Astronomers Indirectly Spot Neutrinos Released 1 Second After the Big Bang - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomers-indirectly-spot-neutrinos-released-just-1-second-after-the-birth-of-the-universe/ <comment><USER2> So how exactly does the timing of this work out. If the neutrinos were kicked off at the big bang and have been traveling at nearly the speed of light since then, how is it that we are further away from the epicenter of the big bang than the neutrinos?

<comment><USER3> "Epicenter"? No, no, it doesn't work that way: the Big Bang was everywhere all at once. It's just that "everywhere" had much less empty space in between it at the time.

The way it works is that neutrinos were made everywhere, including some places which, after adjusting for cosmic inflation, are ~13.7 giga-light-years away, therefore the speed-of-light neutrinos produced there will arrive at the Earth approximately Now.

<comment><USER4> If the Big Bang happened everywhere at the same time then does that mean the universe was infinitely big at the start? Every time I watch a science program about the big bang they say that everything was contained in an area smaller than an atom? Surely both cannot be true.

I don't have a physics background, so forgive a naïve question.

<comment><USER5> _> If the Big Bang happened everywhere at the same time then does that mean the universe was infinitely big at the start?_

Not necessarily; there are models with a spatially infinite universe and models with a spatially finite universe. In our best current model, the universe is spatially infinite; but there is enough wiggle room in the data that a spatially finite (but very, very large) model is still possible (though unlikely).

 _> Every time I watch a science program about the big bang they say that everything was contained in an area smaller than an atom?_

They are talking about the observable universe, not the entire universe. Unfortunately, many pop science treatments don't make the distinction clear.

<comment><USER6> So correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that in a model of a spatially finite universe there obviously has to be a centre, right?

<comment><USER7> Consider the surface of a sphere. It is finite but has no centre.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I forgot about those cases. Thanks! But are those types of models the only finite universe models currently considered? What about just bog standard "surface of a circle", aka. space in a sphere? After all, Olbers' paradox gets resolved by the speed of light and the expansion of the universe.

<comment><USER8> The "sphere" has more than the usual three dimensions, so the "surface" is really our four dimensional space/time.

From the point of view of _any_ observer in our universe, space/time accelerates away equally in all directions - just like a grid on a ball that's inflating spreads out over time.

But the grid has more than two dimensions.

You may be wondering what's "inside" the "sphere." Whatever is there can't be reached from the universe, no matter which direction you travel in. It's literally in a different dimension.

But that's almost completely meaningless as a statement. No one has any idea how the "sphere" really works.

In our universe we can take it for granted that space/time defines a system for measuring shapes and distances.

Outside of the "surface" of the universe, there's no way to know how shapes or distances work, or whether there even needs to be something on the "inside" \- it's possible the "sphere" only exists as a mathematical template, because it's the only way space/time can hang together, and it's some kind of weird emergent thing that has to happen. (Insert further idle speculation here.)

This is all really, really hard to imagine. Brains evolved for swinging through trees can't visualise it without math. Brains with math are still very much struggling with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know of strong proofs of galaxy red shifts being due to relativistic Doppler effect? It seems like almost everything in Cosmology depends on this being true.

<comment><USER10> Im not sure what you are asking, this is really proven. Are you asking about a differing theory??

<comment><USER9> I work down the hall from this guy and he's really convincing: [http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/viewFil...](http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/viewFile/25856/15981)

<comment><USER5> People can be really convincing and still be wrong. As far as I can tell on a quick skim, this theory (that the redshifts are due to differential scattering of starlight) is one that was ruled out several decades ago by cosmologists. Also, his "fundamental inconsistencies of the Big Bang Theory" would be better titled "fundamental misunderstandings on the author's part". The cosmology FAQ I linked to upthread discusses a number of these misunderstandings.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Browsers May Throttle RequestAnimationFrame - <AUTHOR> https://mattperry.is/writing-code/browsers-may-throttle-requestanimationframe-to-30fps <comment><USER2> Very interesting.

AFAICT static hosts do not send these headers. Netlify and Vercel doesn't have a way to configure response headers either.

Edit:

I was wrong. You can configure headers in Vercel and Firebase at the project config. Not sure about Netlify though.

Edit 2:

[https://docs.netlify.com/routing/headers/#syntax-for-the- hea...](https://docs.netlify.com/routing/headers/#syntax-for-the-headers-file)</comment>


From the guy who makes SMBC to the guy who keeps hacking SMBC - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/e08d5/from_the_guy_who_makes_smbc_to_the_guy_who_keeps/ <comment><USER2> This is a great post from a publicity standpoint. It's never a bad thing to put a human face on your business, especially if you're still small.

But, I'm afraid, the only real long-term solution to a security problem is better security. This isn't a people problem, it's a technical problem and will require a technical solution.

<comment><USER3> If someone is hacking something for nothing but some odd satisfaction, it is sort of a people problem in addition to a technical problem. The attacker could very easily point to the problem and say, "OK, I had fun while it lasted but here is the security bug: ..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.smbc-comics.com/> for those unfamiliar with SMBC.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's probably an automated script doing it if he's running any standard software. The person running it probably doesn't speak English and is only aware of smbc in a statistical sense.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who believes that people who want to run a web site should be forced to take an exam before being permitted to do so.

Personally my view is that if you want to put up a web site, go for it. If you can't secure it your options are basically:

a) Learn to secure it; or

b) Transfer the risk and get someone to secure it for you.

It seems that from the guy running the comic site, that option a is slowly becoming a reality. However, given their appetite I get the impression they may be more suited to option b.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think he just has to deal with security of his website. He has a huge readership and therefore always a possible target.

</comment><comment><USER8> The most important bit about this, to me, is that Marty, the webmaster/brother, is apparently falling down on the job.

It's quite likely that Marty is unpaid in these duties, to which I can only say that you get what you pay for. If he IS paid, then I think it's time to replace him, and reflect deeply on the negative stereotypes associated with nepotism.

My first inclination was to just email the guy and see if I could help, but reading on, he apparently maintains a staff for other purposes he considers important, and recognizes that the relative insecurity of his site impacts their livelihoods, but doesn't see security as something worth paying for.

A donation of my time in this regard would, however noble the intent, demean the profession and relative value of security analysts and companies all over the world.

<comment><USER9> I found this exchange in the reddit comments to be interesting:

karlr42: The only way you beat crackers is to set your site up securely and maintain it. Nothing else, including this post, will help.

MrWeiner: No argument here. I could explain what the issue has been, but I'd rather not do that publicly. Suffice it to say that we're doing a lot of cleaning house right now.

Depending on how one interprets "cleaning house" it may be the case that Zach has in fact realized the exact point you're making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found this bit to be the best: <http://cl.ly/8892d1205d53681bea61>

(Context: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU>)

<comment><USER11> Just link to the permalink of the parent comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Crackers not hackers.

<comment><USER13> Dear metaphorical Japenese soldier stranded on an island in the South Pacific:

The war is over. You lost.

Love,

The Crushing Imperialist Juggernaut of Common Usage.

<comment><USER14> I could care less about common usage!

<comment><USER15> So you do care a little bit, then?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw>

<comment><USER16> I think saying could instead of couldn't was part of the joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find it scary that someone could write comics with such clever jokes, while simulaneously being so oblivious to the security requirements of running a website. Trying to address an anonymous hacker via Proggit is beyond ridiculous.</comment>


Show HN: Order your JavaScript dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/favor/dependency-orderer

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my first module, just looking for a bit of feedback before I publish it to NPM.</comment>


The End of Ragequitting - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/01/the-end-of-ragequitting.html <comment><USER2> If Jeff says that he equates suicide with rage quitting a game, I'm prepared to believe that _he_ believes it. But I don't and I don't even think it's a comparison that's useful.

Perhaps he means it sincerely, but my experience with someone close to me committing suicide and the research I have done since then--including research prompted by feedback from HN to posts I have written--is that it can be dangerous to try to "reason" with a suicidal person.

"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into" is something I often say about bigots, sexists, and so on, but it applies to depressed people as well. You don't come back from the brink because of life lessons, or essays on the internet, or the love of a small child. Or this comment.

I won't even try to explain how being so depressed that you kill yourself is nothing like deciding that you don't want to "play the Internets" any more.

The metaphor I use is that suicide is the end-game of a crippling disease that attacks the brains ability to manage stress. I liken depression to AIDS of the emotional immune system.

When we're healthy, we have ways of handling stress. We have good days and bad days, but they fall within a certain manageable range because our body musters compensation for our emotions. The depressed person can be triggered by something bad and spiral into an extreme mood.

If we use my metaphor to explain why someone facing a lot of jail time would commit suicide, the jail time is like pneumonia: Something serious but beatable by a person with a healthy immune system and social support. But not beatable by someone with a compromised immune system, and deadly to someone whose immune system actually attacks himself in response to certain kinds of stress.

Long ramble here, but we can't talk people out of AIDS or Cancer or even the Common Cold. Good spirits and support have been proven to be very helpful, but not as a substitute for proper treatment or for understanding that if you are contemplating ending your own life, you are sick but what you have can be treated PROVIDED YOU AND YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK TREAT DEPRESSION AS A SERIOUS ILLNESS THAT CAN BE TREATED.

I am not telling Mr. Atwood to retract his remarks. But I am saying that I do not support trying to talk someone out of suicide by comparing it to rage quitting a game or walking away from the Internet.

I do support everything he is saying about the ridiculous injustice in the plea bargain system.

<comment><USER3> I agree: his is not a very useful comparison. I think David Foster Wallace gives the most accurate comparison I've read, and I always want to show it to those lucky souls who have never had to deal with this type of depression:

 _The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling._

<comment><USER4> I had a blog post sitting in my drafts folder about Aaron Swartz and David Foster Wallace. It was waiting to make it perfect, but I don't think it ever will be. Thanks for this post, causing me to tidy it up and publish it.

Here it is, for those interested:

<http://swapcase.net/post/41144052777/aaronsw-and-dfw>

<comment><USER5> I picked Infinite Jest up again about a month ago and had been wading through a lot of articles on DFW as a way of trying to understand his suicide. So that was the context in which Aaron's death came to me. I also saw the connection in Quinn's post and it had me wondering. Thanks for completing the post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At Aaron's memorial this past weekend, his partner, Taren, shed some light on what he was going through in his final years: [http://mretc.net/~cris/swartz- transcripts/taren-transcript.t...](http://mretc.net/~cris/swartz- transcripts/taren-transcript.txt)

> _For a long time we didn't talk about the case very much. He wanted to > protect me and he wanted to cordon it off from the rest of his life. He was > worried that I would be subpoenaed, or that his other friends would be > subpoenaed, and so he kept it all to himself. He kept all of the stress and > the anger and the fear to himself._

> _In December there was a hearing that I went to with him -- the trial was > delayed because another hearing at this hearing -- the decision was made to > delay the trial until April. And afterwards I -- we came out of the > courtroom and I tried to give him a hug, and he pushed me away. And he said, > "Not in front of Steve Heymann. I don't want to show Steve Heymann that."_

The obvious, reflexive assessment of Aaron's situation is that he faced (or believed he was facing) an unsurmountable sentence and challenge, and that that fear was enough to cause him to commit suicide. But there's likely more to it than that...it wasn't just the fear or the hopelessness, but the isolation and other inconveniences that was a part of the struggle. Maybe Aaron felt ready to face the consequences, as they existed on paper (the charges, trial, and possible jail sentence) but the unexpected load of paranoia and loneliness, as Taren describes it, was something that ended up being insurmountable.

Of course, from the outside, it's easy to say, "Well, he should've realized he really wasn't alone. And that others were willing to fight along with him." But it's always easier to make that rational assessment from the outside.

<comment><USER7> Does anyone know why Taren is consistently referred to as "partner"? I would have expected "girlfriend", which some sources do use, but I'm curious if there's some reasoning or decision behind the choice of term.

<comment><USER8> A friend of mine does that with her boyfriend as a sort of solidarity thing with same sex couples. Dunno if that's Aaron's reason, but that was what I thought of.

<comment> shane-t In some circles it's common to use the word in more formal or public settings when you are together for a long time (long enough that most couples would be married).

<comment><USER9> It seems to be what grown ups call their boy/girlfriends.

<comment><USER10> This, for me. Ironically, my "partner" regularly wonders why I don't call her my "girlfriend". Perhaps not coincidentally, she is quite a few years my junior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Suicide is not a form of "ragequitting".

At some point in the next 50 years, society is going to learn that suicide deaths are morally comparable to deaths from leukemia or heart disease.

We're going to be embarrassed by things we wrote in 2013 that look at suicide from the vantage point of a "strategies" or personal choices.

It seems likely that things happened to Swartz that provoked his death. That's in the nature of the illness he suffered: a vulnerability to provocations to suicide. But those provocations are just as coercive as the genetic abnormalities that allow environments to coerce living cells into cancer. Swartz's death was nobody's choice; "nobody" includes Aaron Swartz.

<comment><USER12> This scares me. How do you draw the line between someone having no choice to kill themselves and other actions that some majority might not consider to be choices?

Yes, death is final. I still feel it's my choice, other's disagree. What makes their view more valid than mine?

(I don't necessarily believe in a free will, but if it exists it's hard to tell who has with concern to what decisions.)

<comment><USER11> The Buddhist monks who killed themselves to protest the South Vietnamese government were probably not suffering from a mental illness. Most suicides are not monks protesting repressive governments. There is very little evidence to suggest that Swartz died in a deliberate act of protest, and much to suggest that he died of a terrible illness.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure Aaron was aware of that his suicide would bring a lot of attention to his causes and this will have played a part in his, as I consider it, decision. He was also aware of the practical problems, including depression, he faced including that there is a chance of them getting worse and that he could prevent that.

I'm not against curing depression and investing more resources into getting better at it. My worry is that people with depression are portrayed as slaves to disease, as opposed to healthy people who are free to make decisions based on their interests.

That encourages limiting the choice ill people can make. Aaron is no longer suffering from a mental illness. For him, ignoring others, it was a rational decision that he benefitted from.

<comment><USER13> >I'm sure Aaron was aware of that his suicide would bring a lot of attention to his causes and this will have played a part in his, as I consider it, decision.

I'm not sure: <http://www.quinnnorton.com/said/?p=644>

>We used to have a fight about how much the internet would grieve if he died. I was right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did Jeff just admit to considering ending his life? Jeff, I'm glad that you made the right decision. Don't give up. I've been in that place when I was younger. However viable it may seen in a moment, giving up IS the wrong decision.

Your podcasts (among others) got me through a lonely phase of my life (migrating to a new country.. having few friends.. and still learning the language). For that I'm grateful. I'm sure that you've had a similar positive effect on far more strangers.

It's funny, but you tend to see these thoughts in the empathic, idealistic types. I'm one of them. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with being idealistic. It's a strength. It's positive. It's energetic. It _inspires_ people. Accept it. Embrace it. Know your weakness, and you can defend against those who'll try and abuse it. And you will win.

Mandela didn't quit. Ghandi didn't quit. MLK didn't quit. More close to reality: Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij haven't given up. Manning hasn't given up.

If Aaron's case has taught us anything, it's that we need to stand behind these people. If we believe that what they're doing is "right", then we need to support them. Publicly. Privately. They need to know that they're not standing alone. To quote Liverpool FC's theme song: "You'll Never Walk Alone" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youll_Never_Walk_Alone>.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a delicate topic with a lot of factors. I don't know if I would call a suicide due to depression 'ragequitting.'

Quitting, in general, is a healthy and normal action. It's why we all ended up doing what we're doing today (we had to quit something to stop being the proverbial male ballerina). Jeff himself leads the article with what he quit a year ago, and I interpret his view of that decision positively.

It seems like Jeff believes that there are 'ok' ways to quit and 'not ok' ways. Great. But, who is he to decide what is ok and not ok for others? I'm certainly not equipped to say so, and I don't believe Jeff is either. He _is_ judging Aaron. When I was brought up, I was told that telling others what to do in absolute terms was also a form of immaturity. It's all a matter of perspective.

Aaron's death is a tragedy for many reasons and due to causes and circumstances I will never understand. I can't pretend to proscribe any decisions Aaron made. I appreciate Jeff using his articulate and otherwise entertaining writing to help express what he is feeling.

It's open writing like this that helps our community grieve; I just don't agree with Jeff.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, I can't judge Jeff. This seems to really hit close to home with him. It's really brave of Jeff to admit he contemplated suicide.

I was taken aback at Jeff for being angry that Aaron's death has become an effective martyrdom. Quite frankly, if anything can be salvaged from this man's death, salvage it. If he is making the argument others will commit suicide to become martyrs like Aaron, then I would consider his argument. Any positive effect of Aarons suicide don't make his actions right, but I welcome them just the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> While I respect Jeff Atwood's comments, and I suspect he's leaning on the side of being inspirational, I think equating suicide with "ragequitting" (directly or indirectly) is unfair. The consequences are so different, it sort of trivializes suicide.

 _But also, I must admit that I am a little disappointed in Aaron. I understand that depression is a serious disease that can fell any person, however strong. But he chose the path of the activist long ago. And the path of the activist is to fight, for as long and as hard as it takes, to effect change._

I never knew Aaron, but I know that while one can choose to be an activist, one can't choose whether they have clinical depression. It is a serious illness that is hard to fight. And by all accounts I've read, Aaron put up quite a fight trying to deal with the extreme pressure he was put under. In that light, I think Jeff's comment is harsh.

</comment><comment><USER18> > I posted this as a comment on Coding Horror but it will probably get buried. > I'm not sure if I'm missing his point but this is what I took away from the > article.

I enjoyed this article, the romanticized idea of martyrdom and ragequitting in terms of 'infocide' like the cases mentioned seem to fit well, but Aaron's case was not a 'ragequit'. It was a response to a serious mental condition.

"But do not, under any circumstances, give anyone the satisfaction of seeing you ragequit. They don't deserve it. Play other, better moves – and consider your long game."

Depression and suicide is about hopelessness and constant pain. It isn't about sticking it to anyone and depression by its very nature makes 'considering the long game' impossible. For people plagued by it, there is no future, only the black dog looking back at you.

There are many conversations coming out of Aaron's death, copyright, information freedom, the overreach of the law, predator prosecutions but an important one that is being overlooked, in my opinion, is mental health. Programmers, activists, and in Aaron's case a person of extremely high intelligence, all seem to be more susceptible to mental illness.

Maybe, even if nothing else comes out of Aaron's death. No changes to copyright, no prosecutor's getting fired, no open data. Maybe at least we can all take the feeling's of the people around us a little more seriously. Look a little harder for the people that are hurting. And try to help them.

<comment><USER19> > It isn't about sticking it to anyone

I disagree. Whenever I have suicidal fantasies, the sense of hopelessness is always accompanied by some twisted form of "that'll show them". "Them" is usually either my employer or a girl I adore. I'm deeply ashamed that that's the case, but it's the truth.

<comment><USER18> I can relate mate. There is so much self-shame in those thoughts but like with all mental illness, we can't generalize. I'm sure some people have those feelings, I know there have been times when my own episodes have even included them so maybe I shouldn't have written it off so quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Ragequitting is childish, a sign of immaturity.

I had never heard this term before. I agree with Jeff in general but there are very legitimate reasons beyond immaturity. One is maturity in the sense of picking your battles in life and knowing when your current activities are incongruent with your principles. There are many situations when the best course of action for everyone involved is to walk away. The result is not always having given up forever, but an opportunity to step back, reflect and reevaluate your approach. It is unfortunate that people do "rage quit" and give up entirely. Resilience is not always a function of maturity.

<comment><USER21> Ragequitting is a videgame term. It is used to refer to when someone quits a multiplayer game when they are losing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm uncomfortable with the comparison to ragequitting. However, a few points resonated quite strongly with me.

 _we should have been outraged. I am gutted that I did not contribute to his defense in any way, either financially or by writing about it here. I blindly assumed he would prevail, as powerful activists on the side of fairness, openness, and freedom are fortunate enough to often do in our country. I was wrong._

I too was wrong about this. While I don't know how much my support would have mattered, I didn't do much to support him. I can and will offer support to others.

 _The idea that Aaron killing himself was a viable strategy, more than going on to prevail in this matter and so many more in his lifetime, makes me incredibly angry._

My thoughts on this are still developing and I can't articulate anything finer than what Jeff wrote.

</comment><comment><USER23> Depression is a monster, and it is more common than we think in the startup pressure-cooker. And nobody talks about it because you have to put up a facade of invincibility to woo investors, employees, and the press.

I had one startup friend confide that he had sought professional help for the stress he was under, and I thought he was very wise for doing so. Why, when I was heading into a dark depression while building a previous startup did I not seek help?

We need to support each other and destigmatize seeking help.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a book written specifically for the mental health issues faced by activists: <http://www.microcosmdistribution.com/catalog/books/3977/>

Atwood's suggestion that anybody who "chooses the path of the activist" should be prepared to face the consequences does not even _begin_ to address the challenges of being so engaged in such a thankless fight for so long, and then having to bear the weight of these insane charges with almost no publicity for your cause or public support.

Not to mention the weight of a wide swath of people not even understanding the problem Aaron was trying to solve in the first place.

Activism, especially on nearly invisible issues like this one, and _most_ especially when you're on the opposite side of entrenched interests with shitloads of cash, is _really hard work_. It's also hard work for the people on the other side, except in exchange for their hard work they're earning millions of dollars.

</comment><comment><USER25> I used to volunteer for the Samaritans (phone based suicide "hotline" in the UK). I cannot pretend to know the physical causes / manifestations of depression or suicide - but I do know that people I talked to, some whom I / we could not save, were intelligent rational people who could discuss quite normally and naturally ending their lives.

It is not quitting, in a rage or not, to take ones own life. It is rational, even if most people on the planet cannot possibly agree or follow the reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER26> One of the most important lessons many programmers should learn is to "not give up". One of the obvious reasons that comes to mind is not giving up on releasing your product. However, there are many more things that one should never give up on, like your Internet life or even your life. Sometimes it happens, but I think those people only did it because they were in extremely terrible situations.

Anyways, I am happy Jeff is not ragequitting. I'm not ragequitting either!

</comment><comment><USER27> I know it's boilerplate, but it's jarring to have this section immediately below an otherwise emotionally moving article:

 _[advertisement] Stack Overflow Careers matches the best developers (you!) with the best employers. You can search our job listings or create a profile and even let employers find you_

<comment><USER28> Talking of [ad] on Jeff's blog, I used to always be amused at the Atlassian ads I think I recall routinely seeing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Comparing suicide to quitting a game seems kind of offensively trivializing to me; similar to comparing killing people in a video game to having to kill people in war. I guess it's just a metaphor, but still.

(Also, sad to see Jeff Atwood was also contemplating suicide at one point. If you factor in "quality of life years", suicide is an even bigger problem than a lot of other health issues, since it disproportionately affects the young, and affects other people.)

</comment><comment><USER30> May not be the most sympathetic piece, but it nails the thing that has been nagging me: this reaction has been glorifying suicide. The suicide victim has been remembered in glowing terms much greater than he ever received alive and his "enemies" are having their heads called for by a large crowd. I don't know if any of it is wrong objectively but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit > _stripped of the most fundamental citizenship right, the ability to vote_

That is not entirely true. _In the US, every state except Maine and Vermont prohibits felons from voting while in prison. Nine other states disenfranchise felons for various lengths of time following the completion of their probation or parole. Two states, Kentucky and Virginia, continue to impose a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record._ [1]

However, it is entirely possible that he would never have been able to own a firearm or serve on a jury ever again. Everyone can probably form their own opinions on how much those matter to you.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_rights_due_to_felony_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_rights_due_to_felony_conviction)

</comment><comment><USER31> > Play other, better moves – and consider your long game.

And when your long game appears to be sentenced to prison until you're 60 or being becoming a felon (with the reduced rights that are associated with that label), what then?

When being a felon of computer related crimes would result in limiting your access to your entire livelyhood (and your source of activism as well), what then?

In the best case, you spend 6 months in prison, away from your family and loved ones, are denied access to computers and the internet thereafter, you're financially destroyed, and many employers will not hire you due to your felony record... what would _your_ game plan be?

One way or the other, Aaron's life was destroyed. It sucks that he didn't survive that destruction, but I'm not completely sure I would either.

</comment><comment><USER32> Really alarmed & surprised (I know I shouldn't be) to hear of Jeff Atwood's - apparently recent - struggles with depression & suicidal thoughts... he appears (to me, observing from afar, via podcasts, blogs) to have a robust, upbeat personality... never would guessed he'd be susceptible to any kind of unshakeable mental or emotional gloom. Scary that people can look like they have it together in every respect, when they are secretly researching their suicide. So glad Jeff was able to pull himself back from the brink.

</comment><comment><USER33> [This post may or may not be related to the issue at hand, but I think this is something worth noting in a thread like this.]

Whether or not they directly play into the two particular cases mentioned, I think we need to be aware of ourselves and how we can affect/worsen/underline these decisions. Every week there are "Why I quit HN"/"Lessons I learned from HN" and other posts on how someone felt after being thrown under the bus here, particularly if they didn't submit it themselves (and sometimes consciously so).

Despite Jeff's notion that Aaron would have prevailed indefinitely, HN threads on the matter were much more bleak. It is normal to be skeptical of your own success and possibly inundate yourself with thoughts of failure, and it is another to see the community you are a part of dismiss you and your purpose as well. Unfortunately we see that here a lot, especially considering some of these projects are people's honest attempts at making a better person of themselves or trying to find sources of income in a time where so many are still hurting.

I don't know whether or not Aaron's pain would have been quelled in any way had everyone rallied behind him. In my own experiences, the entire universe could be behind you and it probably still wouldn't make much of a difference/you'd still feel like a lone wolf. Still, there are people like Eugene Sprague in the documentary The Bridge who walked the span of the Golden Gate for over 90 minutes waiting for just one person to smile at him. No one did, so he went through with it.

Just something to be cognizant of.

</comment><comment><USER34> There's two separate claims in Atwood's essay that I don't agree with.

First, a lot of social networking involvement is a waste of time and is emotionally exhausting. A lot of times it can be highly addictive and participation becomes dysfunctional. People quit communities all the time when they recognize that things are just not working out. There is nothing wrong with that and it's a good thing. When other members feel they have to defend the community to the point of attacking others just for leaving, using divisive and derogatory terms such as "ragequitting", then it is no longer a community or social board, but is a cult. Cults defame members who leave simply because they have left, which is perceived as an act of betrayal and heresy. Communities do not.

Second, Aaron didn't quit anything. He picked a meaningful date to end his life. Aaron was highly rational and carefully thought things through, it's clear in his writings. He knew he could have handled six months or 7 years in prison. This was an act of self-immolation, the ultimate protest of injustice. It is a time honored and effective last resort message used only in extreme situations of injustice, which is certainly the case of the judicial system in the US which has in recent years descended into a police state like system interested in power and control but not justice. Self-immolators almost never leave suicide notes. There is no need to since it is obvious to all why they have committed their protest. This is clear here, just looking around people are upset and they know and understand exactly why he did this and it has to do with the Federal Prosecutor, not a chemical imbalance in his brain. No one in Tunisia was talking about chemical imbalances in Mohammed Bouazizi's brain, it was obvious that his act was a protest as well.

Additionally, regarding depression, Aaron wrote he was glad he had insurance to allow him to see someone, and his family has stated Aaron has never been diagnosed with depression and was not depressed. Those claiming his action was because of suicidal depression have only weak circumstantial support for their case based on blog entries, and have to completely ignore all the circumstances of what was going on. Blogging that you sometimes feel depressed is not evidence of mental illness. Seeing a therapist is not evidence of mental illness. Occasional depression itself is not evidence of mental illness. It is a normal part of the human condition. Remote medical diagnosis here by the general public is similar to the remote lawyering in the commonly made but unproven claims that he did anything at all criminal other than misdemeanor trespassing. An indictment is not a conviction. Violations of terms of service do not rise to the level of criminality according to the Drew appeal decision, so the whole basis of the case is very questionable.

</comment><comment><USER35> " _And the path of the activist is to fight, for as long and as hard as it takes, to effect change._ "

One has to choose the battles with care.

UK resident, not my issue, very sad as per Tim Berners-Lee's post. A light lost (or was it a moth?)

</comment><comment><USER36> To anyone who is really interested in the subject, I recommend a book called "Night Falls Fast." It's available as an e-book.

</comment><comment><USER37> Calling it "rage quitting" when someone is no longer interested in playing a game you want them to play is an intimidation tactic. It's really none of your business to tell someone what they must play and when and how.

In more civilized times it was called "conceding defeat" not "rage quitting."

<comment><USER38> likewise "taking your ball and going home" is often a way to shame people into continuing to play on a field that favours you over them.

<comment><USER7> Depends on context. I sometimes think of the connotation as the person taking the ball away is the one making unreasonable demands and using the threat of spoiling the game for everyone to get their way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I find it ironic that Atwood complains about martyrdom being effective, then turns around in the next paragraph and complains that Swartz didn't fulfill Atwood's idea of what 'activist' is.

<comment><USER40> Actually, it was MLK's idea of what activism entails, specifically those who use civil disobedience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> _"But do not, under any circumstances, give anyone the satisfaction of seeing you ragequit. They don't deserve it. Play other, better moves – and consider your long game."_

I agree. Do not ragequit SO. They're not worth it. Simply ignore them on SO and never ever help them anymore by posting content there.

But do "rage" everywhere else you can: on Twitter, on /., on G+, on blogs. Wherever you can. Certainly do not try to fight your case on meta: meta is the problem, not the solution. Fight your case on another medium, where they cannot silence you (nor reverse your "rage").

There are just too many issues with SO that have been unadressed.

I did "silentquit" a 7.7 K account (probably more now) gained by mostly helping others. And now everywhere the topic comes out I point out that there are seriously bad moderators issue on SO and that meta is mostly pointless.

The one thing that pissed me off were crazy mods that did "team up" on new users and refuse to see their wrongdoings on meta. This made me sick and I quit. "Silentquit" on SO. "Ragequit" on the big bad Internet.

And, no, I won't "post this meta" or "link to the discussion or it didn't happen".

The very reason I'm posting this _here_ is because, you SO mods and (co)-founders have no say in here. Here it's other people who are voting and they're not all pom-pom girls fighting your cause.

I'm not in a hurry. Usenet is still there (slowly dying, but still here). There are others resources like Quora and EE.

And others will listen to all these high-rep users who did ragequit (or silentquit) SO and address their very real concerns and, one day, we'll have something better than SO.

<comment><USER42> Uh... Yeah. When I "silentquit" SO, I went and did stuff that made me happy. Improved my baking skills. Took care of stuff around the house.

If you're so fed up that you can't stand to use it anymore, why wouldn't you just... Go do something that made you happy? Rage or silent, if you're gonna quit, quit.

Otherwise, you're just making yourself a slave to your own misery. That ain't gonna end well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> aaron's last posts on stackoverflow about the download scripts are just chilling.</comment>


Tell HN: I have to share this with you, reocities found its business model: - <AUTHOR>

Reocities, the reborn version of geocities gets a lot of support messages from people that would like their content removed. Almost all of them are legit and of course I comply when they ask.
A business model for reocities has so far eluded me, but I think this user has just given me the answer to that:
"When my first husband and I were divorcing ten years ago, I edited our Geocities page with some very personal and very angry text. I then changed the password  and put false information for the account's secret questions in order to prevent my ex from "fixing" the page. I promptly forgot the new password, and also lost access to the email address associated with the account, and therefore the page remained for ten years despite my best efforts at getting Yahoo to remove it.
I was overjoyed when GeoCities was taken down, and absolutely horrified when I discovered that you have put my page back up. I have a new life, a new name, a new husband, and I would give anything to have that horrible period of my life erased from the web forever."
Sometimes you're looking in all the wrong places. <comment><USER2> Hehehe, this is evil. And now, you even know her new name! Even better business is possible now. :)

(I assume that you are joking.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course I'm joking, I'm not that much of a cruel and heartless bastard (evil laughter...).

Blackmail is naturally out of the question, but with now over 11K unique visitors and growing steadily sooner or later I'll have to face this issue.

Reocities was literally a labour of love, it cost a pile of money and it looks like it will never bring that back, but if I were to run in to a way to make it break even I would probably take it.

Some of the support mail I get is hilarious though, I think 10% or so is from people that have meanwhile grown up and seriously regret what they put online and ask me to take it down, but none of them used the magic phrase that triggered my dark side.

<comment><USER2> I just clicked you username, way too much karma to be evil.

But at first you got me. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reocities can become Yelp for 90s web design: "We will publish your first Frontpage site, unless you pay us".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, a large part of the requests to remove content come from people that have become designers, and that are 'less than proud' of their first steps on the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Heheh. As others have said this is not an ethical business model, and is nothing more than blackmail.</comment>


How to Recover a Forgotten Password - <AUTHOR> http://smyck.net/2016/08/11/how-to-recover-a-forgotten-password/ <comment><USER2> It's more of remembering than recovering.

TL;DR: write down everything you remember about it, generate a dictionary with all combinations in the holes that you don't remember, then brute force.</comment>


The benefits of a monthly recurring revenue model in tough economic times - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1471-the-benefits-of-a-monthly-recurring-revenue-model-in-tough-economic-times

<comment><USER2> I would have thought some of these things are the first to get the axe.

Do we _really_ need to pay $20/month just to have a chatroom? When there are free alternatives out there? When times are good, sure if you like, but when money gets tight, it's probably a contender for getting cut.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like their cashcow is Basecamp and people would be hard pressed to ditch their project management app

<comment><USER3> You're right, but the problem is that many people are hard pressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's not discussed is "the increased savings from moving to an open source knockoff of 37 signals' offerings", given that you're not just paying once, but every month.

<comment><AUTHOR> While true, I imagine a lot of small businesses who use 37signals won't have a dedicated IT staff to manage and maintain an instance of XYZ project manager. Having 37signals handle all the 'techy' stuff and having them as support must be cheaper than hiring someone to maintain it.

<comment><USER4> I guess 'open source' narrows it down too much, but a bunch of guys who go around trying to 'do less' ( <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Build_Less.php> ) can't be that hard to undercut as far as their products are concerned (they would be very difficult to beat, though, in marketing terms). You could offer a product that people only have to buy once, for instance, instead of slowly bleeding them month after month.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the business perspective, what's the advantage? If you sell a product once, I feel like it becomes more difficult to have people pay for an upgrade. If you spend a lot of time developing updates and improvements upon your product, I feel like you'll find fewer and fewer people willing to pay for them because whatever they have "works fine".

<comment><USER4> It's completely in the business' interest to keep going back for more money every month. However, perhaps with the economy headed south, people will look at that flow of money and think twice about it.

<comment><USER5> Actually, hard times make many people discount the future more. Why spend a lot of money up front on a solution that will sustain you for four years when the odds that your company won't last _one_ year have just gone up?

In extreme cases, businesses with cash flow problems are just like poor people, who are forced to patronize ripoffs like check-cashing places, payday loan sharks, and Rent-A-Centers because they can't afford the minimum balance or down payment on a better solution. They live day-to-day. So do businesses in trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> yeah lately I've been thinking more and more about the benefits of a monthly subscription. People tend to be lazy, so even if they stop using a service, they'll continue paying for it, because they are too lazy to cancel. And $10/month just doesn't seem like that much money to most people, and gets lost in the credit card statement. So you are pretty much guaranteed your revenue, even if you completely stop selling.

Compare that to advertising models, where you need to work non-stop just to make sure you sell your ad-space to cover your next month's bills. Or one time fee models(sales/commission), where once again, you need to make sure you continue being on top of the food chain, to make those new sales every single month.

The good thing about monthly billing, is that you tend to keep those customers for a long ass time. So pretty much all you need is time to grow to profitability.

So you can have a very mediocre acquisition rate(lets say 5 new users per day), after a year of sales(@ $10/mo), you are already making $18,250 a month. And since you get paid month-in, month-out, you can spend a ton of money on advertising to continue growing. Because you have a fixed income.

<comment><USER7> ___And $10/month just doesn't seem like that much money to most people, and gets lost in the credit card statement. So you are pretty much guaranteed your revenue, even if you completely stop selling._ __

I think this is OK as long as you're upfront with the customer about the reoccurring payment. If you try to slip it past them, they will notice, will want their money back and will leave with a sour taste in their mouth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe they're just talking about web-based software but it seems the most popular model in the enterprise space is one-off pay up front, pay for upgrades and pay for support.

<comment> puzzle-out Your typical non-IT SME tends to invest in IT after a big sale / raising new investment - as this does not happen every month, I'm inclined to agree with you Sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Although it may work well once I'm signed up, personally I am about 10 times more reluctant to sign up for a monthly subscription in the first place. I don't like that the price might change for month to month and I don't like that if something goes wrong with billing that it might cause the service to stop working (and if they have my data and it might get deleted while I'm on holiday then that's particularly bad). And finally unless I plan to only use it for a short time, it is nearly always very expensive compared to a one off purchase.

So - if you want me to actually buy your software - make the pricing as simple and transparent as possible and make it either annual or one time purchase.

</comment><comment><USER10> How would you feel / how would the conversation change if, for instance:

\- the $10 / mo charge came with a one-time, upfront cost of $24.99?

\- what if that upfront cost is $14.99?

Any difference?</comment>


Malcolm Gladwell Unmasked - <AUTHOR> http://shameproject.com/report/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-life-work-of-americas-most-successful-propagandist/

<comment><USER2> Interesting to know who Gladwell serves.</comment>


GOP scaling back the mortgage interest deduction hits the Californians hardests - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgage-tax-deduction-20170828-htmlstory.html <comment><USER2> Amusing to see Democrats coming out in support of tax breaks for the wealthy. The mortgage interest deduction is bad economics and bad social policy. It effectively gives rich people extra money to outbid the less rich, driving up housing prices for everyone.

 _The housing industry strongly opposes efforts to place new restrictions on the deduction, arguing that would lead to lower housing prices_

This reminds me of an old SNL news segment about a proposed weakening of privacy regulations: "Opponents of the change claim that it will allow companies to invade people's privacy, while supporters say that it will allow them to invade people's privacy".</comment>


An Analysis of the iKeeB (duh) iPhone botnet - <AUTHOR> http://www.csl.sri.com/users/porras/iPhone-Bot/

<comment><USER2> This is a very thorough analysis. There are a few code snippets but the majority of the really interesting code is password protected. I probably don't qualify as enough of a "professional" to get password access to the really juicy code.</comment>


Facebook to rebrand: 'privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform' - <AUTHOR> https://abcnews.go.com/Business/facebook-rebrand-privacy-focused-messaging-social-networking-platform/story?id=61510020 <comment><USER2> source already submitted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321609)

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook to "rebrand" as "privacy-focused"...

I laughed so hard a peed a little

<comment><USER4> Please don't do this here.</comment></comment>


Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Model - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08265 <comment><AUTHOR> Beating AlphaZero at Go, Chess, and Shogi, an mastering a suite of Atari video games that other AIs have failed to do efficiently. No explicit heads-up contests with a trained AlphaZero; but apparently hits an ELO threshold w/ fewer training cycles. Yowsa.

<comment><USER2> And specifically, enabling the application of reinforcement tree searching agents into domains with blackbox environments. This paper is not only about increased convergence performance, it is about enabling agents in real world scenarios where the definition of environment is not feasible. Maybe of arbitrary complexity. I do not believe in AGI yet, but that's one of the bigger steps in the right direction, one would assume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't seem possible to give "no explicit rules", unless you count "making an illegal move equivalent to a loss" as giving no explicit rules. Which doesn't seem like anything but word laundering.

If you do any less than this, the net will be incentivized to make an illegal move for a win. In which case, yah, I'd guess that net would win a lot of chess games against other rule-bound nets.

<comment><USER4> > It doesn't seem possible to give "no explicit rules", unless you count > "making an illegal move equivalent to a loss" as giving no explicit rules. > Which doesn't seem like anything but word laundering.

The model is learning from game trajectories offline. Illegal moves will be assigned a very low probability because they do not appear in real games (whoever may be playing those games, whether in a simulation or in the real world). AlphaGo/AlphaZero did in fact mask out illegal moves in the MCTS tree search, but MuZero does not:

> MuZero only masks legal actions at the root of the search tree where the > environment can be queried, but does not perform any masking within the > search tree.This is possible because the network rapidly learns not to > predict actions that never occur in the trajectories it is trained on.

And in ALE, all inputs are always legal, it's just that they may be useless and a waste of a 100ms turn. So for ALE it doesn't matter.

Now, for Go/chess/shogi, they generate the training data for the supervised learning part by reusing MuZero for MCTS self-play. They don't mention how legal moves are handled there; they might be masking out like in AlphaZero. You could argue that this is, in some indirect way, 'explicit rules'. But since the MuZero is already learning to predict moves' value and which moves actually get taken, I see no reason that the MCTS self-play couldn't implement an instant-loss rule without any problem or slowing down training all that much, removing even that objection.

<comment><USER5> They do mention "MuZero only masks legal actions at the root of the search tree... does not perform any masking within the search tree". So it's not an instant-loss rule.

<comment><USER4> Searching within its internal game tree is different from what it actually does in the game-trajectory-generation phase. It could be entirely true that the search does not do anything at all to handle illegal moves, relying on the RNN being good enough to predict that illegal moves are never taken, and that the actual game-playing masks it out, or instant-loses, or something else entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time a Deepmind paper is published, I feel simultaneously very excited, and also very depressed that they keep speeding ahead while I'm not anywhere close to understanding their first paper about AlphaGo.

<comment><USER5> I recommend skipping the first AlphaGo paper, because it is completely superseded by AlphaZero and actually harder to understand.

<comment><USER7> I completely agree, the alphago paper is more like the working notes of a team that just accomplished something. The alphazero paper is a more careful analysis about the theoretical underpinnings and paints a clearer picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just released - walkthrough of the MuZero pseudocode: [https://link.medium.com/KB3f4RAu51](https://link.medium.com/KB3f4RAu51)

</comment><comment><USER9> Very impressive - key quote: "In addition, MuZero is designed to operate in the general reinforcement learning setting: single-agent domains with discounted intermediate rewards of arbitrary magnitude. In contrast, AlphaGo Zero and AlphaZero were designed to operate in two-player games with undiscounted terminal rewards of ±1."

It's worth noting that, as impressive as MuZeros performance is in the many Atari games, it achieves a score of 0.0 in Montezuma's Revenge.

</comment><comment><USER10> What sort of resources did this take? Racks of GPUs, or a laptop, or what?

<comment><USER11> According to the paper:

> All experiments were run using third generation Google Cloud TPUs [12]. For > each board game, we used 16 TPUs for training and 1000 TPUs for selfplay. > For each game in Atari, we used 8 TPUs for training and 32 TPUs for > selfplay. The much smaller proportion of TPUs used for selfplay in Atari is > due to the smaller number of simulations per move (50 instead of 800) and > the smaller size of the dynamics function compared to the representation > function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there any game records (kifu) of the MuZero - AlphaZero games?

<comment><USER13> Nope, and it's a bit suspicious. Still, I'm sure many will reimplement it. Unless they've left out some important detail, I think we'll get strong players using this approach in a couple of months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So if you ever find yourself at the mercy of a Superintelligence, simply challenge it to a round of Solaris for the Atari 2600 ;)

I still don't understand how the "prediction function" is generating frames?

From the last line of the paper it seems to suggest MuZero is generalizable to other domains.

But the appendix states "the network rapidly learns not to predict actions that never occur in the trajectories it is trained on"

Consider the problem of predicting the next N frames of video from a one minute youtabe sample chosen at random. Where there is a high probability of some sort of scene transition in the interval. Short of training on a large subset of the youtube corpus.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't generate frames at all! Actually that is the main idea of this paper. (It's not my words, the paper itself calls it "the main idea".) To quote:

> The main idea of the algorithm ... is to predict those aspects of the future > that are directly relevant for planning. The model receives the observation > ... as an input and transforms it into a hidden state... There is no direct > constraint or requirement for the hidden state to capture all information > necessary to reconstruct the original observation, drastically reducing the > amount of information the model has to maintain and predict.

<comment><USER13> It is the main idea of the algorithm, but as the paper itself says, there has been a trend towards this recently. I haven't read many of the papers they cite, but I do remember one of them ("Learning to predict without looking ahead: world models without forward prediction"). They had a neat site (learningtopredict.github.io). They write:

"We speculate that the complexity of world models could be greatly decreased if they could fully leverage this idea: that a complete model of the world is actually unnecessary for most tasks - that by identifying the important part of the world, policies could be trained significantly more quickly, or more sample efficiently".

That is just what this paper does, as I understand it, by bringing it together with the tree search from AlphaZero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Exciting research. Not my area of expertise. An opinion:

> without any knowledge of the game rules

I'd prefer 1000 times an AI that can explain to me why an opposite-colored bishop ending is drawish or why knights are more valuable near the center, and can come up with those and more new concepts/relationships/models on its own (regardless of whether we have given it the game rules or not), than a black box that is excellent at beating you at chess but you can't understand or trust. Adversarial examples (false positives) are supporters for this preference.

<comment><USER16> There are ways to reverse engineer neural nets to try and understand the reasoning but AFAIK none of them are very good.

For example, I went to a SAS/STAT course a few years ago and one of the exercises was to train a simple neural network and then use it as input to generate a decision tree, that would (with pretty good accuracy, around 95% or so) explain the choices made by the neural network. I think the given scenario was that the neural network was used to decide who to send marketing emails to, and the head of marketing wanted to know why it was choosing certain customers.

The problem with this was that it didn't offer insight into why decisions were made, it could only show what variable was being branched on at a given point in the tree. Also while it worked with this simple example, more complex NNs generated huge decision trees that were not usefull in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > In this work we present the MuZero algorithm which, by combining a tree- > based search with a learned model, achieves superhuman performance in a > range of challenging and visually complex domains, without any knowledge of > their underlying dynamics.

<rant> DeepMind "superhuman" hype machine strikes again.

I mean, it's cool that computers are getting even better at chess and all (and other perfectly constrained game environments), but come on. "Superhuman" chess performance hasn't been particularly interesting since Deep Blue vs Kasparov in 1997.

The fact that the new algorithms have "no knowledge of underlying dynamics" makes it sound like an entirely new approach, and on one level it is. ML vs non-statistical methods. But on a deeper level, it's the same shit.

Unless I'm grossly mistaken, (someone please correct me if this is inaccurate), the superhuman performance is only made possible by massive compute. In other words, brute force.

But it uses less training cycles, you say! AlphaZero et all mastered the game in only 3 days! etc etc. This conveniently ignores the fact that this was 3 days of training on an array of GPUs that is way more powerful than the supercomputers of old.

Don't get me wrong. These ML algorithms have value and can solve real problems. I just really wish DeepMind's marketing department would stop beating us over the head with all of this "superhuman" marketing.

For those just tuning in, this is the same company that got the term "digital prodigy" on the cover of Science [0]. Which is again a form of cheating, because the whole prodigy aspect conveniently ignores the compute power required to achieve AlphaZero. For the record, if you took A0 and ran it on hardware from a few years ago, you would have a computer that achieves superhuman performance after a _very_ long time, which wouldn't be making headlines.

</rant>

0\. [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419)

<comment><USER5> Okay, I will bite. It uses less training cycles. Why is that not significant? Both AlphaZero and MuZero are brute force, but MuZero is _less_ brute force than AlphaZero, so it's heading in the right direction.

<comment><USER17> Sure, but both of them are _more_ brute force than Deep Blue (unless anybody has a compelling counter argument), so we're actually heading in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER18> AlphaZero evaluates comparably less positions per second than Deep Blue. It doesn't even reach 100k nodes per seconds of I remember correctly, while Deep Blue was in the millions[1]. Therefore, even though the training is done by brute force, the evaluation is way less "brute forcing" in AlphaZero than in Deep Blue.

Not just Stockfish on modern hardware can evaluate fewer nodes than Deep Blue and still beat it left and right; in 1995 Fritz _on a Pentium_ was able to beat Deep Thought II at the world chess championship. Deep Blue and its ancestors, with their custom hardware, were perhaps the "most brute force" of all chess engines.

[1] [https://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=91692](https://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=91692)

<comment><USER17> As you yourself point out, the brute force here refers to solving a problem by throwing more hardware at it.

Number of nodes searched is not the key metric for gauging how "smart" the algorithm is. You have less nodes searched but you only got there by having way more upfront processing.

<comment><USER19> But that processing happens just once, and then you amortize it over the software's lifetime. Play a million games and you probably come out ahead.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Diaspora Slowly going broke and fading away? - <AUTHOR>

Just received an email from the Diapora team, asking to contribute a bit more to their efforts. I wonder why would people still do that since they havent been able to get a project up and running that would has a social hook. Email copied below
Dear Ahsan -
We love you. Yes. Really, we do.
We're building Diaspora, in a spirit of community, because we believe in you. You're one of the innovators, the creative ones, the people who make the world awesome.
We're building tools that we hope will help you bring your true voice to the world. For no other reason than we want to see what you'll say and do here. For the pure joy of it.
And it's incredibly moving for us whenever someone steps up to help make it happen, by writing a blog post or contributing code, or giving money. It says someone shares our love for what's possible, and is going the extra distance to show it. It's like getting a huge, warm hug.
We're not in this for the money. But today we're asking for your help -- some money -- to keep building Diaspora.
Can you contribute $25.-, or any other amount you feel comfortable with?
It will really make a difference, enabling us to build more great features to help you express yourself, however you like.
We recently asked Diasporans what they love about our service. There were tons of beautiful responses. Here are a few of our favorites:
What people love about Diaspora*
Diaspora is: For benefit rather than profit. A community rather than a corporation. A place where who you are and what you say and to whom is all in your control, not in the control of the people who run it. Run by people who listen to their users and respond. - Goober Fox
It's interesting how much people seem to be sharing on an intellectual level, there are conversations here. Not just short comments and banter. - Satu Jokinen
...all the... wonderful friends I've made here who are too numerous to list...
- Garidin Winslow
I like that i can control who to share what with. I like that I'm not bombarded with alcohol, sex, dating and violence ads all the time... and I love the whole concept its buil[t] up upon. Its like the internet I got to know when I first got online many... years ago
- Bohs Hansen
Freedom.
- Paks
No clutter. ;)
- Carlex Crespo
This is a simple and effective place for adults, or; just for all the people who appreciate 'simple' and effective things; ha!	 - May M
Geez, where to begin? :-) The decentralized approach. The absolute freedom of name, gender and expression. Ownership of your data... Knowing you do it for the sake of advancement and not for profit - makes me want to donate to it! The lovely, intelligent, creative, funny and übergeeky people I am sharing with. The hearts. I ♥ the hearts. And the ☮ signs. It's open source, so no vendor lock-ins or sneaky partnerships The way it could set information free, since a regime can block out one site, but never win a pod info war.
And it's just in alpha, right? Whoa....
- Lars Christensen, a.k.a. Organic Unit 070678
I love the heart of the idea of becoming a Diasporian. Diaspora started off with a good heart. That's what will keep it alive.	 - Dao It's just so heart-warming to read comments like these. What we're building here is so much more than just another social network. At its core, Diaspora* is a new community, a uniquely free one, based on a positive vision of how we can all experience community online.
It's a community effort too. Which is why so many people are contributing in whatever way they can. And why we hope you'll take a moment to give $25.-, or whatever you can, to support this vision today.
Your support will make a real difference, and it will mean the world to us.
Thank you.
- Ilya, Dan, Max, Sarah, Yosem, and Peter
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 <comment><USER2> This definitely does not come off well.

Especially given the general sentiment (around HN at least) that these guys were over-funded.

Chalk one up to the bootstrapping mantra of being cash strapped to force you to push/pivot/iterate/hussle ... or die.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. I think giving a bunch college students a lot of money to make the "perfect" social network, does not bode well. Money has to come when you have built, shipped and performed so people can actually gauge the utility of what you make. The accountability is just not there.

I think something like this also does not bode well for kickstarter in general. I know a number of people (musicians, artists) etc. who have raised money but have not come out with anything in over six months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They should have read this <http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

specifically #8. Slowness in Launching</comment>


Researchers devise new method for protecting private data - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news127744037.html <comment><USER2> It looks like some of the relevant research (called here "attribute-based encryption" rather than "functional encryption") is freely available at: <http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/323.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> Paper here

<http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/404>

Google Scholar is a wonderful tool.</comment>


Why Rails' magic and DSL style might not be good - <AUTHOR> http://bens.me.uk/2009/going-off-the-rails

<comment><USER2> I've got no opinion on the difference between the "layout" classmethod and the "determine_layout" overridden object method, but his security example is ass- backwards: every other framework with a more "explicit" mechanism for exporting/hiding methods has produced applications riddled with authorization bugs. J2EE is a great example.

You don't make a strong case for the evils of "Rails magic" by pointing out that bad things happen when you leave off the "private" declaration in a class definition.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't really intended as a security example, more another example of unintended things happening if you don't know all the rules.

<comment><USER3> The rules in this case seem pretty standard to me; public/private methods work the same in controllers as they do in every other object. Rails is just using an existing mechanism that's been around in OO languages for a very, very long time, rather than implementing something else that does the exact same thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is reusing a standard OO mechanism, just not as well as it could. If all the Rails security tutorials feel they have to mention this point, then it's an indication that the design isn't quite right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> DSLs are great when they bring the code closer to being a description of the problem / logic / assertions. One example of a highly successful embedded DSL is regular expressions.

A DSLs made by using a language's features for operator overloading, magic constants, and similar, has the advantage that the "code" in the DSL is part of the original source, but it also has the big disadvantage that it tends to show many compromises due to limits of the host language, so the syntax will be arcane and non-standard.

Though this isn't specific to Ruby/Rails. I think the problem is twofold, 1) the advantage of having the DSL embedded and 2) the advantage (for the creator of the DSL) of not having to build an actual compiler for the DSL.

Something like Ragel¹ solves #1 by being a preprocessor.

¹ <http://www.complang.org/ragel/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Having implemented a web app framework using a preprocessor, I found it was a bit of a pain to write and use. So using the language features makes sense to get the job done.

But I was trying to question whether or not a DSL was the right way to go for a web app. If you use as many of the standard features and keywords as possible, there's no ambiguity over what a special keyword means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why he's calling any of that "magic". There's nothing magic about it, not even a little bit. He doesn't comprehend how the libraries he is using actually works internally, and that is all there is to it.

Is this what passes for "magic" now? Simply not understanding, or caring about, how the libraries you use work internally? That's "magic"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course there's nothing actually magic about it, because you can read the source. As with any large system, it's quite impenetrable in places, but I do suspect some of the design choices have made it more complex than it could be.

Trying to make a "literate" DSL which reads as much like English as possible means using it can become subtly surprising, as well as complicating the framework implementation. I am questioning the trade-off of terse readable code vs slightly more verbose code which is still readable but uses predictable language features.

That said, I like Rails, and it works very well for the things it's designed to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with the layout example and would add that prototype based languages that unify method calls with attribute lookups (through message sends) give you both:

      SomeController := Controller clone do(
        layout := "template"
      )

      SomeController := Controller clone do(
        layout := method(
            if(params at("foo") == "bar", "foo-template", "template")
        )
      )

This way the framework would send the layout message to the cloned SomeController object and get the proper layout name for either case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Objective-C 2 could be quite nice for this too. It's a nice mix between static and dynamic languages, and a function of this nature can be implemented as a property or as a receiver of a message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 'For example, the View code is executed in a different context to the Controller, yet the @instance variables are magically available, along with the magically included helper modules.'

What - what? How is this magic? How else could this possibly be implemented without breaking MVC?

</comment><comment><USER8> If your "framework" is only meant to run a single custom application...it's not much of a framework

</comment><comment><USER9> valid point if 'use the right tool for the job' is a valid point? very misguided examples for anyone that's used Rails extensively</comment>


Kevin Eichelberger: elonmusk we found part of your SpaceX in the Bahamas - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kpe/status/604418558181785600/photo/1 <comment><USER2> Very cool.

The world is so small. I know Kevin so it's pretty cool to think that someone I know found part of one of Elon's awesome rockets.

I'd love to see the full reentry video. I know they posted a small 2 minute bit.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you using Riak? What for? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> At dotCloud we use PostgreSQL, Riak and redis.

\- PostgreSQL for the user database since it maps nicely to django and sqlalchemy models

\- Redis for caches and non persistent data

\- Riak for everything else

We love the fact that it is easy to scale, that bitcask is safe (it writes to disk:-p) and easy to backup (rsync or cp is enough).

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts on backing up. Would rsync to S3 happening regularly be an adequate solution? Figure if it is on a cron and it fires every other minute, the deltas would be pretty small, and not much would be lost if a datacenter or cluster goes down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At Yammer we use Riak to power our notifications backend. More details available here…

<http://blog.basho.com/2011/03/28/Riak-and-Scala-at-Yammer/>

</comment><comment><USER5> We use Riak at Dropcam to store H.264 video streaming from cameras running 24/7 which needs to be available for playback on the website and mobile apps. We needed a block store that could scale to handle petabytes, tolerate disk and node failures, and provide always-on write- and read-ability.

Riak fits the bill very well, though we did need to make a few mods to workaround certain problems. But it's Erlang/OTP, fairly small code-wise, and easy to modify.

<comment><USER2> Do you use luwak to store the videos or are they small enough?

<comment><USER5> It's a continuous stream. We break it into chunks similar to what Luwak does, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We use Riak as our primary datastore at Showyou, with Redis, Solr, and Memcached helping out. The big advantage of Riak is high availability and easy management, but for sorting/listing keys, range queries, and low latency we need other datastores which maintain post-commit-hook updated indices.

<comment><USER7> Riak provides post-commit hooks:

<http://wiki.basho.com/Pre--and-Post-Commit-Hooks.html>

But I assume you mean these post-commit hooks update other indices stored outside of Riak.

<comment><USER6> Yes, sorry, the wording was somewhat ambiguous. We use post-commit-hooks in riak to update external datastores, as well as callbacks within our ORM for many indexes stored in Riak itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was recently a poll:what database your company is using? Which within the commentd riak was mentioned mant times

<comment><USER9> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2684620>

<comment><USER10> Don't know why that got downvoted, since it's a link to relevant prior discussion. But here's a more specific link (to the Riak thread in that discussion): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2685053>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For now, nothing. My systems use redis as a datastore at first, then move to riak when they outgrow redis. So far my tiny systems haven't outgrown redis.

When I have time, I'll add distributed counter support to Riak and take over the world. (Let's count _everything._ In real time with massive concurrency, full historical resolution, and no single points of failure.)

</comment><comment><USER12> 2 Ruby client projects. Really happy with it. always use it with Redis so we can get atomicity for things like counters, etc...

</comment><comment><USER13> Using it to power the activity stream of a small site (+ Postgres & Redis). <3</comment>


MSNBC Contributor: Debate over NSA is a 'Privileged' Discussion - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-contributor-debate-over-nsa-is-a-privileged-discussion/

<comment><USER2> We now know that the DEA has been using laundered NSA intelligence. That's relevant to the Drug War, where primarily minority communities are routinely terrorized by soldiers, and imprisoned en mass at the world's highest rate.

</comment><comment><USER3> He has a point. The NSA spying adopts more of an innocent until proven guilty mantra that many minorities have experienced throughout their lives. However that shouldn't diminish our outrage towards either or our efforts to put a stop to them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just realized this is the domestic version of "...and you are lynching Negroes!"

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Except no one is being lynched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it necessary to call attention to a form of surveillance by downplaying another? The NSA apparatus will be very useful for those who love to perform these searches on black people. Sharing of information between agencies and departments is slowly being implemented. Your local police officer will love to use the searches of a black teenager to frame him.

Honestly, after seeing this I understand the HNers who complain about the politics overload on HN. This is pure partisan hackery. This is a classical trick in two-party politics: show a problem in the opposite team while you ignore how your side does the same thing through different ways.

</comment><comment><USER5> If I lived in New York, I'd be more active in opposing stop-and-frisk too. Most Americans don't live in New York.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2351342/Bloomberg- re...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2351342/Bloomberg-responds- critics-stop-frisk-program-declaring-I-think-disproportionately-stop-whites- minorities-little.html)

<comment><USER5> I have no idea what you're trying to communicate with the link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you like to respond to Bloomberg's argument for stop-and-frisk?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have heard this point made by many of my friends. Another example is: the TSA pat downs are met with outrage precisely because some of the people who are subjected to them are not accustomed to that sort of treatment. Treatment that many members of minority groups have been enduring for decades, at least.

The outrage implies that the member of the newly affected group is either unaware of the position of privilege he has enjoyed thus far in his life, or is aware of it and thinks it is the natural order of things. Otherwise, why hasn't the person been outraged for decades about these policies which target less powerful members of society?

Taking it further these violations being committed have been paid for (taxes), voted for (elections), and therefore tacitly endorsed, by many of the same people who are so upset when it happens to their in-group.

Which is the greater violation? Someone reading your private email, or the imprisonment of a young mother for 40 years because she was associated with drug dealers? Because the latter had been going on long before the former even could exist.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ah yes, the privilege of not having all of your electronic communications monitored.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm reading this as an interesting variation of _" I am annoyed that this is being discussed now because I already knew this was a problem."_

Wholly unhelpful.

</comment><comment><USER9> This strikes me as making the good the enemy of the great.

<comment><USER10> I think what he's saying is that the poor and minorities have been suffering under a regime much more oppressive for a very long time. It's not that he approves of NSA surveillance, he just finds it indicative of a privileged point of view when one finds the former acceptable, but the latter some sort of new low.</comment></comment>


Everyone I Know is Brokenhearted - <AUTHOR> http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/

<comment><USER2> I'm currently reading Touched with Fire by Kay Jamison. It's a fairly quantitative examination of the links between depression and creativity. Though it's specifically about manic-depressives, I think much of it is relevant to the article as the author describes himself as a writer, web designer/developer, musician and artist.

I was shocked even paging through the book when I first got it, jumping from chart to chart. Check these three out:

Showing Van Gogh's seasonal depression: [http://xomf.com/rzbwz](http://xomf.com/rzbwz)

Suicide rates of artists and writers: [http://xomf.com/xysmn](http://xomf.com/xysmn)

Mood disorders in writers and artists: [http://xomf.com/mxnqq](http://xomf.com/mxnqq)

I think it would be easy for someone to say "oh but wait - this guy is a web designer, he's not sitting with oils and a canvas - these stats are irrelevant." They'd be wrong. Here is what Steve thought about the people who worked on the mac:

"These are the people under different circumstances would be painters and poets but because of the time that we live in this new medium has appeared in which to express one's self to one's fellow species and that's the medium of computing. And so a lot of people that would have been artists and scientists have gone into this field to express their feeling..."

(from the 1990 interview at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nMD6sjAe8I#t=16m25s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nMD6sjAe8I#t=16m25s))

I think there's probably more depression in our industry than people let on. TechCrunch recently did a post on depression in founders. Hell - I just commented on a HN thread of a guy working on an app to combat loneliness. It's a real problem, with a real nasty stigma, and I think it's important people start talking openly about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Hell, a major motion picture company put out Fight Club, which is about as unsubtle an attack on consumer corporate capitalism as you can get."

And that major motion picture company made a shit ton of money selling that fantasy. We're drinking what they're selling.</comment>


Evidence for Abundance - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/ <comment><USER2> One of the graphs struck me as odd - percent of per capita disposable income spent on food, falling. The problem with that is inequality - it's been widely discussed that most of the gains of the last decade have been made by the richest, while wages for the poorest have stagnated. But that means the percent of disposable income spent on food by the poorest might not be falling at all?

It turns out USADA do have that graph as well (in fact it's the one right below the one in the article, taken from [http://www.ers.usda.gov/data- products/ag-and-food-statistics...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag- and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending.aspx)) [http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart- gallery/detail.a...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart- gallery/detail.aspx?chartId=40096&ref=collection&embed=True&widgetId=39734) \- for the lowest quintile of the US population, the % of disposable income spent on food has gone _up_ from 32% to 34% from 2006 to 2014.

The abundant future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed?

<comment><USER3> > while wages for the poorest have stagnated. But that means the percent of > disposable income spent on food by the poorest might not be falling at all

No, that's not true at all. If wages are stagnant and goods are getting cheaper, then you are getting richer. I see this "stagnant wages" meme brought up all the time, but I don't see why nobody ever talks about cost of goods. Ex: Even the poorest today in the US can afford amazingly complex cellphones and computers, which was unthinkable 25 years ago (if we were to somehow make one of the same capacity)

<comment><USER4> > If wages are stagnant and goods are getting cheaper, then you are getting > richer. I see this "stagnant wages" meme brought up all the time, but I > don't see why nobody ever talks about cost of goods.

Because the wages are stagnant in real (that is, inflation-adjusted) terms, which means that the cost of goods is _already considered_.

<comment><USER5> Considered for the most part. You will expectedly still be able to find goods and services that cost considerably more or less than in past, real terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > NOTE: This is not to say that there aren't major issues we still face, like > climate crisis, religious radicalism, terrorism, and so on.

The author felt compelled to include this disclaimer because people are afraid that by pointing out the good trends, that we are taking our eye off the ball in eradicating problems. As if by pointing out any promising trends in poverty, that this is equivalent to saying that we should stop trying to eradicate poverty. As if we declared mission accomplished!

I think this explains the aversion to good-news reporting, not that we over- emphasize the negative because of evolutionary bias. We always feel we need to add a disclaimer: but there is more work to do!

</comment><comment><USER7> If I've learned one thing from this, it's that the worst places on Earth are in Sub-Saharan Africa. That's some staggering poverty which has really resisted major change after what appears to be a major shift in the early 80's.

Guinea worm is a great victory, but like Smallpox it's not emblematic of a general trend. You should not look at a chart of guinea worm infections and draw conclusions about rates of Malaria, VHF's, HIV, etc.

What has clearly and drastically improved is the standard of living in the US and Western Europe, which should shock no one at all.

<comment><USER6> The Bottom Billion is a good book about the factors that make the poorest regions in the world, of which Sub-Saharan Africa is the largest block.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does the first chart account for inflation seeing as it's defined in terms of US dollars?

<comment><USER9> Yes. The source is a bit clearer on the point, mentioning that the chart is in terms of 2011PPP. So it accounts for differences in cost of living too, attempting to measure consumption in vaguely absolute terms. (a bit down the page: [https://ourworldindata.org/world- poverty/](https://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/) )

As a meta point, financial statistics that don't account for inflation are so utterly meaningless and bankrupt the thing to do if you have this concern is to go check and report back if they are crap. The default assumption should be that they do account for inflation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Android users, what apps do you use and suggest? - <AUTHOR>

Just got a Nexus One. My first smartphone. Lovely. What are your favorite apps?<p>I am especially interested in productivity tools, particularly stuff that would let me connect PC-cloud-Mobile. <comment><USER2> While a lot of people will complain about the $11 price, I use and like Locale + Airplane Mode plugin.

The other major items are a slider keyboard (liking SlideIT at the moment) and NewsRob for going through the RSS feeds.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shazam - I really love this, you play it a music clip and it'll tell you the artist and song title.

Last.fm - To listen to music whilst jogging

Notes - Very handy for making todo lists etc

</comment><comment><USER4> I use soccer world cup - wm2010 for the next soccer world cup in south africa.

I also use the Mint app (productivity or finance)

my tracks

</comment><comment><USER5> Far and away: "Toddler Lock", keeps you productive by keeping your toddler occupied!</comment>


Show HN: Triangulae – slide triangles together to form squares - <AUTHOR> http://riquardo.com/triangulae/try/

<comment><USER2> You should comment out this line if you want people to play your game:

//TESTING </comment><comment>-

safeSquares = 0;

// \</comment><comment></comment><comment>--

<comment><AUTHOR> DOH!

Commented, many thanks 5xman

<comment><USER2> Also, when you make 16 squares, it doesn't say anything and won't allow you to start again. You have to refresh the page to play again.</comment></comment></comment>


Just Color Picker - <AUTHOR> http://annystudio.com/software/colorpicker/ <comment><AUTHOR> I saw the recent electron based color picker someone created because windows didn't have a color picker. This is lightweight and one of my favorite tools. It also has a Mac version (although no Linux as far as I know).</comment>


CJDNS Author: Our sights are set higher than Tor - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zINQYkl01N8

<comment><USER2> This is a very interesting video. I'm wondering about several things mentioned, though.

The CJDNS author mentioned that if a user does something people don't like, his friend can tell him, "knock it off", or eventually he can just be cut off from the group. What is to prevent a mob mentality, or even a group/corporation from being able to silence a minority opinion in this sort of setup? It seems like this could be an issue, if people could be easily cut off.

Also, will there be an ability for users to establish more than one connection at a time? That is, can people be connected to more than just one particular "parent" node at at a time? This would certainly be great in order to have better stability, and even to overcome potential problems if a parent node drops (and users would then just be able to use their other "parent" as the main channel).

I thought I heard him mention that packets will have directions--"turn left, turn right", etc-- which will then be stripped away per each traversal. What is to stop malformed packets from occurring with this? Also, what if the packet "turns left", only to find that it hit a dead end (or dead node)?

Will IPs be the key, or will they just act as a key? Also, how will IPs work when it comes to within a network (home network, intranet, WAN) compared to when they leave for the public sort of mesh-net? Will there be reservations for in-house IPs like we already have, or will there be some other workaround?

And finally, it would be interesting to see what happens in regards to TLDs. It would be interesting to see an actual naming scheme that used something like Java packages, so we would be able to navigate to something like: .org.npr.news (keeping the trailing period that a qualified name has?)

I hope to see this taking actually becoming more of a democratic network than the current Internet implementation we have. Although, like anything, it will take time and work.

<comment><USER3> If a mob cuts you off, just find a different peer. If no other peers exist, then we're back to where we are now- I only have Comcast as an ISP choice. With CJDNS, I would have every neighbor as a potential peer.

I'm not sure about how the routing works, exactly. More than one connection at a time is possible and suggested.

IPv6 addresses will be world-routable. This means each device should have a firewall because every device will directly connect- or you can use NAT like you do now.</comment></comment>


PHP Fat-Free Framework - <AUTHOR> http://fatfree.sourceforge.net FAT-FREE is a powerful yet lightweight PHP 5.3+ Web development framework designed to help you build dynamic and robust applications - fast! <comment><USER2> They advertise as "fat-free" but i think theres still fat that could be trimmed, that wouldn't be needed in a base framework.

I don't really understand why they call some of these plugins through the F3 class instead of using them separately.

Wouldn't it be better to separate db class, and do Db::query() or Db::sql() instead of F3::sql(), which uses a __callStatic() magic method and loops through all the files in the autoload dir and checking each class to see if it has a sql() method. Just seems like it's doing a lot of extra un-needed work, even if it is caching it

<comment><USER3> I believe you already can, using F3:: for everything is just a fallback if you've forgotten what class the method belongs to. I had a thought to plug in an ACL check inside the __callStatic() and autoLoad() methods, since it's already searching for the class and method, would be a simple thing to run that through an ACL table to see if the user has access to the class/method. Just a thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am surprised it is licensed as GPLv3. That limits it to in-house projects unless you want to license any of your reusable code in a project as GPL to your clients.

If you are looking for a routing library that works with 5.3, but also 5.1.6 and 5.2, I recommend checking out Moor (<http://github.com/jeffturcotte/moor>). It is licensed MIT so it can be used on any project.

</comment><comment><USER5> "But wait! Act now and get 2 PHP Fat-Free Frameworks for the same low price!"

Does anyone else think that page reads like an infomercial?

Also, PHP -is- a templating engine. No need to re-implement it inside itself.

</comment><comment><USER6> REQUIRES php 5.3, won't even run on 5.2.x

That's a tad overboard.</comment>