Windscale Piles: Cockcroft's Follies avoided nuclear disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-29803990

<comment><AUTHOR> My thermodynamics professor was there as a young scientist when this happened. From what he told us (probably in clear breach of the Official Secrets Act) this was a truly terrifying accident. The absence of temperature data meant that it was impossible to know how extensive the fire was or what remedies would work. Eventually, in desperation, water was used despite the clear hazard of creating a catastrophic Hydrogen/Oxygen explosion. My professor recalled being sent up these towers to monitor any radiation release, perhaps an early example of "this is a job for the intern".

<comment><USER2> Just remember everybody: nuclear power is super safe! Luck is a fucking super- duper strategy for not having nuclear accidents.

       Construction was well under way when Sir John, the director of the Atomic
       Energy Research Establishment, insisted the filters be installed.

       "He saw that if there was a fire, which was probable, there would be no way
       of stopping radioactive dust escaping into the atmosphere," his son said.

       Because they were last-minute additions, the filters were placed atop the
       two 360ft (110m) tall chimneys rather than at the base.
       [...]

       They were roundly criticised by the engineers building the nuclear facility.

       Engineers, who had been told by the government to make the UK a nuclear
       power by 1952, nicknamed the filters Cockcroft's Follies, mocking them as an
       expensive piece of pointless delay.

       However, as one of Sir John's physicists Terence Price said after the fire,
       "the word folly did not seem appropriate after the accident".
       http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-29803990

<comment><USER3> Nuclear power has nothing to do with that incident. Windscale (Sellafield) facility was a military plant, it's raison d'etre was Plutonium production for UK nuclear weapons.

<comment><USER4> Also, the Windscale accident was in 1957. That was extremely early in terms of nuclear _anything_ (power or otherwise); the risks simply weren't all known yet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This accident, along with quite a few others, is covered in the excellent book: _Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima_ by James Mahaffey:

[http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns- Disasters-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters- Mountains/dp/1605984922/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415135359&sr=8-1&keywords=atomic+accidents+a+history)

Edit: The book is no way anti-nuclear and actually starts with a description of a horrific accident at a hydro-electric plant.

<comment><USER6> YES. This book made the rounds on our entire software engineering team here at Joyent, and got to the point that people with only passing interest in the subject were reading it just to get our newly-discovered references to various nuclear disasters and near-disasters. The book -- unlike most technical non- fiction -- is written very, very well, and the snarky footnotes are themselves worth the price of admission. Highly recommended!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think Cockcroft is a small hero in this story. He expended significant political capital to push through a very unpopular idea because he could see the importance at a time when absolute safety was not the first concern. Brave.</comment>


MongoDB is to NoSQL like MySQL to SQL — in the most harmful way - <AUTHOR> http://use-the-index-luke.com/blog/2013-10/mysql-is-to-sql-like-mongodb-to-nosql

<comment><USER2> I still wonder if MongoDB is really that "harmful", or if the rush to use it inappropriately, or in the wrong use cases, results in the expected failures.</comment>


How PGP Works Under the Hood - <AUTHOR> http://marcomanzoni.me/blog/how-pgp-works-under-the-hood/ <comment><USER2> > 384 bits [RSA key] for normal security, 512 bits for a medium security, 1024 > bits for a strong security

Um, this doesn't sound up to date. 1024 bit RSA isn't considered safe for a long term key. In fact, public (SSL) CAs aren't allowed to issue 1024 bit RSA certificates anymore.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I thought 2048 bits was the minimum RSA key size.

<comment><USER4> I think I'll just stick with my 4096 bit key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting post. As someone who thought GPG (more or less) encrypted messages with public keys and decrypted them with private ones, I enjoyed learning how the software actually works at a high level.

As an aside, I recently set up encrypted email for my Mac's desktop Mail client using the GPG Suite. I want to set up my friends with secure email, too, but none of us really use Mail; we prefer web mail. I haven't been able to find good browser plugins for GPG. (WebPG for Chrome looks promising except for a major bug that prevents messages from being sent; I reported this issue.)

Can anyone recommend good solutions for bringing GPG to Gmail in the browser? I want something that's easy enough my non-technical friends will be willing to use it for everyday conversations.

<comment><USER6> Do people who encrypt their Gmail get targeted ads for MjJlNzE4ZTNlMTA2NWE0ZjBlODk5MTMyNDY2NGJiYjg3ODFkYmY0NDk4MzY0MTQ1ODZhNzM0NjVlOGQwOTI2ZA?

<comment><USER7> Google keeps the key, but only for advertising purposes...

<comment><USER7> the down-votes won't change my mind since this is their business model

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know why P-/GPG is still using MD5?

<comment><USER9> It supports it for historical reasons but you should not use it. Here is the recommended configuration:

[https://help.riseup.net/en/security/message- security/openpgp...](https://help.riseup.net/en/security/message- security/openpgp/best-practices)

<comment><USER8> Thanks! So if I do make a signature using GPG, it might still silently sign just an MD5 digest, if I didn't (re-)configure it properly? That sounds scary...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My firewall reports suspicious activity on this site.

It reports the 'virus' Sus/FBJack-A.

Still trying to find out exactly what that is...

Edit: [http://www.sophos.com/en-us/threat-center/threat- analyses/su...](http://www.sophos.com/en-us/threat-center/threat- analyses/suspicious-behavior-and-files/Sus~FBJack-A.aspx)

<comment><USER11> Seems safe: [https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/c9c5514fd72fa2824a60ea0a67...](https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/c9c5514fd72fa2824a60ea0a67c1eb556c6e09b7c7406d9e9042b2eeb3f0f986/analysis/1406410808/)

What firewall are you using?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So if we have a pair of keys, can a message be decrypted with one key if encrypted by the other? And then we just designate 1 as public and the other as private?

<comment><USER13> RSA has this property, but the public and private keys are not chosen arbitrarily. The public key can easily be derived from the private key, but there is no obvious way to determine the private key from the public key.

<comment><USER14> Nitpick: in RSA implementations using the speed optimization of a small public exponent (sometimes even always the same small number, like 3 or 65537), the private exponent has to be derived from the public one. This derivation uses some secret information (the factors of the modulus), so not just anyone can do it. The standard private key file format includes the factors of the modulus to enable some speedups for private key operations; however, the math doesn't require this, and both public and private key operations could be done with just an exponent and a modulus. Someone with just a private exponent and modulus wouldn't be able to compute the matching public exponent, unless it were small and easy to guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about when Alice wants to send to Bob, Sam, and Joe? (But not outside observer James)

<comment><USER16> Symmetric encryption key (Km in the article) get encrypted separately with Alice, Bob, Sam and Joe public keys and then all those encrypted keys get concatenated with the message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article mentions that asymmetric encryption is slow, but I think the more important reason you can't use RSA directly is that it can only encrypt a small message, smaller then the size of the key.

I don't know if these same considerations apply to elliptic curve asymmetric encryption.</comment>


GMail is having issues again - <AUTHOR>

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/gmail/report-an-issue
Many reports (including from myself) of people being unable to
1. Send email
2. Upload attachments
3. View attachments
The status page isn't showing any errors, either http://www.google.com/appsstatus
Edit: My important email was finally able to be sent after 20 minutes of "server errors". <comment><USER2> I had similar issues briefly on the West coast yesterday. Maybe Google is doing a rolling upgrade or something?

</comment><comment><USER3> I am able to 1)send mail 2)upload attachment 3)view attachments

Kashif, Chennai, India</comment>


Ask HN: Heroku style, Linux Distro - <AUTHOR>

Is there any kind of linux distro which includes everything to deploy your rails application?.<p>All-in-one, deploy-ready, standardized, easy-to-scale, well designed file structure <comment><USER2> I was under the impression that Ruby people prefer their gems over distros packaging those same things. Judging by the stance a lot of rubists took against Debian and Ubuntu, it would be a safe bet to say that a distro you describe cannot really exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> you really dont need a distro for that, you can just whip up a chef, puppet or pallet recipe and away you go...

</comment><comment><USER4> can't recommend one in particular, but check some Amazon EC2 images.. someone has probably whipped one up

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://ec2onrails.rubyforge.org/>

EC2 on Rails is an Ubuntu Linux server image for Amazon's EC2 hosting service that's ready to run a standard Ruby on Rails application with little or no customization. It's a Ruby on Rails virtual appliance.

<comment><USER5> When I was doing my homework for deploying to EC2, I came across that and would highly recommend against it! For one thing, it's main committer is out of the picture and have yet to find a good branch with Rails 3 support.

I'd recommend looking into Rubber (<https://github.com/wr0ngway/rubber/wiki>) and Maestro (<https://github.com/bploetz/maestro>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Adding to this, is there any easy way to set up a git deployment architecture on your own server?

<comment><USER4> check this out.. heroku-like deployment. The concept is simple enough to hack to your own needs

[http://remi.org/2010/01/03/phd_passenger-based_heroku- like_d...](http://remi.org/2010/01/03/phd_passenger-based_heroku- like_deployment)

<https://github.com/remi/phd>

<https://github.com/remi/pushand></comment></comment>


First reprapped circuit - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reprap.org/2009/04/first-reprapped-circuit.html <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who's clueless as to what this is about?

<comment><AUTHOR> Reprap (<http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome>) is an open-source 3D printer that can print out most of the parts of itself. The things that can't be printed out include "trivial" things like the metal rods and the flat platform, and "non-trivial" things like motors and electronics.

This is a step towards printing out the electronics. I believe there were efforts in printing out motor components as well, although no results so far, as far as I know.

<comment><USER3> It's a step forward for RepRap...but to be cruel, this is like your disabled child learning to use a spoon at age 6.

I love the project a lot; I was friends with one of the founders ~15 years ago, until we got separated by geography. He had an amazing hack/DIY ethic then, and clearly still does - I'm very impressed with what he's achieved.

But as you can see from the RepRap homepage, funding comes from donations, t-shirts and kit sales. Ideologically pure DIY is laudable but we've all seen software projects that were a triumph of individual achievement and a true labor of love, but where v1.0 finally landed with an interface that was >5 years out of date.

The problem at bottom is that RepRap can't do things on a very fine scale, and you can't build a new RepRap from an existing one - you can make bits, but not the motors or the extruder, which are exactly the (relatively) expensive and hard-to-source parts in shortest supply in places like Africa.

Given the increasing quality and affordability of commercial RP and 3d printing machines, it might make a lot more sense to raise a few hundred k or a few million in capital, buy the good commercial stuff, and skip several generations, just as the OLPC was (presumably) designed on the most up-to-date computers available, rather than being bootstrapped on 8086 machines for reasons of ideological purity.

Reprap is a great venture, but it's never going to get there by itself, and the founders are never going to dirty themselves asking for a big check in exchange for any kind of commercial license. It's held back by it's 'techno- Amish' origins.

<comment><USER3> Or in short, their lack of interest in scaling up limits the hardware's ability to scale down. I talk too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you aware of MakerBot (<http://makerbot.com/>)? This is exactly the thing they're doing: they've launched a company whose first product is based on reprap.

<comment><USER3> I am now :-)

and I think their emphasis on low cost and general utility (as opposed to self-reproducibility) will net them more users and $. I've also been following the Desktop Factory, who promise 3 desktop printing for $5k: <http://www.desktopfactory.com/> Still vaporware commercially speaking, but ti doesn't hurt that they look a Real Company.

I hope I don't sound too down on the RepRap or on you for posting it. I've got a classic case of the 'introverted total DIY = unfinished project' myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pouring molten solder into a mold seems kind of crude; solder is rather blobby even with flux.

I'd have thought that using printer technology would be easier. You could print conductive areas and semiconductors and resistors directly onto an insulator. You could make 3D objects as papercraft.</comment>


Show HN: Formulita – a simple Formula 1 app - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.formulita

<comment><AUTHOR> My objective was to develop an application that allowed me to check only the most relevant information of the Formula 1 championship in a simple and fast way.

This is my first Android application. It is free and it does not contain any ads.

Any feedback is appreciated.</comment>


Simple Day Tracker - <AUTHOR> https://daytracker.tiiny.host/ <comment><AUTHOR> By [https://twitter.com/simplestudio02](https://twitter.com/simplestudio02)</comment>


Why Hacker News Thinks PHP Won Something - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-hacker-news-thinks-php-won.html <comment><USER3> Without the disparaging remarks toward HN, this post would be much better. Granted, I'm new here, but I feel like HN is more about embracing intelligent discussion than embracing the "right way".

The fact that this post could raise a coherent counterpoint to the issue is evidence enough of that.

<comment><USER4> Giles is still angry that his post "Muppets" got downmodded a lot. (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=172894>)

I thought his criticism was valid though. (Not that he cares one bit! ;) ... Both those articles started off assuming that PHP 'won' something, and then tried to explain why by pointing out good things about PHP and its community. Neither of them started by laying down the contest rules, examining all the contenders, and picking a winner... They started with a winner and worked backwards somehow into the aether.

On the other hand, if you just realize headlines are _by definition_ linkbait, you can make the mental substitution of the phrase "became more popular than any other toy language" for the word "won". Suddenly those articles make more sense, even if they become less controversial (or insightful) in the process.

<comment><USER5> from talking to Giles (I work with him), I think his problem with hacker news is that it's basically turning into another digg/reddit/slashdot type of thing. It's basically a pool of links outlining what's popular with whoever the users of the site are at the moment, and that group of people is likely to change over time.

I think what would work better is a pool of links that shows you stuff you might find interesting based on past usage (voting up/down, friending others, etc). Don't show me what's interesting to everybody who reads the site, show me what's interesting to _me_. As Giles has said in the past, I have a need for better filtering mechanisms.

<comment><USER4> Ah. I come here mostly for the discussion. It's honestly quite rare that the actual link is that interesting to me. In fact, the commentary here is probably the only thing that really differentiates it from Reddit/Digg.

But if he wants content personalized, Stumbleupon might be a good avenue.

<comment><USER6> I come here mostly for the discussion. It's honestly quite rare that the actual link is that interesting to me.

I've been finding exactly the same thing, actually. Usually when I upvote it's because the discussion is interesting, rather than the article.

I don't really have a problem with that though; reddit et al can provide links in topics of immediate interest, but the community still differentiates HN IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand this article. I think it wouldn't have gotten as much interest without the meta-hacker news aspect, and I'd much rather see less of that stuff than less about PHP.

The thing thats most wrong with this article is the author understands exactly what the other authors meant. I don't think they were attaching any more meaning to word 'won' than having the most users. Something this author doesn't dispute. Communication was successful, if you need to add extra information about why you think PHP sucks then go ahead. It's not in conflict with those other articles.

I doubt anyone's idea of won is: earns contract programmers more money. Even here though the author contradicts himself in two ways: he says that PHP was more popular because you didn't need headers, and that this meant the "difference between driving a Honda and piloting a yacht". Then he claims that PHP had no language advantages and earns you less money.

There is a lesson in there for language designers - keep making those simple but common tasks easier, every little bit can make huge difference if its multiplied by an economic shift.

<comment><USER8> Yeah - this was simply trolling. But when you go through this - he actually has one interesting argument about why PHP won the biggest market share - <USER2> it is that it improved in just one aspect over the dominant language of that time - Perl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I agree with the assertion that warm bodies organized around a specific technology does not = win, I'm not certain that those are the only metrics for success at play in these articles.

Take the case of the small startup without an inspired coder CTO which didn't have time to wait for ruby or python programmers who went shopping for contractors. PHP can get you far and fast (and often badly).

I was interviewed to lead technology in a place like this and they knew I'd try to make them start over and abandon PHP (purist, longview). PHP had provided them capability and in their mind clearly "won" (developers existed and made themselves clearly visible on the market). They wouldn't have been in business at that point if they had held out for something better.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just because an article with a subjective title gets voted up doesn't mean the community necessarily agrees with it.

Unless you're on Reddit and the post is titled "Vote up if you think PHP won!!!"

<comment><USER11> Exactly. I upvote if I think it's interesting, even if I also think it's wrong.

<comment><USER12> yeah but that's what bothers me. you've got a site founded by the guy who wrote "The Python Paradox" and everybody there thinks it's interesting to discuss PHP. come on! it doesn't matter if it's wrong or not. there is nothing interesting about PHP. there's nothing to learn there. there's no story. even my rant was just Economics 101.

trying to extract lessons from the design of PHP is like trying to win the lottery by wearing a trucker hat because you saw some dude in a trucker hat win the lottery. there's nothing there! you might as well be reading tea leaves. which is what I said in the rant, but you didn't get the point. you might as well be posting a picture of some tea leaves and then having a discussion about that.

yes a good enough conversationalist can extract something meaningful from _anything_ , and that's the real challenge I was after when I wrote the rant, but if your goal is to write something interesting about what you saw on Hacker News, let me tell you, Hacker News does not make it easy for you by talking about PHP.

<comment><USER13> _there is nothing interesting about PHP_

Obviously people in this community feel that there is something interesting there worth discussing. If you disagree, perhaps that implies that this community isn't a good fit for you.

<comment><USER4> Just because he disagrees doesn't mean he should go away.

There are lots of people that disagree in 'challenging ways', but if everyone here saw everything the same way, there would be no discussion at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "A commodity can only compete on location and price, and location doesn't really get you much on the Internet."

I don't know why the author thinks PHP coding is somehow different from every other kind of programming, and that there aren't huge differences between programmers (we're talking orders of magnitude) as far as speed of output and code quality go.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, Giles seems kind of confused about how the PHP ecosystem works. Those "commodity" PHP programmers who flood the market with insanely low bids? As a PHP programmer, they are not your problem. They are your _client's_ problem, one that you can charge money to _solve_. Because it's really hard for a client to find good developer talent among that huge crowd. Lord knows it can't be done by screening resumes for keywords. So once you (the aspiring PHP programmer) have done a bit of work and a bit of networking, and a handful of established PHP folks have met you and filed your name in their contact lists under _good PHP talent_ (a club that is really not _that_ hard to join) you're likely to start getting leads. Leads who are willing to pay your price just to avoid having to screen another 5,000 resumes.

Meanwhile, that army of "commodity" programmers will be out there, energetically _growing the market for your services_ by bringing lots and lots of new PHP-powered sites online. Every blogger who installs Wordpress, and every school and church and magazine and music label that goes online with a basic Drupal site, is a potential future customer.

Of course, just because PHP work pays decently and is easy to find doesn't mean you'll enjoy it. There's a lot of pain involved in working with PHP, particularly other people's PHP. (I ameliorate the pain somewhat by sticking strictly to Drupal, which has higher coding standards and a better defined, more modular structure than the average PHP newbie's code.) But the work is certainly out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _A commodity can only compete on location and price, and location doesn't really get you much on the Internet._

I used to think this until I started freelancing, but it's _much_ easier to get quality jobs if you can meet with the client face-to-face at the start of the gig.

 _If you program only in the most popular programming language, you have made yourself a commodity._

The author seems to think that one PHP programmer is just as good as the next, but there's a whole litany of skills beyond just writing code in whatever language that make someone desirable to a client or employer, from communication to product design. Programmers are not cogs in a machine that you can replace easily as long as you find one that speaks the right language.

</comment><comment><USER16> Giles seems to be operating on the assumption that you can't charge a reasonable amount for PHP work. Does this imply that he views himself as a commodity programmer? That if he were to be doing PHP work he'd be doing it at the same caliber of an outsourced shop in India?

Of course if this Giles character knew anything about economics he would also know that complementary products have complementary demand curves. So, the more PHP applications out there means there's more demand for PHP programmers.

</comment><comment><USER17> Salary is not the only criterion - what if I mostly care about getting things done, not about becoming employed? (Not that I would choose PHP anyway, but still).

I am also not convinced that PHP just got lucky with the timing and that therefore there are no language design lessons to be learned. Perhaps if you get a noob into programming, they would still have an easier time with PHP than with more modern MVC based frameworks, because it is more straightforward. You still just write SQL directly in the code - it is messy, but easier to grasp than having to work through all sorts of layers of abstraction.

Maybe there IS a language lesson there - although I sure hope PHP is not the final answer...

<comment><USER18> Perhaps not a "language lesson", but PHP has a great deployment story: upload then refresh your browser.

PHP allows a strong separation between system administrator (who is running Apache) and the "application developers" who are people using FTP to upload their script files to a shared host. The simplicity of the system makes it easy for anyone to get started, hence the popularity.

There is also the bit about taking an existing UI (written in HTML) and being able to insert programming hooks into it at will. The "minimal change" is very small, the biggest step is changing the file extension from html to php.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good points but why not just comment within the thread?

<comment><USER20> _"... Good points but why not just comment within the thread? ..."_

Read ... [http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters- ope...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-open-door- heal-or-die.html)

and specifically ...

 _"... When you build a system where you get points for the number of people who agree with you, you are building a popularity contest for ideas. However, your popularity contest for ideas will not be dominated by the people with the best ideas, but the people with the most time to spend on your web site. Votes appear to be free, like contribution is with Wikipedia, but in reality you have to register to vote, and you have to be there frequently for your votes to make much difference. So the votes aren't really free - they cost time. If you do the math, it's actually quite obvious that if your popularity contest for ideas inherently, by its structure, favors people who waste their own time, then your contest will produce winners which are actually losers. The most popular ideas will not be the best ideas, since the people who have the best ideas, and the ability to recognize them, also have better things to do and better places to be. ..."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a rather strange argument: Use the least popular language around to make the most money. He's probably right. When I was younger (and I'm not that old) I did a stint working in COBOL. And honestly, you couldn't pay me enough to do that day in and day out!! But those that can stand it and know how to do it are paid well and have reasonable job security.

<comment><USER22> Dude's post was standard-issue comical purist bitching if you ask me. Sure, there's some value to be had by specialization, but taken to the logical conclusion dude's premise reduces to "step 1, learn fortran. step 3, make one million dollars.". Simply put, any language-specific grousing is either an expression of monkey-see-monkey-do false zealotry, or just plain wanking. The real question with any tool is, does it get the job done and from where I'm sitting PHP appears to be getting the job done for a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So if PHP is a commodity and price wins, why would any company NOT choose PHP as it's development environment? Cost wins in business. If PHP essentially does the same thing that Ruby and Python does, there would be no reason to pay a Ruby developer more.

There are various levels of skill within any programming language. It may take someone with no programming experience a day to write a small database app in PHP. It doesn't mean that I'd be willing to hire that person to code something worthwhile for my company.

You can't simply real world situations into easily digested bites and act like you are saying something profound. In reality, you're just omitting the layers that make the real world situations complicated.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's a repeatable principle in the PHP story: Know who the real customer is. In this case the real customer was shared hosting providers. In other cases you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER25> This isn't about PHP winning, it's about Ruby on Rails _not_ winning, ie: losing.

Obviously C# beats the pants of both of these hippy languages so the argument is moot anyway.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure it's fair to say that the ability to write php is less valuable then the ability to code other languages just because php is more popular. This may be true for contract work but if the majority of companies are using php it's probably in your best interest to know it. While it may be beneficial to know other languages, it could be detrimental not to know php, which could be considered a win for the language.

</comment><comment><USER27> I didn't bother reading this, based on the title which assumes I think PHP won something, I guess. I used PHP for a few years, then found something better. I never thought PHP won anything, other than a momentary lapse of my reason.

Next time, be less of a generalizing dick.

<comment><USER9> This comment won't be very popular and let me explain why in case you are interested in retaining credibility for potentially well thought out things you say in the future.

First, admitting that you didn't read the article in a comment on that article is showing your hand before the call and you know for a fact it's a losing hand. In the future, just fold and keep your chips.

Second, it's important to retain your clout in a community like this and actually reading the site regularly is key. If you had been reading this week you would have seen the 2 posts riding the top two related to PHP "winning". In both cases you would have gotten grumpy and written precisely this comment on those articles. If you had, you might have actually had a lot of upvotes. This articles is a response to those posts saying something resembling your point with some meditation on the topic.

Third, and this is the key point, try harder before commenting to ascertain whether or not you agree with the article before admitting to having not read it and then personally attacking someone you don't know. If you absolutely have to attack someone, it is universally bad form to attack someone whom you agree with.

<comment><USER27> Thank you for that very thorough critique. I have internally summarized it as "do not post comments after a night of heavy drinking." I trust this is in keeping with the spirit and overall theme of your follow-up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Spot on! Except for the hint of hacker news disdain.

</comment><comment><USER29> PHP won because web designers now can be programmers too.

I don't care about algorithms, binary trees or what fuck. I can code a web page in a day and that pays the bills.

It could have been an echo, a print or a put, but it had to be simple for us, not scary as system.console.writeln()

Most of you will never understand, you all come from a C or Lisp background and can make a computer cry for sure. We don't care, we just want to spit HTML in shiny ways and 'echo' is all we need.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, there is design and then there is Design. There is architecture and there is Architecture. There is programming and there is Programming.

Anyone can write but not everyone can (or rightly wants to) Write.

This is nothing new. Pulp outsells literature and I'm sure people cry rivers over it. Does that mean pulp "wins"? By one measure, obviously. But they still won't teach it in school and noone will remember it when it's gone.

<comment><USER30> _[T]hey still won't teach it in school and noone will remember it when it's gone._

Indeed, imagine a world in which English classes started with bawdy, violence filled plays written to entertain a mostly drunken and illiterate rabble. Then for the second unit, you could maybe read a serializations designed to sell magazines, whose author was paid by the word. Perhaps by the end of the year, you'd be ready for pop-lit writers who had to retcon their stories due to marketing considerations.

Ugh, what a pitiful and impoverished English curriculum it would be if transient crowd-pleasing drek like Shakespeare, Dickens, and Doyle were studied as literature.

<comment><USER31> There's a difference between pulp and Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's understanding (and manipulation) of the human condition is self- aware, with a wink and a nod.

Pulp, on the other hand, is typified by "Pregnant by the Millionaire." (A real book.) The author may have a certain level of self-loathing (doubt it), but these books are straight for all it's worth.

<comment><USER32> There is no difference between 'pulp' and Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote for the crowds of his day. The difference you allude to is between 'good' and 'bad' writing, according to your personal preference.

'Pulp' refers to popularity, not literary merit.

<comment><USER18> 'Pulp' refers to 'wood pulp', as in cheap and without much substance. Though you're right, judging something as objectively good is a generally hard thing to do, especially when what you are really trying to do is guess what people in 100 years will think of as good.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Wozniak on Samsung patent verdict: 'I hate it and I don't agree with it' - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/09/13/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-samsung-patent-verdict-i-hate-i-dont-agree-it/?utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&awesm=tnw.to_o4EZ&utm_source=Twitter <comment><USER2> This will just get him disavowed as a cofounder of Apple by the hardcore supporters. Eventually no one will remember he helped start Apple and everyone will think Jobs was the only one. (edit: true enough that they already see him as the black sheep, the embarrassing uncle everyone tries to ignore)

No one cares what the "naive, idealistic" engineer clueless about business thinks. That's the battle we're fighting - to fix patents, we have to tell people how it's not mere idealism or ideology, but how real businesses can get squeezed out by patent trolls or assholes if software patents don't get reformed soon.

On the bright side, I'm noticing more friends getting Androids, even around this time when the iPhone 5 is being launched. Only the core Apple supporters are going straight for the iPhone. The tide may be turning and Apple losing a bit of its shine, at least in my circles.

<comment><USER3> Well said. I think it's sad that the mind behind Apple technology is getting forgotten while the marketer gets all the glory. I, too, hope Woz is right and the case gets overturned on appeal.

I am also noticing the shift to Android in my circles. This could be a good thing.

<comment><USER4> I don't think Woz is in danger of getting forgotten anytime soon. In fact, given that the last technical contribution he made to Apple was, as far as I recall, about 30 years ago, it seems to me that is getting rather generous credit for Apple's success.

<comment><USER5> Woz:iPhone 5::George Washington:Apollo 11?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wise man. The way I see it, Apple had a case regarding "trade dress". Some Samsung devices, for example the Galaxy Tab 10.1, do look too much like Apple products. However, the rest of the patents were ridiculous. If the bar for patent validity is going to be this low, most software developers will not be able to do a day's work without accidentally infringing on something. Every piece of software I've seen being built most certainly uses methods that are described somewhere in patents, especially if it is leading edge in terms of communicating, collecting, syncing or displaying information through the web or mobile devices. If court decisions keep going this way, it is going to become impossible to code legally without the costly burden of acquiring a patent war chest and a team of layers to defend your organisation. We might as well shut down the industry to newcomers.

<comment><USER7> I'm interested in why you thought the bar was set low? From all my reading, it sounded like Samsung had to go out of their way to emulate the Apple processes, it wasn't something they would have accidentally done.

I'm not saying I agree with the verdict, but a lot of people misrepresent this case as, "Apple has a patent on pinch-to-zoom" (not true), and Samsung was sued for building a rectangle-with-glass (not true) - instead of the actual, more complicated case.

In particular, which patent did you think was "ridiculous?"

<comment><USER8> Pinch-to-zoom. Just because it is on a capacitive touch screen instead of some other type of touch screen, doesn't really change the implementation of it, and isn't worth patentability.

It is like someone coming on the scene and seeing that windowed GUIs weren't patented, deciding that now if I plug my VGA cord into an LCD instead of a CRT I have suddenly invented a new device and can get all the old innovations protected as long as they appear on a "computing device with LCD display".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope he's right that this gets reversed.

Apple makes a lot of best-in-class products (and I know some people that think everything they make is best-in-class).

Do they think they need to do this kind of litigation to keep making products people will buy? Are they trying to discredit Samsung as copycats? Or is it just a case of "if it costs us $100m to pursue 10 lawsuits with a 5% chance of any one of them getting us a $1b reward, it's a positive business move" sort of thing?

<comment><USER10> For the dozenth time: this is not some radical choice Apple made. Apple is, as a public company, responsible to act in its own interest within the current economic system. The system is screwed up, but that doesn't mean that any single company has a responsibility to unilaterally disarm.

<comment><USER11> Aggressive product-killing patent suits are not the norm, nor are they part of "the system" or "the game" as it's traditionally been practiced. Tech patents have been used to drive revenue: invent stuff, file patents, find infringers, negotiate for a royalty, sue if you can't come to agreement and eventually settle for whatever royalty you end up with.

Apple isn't the only bad actor in the mobile space right now. And other companies (c.f. Rambus) have been much worse in the past. But it's just not correct to argue that they were "forced" to act this way by their obligations to their shareholders. Don't make excuses.

<comment><USER12> And what if the other side doesn't want to settle?

Isn't the threat of injunction a large part of what drives infringers to settle on a royalty or stop infringement?

<comment><USER11> The reporting as it stands is that Apple's demands (something like $30/unit I think?) weren't something that could be meaningfully "negotiated". Obviously there's complexity here, but the same logic goes the other way: if Samsung felt they could get a significant discount on that $1B award via negotiation, surely they would have cut that deal, no?

<comment><USER12> From what was presented at trial the $30/unit was the first offer and basically Samsung didn't counter-propose anything.

It could very well be that Apple was inflexible on the $30 figure but to me a starting offer of $30/unit implies a settlement somewhere at or below $20/unit. Also note that the Apple offer included significant discounts that could wittle the per unit cost down by 20%/40%/60% for various things (or up to 100% if they also used Windows Phone instead of Android).

A settlement at $15 a unit with a 40%-60% discount would only be $6-$9 a unit. Considering Samsung pays Microsoft $5-$10 a unit this doesn't seem all that crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not taking sides. Don't have all the data. I'll just say that there's a huge difference between "Research & Development" and only "Development". The first is far more time consuming, risky and expensive. The second is a clear and guided roadmap that you simply follow to completion.

I used to be an idealist. I bought the whole idea of "just build a better product" without question. And so I did. Many years ago I embarked in the development of electronic products for a specific industry while trenching new territory and bringing new ideas to the user base. I opted not to file for patents because, well, they were expensive and I was going to just beat them with a better product. Or so I thought.

The first product took about a year and a half in R&D. Lots of work. Lots of problems to solve. Lots to learn. It finally got out and we did really good business right out of the gate. Hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. Eight months later competitors came out with devices offering about 60% of what we were doing at half the price.

It nearly killed the business. A six month month run with a hardware product isn't enough to recoup your R&D. Our competitors had the advantage of only having to do the "D" part because they copied and stole as much as they could. Never mind the fact that they did not have to trench new territory and actually test to see if there was a market there.

The lessons I learned during this period were invaluable (and very painful). Patents do have reason to exist and should not be ignored. People will cheat and steal in business the first chance they get. It takes a special kind of person to honor an agreement without the threat of serious financial harm through litigation if violated. People will violate NDA's and use them to get your ideas and insight under all kinds of pretenses.

Business is war. I was an idealist. An idiot. Live and learn.

I don't know about the Apple vs. Samsung issue. Frankly, I don't have the time to dive into the details. Even if it did, it would be a huge waste of my time as I have nothing to gain from such an exercise. Not taking sides, here's hoping that the courts get it right.

<comment><USER11> OK, the problem with your argument is this bit: " _Eight months later competitors came out with devices offering about 60% of what we were doing at half the price. It nearly killed the business_ "

If the HTC G1 "nearly killed" the iPhone 3G, then you might have an argument. Though it would depend in sensitive ways on things like whether or not Apple had made back its R&D costs over the year of Insanely Great iPhone sales. (The fact that that phone wasn't made by Samsung seems kinda important too).

Needless to say, Apple made out sorta OK under the Google/HTC onslaught of '08/90. So why cite something like this as a related anecdote when it clearly doesn't apply? The kind of damages you posit don't exist, so why sue to recoup them?

<comment><USER12> "If the HTC G1 "nearly killed" the iPhone 3G, then you might have an argument."

He's not really arguing that and admits ignorance of Apple vs whoever. He's arguing for the legitimacy of the patent system itself.

Moreover why would his anecdote of 8 months suddenly become a hard and fast rule that can be applied to all other industries after which all bets are off?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've said it before and I will say it again. Apple needs to compete on, and thus focus on the quality of their products. Not sue everyone else into the ground because they feel threatened. Apple will just keep squeezing out incremental changes to their devices and suing everyone else until they are the only ones left standing.

Maybe they should let Woz run the company, he seems to be the last innovator left.

<comment><USER12> In what world does Apple not focus on the quality of their products?

Maybe they're the biggest public company in the world because Woz has never been in charge?

<comment><USER15> It's not about the quality per se but I think their problem right now is that users' choice is overwhelming them and the one-size-fits-all approach of the iPhone has diminishing returns after a point. The variety, choice of screen sizes and price ranges of the competition is only getting better by the day.

A new iPhone is released only once a year, so it better be very good with a lot of new technologies, features, new designs etc. for sales to last all through the next year. iPhone 4S sales started lagging in the 3Q itself this year, compared to the 4th quarter for the iPhone 4. This is because people start waiting for the next version or switch to the competition because they have better specced devices with more features. I think Samsung timed their Galaxy S3 launch perfectly to coincide with the iPhone 4S getting old enough to beat, and they beat it in monthly sales for the first time, which is a noteworthy thing in itself.

The whole situation is reminding me of the PC wars in the 80s, where Apple had a seemingly unassailable innovation lead, and then squandered it away by offering limited choice and higher prices, while Microsoft very smartly licensed DOS to Compaq and others like Dell and HP, and the rest is history. Apple's marketshare is now 17% vs. Android's 67% which is about 4 times more. No wonder Apple is going crazy with the patent war against Android. That's probably their only weapon against the equivalent of the hordes of the 'beige boxes'.

<comment><USER12> I think Apple is aware that they only make one phone and the trade offs that result.

iPhone Q3 sales lagged more than the year before because global rollout is faster and in 2011 they had the midyear CDMA and white iphone launches to buoy Q3.

The Galaxy S3 may have outsold the 4S some months and some devices surely will in the future but the claim that it did so in July/August was not supported by much data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with the sentiment, admire respect the man for his contibutions to where technology is, but I really don't understand why Woz's opionion is solicited for every step that Apple of any time in the past 10 years has made. Even at the gestation of the company, his idea of how they should proceed was completely at odds with Jobs' (the latter actually wanted to turn a profit, among other things). I would call it safe to say modern Apple is all but devoid of Woz's influence

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't believe these guys just called the Woz "infamous".

<comment><USER18> Does infamous not mean "evil" or "bad reputation"? How come people keep using it as if its a good thing?

<comment><USER19> Infamous does indeed refer to the bad kind of fame - this is either a simple brain fart, or possibly the writer just doesn't have a very sound grasp of the language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's interesting that camera quality is so important for people, yet I find it difficult to find information on image quality beyond how many megapixels the sesnor has. The least they could do is tell me the sensor size/aperture size too.

You really have to search the specialized review sites to find good comparisons on image quality.

<comment><USER21> Not sure exactly what this references, but Apple actually gives fairly specific information on all of their iDevices cameras—on the Apple product page it specifically states 5 lens elements and an aperture of 2.4 for the iPhone 5. And 4 lens element and an aperture of 2.8 for the iPhone 4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Turn-by-Turn navigation came on Android way earlier than it came with iPhone 5 yesterday.

How fair it is for Apple complain about stealing ideas?

<comment><USER23> Are you trying to say, that Apple was not aware about the thing called turn- by-turn navigation before Android?

      > How fair it is for Apple complain about stealing ideas?

How about spending some time and finding out what the trial was really about?

<comment><USER24>
        "Are you trying to say, that Apple was not aware about the thing called turn-by-turn navigation before Android?"

Are you trying to say that Google was not aware of universal search?

<http://www.google.com/patents/US8086604>

<comment><USER25> Well, to be fair, the filing date on that patent is Dec 1, 2004.

Absent genuine industrial espionage, it would have been rather hard for the Google Desktop team to have been aware of it in October 2004: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop>

Or are you saying Google should have checked for new patents (and patent applications - this wasn't issued until December 2011) before re-implementing something they'd already done on the desktop on an Android phone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Apple should have won a copyright case against Samsung clearly copying too much of the overall iPhone design. Instead Apple won a patent case which sucks for everyone, not just Samsung. A litigious Apple could use this win against other Android (and smart-phone in general) manufactures.

<comment><USER27> Design falls under Design Patent/trademark (Trade Dress) not copyright.

<comment><USER26> Obviously they allow and people have patented things that are also copyrightable. I just don't think that they should allow patents for many of those things.

It feels like a painter suing another artist not for copying his painting but for using patented brush strokes to create it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Samsung may have copied the shapes and a few gestures like slide to unlock with the original galaxy s. But anyone who claims that it gave them a market advantage is being disingenuous.

Woz has always been rational about stuff and what he says. I hope the verdict gets overturned.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is lazy journalism.

Will people stop posting what Steve Wozniak thinks about everything? Just because he's Steve Wozniak doesn't make him a foremost expert on everything related to technology. Does this quote add any insight or value at all?

 _"I don't agree with it — very small things I don't really call that innovative. I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody's technologies."_

<comment><USER30> Actually it does. The man is not claiming to be an expert on technology, however he did help co-create one of the most successful and profitable companies in history. You have an opinion, why shouldn't he?

<comment><USER31> I don't think that's the only reason he's quoted often. I think the fact that Woz continues to have very sensible opinions on a lot of things has a lot to with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Patents are living proof that ideas are overrated.

</comment><comment><USER33> We know Woz is an 'outside looking in' type person. His remarks remind me of all the people who are really upset with Apple for pursuing this lawsuit. People seem to have this conception that Apple saw an opportunity to sue the pants of a harmless company so it did. This is not the case at all. The two corporations were in meetings with lawyers for a year trying to iron out a deal. The deals fell through and they went to court.

The truth is everyone has been and is suing Apple, all the time. [http://c4sif.org/2012/04/web-of-tech-patent-lawsuits- infogra...](http://c4sif.org/2012/04/web-of-tech-patent-lawsuits-infographic/) This graphic is now 9 month old. Truth is Apple is the most sued company in tech! I just don't get this 'down with Apple' mentality. It's completely irrational.

When Apple entered the phone telecom industry, it turned telecoms on their head. Apple started to take control from these awful companies (see my article on t-mobile: [http://news.nucleusdevelopment.com/2012/09/11/t-mobile- infla...](http://news.nucleusdevelopment.com/2012/09/11/t-mobile-inflated-my- bill-by-242-and-thought-i-wouldnt-notice/)) and give it to consumers. Remember verizon didn't want any part of the iPhone because 'it gave the consumer too much control'?

Google and Samsung have been helping the telecoms regain control, allowing crapware and bloatware to go right back on the phones. That is one of the very things that Apple fought so hard to keep off their phones, and one of the main reasons Verizon didn't initially want Apple as a vendor. Not to mention, The spyware that gets installed with out our knowledge, ie: Carrier IQ. Controlling the software OS on the phones (ei: why it takes so long to get a new version of Android on your existing phone).

<comment><USER25> There are all sorts of things I disagree with in this comment, but I want to highlight just one:

iPhones (like many Android phones and Blackberries and ...) had Carrier IQ software installed on them. Google-controlled Nexus phones did not.

Moreover, the only reason anyone outside of Carrier IQ, operators, smartphone manufacturers, etc knows anything at all about Carrier IQ is that some people discovered it while trying to reverse-engineer an Android phone.

You may think Apple is a white knight protecting you from the carriers. The truth, as always, is much more complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So how would things have turned out if we dropped all the software patent claims and Apple could only sue on trade dress?

Apple is a hardware company. A hardware enclosures design company, really; they outsource most everything to do with producingthe hardware. For a company like Apple, trade dress claims make sense. Software patents seem a little fishy.

(Even for software companies software patents are a bit fishy. That's why they've traditionally relied on copyright. And if I'm not mistaken that's why the USPTO is soon going to be issuing new rules and a new system to deal with software/business method patents since they cause so much concern.)

</comment><comment><USER18> I love the head on that man's shoulders.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why use expression like "The infamous engineer"? what does it mean? some writers just go overboard sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER36> I feel like the craziness is only just beginning.

<comment><USER37> It has long since begun.

It is beyond me, why everyone chooses to ignore Nokia's taking a chunk out of Apple and Microsoft taking a chunk out of HTC, Samsung and Barnes & Nobles.

Apple's case isn't anything new.

<comment><USER38> Many tech companies have used patents in the past to get royalties from each other. Some have been more aggressive than others.

What is new about the Apple case is that they appear to be using patents to completely block competitors from the market, and making a huge amount of noise about how other companies are "blatantly copying" things like slide-to- unlock.

Microsoft have been extracting money from Android manufacturers for a while now, but the public don't know and don't care. If Microsoft were to go around making noise about Android being copy-cats and stealing their ideas, people would be even more angry with them than they are with Apple (being Microsoft).

The argument that often goes around HN that "Nokia started it" completely misses the point of what Apple are doing.

<comment><USER37> Watch more patent litigation. The suits are always just proxies for the licensing negotiation. Even seeking to get products blocked from market is just hardball.

Despite the massive judgment in the Samsung/Apple case, it will likely all boil down to licensing agreements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So what? Really. His opinion isn't any more or any less valuable that anybody else.

</comment><comment><USER40> I respect the guy but is he influential enough that it matters what he thinks?

<comment><USER41> I can't tell if this is a serious question. I'd imagine it matters to a great deal of people what he thinks.

<comment><USER42> Did any of those people disagree with him before? Has he changed anyone's opinion? If he had said the opposite, that the verdict was correct, would anyone here say "hmmm, he's given me a lot to think about."? Or would they just say, "it's so sad to see a legend lose touch."?</comment></comment></comment>


Chromoscope: the Milky Way in different wavelengths - <AUTHOR> http://www.chromoscope.net/ <comment><USER2> Whoa.. this is amazing.. Anyone know what's up with the jaggedness in the x-ray band? Also, I thought that the cosmic background radiation was isotropic, i.e. that the universe looks homogenous far enough away/back in time - is that what it means for the radial horizon/line to look, more or less, all blown out?

edit: holy shit you can zoom in by scrolling

<comment><USER3> After subtracting out foregrounds and known redshifts (mostly from our own peculiar motion) the cosmic _microwave_ background (CMB) is very nearly uniform, with a spectrum like a blackbody radiator with a temperature of 2.73 kelvins, to within one part in a hundred thousand. To see the cosmological hot and cold spots requires serious observatory engineering (starting with BOOMERanG, 1998 and compare [http://www.physics.princeton.edu/cosmology/sk/](http://www.physics.princeton.edu/cosmology/sk/) 1993 which really didn't see them well).

The galaxy as a whole is a substantial foreground. :-) Other more distant galaxies and clusters are also "foreground", essentially because they are newer than the surface of last scattering[1] which produced the CMB. Having all-sky views in different wavelengths lets us find and remove foregrounds. As you can see, in different wavelengths, the sky can be far from uniform.

As to X-Rays, the greenish Chromoscope X-Ray image was produced by the ROSAT team (RÖntgen SATellite, operating in the 1990s). Here's another ROSAT image with a paragraph of explanation: [http://www.mpe.mpg.de/xray/wave/rosat/gallery/five_years/ima...](http://www.mpe.mpg.de/xray/wave/rosat/gallery/five_years/images/bild_16.php)

The curved black features in the greenish Chromoscope X-Ray image are almost certainly unobserved parts of the sky. Here [http://sci.esa.int/planck/46740-planck-sky-coverage- mollweid...](http://sci.esa.int/planck/46740-planck-sky-coverage-mollweide- projection/) are some animations of how the Planck satellite scans the sky, recording details of the cosmic microwave background. ROSAT's scanning was likely pretty similar, but I don't know the details.

\- --

[1] When the universe was hotter and denser, atomic nuclei would be entirely stripped of their electrons. Free electrons and totally ionized atoms are extremely good at scattering light into a fog, which in turn inversely scattered the charged particles into thermal equilibrium. As the cooled, the charged particles could recombine without being blown apart by high-energy photons. The charged matter went on to collapse gravitationally into dense clouds and galaxies, while the light (and neutrinos) as massless (or extremely low mass) particles were mostly free to zip about as a cooling "ghost" of the last scattering surface. So we have decent reasons to expect a cosmic neutrino background (CvB, v like the greek letter \nu), with features roughly similar to what we see in the cosmic microwave background. Additionally, there's a tenuous background (or set of backgrounds) of more massive particles that managed to avoid being drawn into structures that evolved into galaxy clusters. Like the CMB and CvB, it will have grown very cold and tenuous, making it a bit harder to spot than most normal matter (being weak and extremely diffuse emissions, and due to sparseness not much absorption of faraway light on its way to us).

The backgrounds are interesting because they tell us about overdensities at the surface of last scattering, and we have decent reasons to expect that those evolved from overdensities in the even earlier universe. The Cosmic Gravitational Wave background, which hopefully we will eventually be able to study in some detail, is likely to tell us a lot about what could and couldn't have happened before the surface of last scattering (and ideally we can trace the observables back to the _extremely_ hot dense phase we call the "big bang").

<comment><USER3> Oh, hey, on the CMB front Peter Coles ([http://telescoper.wordpress.com/](http://telescoper.wordpress.com/)) of Cardiff University says it better here [https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Glossary/Essay_lss.html](https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Glossary/Essay_lss.html) (1999). I strongly recommend the second paragraph, starting, "To visualise...", (with the tiny caveat that there is an unstated choice of gauge in the "about twice the speed of light"), and the fourth paragraph starting, "Imagine...".</comment></comment></comment>


White House Advisor Says Apple Tech May Have Been Stolen by China - sahin-boydas http://fortune.com/2019/01/04/kudlow-apple-tech-stolen-by-china/ <comment><AUTHOR> I don't know that you can call it actually stealing. Apple goes to China and asks them to make Apple phones for them, also tells them how to make it. China keeps that intel for themselves and all the factories there produce their own branded goods using the same IP.

There's nothing really new or notable about this except the fact a politician just said it publicly!

</comment><comment> sahin-boydas other coverage:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/04/white-house-advisor- kudlow-s...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/04/white-house-advisor-kudlow-says- apple-technology-may-have-been-picked-off-by-china.html)

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/04/white-houses- nati...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/04/white-houses-national- economic-council-head-hints-china-may-have-stolen-apple-tech)

[https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/04/trump-economic-advisor- says-c...](https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/04/trump-economic-advisor-says-china- may-have-stolen-apple-technology/)</comment>


There may be no immunity against Covid-19, new Wuhan study suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3089476/there-may-be-no-immunity-against-covid-19-new-wuhan-study <comment><USER2> Lack of antibodies in the bloodstream does not equate to lack of immunity.

\- There could be antibodies at the mucosal level (IgA)

\- There could be cellular responses (T cells) that aren't detected

\- There could be immunological memory at play after antibodies aren't detectable anymore

A critique of the work, a little heavy-handed:

[https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/06/17/some- forec...](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/06/17/some-forecasting- for-covid-19-has-failed-a-discussion-of-taleb-and-ioannidis-et- al/#comment-1363907) (this specific comment)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I read that too before [1].

On contradiction [2], from today. "Despite that, Gates said recent evidence points to the antibody response being "very strong," which suggests about a year of immunity to anyone who gets the disease."

It gets incredibly difficult to make opinion on all this. In the meantime, people are dying. That's verifiable.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- antibo...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- antibody/antibody-levels-in-recovered-covid-19-patients-decline-quickly- research-idUSKBN23T1CJ) [2] [https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/us/bill-gates- coronavirus...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/us/bill-gates-coronavirus- town-hall-us/index.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Why Reddit's New Website Is So Slow? - <AUTHOR> I don't think I've ever seen such a bloated and sluggish website. I'm baffled by the fact that nothing gets any faster as time goes by. The website is being sluggish from early days of beta to this day! How is this ok for a site as popular as Reddit?<p>The app is not much better to be honest. Sure it works, but it doesn't feel optimized at all either. <comment><USER4> This was asked about 8 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21738571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21738571)

"The site lacks basic optimizations like virtual scrolling to keep the browser from crashing after a few pages of content. There are also entire npm packages being pulled in instead of any tree-shaking, or browser-specific polyfills."

<comment><USER5> > The site lacks basic optimizations like virtual scrolling to keep the > browser from crashing after a few pages of content.

I fucking hate virtual scrolling. Twitter is particularly bad at this - <USER3> breaks search. Twitter's built in search isn't the strongest, so I previously just went with some generic hashtag I knew I used and then used ctrl+f to find the Tweet from my archive. With the "redesign" this use case is totally shot.

For Reddit, I can go to "Saved posts", load as far as I reasonably need, ctrl+f and find what I need.

<comment><USER6> > I fucking hate virtual scrolling. Twitter is particularly bad at this - <USER3> > breaks search.

Not just twitter! Discourse has this "feature" too, breaking search as well. They "helpfully" provide overrides to the built-in search function, but it's a) restricted and b) not what I want. It's not what I want because it does NOT search inside the topic only but inside the whole website. It's restricted because I can't search for some word/phrase _within_ a post. My browser also allows me to highlight searched phrases, but that requires the browser search to be triggered in the first place.

For a while you could circumvent it by pressing / which on Firefox triggers search, but guess what, Discourse "helpfully" redirected it to their broken search as well.

It's a disturbing trend that Discourse is being deployed so widely, replacing older, better working, alternatives.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it seems kind of crazy that a modern browser can't be trusted to just render a few pages of text in boxes without such techniques

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe the weird incentives that web stats create?

If you have a property like Reddit, people will fight through a bad experience to keep reading their stuff. So sluggish turns into "improved session duration" and shitty nav turns into "more pageviews / engagement". Deceptive content looking ads turn into "higher conversion".

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, launch your preferred browser, open the devtools (F12 in Firefox), make a request on the homepage of Reddit and HN and look at the result in the "debugger".

\- For HN you only have an optimized HTML page as well a short javascript download.

\- For Reddit you have a truckload of files which then dynamically load content piece by piece, and also loads ad content from elsewhere (c.amazon- adsystem.com in my case).

Reddit's full content is bigger than HN's, but that isn't really a problem. The real problem is that everything is loaded by tiny chuncks, which adds loads of latencies for a total of a few seconds to load the page. If everything was in one big file it would be (and feel) way faster.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just to save a lot of time and cut through a lot of BS, apparently organizational rot. If you're on iOS give Apollo a try (I'm sure there's an equally good android app), it's completely possible to build a fantastic Reddit app with the existing apis (most of the downsides come into play from user-hostile API administration). The team sizes and funding have to pale in comparison, and on occasion I wonder why this isn't seen internally at Reddit as a mortal biz threat and dire signal to clean up the act. And then I remember — organizational rot.

<comment><USER11> I have an app already. It's called a browser. Requiring a specialized app just to get performance that should already exist is the epitome of what's wrong with the mobile experience.

If Reddit had been envisioned from the begging as requiring a special app for access, I would feel differently, but it's a damn website that should be cleanly and effectively accessed through a browser.

<comment><USER12> For your own sake, I hope you're using Firefox with the mobile reddit redirect extension [1] - with that, your browser works very well for text sub-reddits.

[1] Should always take you to i.reddit.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's been two years and the site redesign is still slow, buggy and ugly. Continue this thread links don't work on comments. The inline video player UX is inconsistent, and placement on the page is bizarre. I use old.reddit.com but even that is broken. All self referential links redirect you the newer broken version of reddit, so you find yourself switching between new and old interfaces all the time.

I have so many questions for their engineering department.

<comment><USER14> I have mostly one: what did youtube do to you that you can't auto suggest video titles anymore .ç.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm glad we still have access to [https://old.reddit.com/](https://old.reddit.com/)

<comment><USER16> I wonder when they cut us off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was also really surprised at how much slower the new site performed when it dropped 2 years ago or whenever it was. I'm sure using react caused some of the performance hit, but I also suspect the flexibility of advertising on the new platform also caused some of the issues.

Either way, I still access reddit via old.reddit.com and it's snappy as ever.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you want the blazing fast site which is optimized for mobile add ".compact" onto any Reddit link such as [https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.compact](https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.compact)

<comment><USER19> You can also use the subdomain i instead of adding .compact

[http://i.reddit.com/r/hackernews](http://i.reddit.com/r/hackernews)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Even the basics of the redesign have issues. To the point that I would honestly quit reddit if they didn't have old.reddit.

Simple things like, not showing me the entire thread and forcing me to like "View Entire Discussion" and then sometimes that will jump to a totally different vertical position in the webpage resulting in confusion, frustration, and anger. Unbelievable that things could be this horrid. How can it be so difficult to consume content when the website's sole purpose is to consume content?

Although I do wonder how new users view the new design. Is it as bad as I made it out to be? I'd be curious to hear their thoughts. Am I simply an old, raggety, grumpy user shaking their fist at the clouds?

</comment><comment><USER21> Just switch back to the old design in your setting.

But it is probably also time to look for something new - I am on that journey too. I was once a super heavy Reddit user but the environment has become so toxic and twitter. It followed a destiny similar to many conventional news sites. Even generic subs like 'news' or 'today I have learned' are infeced by personal agendas of a few monds.

Once a month I still check a few niche communities with mostly work based discussions. For the rest it has become completely unusable. I think astroturfing and political 'outreach-campaigns' have killed that site for me.

</comment><comment><USER22> The reddit team did a classic overrreach rewrite project with a due date. The usual things skipped in projects like that are usability concerns and performance fixes.

I'm sure there was a celebration when the project was "completed", however the user feedback to date indicates the celebration was not warranted.

</comment><comment><USER23> Same question asked 10 years ago:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/c821s/why_is_red...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/c821s/why_is_reddit_so_slow_seriously/)

<comment><USER24> It seems that 10 years ago the problem was on the server side, and now it's sluggish javascript on the new redesigned client side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The website is unbearably slow, mostly because of reasons already mentioned. Also, the server frequently fails loading and after 3-4 seconds of waiting, it says Reddit cannot be reached at the moment.

If you have Android, try Relay for Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER26> simply switch to old reddit

<comment><USER27> For the uninitiated, you can do by changing the URL you're visiting from reddit.com to old.reddit.com. If you have an account, you can also set this as a preference.

<comment><USER28> The preference automatically changes back, because they hate their users.

<comment><USER29> Probably because new reddit is much more ad revenue-friendly. I've managed to make the preference stick somehow.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The War on Cancer - <AUTHOR> http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/war-cancer

<comment><AUTHOR> I found these points from the article rather shocking:

"One in three Americans will develop cancer in their lifetime."

"We have made virtually no progress in extending survival for patients with metastatic solid organ tumors since the "War on Cancer" was declared over 40 years ago."

"For the most part, when a patient has metastatic cancer today, the likelihood of living 10 more years is virtually unchanged from 40 years ago."

"Since 1971, the federal government has spent well over $105 billion on the effort."

"In 2012 cancer killed an estimated 577,190 people in the United States. The death rate, adjusted for the size and age of the population, has decreased by only 5 percent since 1950. And most of this decline is due to mammography screening in breast cancer and cessation of smoking, resulting in less lung cancer in men."

<comment><USER2> I'd speculate that is because what is being fought is the tumerous growth and not the cause. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgically removing tumors is an attempt at fixing the symptom. The cause for the tumor is (probably) at molecular level, which we can't properly manipulate.

Some [1] even suggest it might be a """computational""" problem, as the cell loses information about what it's supposed to do. This encompasses not only "classical" information in the DNA base pairs but there is also research going into quantum information being stored in DNA.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nqHOnVTxJE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nqHOnVTxJE)</comment></comment>


Poland was no walkover for the Reich - <AUTHOR> https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/poland-was-no-walkover-for-the-reich/ <comment><USER2> Great to hear that people resist as human would do, even though they were not considered human.</comment>


DeepDB – High-performing transactional and analytic database - <AUTHOR> http://deep.is/

<comment><USER3> So the team consists of ( [http://deep.is/our-invention/](http://deep.is/our- invention/) ):

      1 CEO
      1 CTO
      3 Founders
      1 Chairman
      1 VP Product Management
      1 VP Sales
      1 Controller
      1 Director of Engineering
      1 Architect
      1 Consultant
      2 Engineers

Yeah... sounds like exactly the company i would never buy from. A company which basically consistes of 80% "upper management" positions and barely any "real workers".. Especially when the website is only about marketing claims and very unspecific details. I can't even find downloads or documenation..

No, i'll stay away.

<comment><USER4> Those bios are a bit strange. They all manage to fill multiple paragraphs without actually saying anything relevant about themselves. Instead it's just strings of empty phrases like "I make magic happen" or "my DNA pushes me to always seek out the vanguard of technology". (Your DNA, really? Did one of your ancestors invent fire?)

To read the real bios, you need to click through to the people's LinkedIn profiles. This reveals that the founders come from companies like Oracle. I don't know if that explains anything.

<comment><USER5> CTO is a professor at UNH, Chief Scientist is from UNH and used to work at Virtual Iron which was acquired by Oracle, then he worked at Akiban until they were acquired. It appears some of their patents ([http://www.google.com/patents/US20130290243](http://www.google.com/patents/US20130290243), [http://www.google.com/patents/US20130254208](http://www.google.com/patents/US20130254208), [http://www.google.com/patents/US20130226931](http://www.google.com/patents/US20130226931)) were assigned to Cloudtree Inc., which appears to have originally been something totally different but with what seems to be the same team: [http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2011/02/st...](http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2011/02/stealthy_start- up_cloudtree_wa.html)

I'm puzzled.

<comment><USER6> VirtualIron was a huge disaster of a company - they pivoted multiple times without ever finding market fit, then pissed off potential acquirers with their attitude, after which they laid everyone off and sold the remains to Oracle for a pittance ( I remember hearing it was ~$10m).

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/with-virtual- iron-o...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/with-virtual-iron-oracle- bought-a-big-loss/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to be too critical since I like database startups as much as the next guy, but there is almost nothing original in their approach to database engines. Most of their assertions about existing databases only apply to relatively weak open source databases; on the high-end databases don't work the way they are assuming at all, which makes me wonder how much they actually know about database engine internals generally. Architecturally, DeepDB goes into the same bucket as PostgreSQL in terms of capabilities and scalability, albeit a different design.

As a more technical nitpick, "high availability" does not mean fast restarts. It means never goes down. The design as described is not a high availability architecture.

Bonus observation: if you assert your database engines uses extensive fine- grained locking, don't show a chart with 24 cores at ~100% utilization and call it "efficient". This is what you would expect to see for a poorly designed and very _inefficient_ implementation for this type of architecture. You can be burning all of your CPU and getting very little throughput. A credible presentation would have demonstrated that system throughput scales linearly with the number of cores (unlikely given the description of their internals).

<comment><USER8> Seems to be targeted as a replacement for InnoDB, slides with actual "meat" on them => [https://portland2013.drupal.org/sites/default/files/slides/B...](https://portland2013.drupal.org/sites/default/files/slides/BlackMesh%20-%20InnoDB%20Replacement%20with%20DeepDB%20for%20MySQL.pptx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> At [http://deep.is/deepdb-genesis-of-invention-iii/](http://deep.is/deepdb- genesis-of-invention-iii/), the chief scientist of this company credits the following four "axioms" for his "General Theory of Information":

Axiom 1: Information is a sequence of Information (self-similar) that is segmented by consistent (well-formed) order.

Axiom 2: Segmented Information is addressable by the First where a sequence of Firsts is a Segment of Summarization.

Axiom 3: Information of a Segment is equal distance to the sequence of Information between non-associated Summarizations.

Axiom 4: Sequenced Information is in direction relation to former and later Information of which Patterns can be Matched.

I don't know what any of that means. Worse, it sounds to me like "cargo-cult" computer science.

<comment><USER10> I also don't know what any of it means, but it certainly looks impressive with all these uppercase letters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > A NEW GENERAL PURPOSE DATABASE DESIGNED FOR BIG DATA AND THE CLOUD THAT > PERFORMS SIMULTANEOUS TRANSACTIONS AND ANALYTICS … IN REAL-TIME, ON THE SAME > DATA SET

Well they certainly have all the right buzzwords present in their pitch. Other than that there's very little to go on right now as to how much merit their product deserves.

<comment><USER12> See @buster's comment. 100 "managers" and 2 engineers, what can go wrong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It amazes me that HN users would spend time commenting here before taking a few seconds to navigate a website. Here is an overview of technical information: [http://deep.is/knowledge/deepdb-white- paper/](http://deep.is/knowledge/deepdb-white-paper/)

These are the interesting things that sticks out to me:

The understanding that storage system throughput is maximized by using sequential access patterns led to the creation of streaming, append-only transactional and indexing algorithms. Our approach is unique in that all database files (i.e. transactional state, indexes, and metadata) are streamed, append-only files.

...

The CASI Tree breaks from a traditional b-tree on-disk approach, eliminating update in-place operations on fixed size pages. Instead, the CASI Tree is an append-only Purely Functional Tree data structure.

...

A complete database audit trail is maintained when running in archival mode, making all previous database states available. These states may be queried in read-only mode, efficiently supporting read-only analytics of point-in-time transactional database states

<comment><USER5> This links to the wrong fractal tree paper for discussing write-read optimized data structures. The proper one is [http://supertech.csail.mit.edu/papers/sbtree.pdf](http://supertech.csail.mit.edu/papers/sbtree.pdf)

This makes me wonder how much research this team really did. I'm not ready to claim they haven't done it, but it raises the question. I would like to see the actual data structure published somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Experience has taught me to be naturally skeptical when a startup says they designed a database from the ground up. It seems like they put every buzzword of machine learning and database design into their website, and the staff seems to be primarily management people and only a handful of engineering staff.

But who knows, maybe in 5 years we'll be doing our business analytics with DeepDB, but most likely we'll be doing business analytics with a tool that doesn't seem this sketchy.

</comment><comment><USER15> No download. No trial. No install doc. No example doc. No tutorial. Just lots and lots of assertions of greatness. That's not so deep.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, a database actually designed for both big data and the cloud! Sounds like deep science to me!

</comment><comment><USER17> I am having trouble locating any reports to reproducible benchmarks that back up their performance claims.

</comment><comment><USER18> A lot of buzzwords, but little actual information. How fast is it? Is it equally fast for both OLTP and OLAP style work?

It seems to be optimising to remove the ETL step of transactional - <USER2> data migration, but you still need the analytical speed.</comment>


(SaaS) How We Got Our First Paying Customers - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stagelight.io/how-we-got-our-first-paying-customers/ <comment><USER2> This is the third submit in just over a day:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=stagelight.io](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=stagelight.io)</comment>


Idea: Online algorithm creation and sharing tool - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be simply a port of existing software. I imagine a community of people sharing algorithms about many different subjects and at different levels of seriousness. My brother wrote a paper on Math Equations for the Socially Challenged in college that would fit well into this concept.

<comment><USER2> This market is probably sewn up -- an original algorithm can be the core of a thesis, while a useful one should be the kernel of a business plan. So you're competing with arXiv.org and YCombinator. Good luck?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am actually talking about providing the tools to a community of users that will create those things to share with one another. arXiv.org and YCombinator address completely separate needs.</comment></comment></comment>


Indian mathematicians discovered infinite series in 1350 - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news106238636.html <comment><USER2> I suppose this is the first real post of Hacker News?

Whenever I study the history of science, I'm always left with a longing for a time machine. Alt-history is fascinating: what level of technology could humanity have achieved today if certain intellectual disasters could be avoided?

A humble request of a time traveler would be to ensure a continuous line of knowledge. Forgotten and rediscovered knowledge are such forces of friction and backsliding. Better communication over larger geographical areas would certainly have helped. It would be like a distributed backup system.

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in Kerala .A word about present academic situation here:

The good old days are far gone . Quality of education is going downhill,as very few practitioners teach the subjects in colleges.Locally, teaching as a profession is considered as a low grade one , compared to engineering and medical professions by majority.This low social status coupled with poor pay has resulted in a situation,where teaching as a profession has become the last of all choices.

A system that do not appreciate innovation is in place, and is oriented ONLY towards getting high academic scores. This is sad. I wish things got better.

[I haven't studied anywhere outside Kerala, so i don't know about the situation elsewhere in India.Please don't conclude this as the situation in India, in general]

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really interesting news. It is sad in a way that so much of the previous efforts have been wasted due to differences in cultures, invasion, wars, disease etc. Imagine Newton studying this math when he was a kid... he would be working on other problems and everyone would be better off. Just amazes how much the ancient civilizations achieved with the resources they had and makes me appreciate them more.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_2400_BC-1...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_2400_BC-1949)

This is surprising. Indian mathematicians invented the 0, binary, formal language specs, logarithms... I wonder what changed.

<comment><USER4> If you mean what changed in recent times - imperial rule. It has been only 60 years since India has been independent.

<comment><USER5> This was a negative?

India was made up of numerous warring states, until one massive war that turned them into a possession of Britain. I'm not aware of how their economic situation changed after that, but if Africa is any indicator... [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/country...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/country-that-used-to-exist.html)

<comment><USER4> I am not sure if it was all negative... I am sure the British brought good things to India. I do believe a century long British rule changed the focus and stifled innovation and free thought. How would it have gone had the British never ruled... hard to tell.

<comment><USER6> The British came centuries later in 1600. They unified the country, brought a common language, railways, administration etc.

Many people say that far greater damage was wrought by the many Muslim emperors and invasions.

By the time the British came, Indian Science was over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wrong/disputed attributions are everywhere. Just a part of history. Human history, because humans care about the attributions.

And Edison invented the lightbulb, Gutenberg the printing press, etc. etc. Sigh for a second. Now go make something.

</comment><comment><USER8> It is well known that all scientific knowledge was given to us by aliens.

<comment><USER9> yes but remember, most Indians are LEGAL Aliens ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ever be verbally told you got the job, then no firm offer? - <AUTHOR> How'd you handle it being told you got the job, but took awhile (or forever) to get the actual firm offer? <comment><USER2> "Great, I'm excited to start. I've still got some other interviews lined up, I'm going to keep going with those until we sign the offer letter and get a firm start date."

<comment><USER3> This is absolutely the best approach, and I say that as an employer. Do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep interviewing. It stinks but you have to look out for yourself. Even asking for the offer can put you in a weaker position.

There is the argument to be made that an interested applicant should follow up, etc, but I look at all the interactions in the interview process as part of the negotiation. So I want to be careful of the message I send either via reaching out, or via my silence.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do you say asking for the offer puts you in a weaker position?

<comment><USER5> It shows that you care about it enough to ask.

<comment><USER6> If you cared enough to go through all their interviews, it already shows that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Happened to me on Friday, actually. Had the offer, in writing, was told the job wasn't mine. Ruined my whole weekend. Felt a serious lack of self-worth.

Monday I got an equitable offer from a company I'm more interested in working for and I've been riding high all week.

YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER8> Was at a job where they did that to a guy. The manager thought he had approval/funding. Things got tight and they pulled the funding for the job. Eventually, it worked out but took a month or too. I would keep looking and if something comes up great.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was at an interview for a startup, when the person interviewing me yelled out the room to someone passing by "hey $guy! I found our new sysadmin!" and we finish our chat, and I go home. Never heard from them again. Reached out to the recruiter and got the silent treatment. Fuck 'em, I thought, and moved on.

<comment><USER10> How arrogant to assume you'd take the job. Implied by 'ive found our..."

<comment><USER10> Damn it i didnt articulate the point very well and got downvoted :-( but i meant the interviewer was arrogant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is simple. If nothing in writing, then you should assume that it is a no go. Yes the hiring manager may really want you and verbally confirmed but there are a lot of "behind the scenes" factors that impact hiring.

Of course, if you do finally get the offer in writing, good for you. The question is should you wait or move on. That will depend on where you stand. If you need a job asap, then keep looking. If not, you may wait for the confirmation in writing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes. Apparently upper management decided to kill the job, and forgot to tell me for 3 months.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes. It was an intern to FTE conversion. They'd just installed a new director and a VP of engineering, and the VP had told me in a 1x1 that there would be an offer made. A few weeks later, no offer.

</comment><comment><USER14> i assume you've already negotiated and agreed upon a salary with the hiring manager. there's no 'following up' to do at that stage in the game. if you've been interacting with an internal recruiter (rather than the hiring manager), then it could be an additional layer of politics, bureaucracy, or something else stretching things out, but either way: if after say 2 weeks, no offer letter has been emailed to you, that reflects very poorly on the hiring manager, and all the more reason to keep on looking elsewhere.

in the meantime, do not let up on the job search.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your post! We hadn't agreed on an exact salary, but he mentioned a range for what he was looking at...now thats in limbo. Ive never been assigned a recruiter yet, and its so far been all through this hiring manager supposedly talking to hr...ever hear of this? How would you proceed?

<comment><USER14> i just mean that in larger companies, sometimes the negotation/etc will happen through a sourcer/recruiter in their HR department rather than directly w the hiring manager. in such cases, the recruiter will act as the messenger between you and the hiring manager basically.

this is the way things usually go (curious to know how much this jives with other people's experience):

\- first step is they decide they'd like to hire you. ie, the "we'd like to go ahead and bring you on board / make you an offer." this is verbal, or sometimes via email. it is typical for them give a specific number at this time (edit: actually, i'd say this is pretty much what a 'job offer' is). you might or might not have discussed salary prior to this, but when they want to hire you, they will almost always start out with an explicit figure (it will be lower than you want 99% of the time).

\- then, the salary negotation begins. eventually, after some back-and-forth (which can happen either in a single phone call, or can stretch out over weeks), both parties finally agree on a specific number for the salary, along with other aspects of the comp package including signing bonus, RSU payout/schedule, and other things like time off, etc etc. this all happens verbally normally.

\- only when a salary/comp is agreed upon, would they send you a written offer letter -- this is usually done as a PDF emailed to you. until this happens, keep up the job hunt.

decide where you are in the above flow (if at all). if they have not uttered a specific, singular figure (and i suggest you let them do that first, no matter the circumstance -- but that's a different discussion), then the interview process is still going imo, and it might be worth a follow-up at some point, use your best judgment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I got an offer with a contract. It got cancelled two days before the start date. For a permanent position and a visa.

Def. happens... mainly with unprofessional start ups

</comment><comment><USER16> One place wouldn't give me an offer until I agreed to take the job.

I assumed it was a hard sell tactic (and red flag) and declined.</comment>