Is there an alternative to Google News?</comment>


Ask HN: What news have I missed since PRISM broke? - <AUTHOR>

I've been mostly reading news about PRISM and the NSA and who's culpable or not and who knew or not for the past few days. What slipped by during this firestorm? What news should I really know about but I missed it?<p>Note: I think I'm being pretty snarky by asking in this way but the HN rankings have been dominated by the same story and I don't know a better way to ask. I'd also love a response that tells me how I should have handled this differently. <comment><USER2> In all it was a slow day. It appears all IO domains went down for a few hours but other than that not much.</comment>


Recess Labs: A Pre-Idea Incubator - <AUTHOR> http://www.recesslabs.com <comment><USER2> I love this idea! Its like a side-project focused sabbatical. I wonder what kind of startups are going to come out of it.</comment>


The 'Radiolab' Effect - <AUTHOR> http://www.observer.com/print/136694

<comment><USER2> I love Radiolab, it's like christmas morning every time they put a new episode up on their podcast.

It is honestly one of the most engaging podcasts available.

Obligatory link: <http://www.radiolab.org/></comment>


The parasite Toxoplasma makes rats lust for cat pee and people drive motorbikes - <AUTHOR> http://tobiastenney.com/2010/06/toxoplasma/ <comment><USER2> The TFA asks "how do you test for Toxo" - the answer: [http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food- poisoning/toxoplasmos...](http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food- poisoning/toxoplasmosis-test?page=2)

That article really made me shudder: _A small literature is coming out now reporting neuropsychological testing on men who are Toxo-infected, showing that they get a little bit impulsive. … And then the truly astonishing thing: two different groups independently have reported that people who are Toxo- infected have three to four times the likelihood of being killed in car accidents involving reckless speeding_

I have a cat (and have always had one) and am in constant close contact (she's literally in my lap non-stop while I'm at home) and I sometimes (often?) forget to clear the cat litter for days (yuck, I know). And I have this thing where I always feel I'm _simply not going fast enough_ while on the road (140kmph on mountain roads is normal for me during my 90km one-way daily commute). Am I just overreacting (traditional self-diagnosis) or is this really worth looking into?

<comment><USER3> The likelihood that you're accurately judging the origins of your driving behavior from your keyboard while a cat is on your lap after reading an article like this is 0.0%. I have a dog in the room with me. Let me help you out. You are not a toxo zombie, 'ComputerGuru.

<comment><USER4> how do we know that the Toxo parasite isn't making you say that? ;)

<comment><USER3> ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-ZOITE.

<comment><USER5> I suggest we all go to the Brain Slug planet -- just walk around, not wearing a helmet.

<comment><USER6> Funny, but you guys are making a classic logical mistake: mocking a potentially serious problem because it seems to have a completely mundane and boring source (housecats).

If the article was about how taking a medicine for high blood pressure increased the risk of death by car accident by 5x, or if flying in a plane the past week increased the risk of death by car accident 5x, or anything more obscure and unusual, you'd be all over it.

<comment><USER7> I think the mocking is not the mundane and boring source, rather the logic of "I drive fast, and I have a cat so it must be toxo."

That's unsound logic, no matter how mundane or extraordinary the housecat is, because habitual fast driving happens for any number of reasons of which toxoplasma gondii is possibly one.

<comment><USER3> It's also unsound logic that is clearly a result of watching and reading an especially vivid piece on the fascinating mechanations of toxo. If I read a piece on the symptoms of spleen cancer, I'm going to think I have that ailment too; it's just how my brain works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How many people are tested annually for toxo and in which situations would someone be tested for toxo?

Dr Sapolsky tells some interesting stories but the skeptic in me wonders how someone can take such a seemingly small independent variable like the presence of toxo in humans and suggest it affects certain specific behaviors like driving aggressively. To be fair, he stops short of establishing any sort of causation, but his implications certainly allow him to weave a fascinating story. Is it safe to assume that telling a good story helps one garner support for funding research?

<comment><USER9> I actually had to have a test for it as part of my working visa application to Belgium. I thought it was really weird, and so did my doctor!

<comment><USER10> Sounds like someone along the line made a mistake - toxoplasmosis isn't infectious between humans (except mother to baby) and shouldn't be included in these test. Typically syphilis and tuberculosis are tested for, plus any additional infectious diseases depending on where you are from.

Perhaps the test was to make sure you already have it, so you would better fit in with us raw-meat-eating Belgians :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Excellent Radio Lab episode on this and other parasites: <http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/09/25>

</comment><comment><USER12> hmm, if i were a MotoGP rider I would so be getting a cat right now.

</comment><comment><USER13> Obligatory: <http://xkcd.com/719/>

</comment><comment><USER14> You got me.

ex-Biker, sometime-speeder and cat-attendant.</comment>