The Effectiveness of Test Driven Development (With Case Studies) - <AUTHOR> http://grokcode.com/439/test-driven-development-and-the-meaning-of-done/ <comment><USER2> I think TDD is useful, but practitioners should not be dogmatic about it.

As I discussed in my talk "Testing is Overrated", programmer testing finds a different class of bugs than manual testing or code reviews.

One of the problems is that programmers are not very good at writing tests. They are much more likely to test "happy path" scenarios. Steve McConnell reports in Code Complete that mature testing organizations have 5 times more dirty tests than clean tests, while immature testing organizations write 5 clean tests for every dirty test.

Another big problem is that unit tests are never going to show you that your software blows. Only user testing can find that.

If you want to ship good software, I think you need to do a combination of code reviews, unit tests, system tests, user studies, and manual testing. Different organizations will find a balance that works for them.

That last is a key point. I like writing tests, but I hate the dogmatism that if you're not writing tests you're doing it wrong. Obviously, good software has been written without tests, and buggy crap has been fully TDD'ed. In the end, the team matters more than the methodology.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/8585284/Testing-is-Overrated- Hando...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/8585284/Testing-is-Overrated-Handout) <http://www.scribd.com/doc/8585444/Testing-is-Overrated>

</comment><comment><USER3> The article misses an important point: People who've done TDD know that it is the easiest/fastest way to unit-test. Few aspects of programming are more painful than trying to unit test code after the fact, especially if it was written without testing in mind.

<comment><USER4> I fail to see how unit tests are required for a shippable product. For a wide range of things, buggy and shipped is better than clean and ready in 3-6 months.

<comment><USER5> But is buggy and shipped in 3-6 months or clean and ready in 3.25 to 7 months better? (that's what the time increase numbers are from TFA).

<comment><USER6> In the marginal case where you only care about one iteration, then TDD is a little bit worse. However, I am confident that without TDD, your second iteration will be slower - you'll get less done, and your bug rate will still be higher.

<comment><USER4> If something is faster, but starts later it does not necessarily win. 15% to 35% longer initial release cycles is fine for a 1 month web app, but if it's a game that takes 2 years to release, your starting from a deep hole.

PS: I suspect, TDD ends up being something of a premature optimization on larger projects, you write tests before you know which direction you want to take the project in. Don't get me wrong Tests are great from a process improvement standpoint, but every major shift ends up breaking way to many tests that you either don't do it, or you just wasted all that time writing tests.

<comment><USER5> > every major shift ends up breaking way to many tests that you either don't > do it, or you just wasted all that time writing tests.

This is why I'm a BDD guy, not a TDD guy. Seems like you're writing a lot of the wrong kind of tests...

<comment><USER4> Thanks, BDD looks like an interesting idea, I think I will look into that some more.

Anyway, I tend to build the happy path by any means necessary, verify that's what you want, then go for TQM style process improvement to add quality. I think of it like pulling a tiny string across the river before you build a rope bridge.

It's not hard to add heaver gage rope to work your way up to a bridge. But, good luck crossing the chasm if you don't know how to swim or where to find a boat. While that original string may have little to do with the finished bridge, but at least you have something to fall back on when you're trying to get the GPU to do something etc.

PS: Ok, I think I took that analogy well past the breaking point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "If we control the bug rate, is TDD faster?" is the central question. I assert that TDD is the Cause of the bugs, so the question is nonsense.

Code should be developed with as large a view of the design as possible. TDD restricts development (by definition) to satisfying the tests. The effect is of 'moving the bugs around' since the existing tests rarely completely describe the whole design. You get into a loop of "oh, yeah, well we Really meant to write a test to cover that case too", repeated ad-nausuem.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what you mean by "TDD is the Cause of the bugs" - the TDD projects had 40-90% fewer bugs. Even if their remaining bugs would have been caught by test coverage of things that occur in live use, that's still a good result, right?

<comment><USER7> Well, sort of. TDD defines bugs as "things the unit tests catch". And the unit tests are very narrow.

So yes, you record fewer bugs, fix those narrow cases quickly and pretend you're done.

Then it gets to the field, and whatever you didn't catch becomes a 3-alarm fire.

I vastly prefer shakedown tests of the sort where you launch a 'bot army' on cloud servers to thrash the app. Especially if there is Any network/client/server component.

<comment><USER6> _TDD defines bugs as "things the unit tests catch". And the unit tests are very narrow._

I think that if you read the article linked, you'd find that the study didn't work that way. Any study that measures different things between experiment and control groups is not going to be sound.

 _Then it gets to the field, and whatever you didn't catch becomes a 3-alarm fire._

I've worked on TDD projects, and those are definitely are counted as bugs. Severity 1.

<comment><USER5> ... and then you get a regression test, so that bug never happens again. And the regression test is easy to write, since all of your code is already testable, you have all the testing infrastructure in place, etc.

<comment><USER7> Never happens again? You already have the 3-alarm fire, its too late. That's my point exactly. You catch only what you can think of and write tests to cover.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure how TDD makes this worse. Unless you think that it absolves you of any end-to-end QA testing. In which case, welcome to the fire.

<comment><USER7> I object to the TDD fundamental precept that you code to the tests. That narrows the 'testing' until its a self-fulfilling prophecy that you will have 'fewer bugs', since you defined the bugs as 'what we're looking for'.

Reminds me of the old joke "A: I'm looking for my wallet. B: where did you lose it? A: over there. B: then why look here? A: the light's better"

<comment><USER6> You're repeating your false idea that bugs in TDD come only from the unit tests. Eh, see comments above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is interesting video from RSC2010: <http://video2010.scottishrubyconference.com/show_video/11/1>

"Dependent Types: A Look At The Other Side" by Larry Diehl

It talks about using Types for Driving your Development. So it is TDD, but without tests, without runtime and programmer's overhead of them.

When using TyDD, you isolate core that should go as bugless as possible and write DSeL for it in language with strong type system. The talk above tells about Agda, but we and some number of other companies in the world (Eaton http//eaton.com/, Echo <http://aboutecho.com/> \- from the top of my head) successfully employ Haskell for that task.

That way you shoot two birds with one stone: you get provably correct software and you get an ideal language to express your core problems.

Best of all, you get free "requirement tracking" - whenever your requirements change, you express them in types and then apply changes where they should, guided by friendly compiler. Still getting provably correct software (modulo types) at the end.

<comment><USER9> That was "interesting" in that I like expanding my horizons, but it was a _terrible_ presentation. Plus, it looks like Haskell and I got the impression from his lead-in that he was going to introduce a new language.

However, I actually came here to say something else about his material: if it is _harder_ to decompose the business requirement into Haskell than it is to write monkey tests for one's Blub language, I am not certain anyone wins when going with a provably correct implementation.

<comment><USER8> He talked about Agda2.

My experience using advanced type system tells me that you can get away with functional tests. Types, also, takes much less code space-programmer's time than tests.

So I do not see how they could be harder to use. Certainly types will be unusual, but not much harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anecdote: I'm not smart enough to design software without having an idea of how it can be automatically tested. My design has to prove that it can be easily tested (both via unit tests and integration tests), and I've found that writing some of the tests up front helps with that.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's down for me. Here's the link to Google cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:grokco...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:grokcode.com/439/test- driven-development-and-the-meaning-of-done/)</comment>


Is Eating a Plant-Based Diet a Cure for Cancer? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/142875/is_eating_a_plant-based_diet_a_cure_for_cancer?page=entire

<comment><USER2> No.</comment>


From backwards boards to king-flipping, Hollywood can't get chess right - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bad-chess-scenes-movies-tv <comment><USER2> Hollywood can't get _anything_ right: real police don't act like movie police; real soldiers don't act like movie soldiers; real programmers don't act like movie programmers; real lovers don't act like movie lovers; real clergymen don't act like movie clergymen; real businessmen don't act like movie businessmen — and to the extent that any real people _do_ act like movie characters, it's due to the influence of movies.

What really worries me is that most of us have far more false experience of most of the world than we have real experience: how many of us know much about chess, or police work, or soldiering, or programming (okay, that one HN has down pretty well, I hope), or love (I _hope_ most of HN has that one down at least a bit), or church, or business? And yet no doubt all of us have very strong opinions about these things, due in no small part to … the false movie experiences we've had.

<comment><USER3> _" real people do act like movie characters, it's due to the influence of movies."_

Yes, somewhat more bizarre Hollywood influence is that people fall down[0] when they are shot (even though, bullet doesn't have enough kinetic energy to force it), just because they saw this happening in movies.

0\. [http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/07/why-do- people-f...](http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/07/why-do-people-fall- down-when-shot.html)

<comment><USER4> Here is some WWI footage [1] Look at 0:33. See how they fall down (this may also be from shrapnel). The simple answer is that balance requires active input from the brain to be maintained. Without it you won't be up for long.

Your article is only about getting blown back by the impact which is generally reserved for only the cheesiest of 80s action movies.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL52P2vH3l0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL52P2vH3l0) WARNING: Not excessively gruesome, but it is war footage

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OP says noone flips their king to resign, well I do, but I've never played competitively. Aren't most games in movies casual? If they were all played with rigourous application of professional rules then that would be unrealistic too.

I've seen people playing with the board oriented wrongly, not more than a couple of times admittedly. Is the reason for it being so common in films that they've flipped the shot a lot of the time?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I play chess sometimes, and I could not care less about how the board is oriented.

<comment><USER7> this raises an interesting question: does one side have an advantage with an incorrectly oriented board? Googling it doesn't really seem to give an answer.

Most results that I found note that it probably does not affect the game that much. If you're planning to write down moves it may become confusing when someone with a correctly set up board tries to replay it.

<comment><USER8> No.

If you set up the pieces the same way, you literally just play with different colors for the fields.

If you mirror your setup of pieces because you want the white queen to go to the white field, then you just play mirrored chess. Apply this transformation again to obtain the actual chess game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They cite ornithologists, biologists, archiologists -- and the worst off are chess players? No, the worst off are hackers who will cringe at almost any movie today.

Probably our consulting fee is just too high for Hollywood.

<comment><USER10> Judging by my wife's comments when we watch shows, lawyers are probably even worse off for inaccuracies (and this often goes just as well for shows that are _about_ the justice system). But they also get a lot more screen time.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. Can you ask her if there's a movie or tv show that gets it mostly right?

<comment><USER12> My Cousin Vinny.

My sister and my brother-in-law are both lawyers. They love this movie. Their professors all love this movie. And from earlier this week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885659)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You think chess players have it bad with depictions? 75% (based on my non- scientific estimate) of actors/directors in Hollywood don't know how to hold a gun (and somehow hire a complete staff without a single person that does too). And guns come up way more often than chess. Not to mention many movie/tv sets have specialized people who obtain the guns and who, I assume, know better. You'd think they'd at least tell the actors to keep their finger off the trigger. If Hollywood was real, completely accidental and preventable shootings would be the #1 cause of death in the world. #2 would probably be PTSD from hearing fake gun sounds anytime a gun is shown in a scene. Let's face it. Hollywood simply doesn't try very hard and it shows.

</comment><comment><USER11> The one that really bothers me is when they show someone hotwiring a modern car solely by pulling wires, stripping them, and touching them together. Aside from the obvious issues with transponder enabled keys, they don't even address the steering wheel column lock.

And, it's not hard to get it "kind of right". At least have the thief plug in some kind of "transponder bypass" gadget and mechanically break the steering lock.

<comment><USER14> My first car, a total banger, was once stolen and then abandoned a few streets away. The thieves broke the ignition and steering lock, which I couldn't afford to get fixed. So for the next year or so, until the thing finally died, I had to hotwire it every time to start.

It never stopped being fun, as I would pretend I was in some kind of 'Gone in 60 seconds' situation, even though the car in question was a rusted-through Metro. And the looks I got from passers-by, especially in car parks, were priceless.

EDIT: And as they also broke the door lock, I could totally unlock it with a screwdriver.

<comment><USER15> Did something similar: I had a (couple, actually..) Citroën 2 CV with a broken lock. My "No money to fix it" solution was to have the wires somewhat exposed and use a screwdriver (obviously anything metal would've been ok) to short it when I had to start the car.

My door lock worked fine, although I noticed that it was so ~crap~ that I could actually unlock it with the key of other cars of the same type. A couple field tests confirmed that I could unlock _other_ 2 CVs with my key as well, on a regular basis.

<comment><USER16> My uncle had an old construction truck that was so jerry-rigged it was hilarious.

It was a diesel truck, but the glow plug igniter (or heater, whatever you call it) had gone out, so it was wired to a couple of toggle switches, so you had to flip one switch, wait like a minute or two, then flip a second switch, wait some more, then flip them off, then start up. They were in some kind of pull out tray (probably an old ash tray or the like) from the dash, and the original preheater would still turn on the light on the dash, but not actually heat the plugs, so it was a built in theft deterrent, since you couldn't actually start that way.

Then at some point, someone either ran over his keys or dropped them in a cement pour (I don't remember anymore), but he had to move the truck for some reason, so he busted the ignition cylinder, so he used a stubby screw driver he kept in the cup holder to start it.

The tailgate was kept up by two chunks of rebar slid through holes in the side of the truck into the tailgate. The bed of the truck was rebuilt out of recycled lumber and plywood from demolition work. Grill was rebuilt out of metal mesh that broke off one of his backhoes I think. That truck was a hell of a sight. Wish I had a picture of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why would anyone expect Hollywood to get anything right? From chess to gun fights to sword fights to relationships to computing to anything.

Hollywood isn't in the business of accurate depictions.

<comment><USER18> Of course when you do accurate depicions, the piece of film can "feel" so much better. We people can kinda detect things that are "off" and not as we remember them and that can push you away from suspension of disbelief and thus enjoyment of the film.

It's easy to fall into the hole of uncanny valley if too much things just don't add up. Keeping things realistic can also add more non-manufactured conflict that makes content more interesting - e.g. see for example The Expanse, where a lot of conflict of the story also lies in the fact that the writers understood how space physics works.

<comment><USER5> An accurate depiction of life has lots of things wrong in it though. It's easy to fall in to the hole of imagining an accurate depiction is one in which everything is precise and correct.

<comment><USER18> > It's easy to fall in to the hole of imagining an accurate depiction is one > in which everything is precise and correct.

Hmm, what do you mean? Isn't that the definition of accuracy?

<comment><USER5> To enlarge on the point I often hear people mis-speak, but that never happens in a film, or someone hiccups, or farts at an inopportune time (rather than for comedic effect). These things would be repeated in an accurate portrayal of people but seldom appear in films. Accuracy in entertainment media is over- rated and can impinge on a story's telling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an amateur who plays chess once every 5 years -- We tip the king, I didn't know there is a correct rotation, check mates are definitely out of the blue and someone could definitely see check mates that us (the players) doesn't.

I am sure we've had illegal positions come up as well, but that one I can understand.

<comment><USER20> I'm 1500 player in Chess.com, and I still miss out on "Checkmate in 2" or "Checkmate in 3" situations on occassion. That's why I review every single one of my games with Stockfish / SCID vs PC.

Generally speaking, those Checkmates I miss are Queen or Rook sacrifices, or "Smothered Mates". There are plenty of checkmates that are obvious 10+ moves ahead... but if you aren't explicitly looking for a smothered mate, it tends to be hard to see IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I can live with odd chess layouts, but the one that always gets me is the Symbol barcode scanner that's mounted as a dash ornament in the new Star Trek movies.

Every time there's a bridge scene I can't help but look for it and "fondly" remember my barcode development days.

</comment><comment><USER22> When they say the board in The Seventh Seal is "set up totally backwards", do they just mean that the board needs to be rotated 90°?

<comment><USER21> Well, if you rotate 180° its ok again, so it's either a 90° error or where the King/Queen are standing on the wrong board colour, sides of each other (e.g. Queen on right), or not facing their opposite piece (K facing K).

I'm fairly certain when I was a kid that I made all those mistakes when setting up the board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> From "The Net" with Sandra Bullock: "75.748.86.91" \- well, it's more comprehensible than IPV6, I suppose!

<comment><USER24> Does DNS allow numeric domain names? I presume ICANN wouldn't sell us the .91 TLD, but hypothetically it could be an awesome trick to weird out all those smartasses who think they know everything about IP address validation :)

<comment><USER11> There are numeric domain names, but no numeric TLDs. You can see all the current TLDS here: [http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by- domain.txt](http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt)

The only rule I can find is from RFC 1738 ([http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt](http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt))

 _" The rightmost domain label will never start with a digit, though, which syntactically distinguishes all domain names from the IP addresses"_

<comment><USER25> would 75.748.86.91.mydomaininmysearchlist.com work?

<comment><USER11> Yes. You can register a numeric domain also, like 123.com or whatever, though I assume at least all the 1, 2, and 3 digit ones are taken.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rosetta witnesses birth of bow shock around comet - <AUTHOR> https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_witnesses_birth_of_baby_bow_shock_around_comet <comment><USER2> "As the supersonic solar wind flows past objects in its path, such as planets or smaller bodies..."

>essentially anything moving with any velocity is supersonic in space

<comment> semi-extrinsic Not really. Attempt at explanation:

Solar wind is a stream of charged particles such as electrons and protons which are emitted by the sun. Together these particles form a "weak" (technical term "tenuous") plasma.

Plasma, as a state of matter, has quite a few resemblences to a gas. In particular, the plasma has a thermal pressure and a density, and the derivative of pressure wrt. density gives you a well-defined speed of sound _for the plasma_. There is a type of waves in the plasma called ion-acoustic waves, which propagate with this sound speed. (There are other types of plasma waves with other speeds of sound.)

When a uniform flow of plasma is travelling faster than the plasma speed of sound, nothing happens by itself. But when this flow hits an object, a bow shock is formed, just as we see in front of the nose of a supersonic jet or a speeding bullet.

<comment><USER3> This is a very good, concise explanation for what usually takes three chapters to explain. Bookmarked for the kids, thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


We don't have enough ventilators and I.C.U. beds if there's a surge of new cases - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/upshot/coronavirus-biggest-worry-hospital-capacity.html <comment><USER2> OK that headline has so much clickbait Imma gonna not even look</comment>


Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/world/asia/bangkok-thailand-fruit-durian.html <comment><USER2> I live in Cambodia where all of these fruits are available, and more. I like every fruit mentioned, except salak, and eat many of them every day.

This author comes off as a deeply uncultured American giving a generic impression of a drunken 3-5 day visit to SEA. There are so many errors in this article it's unreal.

Jackfruit does not have a "jagged sheath" (that's durian).

Dragon fruit is only mushy when it's badly bruised or overripe, and there are other varieties that are sweeter and richer than the white variety.

Durian does not "stink of death".

Salak are normally imported from Indonesia, as far as I know. Maybe the author is thinking of salacca wallichiana, which is related but tastes very different?

Describing a langsat as a "demure cousin" of the lychee is a totally meaningless way of saying that they belong to the same order of plants.

<comment><USER3> It puzzles me how the smell of durian, which I find very aromatic, can be disgusting to some people.

Also dragon fruit is a 'bland mush'? I've must have been eating the wrong fruit. There's also a red dragon fruit which is a little tastier.

<comment><USER4> Well, when nations that grow durian natively have signs banning durian from public transport and hotels, it's probably a good indication that enough of a majority finds the smell unpalatable.

(I've tried durian in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand to try to like them. I have failed. There is just no divorcing the taste from the stench.)

<comment><USER3> It isn't necessary that the majority of the population hates it. Just a sizeable portion like 20% is enough.

Also the puzzling thing is the stark disparity of the perception of the smell between different people. That doesn't happen to, say, seeing. This is akin to having a dress where half the people says it's black while the rest say it's white.

<comment><USER5> What? Did you forget about the dress? Blue or gold? That totally has happened with seeing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dragon fruit can be grown in California, Florida, and Hawaii and is not "bland mush with tiny seeds that can require floss to dislodge". The author must have had a bad one. They can be extremely sweet. The seeds are so small that they go down without noticing and I've never had to use floss. My favorite is a variety with deep red flesh.

Mangosteen is so far from its depiction---"to eat a pile of mangosteens is an exercise in disappointment"\---that I wonder what kind of pile the author ate. In the US, imported mangosteens can run $20 a pound, so getting a few bad ones would be a disappointment. I suppose many vendors would issue a refund for the bad ones. But in Thailand a pile of mangosteens is so cheap that you wouldn't bother. They are exquisite, almost the fruit equivalent of ice cream (they taste better chilled). It's no wonder they call it the queen of fruits.

Durian likewise deserves its designation as king of fruits. Most people, myself included, are repulsed on the first encounter. But if you can get over the initial shock, you will enjoy the most flavorful fruit with custard-like texture. Its flavor can be described as a combination of many other fruit flavors with a complexity only matched by good coffee and dark chocolate.

Jackfruit is cheap and abundant in Mexican and Asian supermarkets in the US. The trouble is peeling and finishing a whole one. Some stores may sell wrapped pieces if you just want a taste. But if you have some guests and time to work with gloves and a knife, eating a whole jackfruit is a memorable experience.

<comment><USER7> I don't dislike Dragon Fruit but having had 30 or so of them in SE Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan) I've never had one that was "extremely sweet". All of them were relatively on the bland every place I had one. It's good to know they can be sweet but I'm curious why finding a sweet one is so rare.

As for the seeds I agree. It's like eating kiwi seeds.

Mangosteen is great! No idea why the author had so much hate.

Durian though ... well I've tried it about 7-8 times and I get that it "tastes" good but I still don't get it. For example in Singapore there is a chain of cream puff stores that carry durian and vanilla cream puffs. To my "unrefined" palette they taste 95% the same but one stinks so if I was to go again I'd choose the vanilla that doesn't stink vs the durian that does. I'm sure I'll try them again but I suspect my reaction will be the same. Tastes fine (like vanilla custard) but why put up with the stink when I can just have vanilla custard.

That said, last summer when I was in Malaysia was the first time the smell started not being so repelling so (a) I'm getting used to it (b) they were in season (c) like the cat virus they've reprogramed my brain :P

<comment><USER8> > I don't dislike Dragon Fruit but having had 30 or so of them in SE Asia > (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan) I've never had one that > was "extremely sweet". All of them were relatively on the bland every place > I had one. It's good to know they can be sweet but I'm curious why finding a > sweet one is so rare.

Our experience is vastly different!

While not a fan of dragon fruit, I do eat it relatively often as my wife loves it. We usually buy pre-peeled pack at the super market when we visit.

For me it is definitely sweet. Not 'extremely' but it's definitely sweeter than a good banana or royal grape. Definitely not bland at all. I don't think I've had a non-sweet version in any of the countries you listed.

Edit: I just had a thought. I always eat Purple dragon fruit, not the white one. Maybe that's the difference.

<comment><USER7> I had both white and purple. I had hoped the purple would be sweeter but I never noticed a difference. It's hard to describe in words what how sweet something is but if I was to rank every fruit I've ever eaten in terms of sweetness Dragon Fruit would be at or near the bottom. I've have bland watermelon but I've had tons of sweet watermelon. I've bland other melons but I've had ton of sweet ones. I've never had a unsweet mango or an unsweet lychee or an unsweet mangosteen. I have had unsweet strawberries but mostly sweet ones.

Anyway, I'll keep trying dragon fruit hoping for a sweet one.

I think at the moment my favorite fruit I've had in SE Asia is cherimoya and I'm surprised they are not way more popular as they are so dang delicious! It's like someone made an apple \+ orange creamsicle fruit

<comment><USER8> OH Custard Apple!!! The best I've had is in Taiwan.

It's one of my wifes favourite fruits, but we can't find good one in Singapore.

<comment><USER9> Don't they have them in regular grocery stores in Singapore? They might only have them when they're in season though.

<comment><USER8> They aren't very good. A lot of the time they are rock hard and if you let them rippen they don't turn out very good. Just used to Taiwan where it's always nice and soft and yummy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The primary limiting factor in distributing these is not that they're hard to eat: pineapples are a pain too, but they're available everywhere, while many of the fruit listed (eg. rambutan, salak/snakefruit, langsat/duku) are trivial to peel.

Instead, it's simply that they don't transport well. Most tropical fruit available in the West are picked raw, kept refrigerated and chemically ripened on arrival, but this isn't possible for most of the fruit listed, certainly not mangosteens or langsat/duku.

<comment><USER11> My understanding is that this is the same reason why there are many more varieties of banana available in Thailand vs. the U.S.

<comment><USER12> Bananas in SEA are so much more delicious than in America. They also have very thin skins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This isn't exclusive to exotic fruit either.

In a trip to central Washington, I bought a flat of Pluots (plum/apricot hybrids), and they were one of the most profound things I have ever eaten. So sweet and juicy, they almost burst like water balloons when you took a bite.

Less than four hours away from where they are grown, I have yet to find any varieties with the same magic available in grocery stores. They good ones are simply too delicate and too short lived.

It ends up being worth the trip every year to go when they are in season.

<comment><USER14> In Virginia we have pawpaw fruit that taste like custard, but must be eaten soon after picking since they bruise very easily and don't store or ship well.

<comment><USER15> Pawpaws are nothing compared to their better cousins in the Annonaceae family, and in particular the Cherimoya.

Downside; they all contain annonacin, which may cause Parkinsons. [1]

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

<comment><USER11> Whoah. Thanks for the warning. There's a squirrel that keeps trying to stash custard apples in my mother-in-law's planter in Thailand. They're tasty (and delivered by squirrels!), but I didn't know about the toxicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Exotic fruits have been interesting to me in a while, and I hope to get my hands on some in my own country. For others interested, there's a channel which is all about exotic fruits and foods in general (including Thai ones), and his videos are always extremely informative and conscious[0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChsbD6Clp- ZPqKwXJR3V7DQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChsbD6Clp-ZPqKwXJR3V7DQ)

</comment><comment><USER17> Longan and papaya are pretty easy to find in New Orleans if you know where to look.

In the Indian subcontinent a common phrase is "the jackfruit is still on the tree and you've already put oil on your lips/mustache" meaning don't count your chickens before the eggs have hatched.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a homebody but great fruit I will travel for. The absolute best fruit is ripened on the plant to the point of being so soft that it would be destroyed if handled. I drive hours to various wild blackberry bushes around Northern California and eat them right off the bush -- just the act of separating them from the bush basically splits them in half so they could never be sold commercially.

</comment><comment><USER19> These are all pretty easy to find in Los Angeles, New York, and the Bay. How many other things do you see if you actually venture to SE Asia?

Central America has all kinds of things that I never see here, eg. canistel or black sapote, as well as variants of mango, corn, and banana that don't sell in the US.

<comment><USER20> Jackfruit is pretty uncommon in NY City outside of specialty Asian markets. Durian even moreso.

Dragonfruit exists mostly as a frozen smoothie ingredient, although you can get it seasonally as well.

Lychee is somewhat available seasonally, longan never or almost never.

And I've never seen a Pomelo outside of SE Asia.

<comment><USER21> I can buy Pomelo at fruit shops and at least one fruit stall in the middle of a mall here in Southampton, UK. It's strange what travels to some places and not others.

I bought one a few years ago and was disappointed at the small amount of grapefruit-ish flesh, not realising how people actually eat them (candied peel and pith) in parts of Asia.

<comment><USER20> Interesting, I never ate the pith, but I haven't traveled Asia extensively. I ate the fruit in Vietnam topped with salt and chili powder.

<comment><USER21> Actually one reason we may see Pomelo here is that the universities in this city attract a lot of Chinese students, and there are a number of shops and restaurants that have sprung up to cater for them.

How it's eaten does seem to vary by country. I've never tried the pith either, but would like to sometime!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here in Australia, you can actually get fresh durians!

There are only 50 odd trees in the country, near Darwin, so the fruit cost a mint by the time they are flow to Melbourne and Sydney. They're good. The consensus is better than the Thai ones, but I hang around Malaysians, who have a low opinion of Thai durians.

Around 1980, there was talk of growing tropical fruit in Northern Australia. Our seasons are out of phase with Asia's, so that would have made a lot of sense. I don't know why it didn't happen.

There is one problem that the article doesn't mention: people who haven't been to Southeast Asia tend to mistake the durian smell for a gas leak, and call the fire brigade. You have to be careful where you take them in the west.

</comment><comment><USER23> My wife's family is from SE Asia and I always eat way more fruit than normal when visiting. It's always cheap, plentiful and high quality.

Star fruit are one of my favorites. Kind of a crunchy, tart apple flavor.

<comment><USER10> Try a golden starfruit next time, and ripen it until the edges turn brown. It will now be sweet and juicy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://archive.vn/UKJCI](https://archive.vn/UKJCI)

</comment><comment><USER25> Thai durian is nothing when compared to the smell and taste of Malaysian durian.

I love durian but the smell can be overpowering. I left a few in my car for an afternoon, parked in an underground garage, to bring to my family after work. I had to drive with the windows down for 2 weeks.

</comment><comment><USER21> On a recent trip to Bangkok it was often hard to tell whether one was approaching an actual open sewer or just a durian stall.

Sad I missed the fruit market though, I bet they have a massive variety of banana cultivars. I tried a couple I'd never had before when over there.

<comment><USER26> I'm curious is aversion to durian is at least somewhat genetic, similar to cilantro and broccoli.

I spent 6 weeks traveling around Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam), including several days in Bangkok.

I ate a metric ton of durian, jackfruit (my favourite), mangostein, lychie, and so forth.

I never noted any negative durian odour, and I just assumed that "it must always be fresh in Southeast Asia", and any reports are based on stale or older fruit after it's travelled internationally...

<comment><USER27> After reading the article I thought the same thing. People who hate cilantro tend to absolutely hate even the thought of it.

<comment><USER28> I'm in this boat and my wife thinks I'm being fussy. The thought of cilantro wants to make me puke but no one ever seems to relate to it. The worst part is my native cuisine uses cilantro extensively.

<comment><USER29> > I'm in this boat and my wife thinks I'm being fussy.

I'm curious about the phrasing here; as far as I can see, that's what "being fussy" means.

<comment><USER28> She thinks it's a choice. For me, when I eat cilantro I really do feel like puking. There was a study that said cilantro tastes like soap to 10% of the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Jackfruit is one of the most nutritious and colon healthy vegetable on the planet. It is full of healthy fiber and keeps you feeling full long after unlike other vegetables. Many families in South india cosume lot of jackfruit in the season. [https://thejackfruitcompany.com/jackfruit-101/](https://thejackfruitcompany.com/jackfruit-101/)

<comment><USER2> And the seeds are edible when cooked!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Another fun Thai fruit: ตะขบ (`da kop`), which are these tiny custard-like berries that literally spoil within hours after picking them. They make great shade trees, so you can often find them growing over a road in residential areas, and just pick a couple to eat on the spot. You'll never find them in a store, but they're a quintessential part of childhood here.

<comment><USER10> Is this the same as _da kop farang_ , or are these different fruits/berries?

[https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%82%E0...](https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%82%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%9D%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B1%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%87)

<comment><USER31> Yup, that's the same! Apparently the name has _farang_ in it since the tree isn't originally native to Thailand; Wikipedia says it's a transplant from Mexico, interestingly enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > the durian would still probably have the highest grapple factor among > Southeast Asia's endemic fruits. Thai exports of the fruit are mostly > destined for China, where consumers tend to be more willing to work for > their meals.

Actually, Durain is not that hard to process, a chopstick or a screwdriver can do the job easily, can't be harder than opening a whole Jamón.

</comment><comment><USER33> And in other news, durian causes an evacuation in Germany and sends people to a hospital... but I love durian!

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/europe/durian-germany- evacuat...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/europe/durian-germany-evacuation- scli-intl-grm/index.html)

<comment><USER34> _Last year, staff at the University of Canberra library were forced to evacuate the building due to a suspected gas leak, but a search revealed the stench was in fact caused by the fruit._

That's what I've always associated the smell of durian with --- not stinking or rotting as others often say, but "gas leak". Not surprisingly, the same compound is responsible for both: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanethiol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanethiol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is work being done to develop easy to peel, low seed count cultivars of various exotic fruits like these? I can only imagine that their consumptive experience is similar to what Native Americans dealt with when they first encountered bananas tens of thousands of years ago.

</comment><comment><USER36> These fruit are hardly unique to Thailand and I ate them all as a kid in Malaysia (which of course abuts Thailand) and Singapore. I believe they are all available in other nearby countries as well. National borders are pretty arbitrary.

</comment><comment><USER37> Dragon fruit is actually native to Central America, not SE Asia. It's the fruit of a cactus. [1]

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

</comment><comment><USER38> My wife loves fruit and she's willing to put in the effort to eat fruit (peel, dig, carve, etc. etc.)

As for me, while there's certain fruit I do like a lot, I'm far less willing to put in the effort and often I just don't bother.

</comment><comment><USER39> Easy Mode Durian: frozen durian has most of the taste and little of the smell.

</comment><comment><USER40> What's going on with the nyt? This is incredibly bad quality writing.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm always amazed at the various types of delicious fruit nature produces. Walking over a foreign market is like fruit fantasy land for me.

</comment><comment><USER42> The author must have had an overripe dragonfruit - their flavor is subtle but quite lovely. not tasteless or mushy in the slightest

</comment><comment><USER43> unpopular opinion - durian is overrated, I don't get what's so special about it, even the smell is not really that big, people must have fancy noses if they think it's particularly smelly, some European cheeses are way more (unpleasantly) smellier

my favorite of exotic fruit is dragon fruit - looks nice, easy to consume with spoon, good flavor

</comment><comment><USER44> All of these fruits are popular all over Southeast Asia and India.

</comment><comment><USER45> As someone who grew up in southern India in a house literally surrounded by at least few dozens of these trees[1], most of them also hosting black pepper creepers, I wonder how this became Thai Fruit? Come on, we even have a western name!

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

<comment><USER46> Hard to find a fruit stall without it in Thailand, but I've not seen if for sale in my (much more limited) time in India. It's a staple in Thailand, so maybe that's the reason?

<comment><USER47> It depends on which part of India you're in, as well as the part of the city you're in. Jackfruit is definitely a staple in the South, and not so popular in the North. If you're in Bangalore, say, you're unlikely to find it in a supermarket; you'd have to go look for it in the right places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hilariously, in Singapore jackfruit is banned on public transport because it smells so awful. I tried some of this though and it it's not a flavor that I had tasted before. Hard to describe but really good if you could hold your nose for the smell.

<comment><USER49> Jackfruit or Durian?

<comment><USER34> That said, extremely ripe jackfruit will also emit a sickly-sweet smell that's "so sweet it stinks", like an overdose of perfume.

<comment><USER2> I actually like the smell of rotting jackfruit, but that is a good description.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> "when the rising mercury concentrates sugars"

Mercury is not capitalized here, which makes a huge difference. In assuming astrological Mercury, not somehow the element?

<comment><USER23> It's a reference to a mercury (the element) thermometer. When the temperature rises, the mercury rises.

It's been decades since mercury thermometers were common for the average person. We'll need to update our idioms!

<comment><USER50> Makes sense now, temperature - I was looking into it too much because I've seen in Farmers Almanacs schedules of planting&harvesting with lunar cycles because the gravitational pull is thought to assist essential growth phases.

I thought perhaps Thai farmers were also heeding Mercury alignment or retrograde to achieve a certain fruiting outcome (gravity from Mercury would be negligible compared to our Moon).</comment></comment></comment>


Hillary Clinton Considered Tim Cook and Bill Gates as Vice President - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/apple-ceo-tim-cook-was-on-hillary-clintons-list-of-pote-1787919668 <comment><USER2> Did she? Or were these just some names on the "first cut" list that one of her advisors sent to her?

If you actually read the email, it's the latter.

Quite a lot of the reporting on the Podesta emails conflates what Hillary Clinton thinks and does, and what her staff thinks and does. The press does that because it makes the reporting more interesting. (But less accurate.)

"John Podesta Sent Hillary Clinton a List of Names" is not as compelling a headline.

</comment><comment><USER3> A few months ago Bill Gates said he didn't want to be president. To be honest I think he should keep on working on the Gates Foundation and keep on eliminating diseases. [http://time.com/money/4251493/bill-gates-reddit- ama/](http://time.com/money/4251493/bill-gates-reddit-ama/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think Steve Ballmer would be great choice. He would have simply concentrated on Voters! Voters! Voters!

<comment><USER5> I don't want my country to crash

<comment><USER6> Profits doubled under Ballmer...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> coincidentally, the NYT had a bit last Sunday which mentions Lee Atwater suggesting Trump for George H W B's VP in '88. Bush, to his credit, scoffed. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/opinion/nostalgia-for- the-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/opinion/nostalgia-for-the-grace-of- george-hw-bush.html?_r=0)

Anyway: obviously this would have been better titled "John Podesta Considered…" or "Hillary's Campaign Considered…"

<comment><USER8> Odd. But of course it was the year that Ross Perot ran.

<comment><USER9> Ross Perot ran against GHWB in '92.

<comment><USER8> Right. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, I wonder what world Clinton would have picked either of the two, including the other non-traditional candidates.

I imagine that it'd happen if Trump had cleaned his act up when going face to face with Clinton, and his "business acumen" had been drawing a lot of voters to him.

Also lol @ how Bernie is his own category

<comment><USER11> > Also lol @ how Bernie is his own category

And at the bottom of the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think they'd be interested.

<comment><USER13> Tim cook has more power now than being VP

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This whole election is very well produced dark comedy.

<comment><USER15> If it was meant to be a comedy, it was horribly produced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Considering" someone for a position is a cost-free way to flatter them. Coincidentally, both are extremely wealthy and support Democratic candidates.

</comment><comment><USER17> The real story is that he considers women, military officers, Hispanics, and blacks to be "food groups". Good god, but the press would have a FIELD DAY if a Republican labeled such groups with that term. Remember "binders full of women"?

Of course, they're thinking in terms of strategy--in the old days, you'd balance the ticket geographically or politically (and so very different people like JFK and LBJ would run together) but now you do the same but with respect to identity politics. Fun times!

<comment><USER18> It's only a story if you have nothing to do with politics at all. Pandering to constituencies is all part of the game, and looking at them like any other marketing exercise comes with it.

Republicans do the exact same thing. The core "food groups" are evangelical christians, corporate types, gun people, defense industry people, small business people. All of these groups drive voter turnout. There are also "borderline" groups that flirt with both parties as their interests collide. This includes some labor unions (especially where their interests overlap others, like defense), regionally important ethnic/religious affiliated groups (catholics, orthodox jewish communities, cubans, etc) and others. This scales down to the local elections. If you want to be the mayor in a small town, you target the firefighter union + key ministers + senior centers.

Make no mistake, this dynamic has always been there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Considering this is stolen email by the Russians, who would love to have Donald Trump as President, I would take this with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER20> I think the Russians are just fine either way.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to- clinton-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton- foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looking forward to this being spun into some deep conspiracy.

HILLARY IN BED WITH TECH LEADERSHIP QUID PRO QUO STARBUCKSGHAZI.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite iPhone apps? - <AUTHOR>

I am interested in what the Hacker News crowd installs on their iPhones.  I don't have much, but here are the ones I use most:
Wikiamo
Google
Pandora
Skype
Now Playing
Shazam
Stitcher
iTalk <comment><USER2> My top three:

Darkroom: This one should have seriously come as an option for the camera. It waits until you have stabilized and then takes the picture. Great App. The only thing I wish it did is to save faster.

GuitarToolkit: this is a slick app for anyone that likes guitars. Scales, tuner, alternate tunings, metronome, chords, etc....

Sportacular: great app to check sports scores. It's basic but comprehensive at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Assuming we are talking 3rd party apps, the only one I use on a daily basis is Toodledo (the official app from the task management website toodledo.com - there are other apps that sync to toodledo.com also but I find the first party one best)

</comment><comment><USER4> The ones I find myself using the most are:

[Appstore]

Tweetie

Stanza

Last.fm / Pandora

[Installed via jailbreak]

Cycorder

SBSettings</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a group encrypted file-sharing with API and affiliate program? - <AUTHOR> - affiliate program with monthly residual<p>- multiple encryption methods<p>- multiple interfaces(windows, mac, android, ios, web(javascript encryption), api)<p>if it doesn't exist is there enough interest for someone build to build it? <comment><USER2> [https://mega.nz](https://mega.nz) is a popular online encrypted file sharing website. Maybe you could check if they have an affiliate program?</comment>


Gov Shutdown? National Weather Service Issues Coded Message 'PLEASE PAY US' - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/coded-message-from-national-weather-service--%E2%80%98please-pay-us%E2%80%99-002058457.html <comment><USER2> The biggest problem with the shutdown is exceptions.

There should be zero exceptions, no police, no weather, nothing, absolutely nobody allowed to keep working.

No piecemeal pick-and-choose whom to re-enable, fund all or none.

Then this would be solved a tiny bit quicker.

Plus we should do what Australia does and dissolve Congress entirely and have new elections. But I guess that part is a fantasy.

<comment><USER3> If police were federally funded that could make some sense, but they aren't. Is that part of the Australian constitution? We have no mechanism in place, presently, to do anything of the sort (I suppose we might be able to have local recall elections, but just checked. In 1967 courts ruled federal legislators weren't held to state recall laws. Things may have changed since then and a new court may rule differently.

<comment><USER2> DC Police are federally funded. So is the military. All should be sent home, no exceptions, until everything funded again.

I've read a few places in Australia if your Parliament deadlocks, it is dissolved and that actually happened once?

All we have left is a "discharge petition" trick if 218 signatures can be assembled - it's actually something used in a movie. Which is insane. But that is the US. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition)

<comment><USER4> > _" I've read a few places in Australia if your Parliament deadlocks, it is > dissolved and that actually happened once?"_

This is a trait that applies to (nearly?) all countries that follow the Westminster system, which is to say Britain and many of its former colonies, including Australia.

The basic concept is that if a vote of non-confidence is passed, then the ruling government must dissolve and elections must be called. The trick here is that all appropriations bills are automatically considered to also be confidence votes.

I'm not sure about Australia, but in Canada it goes one step further: any bill, introduced by the ruling party, that represents their core party agenda, is also automatically a confidence vote. So, for example, if a party wins an election on a platform of banning gay marriage, and the subsequent bill fails to pass, the government is dissolved.

This can have some positive effects - it tends to make party platforms more moderate and the legislation itself less extreme. This only works in multi- party systems though, since in a two-party system the majority will simply never lose a confidence vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of this stunt by Gov. Schwarzenegger:

[http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Did-Schwarzenegger- drop-4...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Did-Schwarzenegger- drop-4-letter-bomb-in-veto-3282903.php)

</comment><comment><USER6> The financial people have taken the money through artificially cheap interest rate created by the worlds central banks which is more debt than can be paid back.

The creature from Jekyll Island [http://www.bigeye.com/griffin.htm](http://www.bigeye.com/griffin.htm)

"calling for an end to the private creation of money by banks" [http://www.compassonline.org.uk/the-green-party-takes-on- the...](http://www.compassonline.org.uk/the-green-party-takes-on-the-banks/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I feel bad for whoever slipped this in. They will probably catch all heck from their boss.

I'd hate working for a company that can't meet its payroll. This really is awful, shouldn't the authorization to hire be the authorization to pay a person?

</comment><comment><USER8> What's awful is that someone is going to get in big trouble over this message... even though it is a bunch of politicians who created this giant mess.

</comment><comment><USER9> Gov. Arnold did it better :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Why pay you? Who needs weather info so much - nobody.

<comment><USER11> I'm sure the people of Moore, Oklahoma, USA would've appreciated the 36 minutes [1] they had (albeit a short amount of time) to gather and leave before they were destroyed by the tornado that ripped through the town earlier this year.

The US's National Weather Service has saved countless lives, the opportunity cost of not funding these guys over DoD or FDA would give the Govt something to argue about in terms of mortality and healthcare.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-21/tornado-alert- gave-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-21/tornado-alert-gave-moore- oklahoma-residents-36-minutes-warning.html)</comment></comment>


6 Million Unfollows Later, Twitter Moves To Silence ManageTwitter - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/24/twitter-managetwitter/

<comment><USER2> _Or maybe Twitter just doesn't like the fact that ManageTwitter has managed to help 35,000 users unfollow nearly 6 million people on the service. I can't imagine any social network would like a third-party service changing the social graph in such a way._

I would imagine Twitter would like to increase the _quality_ of the social graph rather than purely the size.

<comment><USER3> So would I but I can also easily imagine a scenario where some VC or other interested party focuses entirely on one metric, such as "connections".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be a persistent issue with third party developers. If I was bringing out a service to compete for third party developers on my app, I'd add some sort of streamlined approval process. Some way to guarantee that the rug wouldn't been pulled out from under developers 6 months down the track.

</comment><comment><USER4> This (and any other move by Twitter to restrict unfollowing in bulk) is just an anti-spam measure.

Direct marketers follow as many people in bulk as they can without being flagged as spam, a small percentage automatically follow them back, everyone else gets bulk unfollowed, repeat. By doing this you can eventually accumulate an account with thousands of followers which you can then pump commercial messages to. The system works but it's a volume game - if you can't automate the process, you can't make enough money for your time. By breaking tools that enable mass unfollowing, Twitter makes the automation harder and therefore fights spam.

ManageTwitter almost certainly knows this.

</comment><comment><USER5> All ManageTwitter need to do is remove SelectAll as Twitter want and replace it with individual selection upon mouseover, which is still pretty quick.

BaitCrunch title regardless

</comment><comment><USER6> Crap, I really like Twitter, but as it turns out, depending on a third party for your app, you are depending on a third party. Twitter might turn out to be not much better than Apple in that regard :-(

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand the problem at all. Why would you follow so many crappy people that then you want to unfollow them in bulk?

Thinking about this makes Twitter sound right

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a simple solution to this: acquire ManageTwitter, and then find a clever way to integrate this to the core service (with controls that Twitter approves of).</comment>


How did we come to be so certain that closed borders are our salvation? (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://openborders.info/blog/how-did-we-come-to-be-so-certain-that-closed-borders-are-our-salvation/ <comment><USER2> Shrug. At least they're somewhat open about their politics. That's better than most mass-immigration cheerleaders, who make-believe they care about border security and what not. Standard straw man though. "Salvation"? No one ever mentioned "Salvation". No one. "Sanity", yes.

It's not really an issue that warrants a lot of study, in my view. If the Guatemalan government is happy to see its peasants swarm to the United States, they can probably be trusted as authorities on the value of said peasants. A humanitarian could only say "These people are beneficial!" than he would immediately realize, "And Guatemala needs them more than us. Send them back." That has never happened.

<comment><USER3> " A humanitarian could only say 'These people are beneficial!" than he would immediately realize, "And Guatemala needs them more than us. Send them back.' "

Faulty logic. One of the biggest reasons for supporting liberalized immigration is that it lets people move to the areas where they are most productive. People in Guatemala become massively more productive when they move to the USA, which earns them higher wages and makes them better off (along with others who benefit from more production).

This website itself endorses that reasoning:

[http://openborders.info/place-premium/](http://openborders.info/place- premium/)

What you're talking about is the more limited concept of "brain drain". IMO its practical importance is a lot more questionable than people think. It's a small factor compared to the global benefits of liberalizing migration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps open borders should be treated like inter-national economic agreements. Have open borders with countries who reciprocate open borders with you. So, if Canada will let all and any Americans in, we reciprocate. If Mexico opens borders with Haiti, then Haiti should open its borders to Mexico, etc.

I don't think it can work unilaterally, it has to be bilateral and multilateral --eventually having universally open borders --but given the displeasure with the soft equivalent, global economics "globalization", I don't see this happening any sooner.

If "globalization" \--which in theory would eventually bring equilibrium to economic effects-- has such resistance and suffers from criticism from the left and right, wile being a "soft" form of migration, imagine how people would receive "hard' worldwide migration. I don't see it being received well, if done unilaterally.

<comment><USER5> See [http://openborders.info/blog/immigration-trade-and- reciproci...](http://openborders.info/blog/immigration-trade-and-reciprocity/) . In particular:

"Now, the analogy between trade and migration is far from perfect. But I think that on the issue of reciprocity, the economists' objection to mercantilist- style thinking in the trade context can be transferred to the migration context. In other words, _unilateral open immigration_ generates net benefits, _even if_ other countries don't follow suit. Thinking of immigration law in reciprocity terms is fundamentally misguided."

<comment><USER4> I think it's not misguided as a way to obtain traction. If, say, Singapore unilaterally opened its borders, it would be overwhelmed by people from ID, PH, TH, etc. But, if they slowly opened borders bilaterally with say, MY, their economies would have time to adjust, as they adjust they can then extend their borders to VN, let's say. It gives economies a way to adjust without the economic shakeout disrupting the locals too much.

Look at Mexico, it clamors for the US to open its borders to Mexico, if they believed open borders were beneficial and without repercussions, they would open their borders to Guatemala and Honduras, among others -but they don't because of labor protectionism (ethnically they are very similar, so it's not so much ethnic antagonism0.

<comment><USER5> Sure, that's reasonable. This is a specific "slippery slope to open borders" as discussed here: [http://openborders.info/blog/slippery-slopes-to-open- borders...](http://openborders.info/blog/slippery-slopes-to-open-borders/) . The relevant "slippery slope" is:

"Gradual expansion and merging of free migration zones: For instance, the EU is a free migration zone for European countries, and it is gradually adding countries. Suppose the United States and Canada created their own free migration zone, Southeast Asian countries created their own free migration zone, and a few free migration zones emerged in Africa and Latin America (South America). The US-Canada free migration zone could, after some time, add Mexico and the Caribbean Islands, and then merge with the South American free migration zone. The European free migration zone could eventually merge with the new unified American migration zone. Over time, as the threat of terrorism, and the subjective sense of the threat, receded more and more into the past, the Gulf states could merge with the European free migration zone. And so on, until eventually the whole world would be a free migration zone."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unless you think jamming between 100 and 600 million people [1] into favelas is a good idea, you will want some kind of restriction on immigration. It's fairly hilarious that he claims the current situation is "closed borders".

And it's also particularly difficult to take Lee seriously when he says that "it's difficult to find any serious social scientist who believes immigration increases crime rates", or bemoans the lack of research on immigration, IQ, wages, and economic growth, considering what happens to people like Jason Richwine who actually attempt to study the issue.

[1] [http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide- drea...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-dream- life.aspx)

<comment><USER3> "It's fairly hilarious that he claims the current situation is "closed borders"."

Most of the people who want to migrate are prevented from doing so by law. That's close to "closed borders". And he makes it pretty clear in the first paragraph that he's talking about restrictive immigration policies (including current ones), so the semantics on "open" vs. "closed" borders aren't the most relevant point.

Regarding suppression of research: Richwine didn't have tenure. Prof. George Borjas hasn't been fired (or censured), but he has numerous influential publications on immigration and he calls for more restrictive policies. There are a lot of studies on the fiscal impact of immigration, and while many are positive or near zero, some are negative. If there's strong evidence of publication bias, I would be genuinely interested in seeing it.

For what it's worth, I don't think Richwine should have been fired just for anti-PC stuff on IQ. But that's just Heritage's PR decision.

IMO a more likely explanation is that economists have a consensus in favor of immigration liberalization as a pro-market policy. There is plenty of research on the issue that does indicate positive effects of immigration:

[http://openborders.info/economist- consensus/](http://openborders.info/economist-consensus/)

Re favelas: Okay, it depends what you prefer, to be honest. If you care a lot about avoiding _visible_ poverty in the First World, having open borders is a bad idea. If you care about reducing absolute global poverty, it's probably a very, very good idea. If you wanted some kind of compromise, one option would be to let them enter the country but have restrictive zoning laws to keep the slums outside of existing major cities (and just build new cities where immigrants move to).

Nothing about adding a few hundred million people to the US population (and keep in mind, they would probably trickle in at first at a slower rate) would be inherently catastrophic. Scary-looking numbers aside, it's the truth. The US has low population density by most standards, and it wouldn't be difficult to build some new cities. If anything, it would raise the values of American's homes, which could benefit people quite a lot. And if there really were an issue with some scarce resource (water, maybe), there's a price system to handle that.

<comment><USER5> Adding to the point about visible poverty, there is also [http://openborders.info/blog/the-border-as- blindfold/](http://openborders.info/blog/the-border-as-blindfold/) , which quotes:

"Migration controls serve as a _blindfold_ , enabling Americans to ignore most of the poverty, deprivation, and vulnerability that exist in the world by keeping it physically at a distance. In the past, people lived without this blindfold. The wealthy lived amidst poverty, sometimes engaging in generous charity to the poor, sometimes learning, perhaps callously, to ignore them.

Citizens of a modern welfare state, by contrast, feel that the state should coerce people to give to the poor so as to remove from the streets the kind of visible poverty that would make them feel obliged to give, allowing them to feel conscientious and affluent at once. The price of this moral complacency is paid by would-be immigrants who are not allowed to come to America to better their condition by honest labor, lest their poverty trouble the consciences of affluent Americans."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How was Texas created again? Someone remind me....

I think it had something to do with open borders...

<comment><USER8> Which part of the history had to do with open borders creating Texas? Was it the Spanish explorers in the 1500s? The French? Was it Mexico's independence war? Texas independence war? Texas joining the Union? They don't call it the Six Flags over Texas for nothing [http://www.lsjunction.com/facts/6flags.htm](http://www.lsjunction.com/facts/6flags.htm)

<comment><USER7> "The Texas Revolution, also known as the Texas War of Independence, was the military conflict between the government of Mexico and Texas colonists, most of whom were land owners from the United States." \- Wikipedia

They let a bunch of Americans settle in Texas because they basically had open borders and then they seceded in a huge land grab.

<comment><USER8> Then it sounds like a case of they did unto others but don't want that done unto them. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The right wing in the U.S. wants more control over immigration, not an end.

The real question is "How did we come to be so certain that open borders are our salvation?"

<comment><USER10> Isn't something like 40% of USA fortune 500 companies started by immigrants?

<comment><USER11> The percentage of startups founded or co-founded by immigrants should be about the same or higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can Hacker News not rise above the partisan politics that pollute every other site? Why am I seeing this trollish post here?

<comment><USER11> I think your concern is addressed in the "HN Guidelines"

"What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. "

More at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER12> Seeing as the post has pretty much disappeared from the site (not in the first 10 pages) only 1 hour later, I'm feeling pretty confident about my assessment of it's quality and contribution.</comment></comment></comment>


Wintergatan's Marble Machine in Minecraft [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_QgyahFHYk <comment><USER2> I encourage those who have enjoyed the efforts of Wintergatan to also check out the bandleader's previous effort: Detektivbyrån. It's a rare glimpse into Swedish street music and really captures a beautiful Göteborg vibe. It's a nice Scandinavian minimalist approach to music that I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of.

For further Nordic minimalism I also recommend the band Múm from Iceland, specifically the album Finally We Are No One. This album features the beautifully calming lyricist Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, who was a former wife of David Portner, who some in America might know as Avery Tare of the band Animal Collective. She is featured on their 2005 album "Feels" singing and playing a deliberately off-key piano with some really interesting and very flower-child-in-the-fields melodies such as on the track "Did You See The Words".

<comment><USER3> Hey, got to say say that I am a big fan of your music as well.

Seen you live outside Volvo and at big festivals. Random Friday eat all are excellent for unwinding and reflecting as the darkness comes.

I feel there's something particularly Scandinavian to the style of you and Carbon Based Lifeforms as well, but in a very different way to Wintergatan's urban vibes of course... Makes me think of misty fern forests, the barren broken-up landscapes in the north and something mysterious in the twilight.

Have not heard about the others you mentioned though, will definitely check out!

<comment><USER4> Is SOLAR_FIELDS actually the real Solar Fields (Magnus B)?

<comment><USER3> Oh, I actually have no idea, I just assumed it must be him given the comment..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I heartily recommend the YouTube series for the Marble Machine X. It's a wonderful journey, and anyone who has had a dream it idea, started building, needed skills, tools, redesigns, etc will empathise. Marten's is incredibly talented, and has formed a great team too.

<comment><USER6> I agree whole heartedly. I've been following their work for some time now. The collaborative work coming from around the world is great to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> the logic required to make the redstone timing on a machine that large precise enough to control a falling block is insane, to get 99%+ of the blocks like in the video makes this look so much easier than it is.

For those not aware, unlike CPU design where a wire is a wire, in MC, pulses can travel for only 15 blocks before needing a repeater, which necessarily adds a delay.

<comment><USER8> In fairness, in high speed digital design it's not true that a "wire is a wire".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wintergatan has an excellent YouTube channel cataloguing their efforts to build a better marble machine

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. This thing is a work of love.

Original video that inspired this Minecraft recreation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q)

And the rest of his WIP videos for the "Marble Machine X": [https://www.youtube.com/user/wintergatan2000/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/wintergatan2000/videos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Marble Machine is a musical instrument designed and (currently being) constructed by this one determined and very talented guy.

<comment><USER12> That's the marble machine X, the marble machine was the first iteration and was built and performed in a video a few years ago. It was unreliable and couldn't be disassembled to perform with outside of a studio hence the new project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did anyone understand what is it that constitutes the "piano roll" here? Is it those carts on powered rails that we see towards the end?

<comment><USER14> Looking at the world download, it's using powered rails and observer blocks as a solid state storage.

There are only brief glimpses in the video, but here's what that looks like: [https://imgur.com/a/AkOAzgF](https://imgur.com/a/AkOAzgF)

The 14 left-right powered rail tracks are the music channels. Each vertical slice is a tick of music, and they are grouped into 9, the max length of a powered rail signal. The presence of an observer block underneath the rail indicates a note. The whole machine appears to be 128 x 14 bits. It has a serial read interface.

In more detail:

From the bottom of the image to the top you see:

\- A row of redstone blocks, pistons, and redstone wire.

\- A row of repeaters facing north

\- A row of repeaters facing west

\- An observer facing north

\- 14 east-west powered rail/observer wires, sending signals to the east.

\- In a layer underneath the east-west observer-rail wires, alternating columns of rails and redstone wire facing north-south. (Not visible in the picture)

\- (A mirror image of the bottom)

The west facing repeaters control the current read location. The machine sends a signal until they all turn on, then waits until they all turn off, then turns them on again, etc. When one of the repeaters toggles between on and off, the north-facing observer above it sends a pulse. The pulse travels upwards in the north-south rail (in the invisible lower layer), and then if an observer is present, the signal is sent east along the east-west line for the channel.

The bottom two rows form a pause mechanism. The redstone block, piston, redstone wire row is an instant repeater line. When the north-facing repeaters are turned on, they will lock the west-facing repeaters in whatever state they are in. Using instant wire ensures the pause will happen immediately.

The whole system is mirrored at the top since the north-south rails in the lower layer can only send a signal up to 9 blocks. With read signals coming from both sides, this design could support up to 18 channels.

One last detail -- one column of music is read every 2 redstone ticks, so most of the repeaters are set to a 2 tick delay. However, the signal for a channel must be repeated using an observer every 9 blocks (adding a 1 tick delay), so the first repeater in each 9 block section is set to 1 tick. This compensates for the delay.

EDIT: I originally stated that there were 14 channels, but I overlooked that it's double-layered, and that there's a similar quad-layered system on the other side. There are 50 channels in total.

<comment><USER13> Thank you, that was a fantastically detailed explanation! I didn't realise that there was a world download in the video description, thanks for pointing that out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We need a compiler backend that outputs to Minecraft. This looks painful to assemble by hand.

How is this even done? Through in game mechanics and creator mode? (never played minecraft myself)

<comment><USER16> There is an item called a structure block that consists of a 2d array of block types and their relative positions. Once you've defined a structure block in- game you can place copies of it into the world. That can really help with some of these larger projects to have some boilerplate.

Additionally, there are some really interesting ways to build minecraft content with various programming languages. I'm aware of a Python[1] Library, a mod that provides in-game Lua scripting[2], and even a Clojure library used with Overtone/Supercollider[3] - be sure to check out that video for some incredible live-coded music with generated visuals.

[1] [https://github.com/arpruss/raspberryjammod](https://github.com/arpruss/raspberryjammod) [2] [https://github.com/dan200/ComputerCraft](https://github.com/dan200/ComputerCraft) [3] [http://blog.josephwilk.net/clojure/overtone-driving- minecraf...](http://blog.josephwilk.net/clojure/overtone-driving- minecraft.html)

<comment><USER15> Ohh that seems to alleviate the problem. Place every single block individually would take forever

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's a crazy VR Steampunk mash-up of a build-your-own synth and marble machine that I'd love to see people do something elaborate with: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/673970/MuX/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/673970/MuX/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow ... like a giant loom making music.

</comment><comment><USER19> I made a rendition of this in Factorio, though it doesn't simulate the individual marbles like this does: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgnJ_5y5uhM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgnJ_5y5uhM)

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of a video I saw in early alpha of a guy making a calculator with redstone.

Not all the redstone conveniences existed yet, so it was... large.

They weren't the first to do it, but it still blew my mind seeing the memory unit built out further than the game was rendering...</comment>


Scientists observe light acting like a river - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-observed-light-flowing-like-a-river-and-it-s-beautiful <comment><USER2> Not to ask the dumb question, but one of the challenges discussed in the lay video is that it's hard to study when the medium is consistently prone to fail (pop)

What's stopping this test from being attempted on a frozen bubble? My guess is that the crystalline structure of ice is different enough to change the behavior of light, but at the same time, a lot of the variances in the thickness of the bubble would be preserved, no?

<comment><USER3> This is reminiscent of the branching pattern seen in a plasma disc. (you know those things that are flat versions of plasma globes) As I understand it , emission from a plasma requires a high energy electron dropping to a lower energy with photon emission. The path of the 'collapsing energy' is linear - meaning each emission event triggers one nearby- unzipping a river of lower potential in a sea of high energy plasma. Interestingly, the directional changes of branching plasma seem to occur at sharp angles with relatively straight paths connecting the branch points.

With light however, the cascade of photons is fractured into separate rivers as bundles of photons are refracted continuously by the smoothly varying thickness of the bubble. Freezing the bubble might create crystals where the thickness is not smoothly varying so angular paths might be observed as the light jumps from one crystal to the next

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hadn't heard of sciencealert before, so I clicked the home page and it's full of click bait content. Very high noise, low signal stuff, and the ads are just awful.

> Plus, if the video can be looped, it'll make for an absolutely baller > screensaver.

This line in the article really got me, lol, and made me question the source of information.

Some other articles:

> There's a Weird Structure in Our Inner Ears That Hardly Anybody Talks About

> That 'Human Bone' Found in a NASA Mars Photo Isn't Even New. Here's The Real > Story

Here's a link to the actual paper:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2376-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2376-8)</comment>


Mattel Pulls Sexist Barbie Book Off Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/mattel-pulls-sexist-barbie-book-i-can-be-a-computer-engineer-off-amazon/ <comment><USER2> Excellent. The sexism angle is one thing, but the book is also just wrong about what a computer engineer _is_. It's like "Barbie: I Can Be A Construction Worker" \- "Oh, no, I don't actually build buildings, I just think of ideas for what they should look like." That's a totally valid career (once you add some rigor that it's probably fine to elide in a kid's book), but it's _not being a construction worker_.

If the book was titled "I Can Be A Video Game Designer" (and she didn't spend half the book fighting with viruses) it would have been worlds better. Make one of the other students doing the implementation a girl, and you're doing better still. I'd like to see a genuine "I Can Be A Computer Engineer", but it might take some creativity to make it actually engaging for the target age range...</comment>


Sensible Defaults - <AUTHOR> https://www.pgcli.com/sensible-defaults.html <comment><USER2> Filling the indent area with dots is not a sensible default IMO. Often when I work on a query I am going to reuse it in an application. If PgAdmin III or psql filled the indent area with dots then they would be included when I copied the query I'd written.

Even though I always reformat the query, and even though the text editor I use -- vim / neo-vim -- supports rectangular text selection, I would be annoyed at such dots.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good to know. Perhaps I should replace the dots with empty space. I'll do that if we get more requests for it.

Thank you for the feedback.

<comment><USER3> Or alternatively the prompt character could start on a new line. That way you can have smaller windows fit more query per line with less space wasted on white-space.

<comment><USER2> But in return you might use more vertical space, and with a terminal size of 80x24, vertical space is more precious.

<comment><USER4> With the "newline after prompt" scheme, you only get one extra line per query.

Which, if the query is long (e.g. longer than 20+ lines) it's not gonna make any difference anyway -- it's not like it matters if you can fit e.g. 24 or 23 lines of a 30 line query (besides, the result rows are gonna take much more vertical space, further making the measly 1 extra line issue moot).

As for for multiple small queries (and one extra line after each of those prompts), you can always scroll. And, again, the results are gonna take far more vertical space than the single extra line per prompt.

And, of course, with the full horizontal space available (and not half wasted by dots) you get to fit more characters in each line, and thus your queries will probably end up using FEWER lines.

So, not only the extra line from the "newline after prompt" is no big deal vertical-space wise, but the dot scheme wastes MORE vertical space AND renders queries unpastable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Beyond "sensible defaults", it's also important to have the defaults specified sensibly. For robust application development, mainly when working with large software systems, I find it best to disallow "unset" configuration options and the implicit behaviour they entail. That is, every option must have its setting explicitly specified in the configuration. The defaults should exist as a "full" configuration, similar to the configuration file pgcli comes with. Unset configuration options result in a runtime error during application startup.

Also, I believe I first heard of pgcli from an HN comment, and since then I have been a daily user of it.

</comment><comment><USER6>
      Expanded mode in psql is a way to output the results of a
      query if the output is too wide to fit in the screen when
      shown as a table. This can be toggled by \x on or \x off.

      [...] In pgcli, we have the ability to do this but this is
      not enabled by default. It has to be enabled via the config
      file (~/.config/pgcli/config) by the user.

      I don't think we'll change this behavior.

Why not? Seems quite sensible a thing to do when the output otherwise wouldn't fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason being the format change will be jarring to someone who is not used to seeing the expanded mode.

But you bring up a good point. I'm not mired by maintaining legacy, so I could take this as an opportunity to educate users about the \x auto by enabling it as default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a serious, genuinely curious and open-ended comment - I'm not arguing for a position here or making a point and can accept any response.

Do people here think the world would be a better place if installing something didn't require reading any documentation (not even 45 minutes of it) or necessarily spend any time making choices?

For example, if it were possible to requisition a new AWS instance and install a Ruby on Rails configuration with "sensible" defaults on it, in, say, < 30 seconds, and it being secure and properly configured so that a newbie without any experience can immediately deploy apps on it securely and without understanding the parts involved or making choices?

I can see arguments for both sides.

<comment><USER8> "Make a system any idiot can use and any idiot will."

The floor in user capabilities is _low_.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyranny_of_the_minimum_viable_user/)

Also: [http://wiki.c2.com/?IdiotProofProcess](http://wiki.c2.com/?IdiotProofProcess)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Actually a really nice command-line interface with autocomplete to postgres. I'm usually rapidly dissappointed with all the GUI offerings to Postgres so this is a breath of fresh air. Defaults definitely seemed reasonable as per TFA

<comment><USER10> I still think a Mathematica-eque workbook format (manipulable inline graphics and objects interspersed with regular REPL) would be the best of two worlds.

<comment><USER11> I think there are SQL backends for Jupyter and Zeppelin notebooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh, for a command-line SQL client.

I was expecting this to be about web pages.

"Yes, of course I want to sign up for your "newsletter" offering me the latest deals every hour on the hour!" Click on the invisible x to opt out. (Very Facebook.)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some cheap/self-hosted alternatives to Zapier? - <AUTHOR> Zapier's free plan only allows 100 tasks/month. The next tier starts at $20 per month with 1000 tasks/month. Are there any other cheap/self-hosted alternatives to Zapier? I'm looking for only some basic integrations (trigger-based actions). <comment><USER2> My favorite tool for finding software alternatives is alternativeto.net, which returns these alternatives for Zapier: [https://alternativeto.net/software/zapier/](https://alternativeto.net/software/zapier/)

Most promising on that list is Huginn ([https://github.com/huginn/huginn](https://github.com/huginn/huginn)) which looks like exactly what you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Integrations can be a lot of work. So $20 for 1000 tasks sounds pretty inexpensive.

If you want a lower monthly cost you'll need to roll your own basic integrations.</comment>


Tucker Max: Why I stopped angel investing (and you should never start) [2015] - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/talk/stopped-angel-investing-start <comment><USER2> > This is not bragging.

The most absurd statement ever written by tucker max

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't disagree that if you still have the bug you shouldn't go chase it. but your not using logic. investing in 1 company is way riskier than investing in 100. if your wrong once your screwed if its your own company. If your wrong 99 times investing in 100 companies you can still make out(power law)

</comment><comment><USER4> Huh. I don't disagree with the details but I quite enjoy it this far (10 years, 120 investments, not including Angellist stuff)</comment>


Ask HN: Are Paul Graham's arguments in defending Lisp still valid today? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Yes and no.

Yes: Homoiconicity is a big deal. It allows (Lisp style) macros, which are pretty unique and pretty powerful.

No: The argument of the Blub Paradox was mistaken then, and is mistaken now. The mistake is the idea that all languages can be ranked on a one-dimensional axis labeled "power". And (related mistake) that one should choose the most powerful one.

To see why this is mistaken, consider Lisp and Haskell. Lisp advocates looks at Haskell, and knows that they are looking down. (How can you get anything done in Haskell? It doesn't even have macros!) But the Haskell types (pun intended) look at Lisp, and they _also_ know that they are looking down. (How can you get anything done in Lisp? It doesn't even have a decent type system!)

The correct answer is probably more like thinking of programming languages as a tree in a multi-dimensional space. The program you're trying to write is a vector in that space. Pick the branch of the tree that extends the farthest in the direction of the program you're trying to write. That is, pick the language that will do the most to simplify the task of writing the program. Sometimes that language is Lisp; sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's Haskell; sometimes it's not.

<comment><USER3> Blub was about productivity features for building products, i.e. writing software faster, not arbitrary features. A decent type system in terms of productivity is certainly not Haskell, they cannot look down on anyone. So the argument is still valid. But sure, sometimes it could be Haskell, but I doubt it, it's probably always faster to not use it, even if you have to come up with a DSL.

<comment><USER2> > A decent type system in terms of productivity is certainly not Haskell, they > cannot look down on anyone.

I suspect that the Haskell users would disagree with you. (I am not one, so I cannot say with certainty.)</comment></comment></comment>


$2T Company CEO Resigned because of her daughter's list of 22 things he missed - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3432717/ceo-of-trillion-dollar-company-resigned-after-his-daughter-told-him-how-much-he-has-missed/

<comment><USER2> Guy worth hundreds of millions trades one one-percenter job for a couple of smaller one-percenter jobs. Just before the shit massively hits the fan at old job (total coincidence, really!). Comes up with cute story involving daughter. Profit!</comment>


Components Library for Vue Based on Atlaskit - <AUTHOR> https://vue-atlas.com/documentation/introduction <comment><USER2> Very interesting. I wonder why it has so few stars.</comment>


React Native Open Source Update June 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://facebook.github.io/react-native/blog/2019/06/12/react-native-open-source-update <comment><AUTHOR> Good to see FB putting in a lot of effort to make RN better. Especially when Google is putting in huge amount of effort in making Flutter production ready.

Right now RN has multiple advantages over Flutter like a familiar language (JS vs Dart) and a lot of people know React already. It will be interesting to see how future adoption shapes up for these 2 frameworks.</comment>