Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks? - <AUTHOR> (Not as in "going public".)
Why have we not seen a publicly-operated social network?
It strikes me that enabling people to connect with one another is fundamental to most governments as a public service. Cities and states make and fund roadways and public squares and parks. Social networks seem like an approximate digital parallel.
Given everything that's happened with Facebook and Twitter in the last months, why are there no examples of government-run social networks?
(Or, if there are, what are they? How do they work?)
edited the title for breadth
edit 2: thanks for sounding in! A lot of great answers. To be clear, I didn't mean to present this as a leading question. I was curious about the perceived reasons from HN's audience. <comment><USER2> You need roads, bridges, water, electricity, and garbage collection to fulfill basic physiological needs, and also so you can swap menial tasks for higher level work/spending time with family/enjoying a better standard of living.

Framing in Maslow's pyramid [1]: Many of the goods/services the gov provides fulfill either level 1 physiological needs or level 2 security needs.

Social networks fulfill level 3 and 4 needs: love/belonging, and esteem.

We aren't yet at the point where we as a society decide we need to dedicate collective resources (taxes) to level 3 and 4 needs, especially while our level 2 and 1 services/goods aren't improving at the rate with which they did in the 20th century, and are in some cases deteriorating/being privatized.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow#/media/File:Mas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow#/media/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg)

<comment><USER3> Social networks fulfill all needs.

That is why the ultimate form of punishment in our society is to isolate the individual from all human contact.

Humans do terribly in an environment without other people.

Why does it matter that the medium is digital?

<comment><USER4> > Social networks fulfill all needs.

not physiological needs... food, shelter, water, sleep, etc

> That is why the ultimate form of punishment in our society is to isolate the > individual from all human contact.

it is a severe punishment, but again not as crucial as physiological needs. most would (and should) choose isolation from human contact for much longer than isolation from water

> Why does it matter that the medium is digital?

You can't eat it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All the other answers are great, but I think they're missing the biggest and most important reason: a social network run by any government entity would only run on Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 2, would store your password in plain text, and would run on 15-year-old un-patched IIS on a few Windows XP servers stored in the basement of city hall. And it would probably all be built on top of a deprecated social media Wordpress plugin.

<comment><USER6> The meme that (all) government is terrible at technology is getting tired. It is not necessarily true that a publicly run system will inevitably be crap/inefficient/archaic. A good example is the British gov.uk group, who have made some well thought out, usable and technologically sound systems.

Please stop perpetuating this lie. You can, and should expect better of your public digital systems. Don't let them use "Public tech must be bad" as an argument.

<comment><USER7> What happens in a country 1/5 the size in population and 1/10 the size economically shouldnt be expected to perform the same on something literally 10x bigger.

You likely are much closer to your political representatives than we are. The amount of money flowing into your politicians pockets are less.

Here I expect the government contract to be unfavorable to the population at large. I expect the leading politicians to benefit greatly and the company contracted to do a subpar job that barely meets specifications.

I trust my local government, but I do not trust the federal government to be competent.

<comment><USER8> USDS and 18F are staffed by confident people from industry. The federal government, when it comes to software, is not as incompetent as you think.

<comment><USER7> This is literally the problem.

Instead of having a department make software, they are supported from a vastly superior group of developers that work temporarily with that department.

Maybe its too much to ask, but shouldnt the company providing the software also employ the talent that is used to make the software?

<comment><USER9> At least part of the original idea for those entities was to serve as a cadre to improve competence government wide.

Having some experience with why government lacks organizational development competence (TLDR; short-sighted management with the wrong goals), I don't think they can do that—they literally are addressing the wrong problem—but the _idea_ wasn't to be a silo of technical skill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are government run (even if by proxy) social networks. The are worse that Facebook.

[https://vk.com/](https://vk.com/) is government run.

The Chinese "Credit Score" is run by Alibaba and Tencent, which run all the social networks in China and therefore have access to a vast amount of data about people's social ties and activities and what they say. In addition to measuring your ability to pay, as in the United States, the scores serve as a measure of political compliance. Among the things that will hurt a citizen's score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like.

There are plenty more too. Just hope the US doesn't make a government-run social network.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not sure why you are being downvoted as this is a very interesting question indeed.

Social networks tend to kill each other due to network effects as people are flocking to the most used network since there's the largest value for everyone. So having multiple networks might not really work well.

It wouldn't have to be several networks though and it doesn't even have to be your own government running it to provide the value you're looking for (social networking without users being monetized).

Image for example Twitter being bought by a country with good reputation, strong privacy laws and sufficient economy to sustain it in the long term. Iceland with some additional funding from the EU or something like that.

Does not sound too bad, in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> International governments are another version of your Iceland example. A UN- run Twitter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the '90's, there were -- or something closer to this. E.g. IIRC, "prairienet", in Illinois -- run, again IIRC, by U of I or some affiliated organization. Perhaps there was State involvement.

It wasn't a "social network", by today's standards, but you could get a free account.

The "Internet" received a big boost with an government/academic initiative for high speed links between universities and perhaps some other, government locations. Initially, this was to be segregated out for use by academics and their designated projects and the like. But after a year or two, it was opened up to the general public.

There's a phrase, "Privatizing the profits and socializing the costs."

This connectivity had a lot of value to users. And private companies succeeded in inserting themselves and extracting it. Building upon the public investment that started the whole thing.

This is part of why you don't see public social networks. Similar to how ATT, Comcast, et al. fight tooth and nail to limit and shut down any public ISP initiatives. And they have the bigger pocketbooks, as well as legislators in pocket.

Why are there no public social networks? There are certainly other arguments, other pieces to that puzzle. But one primary one is, because there is money to be made.

P.S. [https://localwiki.org/cu/Prairienet](https://localwiki.org/cu/Prairienet)

</comment><comment><USER13> The biggest challenge I see to starting a government run social network (assuming US here) is the free speech issue. While Twitter and FB can censor hate speech, there would be an expensive legal battle over the government doing the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER14> I might go so far as to say that our potential for a publicly operated social network is already here, or right close, but is being severely and intentionally hampered by ISPs more than anything or anyone else - and by extension recalcitrant, ignorant or paid-for representation.

Unrestricted symmetrical broadband would be a more than adequate foothold for robust frameworks that could fulfill the aspirations of one voice among billions in a truly decentralized fashion as well as provide a true springboard for thoughts, ideas and actions.

I believe the only role government should have here is ensuring access to the pipes that are regulated as an unhindered, affordable utility whose content is regulated only by you.

I also believe there are no words worth censoring. Yes, even nazi fucks. Let them speak and their words will prosper or fail on their own merit. We can't treat symptoms or causes if we drive unwanted words into darkness where they can fester and puss.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think it's a great idea, assuming that you're from a country whose government you trust won't to spy on you. Other commenters seems not to see the potential benefit, so I'll spell it out: A government operated social network would be tax-founded, and thus not have any need for profit.

this, one could argue, enables a social network that doesn't spy on you, respects privacy and doesn't even have ads!

of course it also comes with the risk of the ruling party spying on you and engaging in manipulation. depending on where you live, and how..conspirationally inclined you are, this may or may not be a risk you're willing to take

I'm not sure that this is the best way to spend them tax-dollars. But the network itself would certainly be nice though

</comment><comment><USER16> SMS could and should be expanded to include more social primitives within the protocol. Lately, I find myself using group chats in SMS more than any social network. Facebook and Twitter have a dis-incentive to do this, but Apple and Microsoft both make phone operating systems and don't have large social networks to compete with an open protocol. It is really annoying whenever I run up against walls like 'You can only have 10 users in 1 group chat ... unless they're all Apple' situations. The protocol should be device/os agnostic akin to http => browser. But I'm not seeing a lot of movement in the SMS protocol as late, just more messaging apps.

<comment><USER17> Google-backed RCS standard is trying to address this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I keep thinking about this, but no way should this be run by a government. The tech for it to be peer-to-peer, without any central authority is already there and would make the best fit. The only - admittedly huge - hurdle is that no authority means no marketing, no support, integrations, and probably a harder setup/learning curve. While an organization like EFF could help sustain some of this, it has no resources to represent or support billions of users. Of course if the network would be open, smaller businesses could capitalize on it, taking over these tasks, but this could result in walled gardens and incompatibility.

Shaking off big corporations from services that should have been always open and free-for-all is maybe the hardest and most important question of the Internet for the future. I think an answer can only rise upon the ashes of the current big players, should that be a scandal, disaster, or else.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm assuming you mean available to the general public, run by the government? There probably are smaller, niche social networks for gov employees to collaborate. If there aren't there probably should be.

But to answer the assumed question, it's because there is no practical way they could compete with private companies. Sure, theoretically they could dump tons of money into developing cool new features, slick UIs, and obtain top talent. They would also need to spend billions to crush or acquire upcoming networks to maintain their dominance (Whatsapp, Instagram). Or legislate them out of existence. In practicality there is no way this would (or should) ever happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "they'd never develop great features" argument is an interesting one, as I think most social networks can contribute most of their success to the network effect itself. Once that positive feedback loop gets churning, it's hard to turn it around.

Twitter's a neat counterexample here, I think. On the front-end, at least, the features released by Twitter in the last few years haven't left me awestruck. Yet it has become a seemingly self-sustaining space on the internet for public discourse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Think a bit: if we are upset about being constantly observed and spied on by the ones of Google and Facebook, how much more we would be if it was the government itself running these services? I can't imagine anyone using them.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not wanted. Nearly every social network out there isn't wanted.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not a good idea - how would that even be moderated, given that there is always, always, always going to be pushback from politicians and their followers (not necessarily constituents) depending on how the social currents are trending that minute.

Given the constraints of the 1st Amendment in the US, it might not even be possible to moderate a public social network, which would then quickly devolve into something resembling the most excessive wet dreams of 4channers everywhere.

Whatever good might arise would be drowned out by the impulsive emanations of every 14-year old with a passing whim.

</comment><comment><USER22> A nation state running a social network removes an essential political fig leaf, mainly that these networks are not affiliated with the government. Obviously they've been co-opted, but people tend to ignore that in practice. The government is also technologically slow-moving, which makes it great for large and essential research projects in basic science (like every major advance in the 20th century) but not great for consumer-facing and short-term technological applications in the market.

</comment><comment><USER23> The internet, which in many places is supported by government, seems like the approximate digital parallel of a park. What you choose to do at the park is up to you.

</comment><comment><USER24> _It strikes me that enabling people to connect with one another is fundamental to most governments as a public service. Cities and states make and fund roadways and public squares and parks. Social networks seem like an approximate digital parallel._

The roadways, public squares and parks are under the direct control or ownership of the government, the virtual/digital parallel doesn't really exist.

</comment><comment><USER25> The US government recently built a social network but it failed to be adopted, partially because they weren't building it for USAmericans: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban- twitt...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter- zunzuneo-stir-unrest)

</comment><comment><USER26> I suggest you consider the current situation in China. They have state-run social network. They use it to keep up their state surveillance and censorship apparatus. A government run social network is one where you can and will be indicted for anything you say which is at all against the law, and your comments will always be in the public record.

</comment><comment><USER27> As much as everyone likes to shit on crypto, this is exactly what public programmable blockchains will be used for.

<comment><USER28> It depends where you plan to leverage blockchains. They have well known limits around transaction rates and given basic functions such as private-messaging on social platforms, they have the potential to have a much higher txn rate than anything else currently using blockchain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Which government? Worldwide like UN or country level like Peru or some regional / city wide network?

It is probably the one thing no one asked for but could be done. Would probably make more sense in areas with limited freedom as a means to control society.

A non profit would make more sense as they can be seen in a more neutral light.

</comment><comment><USER30> Simply put, the cream rarely rises to the top in the public sector like it does in the private sector. As much as we bemoan financial incentives for the bad they incur, they also bring good ("good" in definition of quality, not morality).

</comment><comment><USER31> So you would rather trust the government instead? They mostly work with private companies to run their IT stuff so at the end of the day your data would end up on some private servers anyway.

<comment><USER32> That's a false dichotomy - in many countries, there are public institutions that are (somewhat) independent on the government. (In Czech Republic, we have universities, radio and TV station that are run like that.)

It could also be a cooperative, or a non-profit.. there are many models.

<comment><USER31> I think the problem is slightly more complex for a large-scale social network. When we look at the cost of running something like facebook, we're looking at hiring an army of expensive developers (someone has to build that platform and maintain it), buying or renting an army of expensive servers to make sure it's up and running 24/7, designers so people can actually use it, extra offices in order to host everyone, etc. It seems to be a money issue as well as an organizational issue.

The scenario we'd be looking at would be a small internal network for a university or a small organization. I believe any government could handle such a thing. For something like facebook we're looking at a lot of money and a bunch of skilled people. Not sure that's in line with governments...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Because governments are generally incapable of delivering large software projects. Because any such facility provided by a government will be automatically labeled untrustworthy due to real or imagined involvement by four-letter agencies or their international equivalents. Because there are good reasons not to waste public funds on whimsical projects; funds that could and should be used to actually improve living conditions, energy security, healthcare, and so on. The list of real wrongs to be righted is too long to recite here.

</comment><comment><USER34> Social networks are global. public goods are local or national. Would the rules that apply to non-citizens or non-locals apply to outsiders?

</comment><comment><USER35> The government doesn't need to run one. They just slurp up data from the ones we sign unto voluntarily.

</comment><comment><USER36> The Internet?

</comment><comment><USER37> What advantage is there of a government-run social network over one run by a co-op?

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting question, and one that opens up numerous areas of history, communications, community, control, freedom, and public vs. private operation.

In the United States, the postal service from its beginning was publicly operated, and served specifically to distribute timely information and general knowledge in the form of discounted rates for newspapers, magazines, and books, as well as providing personal correspondence and parcel delivery. It also established principles of privacy to correspondents.

This was in contrast to various earlier systems, either privately operated or, frequently, operated as part of royal intelligence services.

With the emergence of telephony and broadcast technologies, there were numerous national debates throughout the worrld over public vs. private operation, with many countries opting for primarily public systems. The U.S. chose instead, generally, a regulated private approach.

There are a few histories of these developments, though fewer than you might think. University of Illinois media scholar Roberrt W. McChesney has several books on the topic.

Several countries leveraged their national telecoms systems to create early computer networks, most notably France's Minitel. In the US, the early DARPANET, ARPANET, and Internet were largely public operations, though through a mixed-control operator network, including the Department of Defence, RAND, SRI, the National Science Foundation, and numerous universities, themselves a mix of public and private.

The Internet itself gradually transitioned from research to commercial use between 1985 and 1995, in a not particularly structured manner. See for example: [https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student- paper...](https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student- papers/fall95-papers/vincent-culture.html)

There remain elements of government involvement and access to both Net infrastructure and firms, including investments in several significant firms (notably Google and Facebook), as well as intercept capabilities through network operators, engineered device and protocol weaknesses, CA compromises, and both law-based and extralegal means, fairly trivially confirmed through a few moments research. (EFF and _The Intercept_ document much of this.)

At the same time, there are countries which do substantively operate or participate in social networks either directly or through public-private enterprises, notably Russia and China.

And much of the objective of networking the world has been accomplished through largely private operators.

In short: they could, some do, there's a great deal of history, and the present regime arose likely in significant part as national governments and agencies thought they were seeing their needs met through the cooptable efforts of others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thorough reporting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> that's what public gardens should be for :)

</comment><comment><USER40> corruption would exist on day 1 and day 3545

</comment><comment><USER41> NSA.

</comment><comment><USER42> Because Facebook is free and taxes aren't.

</comment><comment><USER43> Have you ever used a government website?

With the exception on gov.uk, they are all god-awful. I suspect lack of talent within the government is one major reason.

<comment><USER44> I think a more likely answer is a lot of successful lobbying by large crappy software companies. See also Oracle.</comment></comment>


Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious [2015] - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/03/a-scientific-explanation-of-what-makes-indian-food-so-delicious/ <comment><USER2> Is any of the data of flavor compounds open source? I would love to invent new recipes data science way.</comment>


CloudFlare Transparency Report on National Security Orders - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-transparency-report-on-national-security-orders

<comment><USER2> It says 0-249, but it means 1-249.

If you've never received one, my understanding is that there's no law preventing you from saying "0", so why wouldn't you if it were true?

<comment><USER3> This is correct. If they haven't received any, they can legally say so, and it would seem to imply they have received one or more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Starting with 0-249

I'm puzzled why it's not 1-249 with 0 being a different group. So this law basically means that as long as you send less than 250 requests to a single company you're fine.

Might as well start sending 249 requests to every company they can think of.

<comment><USER5> The usage of a 0-249 block also keeps that sense of fear for the user base of the service(s). A sort of government scare tactic, you could say.

If a service was allowed to say that they had 0 requests, perhaps more users would flock to that service as a less surveilled alternative to a competitor that is in the 1-249 bracket(or higher).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They say they've received 0-249 NSLs, but they also said "CloudFlare will therefore challenge in court any NSLs we receive." While it's possible this statement doesn't apply retroactively, they seem to be implying they haven't received any NSLs.

<comment><USER7> No, applies retroactively. Any NSLs we've received we've fought. And we'll continue to do so.

<comment><USER6> The only remaining question is, are you able to publicly disclose when you fight NSLs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a Cloudflare customer, I'm really happy to see this. Cloudflare provides a great service, but to do so, they have to assume a position of enough power that makes them an easy (legal) target for a determined government.

As a US resident (and citizen), though, I find this very disconcerting. The difference between 0 and 249 requests is a _lot_.

There isn't much else a company the size of Cloudflare can be expected to do (lobbying the government requires levels of cash that I doubt Cloudflare has right now), but it makes me sad that this is even newsworthy.</comment>


Ask YC: How do I make the most out of Startup-school? - <AUTHOR>

I was fortunate enough to get accepted to startup-school.  I'll be coming on Thursday afternoon, leaving on Monday morning.  I've got a couple of desktop product, and I'm seriously working towards my own web-based startup.  My questions are:<p>(1) Besides myself, what should I bring to the conference itself?  Will a laptop just be a burden because of lack of space?<p>(2) Besides a pretty great lineup of speakers, what else should I expect?<p>(3) Besides pg's essays, is there anything I can do to prep, to make the experience more valuable?<p>(4) This might seem strange, but I've been dreaming about coming to Silicon Valley ever since I was a kid.  I've been to SF once (loved it), but didn't make it to SV.  Anything I should not miss in SV while I'm there?  I just looked, and it seems most of the Computer History Museum is closed for renovations.<p>(5) Any other suggestions as to how I can make the most out of the experience?<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> 1\. A lot of people seem to bring laptops to take notes. I wouldn't though. I'd rather take just a few important notes on paper.

2\. The other people there. You should introduce yourself to people. They also don't know anyone. Also, Airbnb's going to host an afterparty that I recommend to everyone. Those guys know how to throw a party.

3\. Learn as much as you can about the backgrounds of the speakers.

4\. I should write something about this.

5\. If you are a hacker and would possibly consider going to work at a startup instead of starting your own, visit some startups while you're there. Startups are desperately eager to hire right now. They won't consider it an imposition at all if hackers want to visit them.

<comment><USER3> Strongly agree with #5: hiring sucks for startups, we'd all love to meet some entusiastic candidates.

Shameless plug: GazeHawk is looking for our first hires. <http://gazehawk.com/jobs/>

<comment><USER4> You should post in the new October who's hiring thread. I browsed a lot of it last night and would have remembered your job posting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone is in the Bay Area a day or two before Startup School, maybe we can do a pre Startup School meetup in San Francisco? That way the more introverted hackers will come to the event and see people they know.

<comment><USER6> we're working on setting up a hackers and founders meetup the day before startup school. stay tuned.

<comment><USER7> Awesome, keep us updated. Is there a mailing list for everyone to keep up to date about Startup School related meetups?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having been, the big thing I feel I didn't do enough of was networking. I met a few folks, but really could have done much better at introducing myself to new people and maintaining the connection afterward. There are amazing people there, try to meet them all:)

</comment><comment><USER9> > (4) This might seem strange, but I've been dreaming about coming to Silicon > Valley ever since I was a kid. I've been to SF once (loved it), but didn't > make it to SV. Anything I should not miss in SV while I'm there? I just > looked, and it seems most of the Computer History Museum is closed for > renovations.

Go to Stanford and sit in on an interesting-to-you class. If it's a really small class, introduce yourself before to the instructor.

I recommend EE380, <http://ee380.stanford.edu> , if you can make it on a wednesday afternoon (because I help run it). There are dozens of comparable lecture series.

</comment><comment><USER10> 1) Something to take notes. It's like a lecture hall, so you'll have room if you really want a laptop. Don't get distracted though.

2) Many of the speakers hang out after their talks, so be sure to get some quality time and have a few questions for them.

3) Have questions ready.

4) If you can arrange tours of the major company HQs (Google, Facebook, etc.), do it.

5) Come find me at startup school. ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi Hackers, if any of you are looking to work in a startup, feel free to send me your resumes. email id in profile.

Looking for those who can hack through and scale the product up using PHP/MySQL/AJAX (Not interested in fancy stuff right now, focused more on getting the product out through a stable platform).

We can even meet at Startup School. (But sending resumes before itself would be great)

</comment><comment><USER12> 1) Come find me! I'd love to meet people just as much as you do, so feel free to come find me. My name's Sahil - I assume we'll all have name tags, not sure.

</comment><comment><USER13> network with people.</comment>


ARP founder Alan R. Pearlman has died - <AUTHOR> http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2019/01/06/arp-founder-alan-r-pearlman-has-died/ <comment><USER2> Christmas 1976 my parents gave me an Arp Axxe, which was a simpler, less- expensive version of the much more famous Odyssey [1]. It was great for a kid to learn about electronic music because the controls were laid out to where you could visualize the signal flow. It also came with a great textbook. I learned a lot about sound and analog signal processing as well as had a lot of fun. May Mr. Pearlman rest in peace.

1: [http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/02/17/korg-is- bringin...](http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/02/17/korg-is-bringing- back-the-arp-odyssey/)

<comment><USER3> "less-expensive" as in still a hell of a christmas gift for almost anybody!

<comment><USER2> Yes, it was. I don't know what happened that year, if my dad got a promotion, won the lottery (just kidding, there was no lottery then), or what, but we hadn't had a Christmas like that before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huge synth head here. He will be missed. The Korg remakes of the Odyssey are great machines for those not wanting (or having the money) to dive into vintage madness. Now Korg should reissue the 2600 in his memory. For under $1500..

<comment><USER5> Former 2600 owner, and aspiring current owner (although Arturia is keeping the itch scratched for now), I think this would be viable for Korg. TTSH kits were around for a while. You could get one built for 3500, 1000 for parts. Korg purchasing could probably do way better.

<comment><USER6> The MS-20m kit's sales were slow enough that they had a blowout at the end of production - not an encouraging sign for Korg, in terms of making a relatively inexpensive 2600 reissue.

Behringer, on the other hand, is likely on the case.

<comment><USER7> I don't remember that at all. In fact I think in Europe they sold out really quickly as it is the ultimate model and although expensive, was still sought after.

<comment><USER6> I had my eye on it in a couple of places, but I was being very good about not buying another analog monosynth. Towards the end, you could buy a new-in-the- box kit for $899 (and you could probably call and get an additional 15% off). By comparison, when it was announced, list price was $1600, street price was $1200.

Double-checking my memory, Reverb listings from 2017 are showing it selling secondhand for $700-$900.

More recently, the last one that sold on eBay went for $1500+, and the one that's on Reverb now is listed, quite absurdly, for about $2500.

I was in the middle of some really expensive construction at the time, and just didn't have any room for non-essential spending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read the title as Address Resolution Protocol, then thought it was odd that they would call him the "founder" of a protocol.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2U0q4lZiFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2U0q4lZiFg)

Éliane Radigue has used the ARP 2500 for decades and has only recently started composing for acoustic musicians playing traditional instruments. Just one small byway this technology enabled...

</comment><comment><USER10> Peter Kirn has a more in-depth obituary over at CDM, including some of the most famous uses of 2500/2600s and Odysseys: [http://cdm.link/2019/01/rip- alan-pearlman-arp/](http://cdm.link/2019/01/rip-alan-pearlman-arp/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Sad day.

Time to start working on restoring my 2600, which I've owned aincw 1979. Many shorted tantalum caps. I miss it!

<comment><USER12> ARP 2600s command some serious money now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did he sneaked his initials into protocol name? Or was it just a coincidence?

<comment><USER14> It's not that kind of ARP, it's a synth. The article tells all.</comment></comment>


If you watch closely enough, everything is a speaker - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/18/01/if-you-watch-closely-enough-everything-is-a-speaker <comment><USER3> Impeached Arizona governor Evan Mecham (shortened term 1987-1988) was probably very paranoid during his time in office, but nobody gave credence to his concern over the possibility of "reflected laser use" to surveil him. From Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Mecham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Mecham)) ...

        Throughout his administration, Mecham expressed concern about
        possible eavesdropping on his private communications. A senior
        member of Mecham's staff broke his leg after falling through a
        false ceiling he had been crawling over, looking for covert
        listening devices. A private investigator was hired to sweep
        the governor's offices looking for bugs. The Governor was quoted
        as saying, "Whenever I'm in my house or my office, I always have
        a radio on. It keeps the lasers out." After this was reported,
        a political cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist
        Steve Benson appeared in the Arizona Republic depicting the
        governor leaving his house outfitted for laser tag. When asked
        about this by reporters, Attorney General Bob Corbin replied in
        amusement, "We don't have any ray gun pointed at him."

The guy was a tool but the guy had a point about surveillance technology, and nobody took him seriously.

<comment><USER4> No one took him seriously because "I always have a radio on. It keeps the lasers out." is a textbook example of the kind of thing someone experiencing paranoid psychosis will say.

i.e. there are certainly listening devices that operate based on bouncing a laser off of a window[1] (or some other object), but his use of a quasi- magical protective measure (radios allegedly protecting against lasers) - <USER2> addition to the other behaviour mentioned - strongly implies that he was in need of psychiatric care, as opposed to being under surveillance.

FWIW, I've met multiple people with paranoid psychoses of one sort or another, and _all_ of them have incorporated elements of real-world technology into their delusions.

[1] e.g. [http://www.lucidscience.com/pro- laser%20spy%20device-1.aspx](http://www.lucidscience.com/pro- laser%20spy%20device-1.aspx)

<comment><USER5> Is he wrong? Adding noise from a radio or TV in the room may be an effective way to obfuscate attempts to use laser reflection surveillance on a window or other diaphragm. Both the device and the person speaking will cause the laser to jitter as the window vibrates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is the project page from 2014:

[http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/)

And previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131785)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9254654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9254654)

<comment><USER7> Also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201745)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The group tested an eclectic selection of materials, including a bag of > chips (excellent), a soda can (surprisingly mediocre), and a potted plant > (average). They were even able to recreate music playing using footage of > the vibrating ear buds. The best material of all was the thin foil wrapper > on a Lindt chocolate bar Davis had been snacking on.

I hope it was the journalist who thought the soda can was surprisingly mediocre and not the researchers. The soda can is immensely stiff compared to the foil and much heavier so it will not move so much, meaning that there is simply less for the camera to see.

<comment><USER9> A thin foil wrapper is exactly a ribbon mic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another cool thing is recovery of picture from ambient reflected light. Sadly it only works on CRTs.

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/emsec/optical- faq.html](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/emsec/optical-faq.html)

<comment><USER11> You can indirectly photograph any object via its reflectivenes if you have a movable trackable light source and a camera pointed at a wall the object is facing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Everything is a microphone?

<comment><USER13> The original research in 2014 is presented well. This article in 2018 butchers the terminology, using "speaker" instead of "microphone".

<comment><USER14> Speakers and microphones are both transducers, which is what the author seems to be getting at.

<comment><USER15> But leafs shake because they receive waves. Not the other way around.

<comment><USER16> Another valid metaphor though is that video of the leaves can be decoded the same way video of a speaker would. The analogy works either way.

<comment><USER17> Yup. Interestingly, actual speakers work either way too. Reverse the polarity on them and you can use them as a crappy microphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> TL;DR Laser window bug upgraded to high speed camera/DSLR using scanning delay between rows of pixels.

</comment><comment><USER19> Silly question: isn't this phenomenon bound by the Nyquist limit, which means it would take at the very least 4k fps to reconstruct music (considering that a soprano can get no higher than 2 kHz)? That sounds like an impossibly high framerate.

<comment><USER20> 4K fps? Impossibly high? Not at all. There are consumer compact cameras and even smartphone sensors that can hit 1K fps [1] -- and those are not even specialist high speed cameras.

Specialist cameras hit 4k fps at second gear, and can go as high as million fps (and even trillion fps [2])!

Besides, this is about reproducing music frequencies, whereas the most probable target for this technology is eavesdropping, not as a replacement for Neumann U87 -- and for that you need way less range.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/2/7/14532610/so...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/2/7/14532610/sony- smartphone-camera-sensor-1000-fps)

[2] [https://newatlas.com/fastest-camera-44-trillion-frames- per-s...](https://newatlas.com/fastest-camera-44-trillion-frames-per- second/33330/)

<comment><USER21> wait, 4.4 trillion fps with a resolution of 450 x 450 ? Isn't it petabytes of data per second?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I once heared radio news coming out of my electric guitar, pretty scary.

<comment><USER23> When I was growing up, we would often hear radio stations faintly in our vehicle after we had parked it and shut it off on our driveway - that's how I learned that radio waves go through everything all the time. It wasn't just one time or one vehicle, it happened in quite a few spots on our driveway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Disclaimer: I work for a professional microphone manufacturer.

I wonder how long it'll be until this technique becomes feasible for recording professionally? Like, instead of capsules and diaphragms, we just have a laser that gets the cleanest, clearest possible signal it can, from the room around you ..

<comment><USER25> Isn't one of the benefits of high-quality microphones that they can reject or attenuate the ambient sounds and reverberations that you do not want?

<comment><USER26> Higher-quality microphones tend to pick up _more_ ambient sound because they're more sensitive and/or have a larger frequency response.

"Worse is better" sometimes applies to mics as well. For example, new podcasters are often advised to use cheap dynamic mics since it forces them to get close to the mic (improving their signal-to-noise ratio) and doesn't pick up audio over 15 kHz (which is not meaningful for voice recording).

<comment><USER25> more sensitive and with a wider frequency response but also directional and with fewer resonances than what OP was suggesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Somewhat reminds me of this hoax from over a decade ago: [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> What about to process some movies with this method, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow, "everything is a speaker" really fails to convey how crazy this is. The implications for this in terms of surveillance seem to be massive!

<comment><USER30> This is rather old news re surveillance.

<comment><USER31> I wonder about reconstructing "off-screen" or muted conversation/noise in Youtube videos. Or CSPAN video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if this could be applied to normal video and get results useful for any purposes. I realize it would be lower quality, but I feel like it might be possible to detect nearby gunshots on security camera footage that doesn't have audio. How cool would it be to see a murder trial enter audio recovered from footage of a house plant as evidence?

<comment><USER33> See this - [https://youtu.be/FKXOucXB4a8?t=187](https://youtu.be/FKXOucXB4a8?t=187)

They show audio captured from a 60fps video from a DSLR exploiting the rolling shutter. I'm not sure if you can use less than 60fps though?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Isn't this how those laser microphones work?

<comment><USER35> It's the same concept of detecting vibrations, but obviously this method is using a camera and processing a video, while the "laser microphone" [0] measures the difference in distance traveled by the laser beam.

It would be interesting to compare the two methods in various scenarios, i.e. through glass.

Obviously the laser method will work at night while the video method will not (probably depends how "dark" it is).

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was wondering about using smartphone cameras as drum-head pickups, but the frame-rate problem put me off the idea. With the rolling-shutter trick it seems that it might be almost useful on bass drums, at least as a trigger rather than an audio source.

<comment><USER37> I used to be a sound engineer for live shows. I could imagine high speed cameras being used to replace instrument microphones in live performances one day, much like optical mice replaced the roller ball style.

By keeping a fixed object in view of the camera (e.g. a reflector on the stage), a camera could correct for its own vibrations and achieve perfect rejection of outside noise, unlike most microphones which have a cardioid pattern.

Probably a pipe dream, but cool idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "everything is a speaker, especially earbuds!" That example doesn't seem particularly noteworthy.

</comment><comment><USER39> I see everything as an antenna.</comment>


In Brazil, Amazon Protections Are Slashed and Forests Fall - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/world/americas/brazil-deforestation-amazon-bolsonaro.html <comment><USER2> This happens when other nations and unions stand by idly instead of immediately threaten sanctions against insane people like Bolsonaro. There needs to be so much pressure on the country, that they riot against people like him and rid themselves of people like him. The moment this guy talked about cutting down trees, other nations should have immediately threatened with heavy sanctions, to stop this thread right away.

<comment><USER3> Hard for USA to pressure with a nationalist right winger in power, same with Britain and many EU countries. So who exactly has the political will and clout to do anything?

<comment><USER4> It's bullshit anyway. I have this idea that Bezos should use his money from Amazon to buy a large chunk of the Amazon rain forest. I am sure right winger is happy to sell the land for slightly above the price of wood on it.

<comment><USER5> That's nice in theory, but unless there's surveillance it won't help. They'll ravage the land anyways if there's nobody there to protect it

<comment><USER4> Hello Amazon drones?

<comment><USER5> Not sure you're aware of how large and remote the Amazon is. Even if the drone battery life was sustainable, you'd still need to get physical enforcement to the location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We seem determined to undermine all attempts to save ourselves. It makes me very depressed sometimes, when striving to be better as an individual, to see things like this happening. I truly do worry we don't have a lot of time left.

<comment><USER7> Just switch your allegiance to the Planet instead of the Race.

<comment><USER8> Puts you at odds with humanity unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The other day there was a thread on HN where most people agreed that Amazon should pay France more taxes because even though it's an internet business, it benefits from things done by the French government.

Maybe developed countries should start paying a tax to Brazil and other Amazon forest countries so that they can preserve it. After all, most didn't do a good job preserving their own forests, so demanding underdeveloped countries to do it is somewhat hypocritical.

<comment><USER10> This ^^! Most people do not appreciate what truly being poor is like. If the choice is development or preserving the rainforest, Brazilians deserve the right to choose for themselves

<comment><USER11> Except destroying the rain forests is gonna do absolutely nothing to help the Brazilian poor.

So I'm not sure what being truly poor has anything to do with this. This will be almost entirely about displacing the poor, poisoning their water, and rewarding corrupt cronies.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. It's probably going to be even worse for the poor in the affected area from now on.

Illegal wood extraction doesn't only kill trees. Those criminals have historically killed citizens in order to prevent being caught.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bolsonaro is only doing that in order to spite the left.

If leftists took the public position of wanting to destroy the Amazon he would be doing everything in his power to preserve it.

That's the world we live in today.

</comment><comment><USER13> _"The Amazon is ours, not yours," he told a European journalist._

I wonder if there's a scenario somewhere, already worked out, where this is not true anymore. A military takeover of the amazon basin.

<comment><USER12> It won't happen because Bolsonaro is too cozy with the US government, both have the same anti-leftist "own them libs" political leaning.

Who's going to do it? Europe? Asia?

<comment><USER13> It's an amusing thought experiment. China? They seem to be focusing on the topic of environment.

<comment><USER14> China's burning more coal by the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a pity things are going in that direction. But i don't think we are in position to judge the Brazilians over this.

I watched a short documentary about this issue recently on Youtube, and the journalists went to some really remote area and spoke with the mayor of town there. The guy was big supporter of Bolsonaro and he said something that is actually very true. He said US and Europe have no right to tell Brazil what to do with it's natural resources, because they have already used theirs to industrialise and develop and now want to prevent Brazil from doing so.

And as unpleasant as it sounds he is right. People in the western world can wipe their buts with toilet paper made from virgin pulp, but Brazil and other poor countries should hold should preserve the lungs of the planet.

<comment><USER16> That is the same argument Poland throws at Germany to justify the huge amounts of coal it uses and has little plans to reduce. At some point one has to ask at what cost the growth is justifiable and if dumping the same efforts into renewable technology isn't going to pay more dividends in the future when the world has moved on

<comment><USER17> Polish person here.

Actually that argument was only ever used to make the miners - a very powerful group in Poland - vote for whichever political party was in charge at the moment.

The coal industry overall is not a source of growth, but a liability, costing the taxpayers around €2bln annually.

A looming energy crisis and increasing costs of emissions, finally made the current government give in, put their cronies where they wanted them and approve a lot of new offshore wind investments + create a subsidy program for solar power to the tune of €230mln.

I talked with some people from Silesia and even the miners see the writing on the wall - currently 20% of the coal used in Poland is imported, so miners as a group don't have as much leverage as they used to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Brazil's southeast (which includes São Paulo - the most industrialised state and with 40 million people) gets humidity from the Amazon. They have had water shortages these last few years.

This government has given power to the greediest and most short-sighted elements of Brazilian society. They have always played a big role, but they now run unbridled and unashamed.

</comment><comment><USER19> What if rich countries stop buying things that cause deforestation such as meat and wood? (now you throw me through the window).

When I read that foreigners (specially Europeans) are concerned about Amazon I simply laugh. They've been exploiting Brazilian's (and other colonies as well) natural resources since ever! They've got rich as hell by just doing that!! But now they are superior and know exactly what the world needs. Same old story.

</comment><comment><USER11> Apparently it's not just the forests that are an obstacle to growth.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/28/amazon-gold- mi...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/28/amazon-gold-miners- invade-indigenous-village-brazil-leader-killed)

</comment><comment><USER20> There are no protections being slashed. this is totaly and complete BS. France is attacking Brasil because of the impact in a comer ial agreement. Why you don't go take care of your lives instead of gossiping in the web?

<comment><USER21> If an article is wrong and you have correct information, you're welcome to provide it, but please don't do it by calling names. Do it by neutrally stating facts. This will do a much better job of refuting the wrong article. Taking the threads further into flamewar helps nothing, and damages this place.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Things like this strike fear in my heart and make me feel helpless to prevent our species from dismantling our ecosystem until it can no longer support us.

<comment><USER3> We are in the thick of it. Shame that politics moves so slowly in so many countries, and that money and economics comes above long term ecosystem health. I think if we recognized we are merely a species from that ecosystem, part of its food chain, maybe we would react better.

Reminds me of a friend who has this pet desire that 1/2 of all humans should vanish, this was before Thanos too. He just hates what humans do and wants less of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Everytime there are news about Brazil the threads get a simple political view with shallow arguments.

I'm yet to see an article from nytimes and so on where they begin with basic and correct information instead of out-of-the-pocket made up numbers. Because numbers, in reality, are very different from this perspective that it's written. There isn't these increase in forests falling as this article implies.

<comment><USER3> Wow, pot calling the kettle black. You provided zero numbers yourself.

<comment><USER23> Yes, because I'm not discussing this article, I'm pointing that no one else is. A meta comment, if you prefer.</comment></comment></comment>


Real-time H1B wage information not available anymore - <AUTHOR> Previously, you could use the iCERT or OFLC systems [1] to search for labor condition applications and PERM (green card) filings. You could search by state, employer, job title etc..
This was very useful to know which companies are filing for H1Bs, green cards and what annual base salaries are being offered. Many other websites aggregated this data and provided more search capabilities. [2]
Looks like they've moved to a new FLAG system [3] which is behind a login now, and you can't search other LCAs being filed. It appears data disclosure is now annual as opposed to real-time (or daily, I don't know).
[1] https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm
[2] http://www.myvisajobs.com/
[3] https://flag.dol.gov/ <comment><USER2> This is horrible. A great alternative to levels.fyi (without puffery). Though you could not see RSUs or yearly bonus</comment>


Ask HN: how would you graph news comments and/or website crosslinking? - <AUTHOR>

I've been wondering for a while if there's a way to analyze and graph comment spam, on blogs or particularly on news websites.
Not the 'great deals on shoes http...' variety, but more astro-turfing, where a small group of people who are fanatical about a certain issue leave comments on any relevant news story/discussion forum they find. Often they simply pasting the same comment over and over (even on multiple stories at the same site) until they get banned, or they might post the same generic comment on lots of different news sites but change it up each day so their contributions on any individual site look varied and unique.
The task is quite similar to plagiarism detection or lexical analysis, but I'm not aware of good tools for doing that on a really wide scale. I'm looking for similarities both across the universe of news websites and blogs, and over time, especially in response to specific news events where an issue yields a lot of coverage and the astro-turfers go into overtime.
In a related task, there are a relatively small number of websites focused on an issue, and there would be a great deal overlap between them, they would be constantly citing each other and so on, partly to ensure that when a mainstream news outlet covers 'their' issue one or other of them is sure to be quoted as an authoritative source. Of course, there would be a great deal of outward linking to various news stories from articles/forums on these subject-specific websites.
This is a bit like recursively graphing blog track/pingbacks, or retweets, or citations in academic papers or legal judgments. Unfortunately most of the analytic tools I've looked at either do geomaps or just graph statistical aggregates as bars. What I'm really interested in is looking at the patterns of propagation - both to see how they evolve, and to identify major vectors leading back to sources. This seems like something best handled by De Bruijn or directed graphs, but my knowledge of graph theory and related tools is pretty limited.
I'm interested in the content of the subject material rather than product development, so tools/services > APIs/frameworks > theory/research - although I'd be grateful for any and all suggestions. Thanks for your interest. <comment><AUTHOR> PS - A more limited but equally handy thing would be suggestions for tools to graph individual websites. For example, imagine visualizing HN or the comments on an individual HN thread in tree (or other?) form without the text, though allowing access to the text via clicking on individual nodes. I'm interested in studying the structure and temporal development of the thread in particular.</comment>


Making a SNES game in 2020 using modern tools - <AUTHOR> https://drludos.itch.io/yo-yo-shuriken/devlog/147478/making-a-snes-game-in-2020 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone!

Here is an article I've just published about making a brand new game for the Super Nintendo (SNES) console using today's technology. It starts with the various steps to designing and program the game, and then details how me manufacture new cartridges (with box and manual) for a console whose commercial support ceased more than 20 years ago!

I hope you'll enjoy it, and don't hesitate to ask me if you have any question!

<comment><USER2> When you made your own cart, did you do anything about the lockout chip? (I think it's called 10nes?)

Or do you carts only work on a modded SNES?

<comment><USER3> 10NES is the algorithm running on the CIC lockout chip of the original Nintendo Entertainment System; the SNES had a similar lockout chip, but used a different algorithm.

These days, the SNES CIC algorithm is fully understood, and you can program an ordinary microcontroller to run either the "cartridge" or "console" ends of the algorithm for every region, or even for a cartridge to detect at runtime what region the console expects. See [https://sd2snes.de/blog/cool- stuff/supercic](https://sd2snes.de/blog/cool-stuff/supercic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People like you spent years of years time, effort, sleepless nights and a lot more than talked to sharpen skills in one hardcore area very few people want to try and then willing to share everything within a mere article, thanks so much for sharing this and kudos to all the people like you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your comment, it's really motivating :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also Micro Mages [https://youtu.be/ZWQ0591PAxM](https://youtu.be/ZWQ0591PAxM)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is amazing, it's the sort of content that keeps me coming back to HN.

For people interested in some of the tricks, tips and approaches that went into building games at the time (mainly in the late 80s to late 90s), I can highly recommend GameHut on YouTube.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVFSjHQ57zyxajhhRc7i0g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVFSjHQ57zyxajhhRc7i0g)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish nintendo or any other hardware company would release a well-made console, without the game licensing stuff.

The nintendo DS was such a success, and it did not have fast hardware.

Even if it's a little expensive and not fast, being able to run free games and software would really be an awesome feature. People say there's no money in it, but hardware is fast and cheap today, so any slow device would be cheap to make.

The raspberry pi is really awesome, but I don't understand why they're not making the final step of releasing a full device. Of course there are many projects out there, but they're not produced in high quantities, meaning not cheap, not well marketed, not always well designed, and often require non- trivial additional tweaking.

<comment><USER8> Its because Nintendo isnt really a hardware company - they're a software company. Game console hardware is generally sold close to at cost (sometimes even at a loss), and profit is made by charging royalties to game developers.

The primary reason to lock down consoles is to prevent piracy, but also to lock in those royalties. If the console was open, presumably most 3rd parties would take advantage of that to reduce costs.

<comment><USER9> IIRC, so take this with a grain of salt, the big N is the only major console developer to consistently sell consoles at a profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am extremely jelly that you were able to build a cartridge of your game. I have made a NES game myself and I am hoping that I will be skilled enough & have necessary tools to make it a physical product (I can play it using everdrive cartridge, which is close enough!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you're lucky, because there are a lot of people making very high quality NES cartridge already (the NES homebrew scene is very vibrant compared to the SNES scene).

I can recommend you to shopping at Infinite NES Lives, they are selling blank cartridge (loads of mappers variants available) and a tool to "write" the game on the cartridge: [http://www.infiniteneslives.com/nessupplies.php](http://www.infiniteneslives.com/nessupplies.php)

(we actually used their flasher to write the SNES cartridges of Yo-Yo Shuriken, as it works for SNES too!)

With that you can make your own physical release too! :)

<comment><USER10> That feels like a bit of cheating if you are not designing & soldering your own cartridge :P

I wonder how this was like 40 years ago. Would developers use services similar to this: find a company that makes the mapper you use, send them your binaries and leave them to production details? Or would you design your own boards and use a service to create and assemble them? Perhaps very large companies could even afford build their own boards.

There are some complex/unique mappers out there which makes me believe at least some companies out there were designing those mappers and building their own boards

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, for my project I did partner with someone to make the PCB, as I have about 0 electronics skills (maybe someday...). People like INL or Catskull are usually one-man operations, and they design their own PCB from scratch, so we are still in the "homebrew" spirit ;). But I get your feeling of wanting to build your own PCB on your own - I think you may find some schematics / documentation online to get you started if you want.

During the 80's-90's, AFAIK, Nintendo was the only company authorized to manufacture cartridges. So any publisher / developer would have to buy hardware from them. And you wouldn't be able to make a small lot, but you had to buy tens thousands or maybe hundreds thousands of units - this was a large scale business!

From what I've read, the process was indeed: build the final rom, have it pass a thorough QA session at Nintendo, pay for the cartridges and Nintendo will build them for you.

For the NES era, several companies did manage to make their own mappers. For example Konami designed a mapper to add extra audio channels in a NES cart. But, for some reasons, Nintendo didn't allow third party mappers in US and European releases. That's why only Japanese version of games like Castlevania III have such mappers "not made by Nintendo".

And of course, many unlicensed companies did create their own cartridges from the ground up, like Codemaster and Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree. They were not big companies at the time. So I think even middle sized ones could create their own cartridges and mappers if they had the skill inhouse!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome. Simply awesome. Such a fun, interesting and refreshing read. I really needed to take my mind off the news for a while and this was perfect. Congratulations, this is an amazing project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> NEKOTAKO is another new SNES game released in 2019 that uses original sound driver.

[http://pagam.es/](http://pagam.es/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I wasn't aware of this one, it looks very cool! I love how they wrote their full MML based driver! (my game use the SNESmod driver, that can take Impulse Tracker (.it) files for input)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've seen some SNES coding tutorials with emulator. But you don't stop with that, and also make the actual game cartridges.

Certainly very impressive :)

</comment><comment> kalium-xyz infinite NES lives is super cool, have you seen his (with others) recent efforts to get wifi for multiplayer on NES cartridges?

He live-streams his progress weekly: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZr5Jc9hj6z5mlAYxELq_xQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZr5Jc9hj6z5mlAYxELq_xQ)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've seen this project, this is incredible! I can't wait to be able to play a NES multiplayer game over the network! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for writing this! I just recommended the first half of your article to a friend who's been wanting to get into game development. The second half was super interesting to me, especially the manufacturing of the cartridges.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the article! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for the write-up! Glad to see that the SNES is still getting some love.</comment>


Get 20% discount on C# Smorgasbord [Book]  - <AUTHOR>

Use discount code B6MJC8PS on CreateSpace https://www.createspace.com/3759762
C# Smorgasbord covers a vast variety of different technologies, patterns and best practices that any C# developer should master.
Looking at everything from testing strategies to compilation as a service and how to do really advance things in runtime; you get a great sense of what you as a developer can do. By taking his personal views and his personal experience, Filip digs into each subject with a personal touch and by having real world problems at hand; we can look at how these problems could be tackled. <comment><USER2> " _By taking his personal views and his personal experience, Filip digs into each subject with a personal touch and by having real world problems at hand; we can look at how these problems could be tackled._ "

Aren't you the author, Filip Ekberg? Why are you referring to yourself in the third person?

<comment><AUTHOR> I copied the information from the information page. Should have added quotation marks or left that out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about a sample chapter or two as a PDF to enable us to form an opinion?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a "Look inside" available on Amazon:

[http://www.amazon.com/C-Smorgasbord-Filip- Ekberg/dp/14681521...](http://www.amazon.com/C-Smorgasbord-Filip- Ekberg/dp/1468152106/)</comment></comment>


Reinforcement learning with musculoskeletal models - <AUTHOR> http://osim-rl.stanford.edu/ <comment><USER2> Like literally 3 hours ago I was searching for software that can simulate skeletons and joints to investigate the exact effects of jiu jitsu joint locks, optimal fulcrum points etc. Could this be used or adapted for that? Anyone here ever used it?

<comment><USER3> I've participated in the NIPS "Learning to run" competition last year. It only computes motion in one direction (forward-backward, the model can't go left or right). What turned me off was the fact that object collision was handled poorly. You can't see a model that actually makes effort to avoid obstacles, instead all top solutions go through objects.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's only one-side of the story. It is actually a very accurate contact model. The problem is that it's also computationally expensive and therefore we reduce the stiffness of objects to make it faster. It's basically a trade- off between the accuracy and speed. In gaming engines you have speed and it looks good, but then it's impossible to generalize for real-life applications (because the contact is inaccurate).

<comment><USER4> > The problem is that it's also computationally expensive and therefore we > reduce the stiffness of objects to make it faster.

Are y'all using penalty methods for the collisions? Which model does it use?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone into this check out dual quaternions

[http://www.chinedufn.com/dual-quaternion-shader- explained/](http://www.chinedufn.com/dual-quaternion-shader-explained/)

They are magic.

</comment><comment><USER6> I tried the 2017 competition, and DDPG never converges for me. Since the 30+ dimensional state space is so large, I wonder are there some ML techniques that deal with dimensionality reduction or just large dimensions in general?

</comment><comment><USER7> A lot of these would be good submissions to the Ministry of Silly Walks

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2ViNJFZC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2ViNJFZC8)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, would be nice if this was integrated into the OpenAI environments

<comment><USER9> if you look at the github readme, it is openai gym compatible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I may be late to the game but this is the first time I've looked at something and thought "yeah well The Terminator is about to happen"

<comment><USER11> The skeleton is not exactly good marketing.

<comment><USER12> I was going to suggest that they hook the AI up to QWOP.

<comment><USER13> But this task is strictly harder and more general than QWOP .

<comment><USER14> But not strictly as humourous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> can this be used to help children with developmental delays and disabilities?</comment>


A new framework for startup teams - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ghacklabs.com/abcd-startup-teams/ <comment><USER2> Great article Luke.

In particular I like the part where you write about attracting talent and how offering equity isn't super appealing unless you have already created something of value (or at least show you have the ability to do so).</comment>


How to Inspect Ruby Process from gdb - <AUTHOR> http://intridea.com/2010/12/1/inspect-ruby-process-from-gdb

<comment><USER2> nice</comment>


IPhone Analytics Recommendation. - <AUTHOR>

I want to put analytics code into my iPhone app, and would like to get recommendations for analytic services others on HN have used. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I co-founded and ran Pinch Media, which recently (transaction announced last week and closed yesterday) merged with Flurry. Now I'm doing product management there.

I'm assuming you've written a native app vs. a web app. (If not, my apologies - ignore any advice I give you.) While I'm ridiculously biased, I'd recommend going with Flurry Analytics. In a couple months, it'll have the superset of features from both Pinch and Flurry. The data is processed using Hadoop, and reporting updates very quickly. It's built for multiple platforms, so it'll stay with you if you decide to build for multiple phones. And the company's well-backed and doing well financially - which is an important thing to consider, because once you release a smartphone application with analytics code in it, at least some installs are out there forever, since you can't force 100% of your users to upgrade.

Of course, because I'm ridiculously biased, you probably should check out other solutions in the space as well. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> We (Colloquy) built our own analytics for our app. It shows us exactly what we want to see, and gives us the raw data to examine as needed. Prior to that, we had played around with Medialets analytics (which were quite nice, but not quite what we wanted, in terms of how to look at the data or how it worked (although I've heard that Medialets has since improved their analytics in this respect)).

Its not terribly complicated, just POST'ing some data with NSURLConnection. [http://colloquy.info/project/browser/trunk/Mobile/Controller...](http://colloquy.info/project/browser/trunk/Mobile/Controllers/CQAnalyticsController.m) is our implementation, if you're interested. Its under a BSD license (although you'll have to write your own way of sorting through the data).

</comment><comment><USER4> I've used flurry - It's easy to integrate and good for charting numbers and new users.

The "events" and crash tracking functionality was not as useful as I had hoped - if I have a rare crash I'd like to see the events that lead to that crash, but that data is not linked together. I'd also like to know the phone model an OS for the device that crashed, but the OS and device data is logged separately and isn't connected to the crash reports.

Maybe the event integration will improve with the Pinch Media merger.

</comment><comment><USER5> A friend co-founded <http://www.localytics.com/> who have a real-time solution in this space. It is free so worth a try though I haven't tried it myself.</comment>


Tell Apple the Story of Your First Mac - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/30-years/your-first-mac/

<comment><USER2> Maybe I can tell the story of my first and last Mac.

It was the worst computer I ever had. Too many things to list, let me see if I remember some of them:

      - random stalls/hang-ups, had to upgrade RAM, throwing away the previous sticks because they were using both slots
      - power cable broke three times, it caught fire once http://lazyant.com/post/501307510/my-macbook-power-supply-cable-went-up-in-flames
      - palm rest broken from regular use
      - battery lasted about 3 months
      - a regular OS software upgrade screwed WiFi connectivity,  it would come and go. Couldn't roll back the software update, had to wait a few months for the next update
      - it made a lot of noise
      - etc etc

</comment><comment><USER3> Dear Apple, my first Mac was a $600 Mac Mini.

Your salesman informed me that I needed to buy a $30 Mini-DVI to DVI cable, which I did, only to discover one already came in the box.

I kept it out in the open, with good ventilation on all sides, in a 70f room. It ran great for about six months before (most likely) overheating killed the hard drive, where I lost all my data. Opening the case with a putty knife was a fun treat. A CD was stuck in the drive, and none of the various methods and shortcuts to eject it were successful, so I had to physically pry the disc out once I swapped the hard drive to get the OS installation media in. The disc did not survive the extraction.

About three months later, I noticed my Linux VM was running ridiculously slow. Upon investigating, I learned that my RAM reported as 1GB instead of 2GB. One of the sticks had now (again, most likely) died from overheating. I tried replacing the RAM with new RAM, and the system refused to recognize it. I tried putting the original RAM back in, and the system still refused to recognize it. Tried every combination of all four sticks in both slots to no avail. The system never booted again.

And that was the story of my first Mac.

<comment><USER4> But, does your First Mac == Last Mac?

<comment><USER3> If all of my software remains free, then yes. I am using a Hackintosh to continue porting my software to OS X, but obviously I can't and won't release any software built on an untrusted system, so everything is source-only. If I ever decide to sell a product, then my personal grievances will be irrelevant and I'll have to buy another.

When it was running, it was a nice, sleek, quiet, fast, low-power system. I did not enjoy developing on it at all, but web browsing/movie playing/music playing/chatting was very nice and polished. I realize my experiences may not be the norm, but it has shattered my perception of, "you pay for hardware quality." All of the parts inside were stock Samsung HDD/no-name RAM/etc, and the cooling system was clearly compromised for form over function. No, you're really only paying for the ability to load OS X without relying on sketchy third-party cracks. I will definitely be buying their top-end AppleCare warranty if I ever do purchase another Mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mine's still going strong. 24" 2nd generation Intel iMac from late 2006. My Chinese in-laws use it to watch Chinese TV and films and skype their relatives in China. A video circuit gave out early on, but was replaced under warranty. The first hard drive failed a few years ago, but I had everything backed up in Time Machine, so no big deal. I only replaced it with a Mini in late 2012.

I can't say it's been more or less reliable that any other PC I've every owned, but in all those 7 years I've not had to worry about viruses once. For that alone it was worth every penny, especially from a 2006 perspective. It's been worth every penny over again for Time Machine. And again for iPhoto, iMovie and back in the day iDVD.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had access to a lab of 512k/512kE/Plus Macs at the "gifted and talented" program in my public school district in Pennsylvania in 1985-199x, officially one day every 5-10 days, but ended up skipping regular classes, staying late, etc. with the cooperation of a couple of the teachers to use the lab more. HyperCard! Some "choose your own adventure" style game creation toolkit. Some early Mac games. Pascal. early SimCity. Some kind of dialup to somewhere (probably local BBSes? I think Fido mail too).

The main schools at the time had c64, Commodore PET, and then in middle school, labs of Apple II with sometimes IIgs; much less worthwhile, and all in structured classes like "we will all learn to type".

I mowed a lot of lawns, etc to save up for a Mac Classic 1/0 for $899 in 1990. (I had a "colecovision adam" before that, with the tape drive, printer, etc., which was essentially a word processor and games machine even when I got it; a c64 or apple II would have been a vastly better choice for a kid back then). I did Mac stuff with it for a few more years (very simple programming, hacking around with ResEdit, keeping up with the prepress going to digital transition, desktop publishing, etc.), but once I got VMS and UNIX accounts, and various dial-ups, and a modem, it turned into a glorified terminal. I eventually got a 486sx25 and then a P90 to replace it, running early 386BSD, BSD/OS, and Linux, but didn't get back into Macs until 2007 at a startup.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ah, I remember my first mac... The distinctive organ sound when i turned it on.. The extremely low framerate in SC2 even though I paid twice as much as my PC friends... Sigh, Oct 2012, those were the days...

Before the fanbois hate: I bought a MBA because I was sick of dealing with Linux driver issues on my IBM laptop and wanted a *nix like environment and something really light so I could travel.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't think Apple wants to hear how I was promised a Macbook as down payment for a freelance job and how the client was disappointed that I didn't work fast enough so he started screaming at me on the phone and brought me to court to get his down payment back. But when I got to court, with the macbook packed and ready to go back because I didn't want to argue, he didn't show and by default in Sweden if the other person doesn't show you win the case so it became mine. It later became my mothers for a few years before I gave her a better one and now it gathers dust at my sisters I believe. :)

Edit: I think the story of how my first boss in IT got his first Apple is much more positive. I'm not sure if it was a Mac or an Apple but he went into a computer store and saw two computers on display. One had DOS running, which as we all know is just a blinking white cursor at a prompt, and the other had a graphical desktop, with a mouse. He's not an apple person but he told me "obviously I wanted the Apple".

</comment><comment><USER9> I so strongly remember the first Mac I encountered... in 1984, tucked away in a corner room at Grinnell College. Some friends and I played with the MacDraw and MacWrite programs and the little dot-matrix printer, creating character sheets for a Call of C'thulhu RPG I was running that summer.

I knew _this_ was the future, not that clunky VAX they were putting in downstairs to replace the PDP-11 that ran the campus network.

A year later, I walked away from college and computing, and didn't take it up again for several years. My first PC of my own was a Mac LC.

<comment><USER10> Was yours 256K RAM? Mine was, and yet everyone talks about the Mac SE or 512 like those were the earliest ones ever.

I bought a 2nd FD and a 300/1200 baud modem to go with it. I regularly schlepped that sucker (heavy!) in its canvas bag 3/4 mile across campus from my dorm to the math building. (Yeah, we had a PDP11 as well.) I used it to desktop-publish (sort of) a newsletter for our sci-fi club. We didn't have the ability to scan in the masthead or any pictures, so there was old fashioned cut and paste going on as well. :)

<comment><USER9> 128k. Loading software was SSSSLLLLLOOOOOWWWWW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does Next count? My father had the a bunch of old macs, Mac IIx and Mac 512k, I used to play reader rabbit on them. Then we had two Next computers, and those were sweet, I still use a Next keyboard with my work macbook air. We used them in grade school, and I remember how confusing the bottom left part of the keyboard was. It never made sense to me why pc and macs had different keyboards. Use to play kidpix on those.

</comment><comment><USER12> My first Mac was a white iBook purchased from Amazon in December, 2002. My then girlfriend was home when the package arrived. She hid it and made me hunt for it when I got home from work. I finally found it in the dryer.

Inside the box was a pearl white slab of plastic. The best part about it was the smell...

I have not experienced boredom since.

</comment><comment><USER13> It wasn't the twentieth anniversary mac, originally priced over seven thousand dollars.

[http://www.mac512.com/Twentieth_Anniversary_Macintosh.html](http://www.mac512.com/Twentieth_Anniversary_Macintosh.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Christmas Morning, 1991.

It was a Macintosh LC, and I've never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reflecting on the various Macs I've encountered over the years, it occurs to me that Apple does not get enough credit for the innovation they've done on the Mac platform. The current technology is so different from the original, I feel like they should be thought of ad two completely different platforms that just happen to share the same name.

The NextStep/OS X switch was a _huge_ risk, but it has paid off huge. At the time the Unix heritage and shell was seen by most people as a step backward and liability. But it anticipated the rise of Linux and open source, and is probably the #1 reason Macs are so popular with tech influencers today.

It's also the reason they were able to move to Intel processors so easily. Not a chance that happens if they were still on Mac OS.

<comment><USER16> Well, there _was_ the Star Trek project...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The slider at the bottom is pretty interesting. Looks like programming disappeared for a while and then came back.

<comment><USER18> Probably because people think programming is using Codewarrior and Applebugs. I used Hypercard and Excel but never considered it programming until I got to college and did most of my calculus work in Excel (Matlab was too much work to setup).

My first attempt at "programming" on a Mac ended up being pretty disappointing. Codewarrior required a FPU and the Performas had the 68LC040 instead of the proper 68040. All those C books I checked out from the library were wasted until I could use the school PC lab, for the 30 minutes of free time I had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm commenting using my first mac ;-)

</comment><comment><USER20> You mean my hackintosh?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you approach a problem when you are stuck? - <AUTHOR> I have been thinking about this. For eg, let's say I am following implementing a design pattern and I am stuck at implementing a specific feature adhering to that pattern. I usually search for it online and then try to implement as suggested (I don't have much experience, I am a new grad). What do you think?. Should I implement my own solution first even if it violates the design pattern, then check if my solution was correct, or do I search on the internet the correct way to implement the feature? <comment><USER2> I assume you're learning, not debugging.

There's a period of time where it's worth trying. It varies a lot, depending on your willpower and how important a problem is.

If you're just trying to solve a Hackerrank problem, you should probably spend 30-60 minutes on it. You'll want to go long enough to not get frustrated with it.

Sometimes copying solutions is better. I learned map(), reduce(), filter() that way - these are all things that can be solved a slow way, but doing it in less lines of code is very good.

You can try copying a solution, then try solving the problem again based off memory. It's good to practice repeated basics like array manipulation and type conversion until it's muscle memory. Design patterns tend to be quite rare and it's fine to do it once and reference it every other time.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I'm well and truly stuck, then what I do is put the problem on the back burner for a while (typically a day or two), and work on a different, preferably unrelated, thing. I very often find that when I come back to the problem I was stuck on, I find a solution or direction that I was blind to before.

I use this "distraction" technique when I'm stuck on any problem in life, too, not just programming ones. I find it very powerful.

If I remain stuck, then I begin to entertain the idea that the problem itself is the result of a different problem elsewhere and investigate that possibility. Sometimes a problem is intractable because the issue isn't really in the code you're working on, but is the result of a larger design issue.

</comment><comment><USER4> ADHDer here. I can help with this.

When you are stuck, it probably means you are too focused. You should turn your attention-thermostat more toward the exploratory side of things. You also probably want to talk the problem through with a coworker whom you like who is good at being a sounding board.

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

# Explanation: Working Memory and Scope of Attention

# Working Memory

You know how a computer processor has registers and it performs operations on the values stored in those registers? Your brain has Working Memory and it can hold 4-9 "chunks" of information. More if you are relaxed and confident in your social position, Fewer chunks if you are stressed or worried about being kicked out of your social group.

A "chunk" is any piece of information that you are able to think about as a single thing.

\- Your own home address is 1 chunk

\- A stranger's home address is 4 chunks (house number, street name, city+state, postcode)

\- A stranger's address whom you've said out loud a couple times is 2 chunks I guess.

\- A design pattern you know well is 1 or 2 chunks.

\- A design pattern you've not yet learned is 5-15 chunks.

Your brain decides what to hold in your Working Memory based on a whole lot of things. The mental act of focusing is ignoring ideas and stimuli in order to preserve specific information in your working memory. If you google "mindfulness meditation" or "sniper breath control technique" and try doing either, you can observe this process in action.

> I am a new grad

Great. Picture a massive undirected graph of all the wikipedia articles and their links to each other. Now picture a graph of all conceivable ideas and the conceptual links that might lead the thought of one to lead to another. When you focus, you tell your brain "If the concept doesn't seem like X, don't traverse this edge."

In your case, it seems like you are telling your brain "If adding the new idea doesn't mean that I can put together full solution from what is in Working Memory, stop." Well it turns out that code and design patterns can be complicated and trying to do the whole thing at once might take more Working Memory than you have. However, doing the imperfect solution would:

1) Take some of the complexity out of your head and put it into a text editor. Thus, it would also "chunk" it and free up space in your working memory for manipulating the rest of the complexity.

2) Cause you to traverse the graph of ideas more. With your working memory freed up, you might spot a solution which is based on the crappy version but closer to what you want.

So my advice is to ego for a walk for a bit and let your brain expand the set of possibly-relevant ideas.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fuck u bit- __*CH

</comment><comment><USER6> "Invert, always invert" \- Jacobi.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fuck you bitch</comment>


Scientist Figures Out How 'Sailing Stones' Move Themselves Across Death Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.core77.com/blog/transportation/scientist_figures_out_how_those_big-ass_sailing_stones_move_themselves_across_death_valley_25038.asp <comment><USER2> It's a good theory, and not the first time that ice has been proposed as playing the major role at the Racetrack Playa. I have a friend who is obsessed with taking photographs of these, and it was about five years ago that I first heard the ice theory (and about these wacky furrows in the Playa) - I'm sure people have had ideas like this for even longer.

I think it's a stretch to say that this has been "Figured Out" \- I'll give that credit to the first person who records an observation of them moving.

Until then - just more theories.

[Edit - I like this 10+ year old theory, which suggests it's actually a case of moving ice sheets, with rocks embedded in them, that actually causes the furrows. [http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4021](http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4021)]

</comment><comment><USER3> There exist a Skeptoid episode about this: [http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4021](http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4021) , the 'Living Stones of Death Valley':

 _" When we reached the lake, we found to our great surprise that the entire lake was moving with the wind, at a speed we estimated at about one half of a mile per hour. The sun was on the lake by now and we could see a few very thin ice sheets that were now dissolving back into water. This whole procession was washing past many of the famous rocks. It's easy to imagine that if it were only few degrees colder when we were there — as it probably had been a couple of hours earlier — the whole surface would be great sheets of thin ice. Solid ice, moving with the surface of the lake and with the inertia of a whole surrounding ice sheet, would have no trouble pushing a rock along the slick muddy floor. Certainly a lot more horsepower than wind alone, as has been proposed. The wind was gusty and moved around some, and since the surface is not perfectly flat and with rocks and various obstructions, the water didn't flow straight; rather it swapped around as it moved generally forward. Ice sheets driven by the water would move in the same way, accounting for the turns and curves found in many of the rock trails."_

</comment><comment><USER4> > And if you're wondering why they don't just strap a GoPro camera onto a rock > to see what's going on, scientists returning to the site over the years have > calculated that the rocks move for short periods of time, just once every > three years. That's a bit longer than your battery's likely to last.

Stick a solar panel on it to charge it up then. Christ >_<

<comment><USER5> It is, after all, rather sunny in Death Valley.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cameras are so cheap these days. Why doesn't he set up a camera continuously recording for the next 5 years until he catches a glimpse of it moving?

<comment><USER7> Hell, can't they just get some grad students to camp out there for a few months with a motion detector and a siren? It would hardly be the _most_ boring job ever given to grad students.. This really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should go unobserved for so long.

I suppose I should be glad that this isn't as bad as the pitch drop.

<comment><USER8> Because during part of the year it's actually a shallow lake, and the rocks only move one year in three, which is a fairly low chance of it happening.

<comment><USER9> Like gp said, perfect for a grad student!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The small-scale proof-of-concept mentioned seems a little flawed to me...the surface area => volume ratio of a small rock can't be compared to a boulder. The ice collar formed inside a tupperware container is also very idealized compared to the ice layer that would form in nature. I guess if the ice collar were thick enough, maybe it's possible, but that's quite an ice build-up you would need. It doesn't seem too hard to get a large-scale experiment going to confirm some of this...Myth Busters needs to get on this.

Until then, my theory is that this phenomenon is brought to you by the same kind of people that make crop circles :P

</comment><comment><USER11> If they only move a little bit in just the right conditions during the winter, why do they maintain course for so long before making sharp turn and then maintaining that course for a long period of time? Wouldn't the wind have to be mostly blowing in the right direction for years during the winters and then suddenly start mostly blowing in another direction for years? Or is it maybe some subtlety in terrain variation that determines where they'll move?

</comment><comment><USER12> > Lorenz realized that as moisture levels changed with the seasons, a collar > of ice could form around the rock. With the rest of the lakebed covered in a > thin, cold-but-not-frozen sheet of water, this ice collar would enable the > rock it encased to float—slightly.

So "ice collars" are responsible for moving 700 pound rocks on a "thin sheet of water"; and all this in the hottest and driest place in America? I must be missing something....

<comment><USER13> The Racetrack is a dry lake bed. Which is to say, it's a lake but the water level is (usually) below ground level. Often only just. Along some parts of the road running along the edge of The Racetrack is a trench and there's often water visible in this, 6-12" below the lakebed level.

Moreover, the playa is at 3700 feet. The desert floor itself gets cold enough in the winter time, and the extra elevation only excacerbates this: adibiatic lapse accounts for about 3.5F cooling per 1000 feet, so Racetrack Playa would be 13F cooler than sea level.

Deserts, despite their reputation as hot places (and yes, Death Valley and the Racetrack can be quite hot in the summer months) are largely characterized by their _exposure_. Which means they can get quite cold in wintertime.

<comment><USER14> Many deserts can get quite cold at night, even in the summer time.

No cloud cover, low humidity -> the heat just radiates off into space.

The Romans supposedly used to make ice in the Middle East and North Africa by digging a deep pit and insulating it with straw. They'd open it up at night and cover it back up during the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe. 700-pound rocks 'floated' by ice, though? I'm inclined to think about ice build-up on the ground on the windward side. Note the pancake-sized hillocks with valleys between that can fill with water. When it freezes, the rock lifts. Hmmm. Anyhow, the interaction with that 'special' surface is more complex than just 'sand'.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. The original Am. J. Phys. paper[1] is from 2011.

[1] [http://ajp.aapt.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/resource/1/...](http://ajp.aapt.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/resource/1/ajpias/v79/i1/p37_s1)

<comment><USER2> "The resource you requested requires you to log in with your UW NetID and password"

<comment><USER17> [http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1/ajpias/v79/i1/p37_s1](http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1/ajpias/v79/i1/p37_s1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So you create a doughnut of ice around the base of a rock. The base of the rock has friction reduced by the area of the doughnut while slightly scraping the bottom sand. How high does this layer of frost get?

</comment><comment><USER19> Ice blown by wind can be dangerous:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjWq- bwhgZA&noredirect=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjWq-bwhgZA&noredirect=1)

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice summary of theory. I hope we can get this on video soon.

</comment><comment><USER21> And I am thinking can this table top experiment be used in _Earth Moving_ tech? There is a lot of rock to be moved both in construction and road- building industry.

<comment><USER22> Or aliens.</comment></comment>


JStat - JavaScript Statistical Library - <AUTHOR> http://blogfreakz.com/javascript/jstat-javascript-statistical-library/ <comment><USER2> Direct link to the library: <http://www.jstat.org/>. Looks quite cool.</comment>