A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/culture/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15949137

<comment><USER2> From the most useful Amazon.com review of the book ([http://www.amazon.com/review/R15E7HO19A2FQF/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R15E7HO19A2FQF/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)):

" _The core of the argument (on page 201) I will not spoil here, but it's not wholly convincing on several grounds. First, although he does not further dwell on it, the author favors the 'Copenhagen' (or observer effect) interpretation of quantum physics, which is used to buttress & underpin his argument._"

Oops. Or at least say I, not liking the Copenhagen interpretation at all. (Perhaps the most frightening thing to me about quantum mechanics is that I've found the many worlds interpenetration to be the best ... then again, in this area I'm a chemist, so these issues are "above my pay grade".)

<comment><USER3> Whether a physicist (in modern times and below a certain age) espouses MWI is quickly becoming a great litmus test for whether you should bother listening to them on anything that isn't established textbook material. Copenhagen is pseudo-scientific nonsense, and I'm amazed anyone can work on developing quantum computers while simultaneously denying the existence of what they're designing. I'd cut him some slack if this were just some tangential side point, but if it's critical to his argument the whole of it isn't worth anyone's time.

<comment><USER4> The reason people can get away with Copenhagen is that decoherence is absurdly effective in all realistic cases, causing there to very little uncertainty about whether and when a measurement happened. Insofar as we can all agree when a measurement happened, physicists operating under Copenhagen are going to be just as effective as those who understand MWI. And for most of the _theoretical_ and especially _computational_ aspects of quantum computers, this is the case. The only place where someone operating under the Copenhagen interpretation is going to falter is when they have to think hard and in novel ways about how to prevent decoherence.

So I really don't think interpretation is going to be correlated with advances in the computational aspects (i.e., what kind of problems are quantum computers good for once they are built, etc.) but I would predict that future insights in how to build computers which are robust against decoherence will be dominates by those who understand MWI.

<comment><USER3> "Insofar as we can all agree when a measurement happened, physicists operating under Copenhagen are going to be just as effective as those who understand MWI."

Agreed. If you're only worrying about the mundane medium-sized world we live in and what QM predicts we'll see in it, MWI vs. Copenhagen won't matter. Here, it does, as he's apparently using Cop. as a part of his argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did my Masters thesis informational ontology. Here's the thing: Shannon's information theory is a mathematical formalism, and is not enough to define information. Furthermore, information can only be defined within bounds of a model, and there are typically many ways and many abstraction levels available to describe a phenomenon, so the question of objectivity of information is still open.

If to assert objectivity you try to pick the lowest possible layer of abstraction at the quantum mechanics level, you lose the whole layer of _semantic_ information, i.e. information about something, which is actually the primary concept of information, and "information" simply becomes a name for a set of mathematical formulas, and as such it may not be treated as a substance.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article seems to imply that the author equates Shannon entropy with information. Is that so? It has always struck me that Shannon entropy is a good measure of information, but is not a good definition of information itself. Like the difference between a vector and the magnitude of a vector, information and its measure are not the same. What is information itself? If this author actually has a definition of that, I would like to see it.

<comment><USER7> "You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage."

John von Neumann to Claude Shannon

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> " _Unusually for a physicist, Mr Vedral spends a fair bit of time talking about religious views, such as how God created the universe. He asks whether something can come out of nothing . . . Mr Vedral makes a persuasive argument for a third option: information can be created out of nothing._ "

Somehow this reminded be about this verse in the Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God", <http://bible.cc/john/1-1.htm>

<comment><USER9> .. and the heavenly spirits decided to set the Word free with a GNU license, and released Open Office, and after fixing most of the bugs God saw that it was good (or at least usable).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a book review -- doesn't really explain what the physicist is arguing in any meaningful sense.

<comment><USER11> "It's a book review -- doesn't really explain what the physicist is arguing in any meaningful sense."

Indeed, the review ends with this:

"Mr Vedral makes a persuasive argument for a third option: information can be created out of nothing."

That's a remarkable claim, and the review says zip about how it is presented. It seems that it would also be the key concept of the book, making this a pretty lame review.

<comment><USER12> Well it's not really remarkable at all, the argument is basically that information and entropy are mathematically equivalent and so information like entropy spontaneously increases.

<comment><USER13> Information and entropy are absolutely not equivalent; entropy describes the upper bound on information content, but says little about the actual information contained in a coding. The statement that information is spontaeously created isn't based in any physics I know of.

<comment><USER10> How does the (conventional) big bang theory fit into that? At first glance it seems like valid evidence for spontaneous creation of information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I doubt it. Maybe if he said "monetization the root of everything".

Most philosophy of science arguments remind me of old costume dramas. They tend to say more about the times of the people who made them than about the times of the people depicted in the story.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't tend to find these varieties of ontological reductionism that compelling, though it is interesting to read when people propose new ones. Sure, you can construct a coherent account of how everything _really is just X_ for a lot of X, and everything else is merely higher-level structure on top of it. But picking the X always seems to be a bit arbitrary. Here he argues for the primacy of information; traditional materialists argued for atoms; some dynamicists argue for dynamics and state spaces; phenomenologists argue for conscious experience; Cartesian dualists argue for both _atoms plus consciousness_ (everything reduces to those two, but neither reduces to the other); social constructionists argue for _human social relations_ ; some mathematicians argue for _atoms plus math_ ; etc.

Although I don't like everything else they write, I sort of like the manifesto of the Object-Oriented Ontologists, which is more or less that, while objects like televisions undoubtedly are made up of atoms, can be analyzed using information theory, are phenomenological entities, have a (perhaps socially constructed) role in human society etc., those are each just methods of investigating televisions, and televisions themselves "really" do exist as well: <http://ooo.gatech.edu/>

</comment><comment><USER16> No surprise here... Edwin Jaynes called this the mind projection fallacy whereas Ayn Rand called it the primacy of consciousness, an epistemological error. If everything is "information" then what are the physicists studying? To quote AR "A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms". Full quote here; <http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/consciousness.html>

<comment><USER10> Consider a computer program with access to the memory in which the program is running and no other inputs. The program is information, and only has access to information. The information is embodied in some set of hardware, but the computer program has no way of knowing or accessing this hardware (and we assume the hardware is 100% reliable, e.g. no memory faults due to overheating RAM or whatnot). So from the perspective of the program, everything is information, including the program itself. Substitute 'conscious mind' for 'program' and you have a conscious mind in a world of nothing but information. The fact that a 'hard' world exists outside of the 'soft' world is irrelevant, by virtue of being unknowable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know nothing, but here are my thoughts...

What is information really? Does information exist without a conscious being to interpret it? Are the laws that govern information simply laws that are created by conscious beings for the purpose of interpreting the information? Most laws that we are concerned with are derived from nature, through our senses and experience of cause and effect. Our senses allow us to perceive the changes in state of our surrounding environment. These changes in state is information.

I guess the point I am finally making, is that the statement above concerning information is expected in lieu of our current focus, reliance, and addiction on information as a representation of reality. I am not sure what the difference is between the laws that govern matter and the laws that govern information. We're still working with information in either case. We have to take measurements, interpret the data, make predictions, and build systems to exploit the "laws" we've uncovered.

<comment><USER18> I think you're substituting some colloquial fuzzy/subjective definition of the word "information" here as "a conscious being knowing something." But in the context of the linked article, we're talking about Information in the context of Information Theory. It is not subjective. The remarkable thing about Shannon's information theory is that he does formulate real laws of information on the same solid, objective footing as laws of physics.

But then, I could have stopped reading at your first line: it sums up your entire post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems quite strange if, as alleged 3rd hand in this thread, Vedral is obsessed with quantum computing, but sticks with the antiquated and more or less content-free Copenhagen interpretation. MWI seems to me to be critical to quantum computing -- otherwise, where is all that extra computing power coming from?

<comment><USER20> That doesn't make as much sense as it sounds like it does.

From a macro point of view the multiple worlds are all identical. All. The business with hitler doing something different in a different world is nonsense, quantum uncertainty almost never has any effect in the macro world.

So when you are computing in your world, everyone is doing the same computation in all the worlds.

Part of the MWI is that each world has a slightly different version of the event, and you just see yours, which was effected by theirs. But in a quantum computer you specifically set it up so that your get a single right answer - but if you get just one answer, all the worlds are the same, so how do you get multiple worlds each working on it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A link to the book in question (clean btw, no referral): [http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Reality-Universe-Quantum- Info...](http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Reality-Universe-Quantum- Information/dp/0199237697/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0)

</comment><comment><USER22> Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it, since it comes to mind every time I see an article like this. Let me know if I'm off track.

Isn't it more accurate to say that "description," rather than "information," is the root of everything? Information itself is pretty abstract, so it seems far more useful to do it this way.

<comment><USER23> They're using information in a technical sense, in the sense of "information theory" and maybe "Kolmogorov complexity".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does it mean everything is addicted? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293262>

;-)

</comment><comment><USER25> Mistaking the deepest abstraction you are capable of for the fundament of all reality is hubris.

Philosophy is one of those subjects that most intelligent persons think they can master pretty well. It all seems pretty simple and straightforward. Especially physicists fall into that trap again and again, up to great string theorists putting forward anthropocentric theories of the universe. These people usually make trivial mistakes that any real philosopher spots in no time. Intelligence is not a substitute for knowledge and this guy seem to have fallen into the same trap as well. In this case you don't even need to be a philosopher. He defines information based on the frequency of 'events'. This means that both time and 'events' are more primal than his notion of 'information'. Consequently, 'information' is not at the root of anything. And how could it be, if we need minds and language to discuss 'information' in the first place?

<comment><USER26> "He defines information based on the frequency of 'events'. This means that both time and 'events' are more primal than his notion of 'information'."

True, but what do you expect for a popular review of a book that itself is a popular review of some pretty abstract ideas.

The basic concept is not just that our universe can be described by statistical measures, but that the foundational laws seem to be _governed_ by statistics. At the small scale (individual particles), quantum mechanics basically says that the universe runs itself by rolling dice in very particular ways. Events involving these particles seem to simply be the tangible embodiment of Shannon entropy. Even at the everyday scale of refrigerators and gasoline engines, entropy calculations are the bread and butter of thermodynamics engineers.

It is a major open question in physics whether entropy and statistics are truly foundational, or whether they are simply the large scale average result of a fine-grained deterministic foundation. The "Copenhagen interpretation" takes statistics to be fundamental, and by gosh the calculations sure work nice, but there is no evidence that it reflects a higher truth.

Re. the anthropic principle in physics, it is one approach to answering why certain laws of physics seem to be balanced on a knife edge between chaos on one side and stagnation on the other. If we posit that universes can be created with nearly arbitrary physical laws, then naturally we find ourselves in one that is neither too chaotic nor too stagnant for our existence. The creation of such a universe might be unlikely, but given enough opportunity it is inevitable. This allows for bizarre physical laws without requiring magic or divine intervention. (There are even evolutionary approaches, where events like black hole formation create a new universe similar to its parent. That way if you find yourself in a part of the multiverse conducive to your kind of life, neighboring universes are likely to be very rich in friendly conditions.)

"And how could it be, if we need minds and language to discuss 'information' in the first place?"

If the evolutionary approach were true, universes of pure thought could potentially be created, where the very atoms were symbols grounded in some reality. A mind there wouldn't pick up a pen to draw a symbol, it would just think it into existence. Or such a parent universe could create a universe like ours, to test whether symbol processing is a necessary law of physics, or if it can spontaneously arise from semi-chaotic fundamental laws.

<comment><USER27> Well put. The one alteration I'd make is that universes of pure thought would require a Tegmark Level IV type multiverse, not just a MWI or black-hole- spawning type multiverse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So close. It's actually math.</comment>


A record 21.6 million millennials live with parents - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/business/record-21-6-million-millennials-live-parents-6C10823526

<comment><USER2> That's a lot of startups trying to change the world...</comment>


Google Chrome rolls out $14470.70 worth of security patches - <AUTHOR> http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2011/01/chrome-stable-release.html

<comment><USER2> Nice. In a way its feels a lot like they are underpaying. Clearly these bugs are worth 2-4 times the amount paid.</comment>


The Funemployment Phenomenon - <AUTHOR> http://www.adambossy.com/blog/2009/07/28/the-funemployment-phenomenon/

<comment><USER2> Currently I'm tied fairly tightly to 9-to-yuck employment, but I think a lot of knowledge workers are not. We make gobsmackingly good amounts of money. Many niches in our industry/industries tolerate frequent changes of employment well. What is to say that instead of taking continuous employment at an annualized salary of X you tolerate working for an annualized salary of 2/3 X and spend a third of your life between jobs? (Heck, after doing that for a while, wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that you spend two thirds of your life between periods of intense concentration on things which matter to you?)

Where is it written that the one acceptable business model for individuals is selling precisely 40 hours a week of your services to one company, with the contract to continue for many years at a time? That model is a historical accident, not a law of nature.

<comment><AUTHOR> > That model is a historical accident, not a law of nature.

Beautifully stated!

This begs the question, how then are humans most productive, by nature? If we can model our workforce around a higher level of productivity, then we can reduce our work hours accordingly (or increase the world's wealth, whichever one).

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "..organizing by physical proximity and geritocracy is no longer necessary.."

I just quit a job where I was working in Silicon Valley but most of the team was in Toronto. Other aspects of the project were outsourced to India, China, and Germany. For my new job, all developers sit on the same floor. Things works 10x better at my new job. I know that Linux and some open source projects have achieved geographic independence, but that doesn't mean it's easier enough for everyone to do it yet. I think there's a core of super dedicated people that keep geographically disparate projects alive and working well.

<comment><USER5> >I think there's a core of super dedicated people that keep geographically disparate projects alive and working well.

There's generally a core of super dedicated people that keep _any_ project alive and working well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What really gets me: 'Experts say it's both a reflection of the country's cultural narcissism'

Experts on what exactly?

<comment><USER7> It's a reflection on how society absolutely does not need for everyone to be a working, productive member in order for society to continue functioning.

<comment><USER8> However, most members of society need to be working and at least marginally productive so they can continue to keep themselves functioning. Better or worse, it is the way we've organized the markets that bring people the essentials. Sentiment on whether it is better or worse seems more muddled given the current turmoil.

It largely depends on where one sets the threshold to define something as functioning. I've noticed at least a couple of different thresholds being argued about in other threads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Actually I viewed the original "funemployment" article as a propaganda piece, focused on putting a happy face on what are pretty bad numbers.

</comment><comment><USER9> Funemployment is like enjoying the thrill of skydiving without a parachute. Sure, it's a blast while you're in the air, but the landing's going to suck.

<comment><USER10> Only if you're absolutely insistent on playing chicken with the ground. You will, of course, lose -- probably badly. People have walked away from their parachutes not opening, though. Most don't, and it's not an experience you should seek out, but it is something to be mindful of, should you ever find yourself in that situation.

Your simile is inapt, though: funemployment is a ride you can step off as soon as you find one you like better. I've done it both ways, after a fashion, and can heartily recommend it, provided you've gotten yourself together enough to step off in time. Hell, I'd even recommend it (though somewhat more reservedly) if you don't step off in time. Nothing teaches you more about yourself than hardship, particularly when it's self-inflicted.

<comment><USER11> <http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/inspiration/justaride.html>

<comment><USER10> The world needs more Bill Hicks types. He was -- still is -- my favorite comic, bar none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Funemplyment? Really?

What is going on inside of these people's minds? Did they just people forget to grow up? Must be...

I guess that's what comes of a career path always being so well-trodden before sheeple. Nice high school, college paid for, then a nice "secure" job at a nice "big firm". And when those jobs are suddenly out of reach, it's not because of "the bad economy", but because bullshitting your way through college half-sober on your parents' dime didn't teach you in the least how to be a _productive_ member of society.

But fine, lie to yourself, call yourself _fun_ employed. Ha, it's _fun_ employment until the credit cards run out or mom and dad decide to retire. Then you realize you're back to square 0, except not any younger. That's when we realize that the vast majority of our society is a bunch of morons without a clue, replace truck drivers with computers, most of the Walmart employees with cheap RFID tags on goods, and watch the true economic divide appear - between people who have useful skills and those who don't.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, quick everyone, ACT SERIOUS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I stopped reading at:

"Traditional corporations are obsolete. With the advent of the Internet, organizing by physical proximity and geritocracy is no longer necessary."

The new does replace the old, _eventually_.

<comment><AUTHOR> I absolutely agree. I probably over-simplified for the sake of brevity.

The world isn't ready to move away from 9-to-5. But a whole lot of new workers are coming into the workforce that seek the alternative lifestyle described in the blog post. These workers will ultimately dominate the business world, and hence it will be reshaped.

In my mind, "obsolete" means that it is no longer growing. In this case, the growth of the traditional corporate mindset is stagnant and will inevitably die. Sorry for the miscommunication.</comment></comment>


Edit: A Relaxing Mix of Vi and Acme - <AUTHOR> http://c9x.me/edit/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad to see such a positive reaction! I worked on that for quite a while and use it daily. I think the code is of pretty good quality (never had a segfault or data loss while using it). If you try it and encounter annoyances because it does not behave exactly like what you want, you have to hack in the code! I will never fix something myself if it does not annoy me. This does not mean that I did nothing for you, instead I tried a lot to make the code such that everybody can hack it, it is very regular, short, simple and occasionally well documented (vicmd.w, buf.c).

I spent a probably unreasonable amount of time thinking on its design and I believe I came up with something satisfying, the code is only 3000 lines but one or two features I want remain to be hacked in. The undo and the buffer data structures were tested automatically for several hours with success (see the tools/ subdir), no data was ever lost. The file saving command is even formally proved correct in Coq.

Any suggestion that could simplify the logic and preferably decrease the line count is more than welcome.

Also, note that the version showed in the video is a bit deprecated, the master branch now supports better handling of async commands and window splits (vertical and up to 6 windows) with resizes using the mouse.

Some are concerned about the license. It is public domain. But please tell me if you do something cool with it or like it.

<comment><USER3> Everything about this awesome, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like there are some differences with vi, among others:

* "dd" is not implemented, use "d_"

* "cw" will not work as in vi, use "ce" or "cl"

* "r" is not implemented, use "cl"

I think these are very common mnemonics, so I wonder why they are not implemented and if there are any plans to do it in the future. I use these all the time, so this would be a major turnoff for me.

<comment><USER5> Because they are not very reasonable?

* "dd" isn't reasonable because it violates the "command + movement/region" structure of vi commands. So is "cc" and "yy". None of "c d y" is not a movement or region. Presumably in this editor "_" represents the "whole line" region, which leads to also "c_" and "y_". Much more regular although it does require you to lift your finger one more time.

* "cw" isn't reasonable because "w" as a movement usually means "to the next word", but in "cw" it means "to the end of current word" instead. "ce" is indeed better.

* "r" is actually not bad (indeed "rx" is equivalent to "clx<Esc>", but the former requires 2 keystrokes), but I guess it's because the author rarely uses it.

Anyway the editor is pretty small, it might be easy or even fun to hack it! :)

<comment><USER6> _' "cw" isn't reasonable because "w" as a movement usually means "to the next word", but in "cw" it means "to the end of current word" instead. "ce" is indeed better.'_

I've recently been noticing this - dw behaves like dw, but cw behaves like ce and there's no way to express a real cw in a short number of keystrokes. Despite it breaking my muscle memory, I believe I _approve_ of this change.

<comment><USER7> > there's no way to express a real cw in a short number of keystrokes.

dwi is pretty short.

<comment><USER6> ... but not a single action. This is important when I want to repeat things.

<comment><USER7> Good point. It seems likely that caw will suit most of the time, but I can't think of an exact replacement.

<comment><USER6> Right, caw is probably the closest; cf<Space> is what I defaulted to earlier in my vi-ing, which is a little further away but also _usually_ close enough.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I didn't know about caw, because I learned vi on Solaris, which had real vi and not vim.

<comment><USER6> The a and i modifiers are great things - they can also be combined with most grouping characters (parens, brackets, braces, quotes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > you will also need cweb because one file is written in literate programming

Glad to see there is a small village of indomitable programmers still holding out against the invaders :)

<comment><USER10> It's still fairly alive in the academic community, with things like Sweave/knitr/IPython workbooks/Maple stuff/etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope the author of Edit is reading this thread. This sounds like a dream come true! The best form of encouragement is people using the software, but if the author wants us to wait, I'm cool with that - but I hope they make real progress quickly!

Now I have the itch to fire up and work in Acme again :)

</comment><comment><USER12> For people not familiar with Acme, I found this 20-minute video tour very informative:

[http://research.swtch.com/acme](http://research.swtch.com/acme)

<comment><USER13> Also, I asked HN about modern Acme clones recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269442) (glad this came along)

<comment><USER3> I'm the developer of plan9-for-vimspace[1], which you mentioned in your thread. I've not been very active with it, because I came up against some limitations in vim, but I really want to go further with it.

I would really like some feedback on what stuff should go in or out. I've thought a lot on how to implement acme's tag lines and a plumber system (just this weekend, I was thinking of providing a fuse-based system for that).

[1] [https://github.com/fmoralesc/plan9-for- vimspace](https://github.com/fmoralesc/plan9-for-vimspace)

<comment><USER14> Were the issues you hit being addressed by neovim ([https://github.com/neovim/neovim](https://github.com/neovim/neovim))? They seem to be pretty interested in making a more extensible vim.

<comment><USER3> Not yet, the plugin API is not yet stable. One thing I needed for this was something like multiple selections, which is not in the roadmap. I also wanted to implement moving the mouse cursor like acme does on movements, but that currently would require vim to provide more info about its display (also not in neovim's roadmap, especially since it doesn't provide a GUI yet).

For the first point, I can hack something up with the recently merged (by yours truly) `matchaddpos()` function, and I think I will do so this week. I've been also toying with computing a character's position in vim's display taking into account splits, but that has proven to be very hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A wonderful idea, but in the current state I can't use it since it doesn't support entering Cyrillic.

In fact, vim doesn't do the right thing with Cyrillic either (vim binds commands to entered characters, not keys; so when entering Cyrillic you either have to switch layouts when entering commands — or do some ugly hacks), but it's at least usable. Edit is not, right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> That's neat, it reminds me of MPW and the scheme interpreter I used long ago on a mac, wish I could remember which one now. They had a worksheet where you could go back to a previous line with the keyboard or mouse and hit enter there (or edit it first and hit enter then) to execute. I had a very nice worksheet with lots of templates I would follow.

<comment><USER17> Eddie(Text Editor) by Pavel Císler has a worksheet like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found this in the doc/ subdirectory of the repository: [http://c9x.me/git/?p=ed.git;a=blob;f=doc/republic.txt;h=366f...](http://c9x.me/git/?p=ed.git;a=blob;f=doc/republic.txt;h=366f1543a185a1b2f6c5b4e8dbeac82715c15ee5;hb=HEAD)

I am really curious about what the full text of Republic is doing here...

<comment><USER18> Its probably for testing purpose. Its a big file of natural text so you can easily checks a lot of things with it and its a lot less boring than pages of lorem ipsum...

But, its funny that it is more than half of the full content in the git clone...

<comment><USER5> Ah, indeed. It turns out that the "doc" actually means "text documents" instead of "software documentation".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> bulte-rs Lovely.... Now to get some command line utils to interact with a clojure repl and some form of splits (i.e. for documentation).

This is actually something I might contribute to! :P

edit: async is already in... mea culpa

<comment><USER2> Splits are available in the git master branch.

<comment> bulte-rs just noticed; very awesome. For some reason this editor gives me the same feeling I had "back when I was little" when I was using IDE's like Turbo Pascal's. It just feels... modern retro!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice. Wish it was on Github for easier contributing (and issue tracking).

<comment><USER19> >easier contributing

Er... what? What's hard about contributing? You don't have to go through a web interface for everything? IMHO that makes it easier.

        $ git clone git://c9x.me/ed.git
        <do your changes>
        $ git format-patch --cover-letter <any other options you want> <commits>
        <edit the file if you want>
        $ git send-email <the file>

`man git send-email` will tell you anything you need to know: configuration options, examples... If is well-written and straightforward! Seems like the author isn't interested in public issue tracking (yet), and using Github wouldn't have changed that.

I, for one, celebrate that he's not using Github. I'm very afraid of the git == github trend I'm seeing amongst many people (technically semi-literate or even technical people)

<comment><USER20> Excellent points. Monocultures are terribly harmful, especially in the open- source side of things. While github is convenient, it's not the right answer for a lot of things and terribly inconvenient for others.

I use git without github. I use it with vim outliner and keep the issues in the repo.

<comment><USER19> You use vim outliner plugin for the issues? How does that work?

Are your issues simple text files describing it? In a "issues" folder? Do you enforce a format? How do you track their status?

<comment><USER20> Yes. Indent per issue. One .otl file with all issues in it. No format enforced although I'm pretty consistent at writing issues. Once complete the issue is simply deleted. I've done this up to 4 people and it has worked wonderfully even though they had to learn vim :)

You can pipe it through awk to remove any lines starting with a space/tab, sort it then then diff the result with earlier versions to work out progress etc as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is fantastic. I felt like I was alone in thinking acme is great, but is missing a text editor. Nice to see I'm not the only one.

</comment><comment><USER21> I might just be missing it, but I don't see the license mentioned anywhere. Anyone know what it is?

<comment><USER2> I hacked it. It's public domain for now. I might (or not) switch to MIT later.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that's possible. If it's public domain, none can claim copyright.</comment></comment></comment>


A man sent me a dick pic on Instagram - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ashsmash/a-man-sent-me-a-dick-pic-on-instagram-9ab7ffb41716#.q68xowymy <comment><USER2> The problem is that you can't prevent a stranger from sending you something you don't like, unless you block all strangers from sending you messages or block the stranger after they've already sent it. You reported the person to Instagram. In my experience, this works pretty well and the user account will most likely get banned.

I feel like you want a digital 'safe space' like on many college campuses. The real world is much darker than this. There are no safe spaces.

The 'edge case' that you discuss is just reality. The only way around it is to only communicate with a circle of people that you completely trust.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't get the impression that she wanted a safe space, just that she was criticizing design decisions.

"The problem is that you can't prevent a stranger from sending you something you don't like"

Sure, but Instagram could choose not to automatically display images from strangers. Because of their design, she can't check messages that she wants without possibly seeing a stranger's dick. That, and there's no easy way for her to report them for that message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You're welcome?</comment>


Onivim 2: Vim-style modal editing with aesthetics and features of modern editors - <AUTHOR> https://v2.onivim.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have been using Onivim as a daily driver since several weeks and am really enjoying the experience so far. Highly recommended.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you take this business to the next level? - <AUTHOR> I am a non-technical guy who has validated a business model using messengers (WhatsApp and FB messenger) to sell stuff and made over $60K over the last 12 months without writing a single line of code. I now know how all the parts and pieces need to work together.
During the process I have encountered a lot of inefficiencies. If I had a technical co-founder, we would be able to build a web application that could greatly reduce these inefficiencies and scale this up significantly.
How would you guys go about finding such a person? (would be glad to talk to anyone here too). This is in Bangalore, India. <comment><USER2> Looks like you might need to farm out specific problems (e.g. I need a website, built on technology X, that has THESE capabilities). You could just put those specific tasks out to tender on a programmers-for-hire site. Unless you are happy to part with some equity in your company. Here are some links on this topic to help.

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tech-co-founder-myth-vijay- ga...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tech-co-founder-myth-vijay-ganti)

[https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-find-good-technical-co- founde...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-find-good-technical-co-founders)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20120229131356/http://lederhosenl...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120229131356/http://lederhosenlabs.com/2011/05/31/technical- co-founders-are-overrated/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links. Yes, I would happily give away equity to a cofounder who can manage the tech side of things.

I can scale this thing up a few 100K dollars a year the way I am doing this now. But it is excel sheets and 3 computers side by side so I can see product info, customer info etc side by side. Its just ugly. lol. I need some elegance in my life now.

I have settled the "should I really bring-on a technical co-founder" question in my head and hence the post.

<comment><USER3> My wife has a small business similar to yours, and I ended up building a micro CRM for her, complete with scraping (some of our vendors don't offer an Api), reports, invoicing etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> My story is similar. My friends wife was selling Indian women clothes and I took a stab at re-jigging her business for the "messaging-first" world. worked like a charm. she is now selling a very non-differentiated product at the rate of 1 every 20 working minutes. :-)

so now we have good problems to solve like actually needing a CRM, invoicing etc that I hoping to do via a web app.

Once that is done, it could be sold to other similar businesses. I have already done some presales using my mockups and there is interest.

<comment><USER4> you should just blog about whatsapp selling and sell your services; other than selling to Chinese on wechat I have no idea what this even is or how/why it works.

below you said you are running whatsapp sales for b&m shops, but how do customers find you? afaik whatsapp has no discovery features.

<comment><AUTHOR> If are really curious, I would be glad to explain on a call on how a customer finds us, how a sale happens and money is collected.

don't wanna post exactly how that is done publicly (yet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You might want to find a technical co-founder. If you have a proof of concept and you have validated the business model, it shouldn't be too hard convincing an entrepreneur-minded engineer to join your startup!

Finding a technical co-founder isn't that difficult if you know where to look for. couple resources/networks I have used successfully in the past:

       https://www.meetup.com/

(if meetup.com hasn't caught up where you live, there might be something similar that's popular)

-Meetups geared towards entrepreneurship, software dev, engineering.... are great places to find a technical co-founder. Prepare a simple pitch-deck, meet smart people, share your idea and see if they would be interested in joining the cause. (don't worry about someone stealing your idea... it's all in the execution. You can hold back some key features until you sign an NDA or something.)

-networking in general goes a long way. Start networking with any and all engineers you know (shouldn't be hard to find software engineers in Bangalore!)

       https://angel.co/

-Angel List is a great place to post jobs, especially if you are looking for a co-founder.

Be prepared to give up a considerable amount of equity (30%-50%) if you are looking for a "serious technical co-founder". Make sure to have vesting & a cliff in the contract.

Also consider talking/networking with friends, family, ex-colleagues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointer about meetup.com . seems to be very active in Bangalore. Could be helpful to make fundraising connections too. Signed up for an event too! thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi Arjun! There are lot of open source, pay-as-you-go (very cheap) crm products that might fit your need. Have you explored any?

Having a tech cofounder gives its own advantages But why you are not Hiring a tech person to quickly build your mvp to simplify your life? It will not cost you much. Once this takes off then you can take the call whether u still need a tech cofounder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. Would you know of any CRM products that would work with WhatsApp?

<comment><USER6> I just sent you an email. We need to talk a little more. I will explore on WhatsApp integration

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a very inspiring thread. The help being offered by the community is heartwarming.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm currently writing CRM for Whatsapp and Messendger. Clients list, calendar, products list, messages history. Is it what you are interested in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I would say so. Here are a couple of animations that I made in Keynote to show how the web app could be structured

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCcEoVlmiok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCcEoVlmiok)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guA6trEPNls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guA6trEPNls)

I just want to "reduce stupidity" now. for example when I get a message saying "haven't got my product yet!!" . I have no clue who this person is or what they ordered without doing a forensic audit of the chat history.

<comment><USER8> Btw, are you just also validating your software idea here? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> nope, not here. I know it works cause I have already done some pre-sales and there are business signed up to use the platform.

CRM and inventory is not the hurdle. Its an essential. The need is "digitization of inventory" and "customer acquisition".

I'll be happy to share everything I have learned so far on what I think the secret sauce is if you would like to talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was looking for a technical cofounder in 2016.

1\. I created a Google Spreadsheet with a description of my idea and my goal was to inspire readers of this document.

2\. Then I made a Facebook post where I shared this document. I received few dozens of likes/shares from my friends.

3\. After that, I used Linkedin Premium (it is free for 30 days) to find developers in my region. I asked them if they are considering new job offers. And if they answer was yes, I shared a link to my Facebook post.

They came to my page and see likes and shares (social proof). Then they read the document and if the idea was interesting for them, we scheduled a skype call.

That's how I found the CTO for AcademyOcean.com : )

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome! thats a great idea to use linkedin premium to find folks closer to home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have you looked at meesho? They are a YC company helping businesses sell using WhatsApp and Instagram. [http://meesho.com/](http://meesho.com/)

(not affiliated with meesho)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have. They have a slightly different business model and do it via an app. Its very clever I must say how they have managed to sidestep whatsapp's restrictions and they look like they have a great team.

I have a different business model that doing it via a web app. My approach is to \- digitize the inventory of existing stores \- train them to use to use the app \- collect a commission every time they make a sale through the system.

This is what I know works from the last few months of working on different permutations :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd be interested in taking a look at it. What are your long-term goals?

<comment><AUTHOR> to teach high school in my hometown. serious.

could you drop me an email arjunvpaul AT gmail ? I can walk you through any details you need and even show you product animations that I have done to communicate what the web app could look like.

For the product - the long term goal is build a significantly automated web application that other small business can use to do commerce via messengers only (no apps, no websites)

For the business - an exit to Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >>without writing a single line of code

Umm, how? You have a web app, you provide people with an admin dashboard to interact with the messaging apps. Am I missing something here?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a web app yet. the video is just a mockup I did on keynote to show what things could look like :-) so that, the potential tech co-founder would understand what I think the solution would look like.

<comment><USER12> That makes sense. Could you share with how exactly did you make the money - what were you offering before?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just approached a few brick and mortar stores and offered to open up a new sales channel (their existing customer acquisition channel was basically having a store front and then staring into space, so was not hard to beat)

I offered a "I make money only if you make money" pitch. Sold their wares via Facebook and WhatsApp and then took a huge markup from those sales.

<comment><USER12> Nicely done. I'd suggest not taking an investor though unless you are really having trouble with scaling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm in Bangalore for a few days right now and I am interested in talking about it. Contact me through my website listed on the profile. FYI, I live in the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool. sent you an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> currently we @Nexart solving similar kind of problem. They were selling through Whatsapp. In there case the solution we suggested was better. May be i can suggest you some solution and act on it. you can mail me at email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, are you part of a development house? will send you an email to discuss but I am not looking to outsource work at this point. Just a cofounder who believes in business model enough to work for equity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Arjun, I am in bangalore. Add you contact details to your profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there. added contact info. you could reach me at arjunvpaul AT gmail</comment></comment>


Two Lines of Code to Bulletproof Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wolfram.com/2020/06/16/two-lines-of-code-to-bulletproof-encryption-advancements-in-cryptography-development-in-the-wolfram-language/ <comment><USER2> That article has one of the most inaccurate uses of the word "exponentially" that I have ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them.</comment>


Third world America: The decline of a superpower? - <AUTHOR> http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/14/third-world-america/

<comment><USER2> I think this article has a good summary of cutbacks that are happening due to the recession. However, the article makes no attempt to tease apart what effects might be due to the recession, and what effects might be permanent. The long series of stories about local governments is interesting - I'm intrigued by what people cut back on when they run out of money. There is no question that this is the most serious recession in living memory, in the US. As such, the recession deserves a lot of attention. But it is a leap to go from "Some town in Ohio had to layoff several police officiers" to "This means the US is finished forever." (I am making up exaggerated quotes, which I think summarize the gist of the article.)

It is possible that the US is finished forever, but there is nothing in this article that convinces me.

<comment><USER3> How many of these cutbacks SHOULD have been done before hand and are now forced to happen because of the recession.

Laying off police officers.. Good idea - They probably don't provide enough to be worth their pay over a certain point.

Maybe being forced to fill less pot holes will encourage us to come up with cheaper ways to do the job.

Perhaps if we cut back on teachers and educational spending we'll be able to do more with less... Money isn't the problem in education... if it was then we wouldn't have this data mashup: [http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/spent- student-and-sat-sco...](http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/spent-student-and- sat-scores) \- It looks like spending more money per student isn't working.

Thinking that cutting back = massive failure is why most American's have massive amounts of personal debt that they will never get out of.

<comment><USER4> It's also not even clear they need to cut back on services.

Take Flint, for example. Instead of cutting 23 of 88 firefighters, why not keep them all but reduce their compensation by 26%? It's Flint Michigan, they don't exactly have other employment options. Besides, it's unlikely Flint even needs that many firefighters - their population dropped by about 10% since 2000.

The same could be done for teachers - NYC pays entry level teachers roughly the same salary as entry level engineers (total comp per month worked, not per calendar year). Rather than laying them off, why not cut their comp down to liberal arts grad entry level?

[edit: replaced word "pay" in second paragraph with "compensation". Thanks chrisbolt.]

<comment><USER5> The answer to your rhetorical questions is politically powerful public employee unions. Only a small minority of the members of the union got laid off, so they'd have to be okay with making the sacrifice to keep those people employed. They could fill those jobs at significantly lower salaries, but that factor never enters the equation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How often do people write this article? I would be really interested to see how many articles in a similar spirit were written during the 1930s or 1980s. For one, based on the 'smart money' investments from China and Russia they still seem to believe in the future of the US.

</comment><comment><USER7> The US reminds me of a company that's suffered from stagnant revenue and decreasing profit margins for years, yet whose profits continue to grow through a combination of cost cutting and underinvestment in research and infrastructure. Meanwhile, the shareholders demand an ever-growing dividend...

In relative terms, the US has been in decline since the early 1960s. It benefitted from an unprecedented situation after WWII when all it's competitors were reduced to bankruptcy and physical ruin, not to mention political turmoil and the yoke of Communism. America had a growing population and the best infrastructure in the world. Americans became accustomed to effortless growth and weak competition, while the rest of the world learned to compete with tooth and claw while rebuilding their economies and infrastructure from scratch.

The current recession is a shock, but it's hardly the cause of America's decline. The decline was inevitable--as other countries become more competitive, the US becomes less so by definition. What's almost unique about America is the refusal to face that fact and address it. I honestly don't think that American society as a whole is capable of acknowledging that other countries can be superior in certain ways. At best, there's always a nebulous suspicion that foreign systems must possess some fatal flaw that will ultimately tell against them. Hence, there's this obsession about which jobs Americans are naturally advantaged at. There aren't any. Those are exactly the jobs non-Americans covet and are working to acquire.

Those of us outside the US are privileged in a sense, because we can never delude ourselves that success is possible without determined competition among equals. If nothing else, we're always in competition with the US--whether you know it or not.

</comment><comment><USER8> I never could understand the logic of Americans who demand public services like police, fire, hospitals, roads, traffic lights, internet, water, sewage, parks, etc., and then turn right around and vote leaders out of office the second they whisper the words "raise" and "taxes" in the same sentence. Where does everyone think the money will come from?

Of course it's always more complicated than that, but this country strikes me as one that demands to have its cake and eat it too. It's too bad that it could take a slide into "third world" status (whatever that might be) before the masses realize how entitled and illogical they often seem to act.

</comment><comment><USER9> > In July, a group of farmers removed the safeties from their shotgun triggers > and surrounded a trailer in which a suspected house robber was hiding while > they waited for the county's last, lone squad car to arrive.

Hah, that's certainly something you wouldn't see in Canada (and I say this as a Canadian). Go Team America?! :)

</comment><comment><USER10> There's a certain irony in hearing someone from the Reagan government talking about China's fast train. If you so much as suggested something like that in the USA you'd be billed as a socialist and the program will be immediately scrapped.

Once the USA wasn't like this. Once it had a big government who looked after its citizens and did what no private investor could or would do.

In Australia the government is building fiber optics to all houses. In Europe governments are building a network of fast trains. In China government is building pretty much everything.

Are the Americans sure that they are backing the right politics?

<comment><USER4> Well, the US is richer (PPP adjusted) than nearly every single one one of those countries (the sole exceptions being Norway and a couple of city states). In the one case where I've seen good data (US vs Sweden), the disparity gets even bigger if you compare Swedes to Swedish Americans.

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy- in-o...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-one- picture.html)

So maybe the US is doing something right after all.

<comment><USER10> ... or maybe that you did something right in the past.

By that meter then Nokia is doing things right too.

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, Nokia's downfall is caused in part by its failure to compete with Google & Apple's - two American companies - innovation.

<comment><USER10> Nobody is arguing that American companies can't compete, or that America isn't a great country. But the UK was an innovator once, and so was Italy before it.

That said you could very well end up with a future with very powerful and very competitive american companies... in a country with no middle-class and a strong divide between managers and those with money, and the labour force with little privileges.

Edit: I think USA got to where it is for a certain pragmatism that it seems to have lost. Now ideologies (free market, socialism, God, etc...) seem to be all that matter, and society is suffering for it. GDP is not a good indicator of the society's wellbeing and even less is current GDP for tomorrow's society's. At the end of the day the richest man in the world is Mexican, but Mexico is hardly a first world country.

<comment><USER11> I agree the problems you're referring to are real, but it seems to me Americans are more aware of them than you might think (BTW, I live in NYC but I'm not American).

They elected a president who's decidedly a pragmatist (I think McCain would have been one as well, though not his VP candidate..), and one of the most talked about issues here is the disappearing middle class. My view is that they ultimately do have a good system in place to discuss and hopefully improve on these problems.

Their core strength is flexibility. I still remember talk of Japan overtaking the US in the 80s, and Japanese companies are still strong in the markets they dominated at the time - but the Americans have moved on to lead in software/Internet industries. That's not coincidence, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I live in an European country and I think especially since the eighties Europe have much more changed than America did. We had a very deep transformations of our society towards the American life style and we copied the American way to put 'market' everywhere. Good ol' European counter-capitalistic socialism is nearly dead. So I think the main thing that has changed for America is the number and the power of it competitors.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't be bothered to actually read this article. Does anyone actually think America is in 'decline'?

As a retort, here's Hans Rosling on narrowing GDP/capita and the first world's role in this 'new economy':

<http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/912>

<comment><USER14> Your comment says it all about America. You can't even be bothered to read it.

Secondly, stop giving MBAs a bad name.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you do on your daily commute? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to find more interesting/productive ways to spend my daily 45 minute commute. Suggestions? <comment><USER2> I'm the opposite of a morning-person.

I know some people enjoy audio books and whatnot, but I'm just trying to wake up so I just play some music from my phone (Over the car audio system), what I play depends on my current mood.

Everything from "Pickle Rick" to dubstep, lately I've been playing a track I use when coding.

</comment><comment><USER3> My daily commute is 25-30 minutes round trip thankfully. I usually use that time to either 1) sit in silence, or 2) call and catchup with friends.</comment>


React-native-ios-charts: Bringing iOS Charts to React Native - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Jpadilla1/react-native-ios-charts <comment><USER2> IMHO having to struggle through using it, iOS-charts is an over complicated, poorly documented, bloated, non-platform conforming (not standard objective-c style in design nor swifty) in paradigm behemoth. This makes sense since it's just a very direct port of an Android library. So now we have a Java library ported to Objective-C ported to JavaScript...

<comment><USER3> It even reads like Java. Jokes aside, this is a nice project and congrats to the OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jeff Atwood's law is going strong! "any program that can be written in JavaScript, will be written in JavaScript". We're also pushing the envelope on what "can" be written in JavaScript!</comment>


DRM : No "new game" button for Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D - <AUTHOR> http://dvice.com/archives/2011/06/capcom-tries-to.php

<comment><USER2> Well, that's one game I won't be getting through GameFly.</comment>


Show HN: Career assistance to PhD candidates – current / past - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone, it's Maxim
I frequently see and feel that recruiting processes generally could make people unhappy, so decided to try a series of little experiments and dedicate some of my time to try to use thoughtful approaches for that.
Disclaimer: I'm not an industry expert or anything, just some random human who may be of some use.
There are clear areas that overlooked by companies and even more so by headhunters - junior/entry level people, PhDs and more so dropouts trying to enter the job market outside the academia and so on.
Please leave your ideas and feedback in comments, I'd be happy to learn more.
It may be easier or harder for STEM and humanities, US and Europe, a whole lot of the other differences.
So, for every candidate, I'll try hard to help them land a truly fulfilling career and figure the general principles of the problem I'm sure worth solving completely free. <comment><AUTHOR> Link: [https://xprmntng.com/](https://xprmntng.com/)

<comment><USER2> Yes, "they will pay..."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where should I work: Facebook or Google? - <AUTHOR>

I am choosing where to work between these two companies for my first job as a software engineer at a large tech company.  The offers differ substantially in terms of dollars and cents, but I'd like to take that out of the equation for now.  I know which team I'd be on at either company, and they are both excellent.  This is a very difficult decision (albeit one I'm happy to be able to be making), so I'd love to hear HN's perspective. <comment><USER2> You can try to get the company offering less money to beat the offer made by the other. If it's Facebook and Google, as you said, then this shouldn't be that difficult.

Google working on groundbreaking things (they are not) or Facebook having all these hot products that everyone wants to work on (they do not) doesn't mean anything if you aren't working on them. Look at what you'd be working on and the group you'd be working with and see which you'd prefer. If there isn't much difference between the projects, then go with the company paying more money.

As far as which company is more popular or the hotter place to work, I think that Facebook's "buzz" has waned enough that both companies are about equal, but Facebook may still have a slight edge in this area. Previously it was clearly Facebook, because Google was becoming stagnating big company wasting everyone's talent and Facebook was the pre-IPO "startup" where you could actually work on something important without all the politics, bullshitting, and churn. That is, what Google promised, only Facebook delivered.

You want to pick the company that allows you to learn and do as much as possible, not just fix bugs, and you want to avoid being around people that don't know what they are doing or that will try to get in your way. Usually at Google, all you'll end up doing is fixing bugs, or working on irrelevant projects, so this would cast a vote for working at Facebook, but I'm hearing the same situation may now exist at Facebook as well.

You can also check the reviews for each company on Glassdoor to see what employees are saying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input! Just a question - what do you mean by "they are not" and "they do not"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well my opinion here really is just 2 cents, but you asked: I'd work at Google. When you get bored with social networking apps at Facebook, there's nowhere to hide. Google has attracted minds like Ray Kurzweil. They're working on world-changing problems.

That said, I could easily be proven wrong in 10 years, but by that time you'll be gone anyhow. Also, Facebook's scale has given rise to some interesting technologies such as Cassandra and various MapReduce technologies. Still, Google has more.

<comment><USER4> Yes, Google is working on world changing problems. You are also incorrect in thinking that all Facebook is doing is work on social networking. They have so huge an engineering challenge that there are enough interesting problems.

However, the key issue in both companies is that they are both at such a huge scale that they have enough crud work that you might end up working in if you are a junior engineer. Just because some of the greatest problems are being worked on doesn't necessarily mean you will work on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Try the following: [http://www.quora.com/Which-is-better-to-work-for-Google- or-F...](http://www.quora.com/Which-is-better-to-work-for-Google-or-Facebook)

The link provides Some great answers covering different points that might help give you the information you need without having to disclose more details here...

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw that, but it's hard to tell how dated the info is. The only answer that wasn't downvoted comes from a guy who hasn't been at Google since 2007 or Facebook since 2011.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's not really enough information for us to help you. The only differing factor you've given us is dollars and cents. So, in the absence of more information, I say go with the one that gives you more dollars and cents. Or choose the one that requires communicating the least amount of detail.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't want to provide any identifying detail. I figured it might still be possible for people to generalize which is a more pleasant place to be an employee.

I will say that I am a software engineer.</comment></comment>


New Apple Technology to Produce Seamless Metal iPhone Case - <AUTHOR> http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10001354/new-apple-technology-to-produce-seamless-metal-iphone-case/

<comment><USER2> Please...

This isn't really new as Apple has been using this technique on the iPod line for years. The mini, nano, and shuffles all appear to be made with this technique. Additionally, the biggest issue with using a single piece of aluminum for an iPhone body would be that the aluminum itself would block the RF signal for the GSM and Wi/Fi radios which is why the current iphone back is plastic as is the little corner area on the back of the iTouch.

</comment><comment><USER3> _As my colleague Michael Hickins points out, Apple has a big order in for flash memory._

Well, yeah. Rotational storage's lifetime is pretty much over, and it is time to move on.</comment>


Future of Recruitment - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-recruitment-rajnish-kumar/ <comment><USER2> Should be interesting when productivity data is married with remote work. Under Marissa Meyer, Yahoo famously rolled back their remote work policy based on productivity data, but I'm skeptical that it's representative.</comment>


Show HN: Distancing.party – Send love and happiness to others around the world - <AUTHOR> https://distancing.party/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! With all that's going on in the world I thought I'd make a fun little project [0] to make the world feel more connected! It's basically a map with an overlay that allows you to send love and happiness to others :)

I also embedded the lofi hip hop radio to make the site more chill (but can hide it if you want).

Tech stack is Go, Redis, and vanilla HTML/JS running on Heroku

Thanks!

[0]: [https://distancing.party/](https://distancing.party/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Hilarious! Love it :)</comment>


The Little-Known Scientific Reason Your iPhone Earbuds Always Get Tangled - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-reason-tangled-apple-iphone-earbuds-headphones-2014-6

<comment><USER2> But they don't. The material the Apple earbuds are made of is amazing. Other earbuds do get tangled, but iPhone earbuds, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a much more interesting article than the clickbaity angle would suggest.</comment>


The universe has made almost all the stars it will ever make - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/89/the-dark-side/the-universe-has-made-almost-all-the-stars-it-will-ever-make <comment><USER2> I think the article headline is somewhat misstating the conclusion of the actual paper (linked to by alex_young). The actual paper says the stellar mass density will reach a maximum only 5% higher than its current value. But the stellar mass density is affected by two processes: star formation _and_ star destruction. As the paper notes, the process of star destruction "recycles" some fraction of the mass of the destroyed star, making it available for new star formation. So the stellar mass density reaching a maximum does not mean that all star formation stops, which is what the article headline implies.

<comment><USER3> I wish there was a way to flag posts as "appropriate for HN but has a wildly misleading headline".

<comment><USER4> I would imagine some kind of a/b testing algorithms have come up with "wildly misleading headline" => more interest.

<comment><USER5> If you assume that interestingness of headlines is somewhat randomly distributed, and that for each article there are more misleading headlines than accurate headlines, your relation is bound to be true, even if being misleading by itself doesn't help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This appears to be the paper actually stating the headline [0].

Interestingly the statement is a bit different: "The star formation activity over the last ∼11 Gyr is responsible for producing ∼95 per cent of the total stellar mass density observed locally, with half of that being assembled in 2 Gyr between z = 1.2 and 2.2, and the other half in 8 Gyr (since z < 1.2). If the star formation rate density continues to decline with time in the same way as seen in the past ∼11 Gyr, then the stellar mass density of the Universe will reach a maximum which is only 5 per cent higher than the present-day value."

To me, this says a lot more about the expansion of the universe, in that we have an ever smaller window into the observable universe, than anything about black holes.

Is that a reasonable interpretation or am I missing something?

[0] [https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/428/2/1128/1000290](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/428/2/1128/1000290)

<comment><USER2> _> To me, this says a lot more about the expansion of the universe, in that we have an ever smaller window into the observable universe_

I don't think that's what the actual paper is saying. The "stellar mass density" it talks about is by definition homogeneous across the entire universe; it's not something that is affected by how much of the entire universe we can actually see.

<comment><USER6> "Observed locally" seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting if I read things right.

If the observable universe is say 1/300th of the total, wouldn't this actually represent an increase?

<comment><USER2> We can only make direct observations of stellar mass density locally. We have no direct way of knowing what the stellar mass density is "now" a billion light years away; all we can see is what it was a billion years ago. We have to reconstruct what things are like "now" elsewhere based on past data, which is all we can see.

<comment><USER6> That makes sense, but isn't it at least more likely than not that there is relatively normal distribution?

<comment><USER2> _> isn't it at least more likely than not that there is relatively normal distribution?_

No, because that would make our particular spatial location in the universe special, and that is an additional hypothesis that would require some kind of evidence in its favor, and we have none. The simplest hypothesis is that the universe is pretty much the same everywhere, and that means the average stellar density "now" should be pretty much the same everywhere.

<comment><USER6> That's what I meant by normal distribution :)

<comment><USER2> Ah, ok. I was interpreting "normal distribution" in the sense that term is used in statistics, as "Gaussian centered on our spatial location".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" Research over the past 30 or so years has revealed that the formation of stars across the universe reached an extended peak of activity roughly 10 to 11 billion years ago."_

 _"... it appears that the great majority of stars that the universe will ever make—perhaps 95 percent of them—have already been made."_

Not sure it matters on human timescales, but still feels like we're late to the party.

<comment><USER8> Since heavier elements are made by stars, could we have been much earlier? How much earlier?

<comment><USER9> Good question. I remember that somehow we hafäd to go through at least 3 star creation/destruction cycles to get all our elements

<comment><USER10> Large stars have a short lifespan

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Related question:

At universe-scale, does it makes sense to talk about a general "now"? I thought that, when large enough distances are involved, "now" becomes a local concept.

<comment><USER12> It gets more complicated but it still makes sense. The concept is called a Cauchy surface.

The tricky bit is that it isn't uniquely defined, but even for an expanding universe it can be defined globally (I think).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The data points to this but "Einsteins greatest blunder" and earth-centric universe come to mind.

Simply (and I'm sure many have thought of alternatives), it is based on what we see. If, as is commonly thought, the universe will expand till we are alone, then there is no guarantee that this hasn't happened already which means we may have no idea what lies outside the cosmological horizon.

</comment><comment><USER14> In a certain sense, everything has existed since the moment of the big bang, since all the information necessary to define the universe's evolutionary trajectory needs to have existed since the very inception of the universe. In other words, our universe, and you and I, have incredibly small Kolmogorov complexity.

<comment><USER15> > everything has existed since the moment of the big bang

That's a very non-quantum view of things. For example, Hawking radiation [1] relies on brand new matter-antimatter pairs of particles popping into existence.

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

<comment><USER14> in that sense everything has very small kolmogorov sifficient statistic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So the rate of star creation over time is b ^ x , where 0 < b <= 0.5 (i.e. exponential decrease) ? Or perhaps e ^ (-bx) , where x >= 1 (i.e. exponential decay) ? Sounds logical enough, considering that there was a lot more raw material for star creation immediately after the big bang, than there has been ever since then.

<comment><USER17> This is colloquially referred to as the "Madau plot": [https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March14/Madau/Figures/fi...](https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March14/Madau/Figures/fig9a.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've always wondered if it's possible for there to be a steady-state universe, where it expands continuously like it does now, but new matter is added at a matching rate, keeping the density constant.

I suppose metallicity measurements of the oldest stars would exclude any such scenario, but it's fun to think about anyway.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not an astrophysicist, not even close (and I haven't read the article) but making a statement like this seems bold. Who can predict how the universe will evolve in the next 1000's of billions of years, there are just too many unknowns, no?

<comment><USER20> We don't know with certainty how the universe will change in the future, however we do have a decent understanding of how the universe works at a large scale. We can use that understanding to make hypothesis that are backed by both data and theory. This is one such hypothesis.

This is part of the scientific method. In astrophysics data is collected and new experiments are done to improve theory, and it helps us better understand the history of the universe and the future of the universe. Our understanding will change over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I always wondered, if quantumness looks like observing something is what solidifies it into being, then "almost all the stars" is really just reaching a critical mass of observation? Somewhere beyond what we can see could be a shit ton more stars in the making.

<comment><USER22> Well, I think you're kind of conflating two things here.

It's not necessarily wrong to say that observing something solidifies it into being, because it's not really a scientific term. There's too much philosophical about the term 'being'

But the overall star formation of the universe isn't likely to be too tied to having to observe or measure things at the quantum level. There's some caveats there, and it's theoretically possible that a huge amount of mass could just appear due to quantum tunneling, but isn't likely to occur in any place or time relevant to us, or even our observable universe before heat death.

As for the second bit, the observable universe is the key, and we're back to the philosophical. It's unlikely we'll be able to ever travel at the speed of light, or faster than light. Even assuming we can get pretty close to the speed of light, similar to what we see in relativistic jets, and could do so today, and didn't care about making it back, we could really only reach about 3% of the stuff we can see now before the expansion of the universe takes it forever out of our grasp. And the universe is expanding everywhere, so even if there was other stuff that is, without expansion, moving "towards" us outside of our view, it won't be able to overcome expansion.

So we'll never see it. Maybe somewhere out there in the cosmos is an area where there's a ton of star formation left to go. But unless we can somehow travel faster than light, it has zero ability to impact us. We won't ever be able to observe it or confirm it. At that point, does it even actually exist, as far as we are concerned? Does it make sense to even really think about it or consider the possibility?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Neat video on the projected future end of the universe [https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA](https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA)

How close is it to this study?

</comment><comment><USER24> Well that party ended a lot quicker than I expected.

</comment><comment><USER25> "everything in the universe exists, since the big bang"

</comment><comment><USER26> Infinity plus or minus

</comment><comment><USER27> And I say that should be enough.

</comment><comment><USER28> "640KB memory should be enough for everyone"

</comment><comment><USER29> The universe is believed to be infinite, so: infinity down, infinity to go!

<comment><USER30> Infinite space/size, not infinite mass though. The space between the mass is expanding, but the mass is staying the same.

<comment> 867-5309 perhaps, until you factor in dark energy/matter

<comment> saiya-jin If mass of universe remains the same, so should any form of energy within it (since they are interchangeable according to my layman's high school knowledge of Einstein's stuff). Or you meant something else?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would a cosmic orchestra sound like? - <AUTHOR> Ever since I've read this paragraph in the New Yorker, I've been thinking about what it would take to listen to the universe as a 2-5 minute musical piece. I'd imagine it would be several years worth of waves compressed in time. And what would it sound like? Would we detect melodies and harmonies forming, or would it sound completely chaotic?<p>"Different celestial sources emit their own sorts of gravitational waves, which means that LIGO and its successors could end up hearing something like a cosmic orchestra. 'The binary neutron stars are like the piccolos,' Reitze said. Isolated spinning pulsars, he added, might make a monochromatic 'ding' like a triangle, and black holes would fill in the string section, running from double bass on up, depending on their mass. LIGO, he said, will only ever be able to detect violins and violas; waves from supermassive black holes, like the one at the center of the Milky Way, will have to await future detectors, with different sensitivities."<p>http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gravitational-waves-exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them <comment><AUTHOR> For those curious, here's what the gravitational wave recently detected by LIGO sounds like, slowed down: [http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-wave- black-holes-sou...](http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-wave-black-holes- sound-2016-2)</comment>


Coronavirus Conspiracy: What's Behind a Chinese Diplomat's Covid-19 Misdirection - <AUTHOR> https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/china-covid19-origin-narrative <comment><USER2> This part is misleading: "widely debunked theories that the virus was human- engineered"

1\. The lack of a tell-tale sign in the RNA is not proof against engineering. Nobody can ever possibly debunk anything about viral engineering.

2\. Viruses can be changed with ordinary breeding. This is how we created the live polio vaccine many decades ago. In that case, we wanted to weaken the virus, but we could easily strengthen a virus. No engineering is required.

3\. Even if the virus were not changed purposely by human endeavor, it could still be released by either malice or incompetence. Labs that deal with dangerous viruses do not have a good track record for safety. There is such a lab in Wuhan.</comment>


Less Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/

<comment><USER2> Heh... posting Less Wrong at HN is kinda like posting Encyclopedia Dramatica at 4chan.

:)

<comment><AUTHOR> How should I understand that?

<comment><USER3> I'd say it's more like posting Wikipedia's front page. "Everyone" knows about it; you need to post a specific article.

(I would not say LessWrong is in the HN zeitgeist, but the zeitgeist is definitely _aware_ of it.)</comment></comment></comment>


Help us test our DNSSEC implementation - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/help-us-test-our-dnssec-implementation/

<comment><USER2> Why bother with DNSSEC when you could be working on actually useful technologies?</comment>


Clash of the Titans: MapReduce vs. Spark for Large Scale Data Analytics [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol8/p2110-shi.pdf <comment><USER2> Is MapReduce faster for any cases? A quick glance at the paper seems to suggest that Spark is always at least as good or better than traditional MR.

Should I ever use traditional MR over Spark?

<comment><USER3> You didn't even try to make it through the abstract...

> An exception to this is the Sort workload, for which MapReduce is 2 x faster > than Spark. We show that MapReduce's execution model is more efficient for > shuffling data than Spark, thus making Sort run faster on MapRe- duce

<comment><USER4> Didn't spark win the world record on sorting recently?

[http://spark.apache.org/news/spark-wins-daytona-gray- sort-10...](http://spark.apache.org/news/spark-wins-daytona-gray-sort-100tb- benchmark.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A lot of the differences between the systems arise from the implementation choice of how to do aggregation in Hadoop 2.4.0 and Spark 1.3. There's nothing inherent in the RDD model, for example, that says the aggregation has to be done eagerly at the mapper; nor in the MapReduce model that says it has to be done at the reducer. Either system could support the other aggregation mechanism, and the only challenge would be in choosing which one to use.

Some former colleagues wrote a nice paper about the performance trade-offs for different styles of distributed aggregation in DryadLINQ (a MapReduce-style system), and evaluated it at scale:

[http://sigops.org/sosp/sosp09/papers/yu- sosp09.pdf](http://sigops.org/sosp/sosp09/papers/yu-sosp09.pdf)

<comment><USER5> > Either system could support the other aggregation mechanism, and the only > challenge would be in choosing which one to use.

Hive implements something similar to the paper mentioned. Partial aggregation on mappers & the reducer does a sorted final aggregation.

You'll find Hive beating MapReduce[1], even though it is implemented using MR.

[1] - [https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/musketeer/eurosy...](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/musketeer/eurosys2015/fig2b.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 4 node cluster??

<comment><USER3> This is a very valid concern. There are a lot of ways to make algorithms and distributed systems scale poorly for significant numbers of computation nodes (it took Hadoop half a decade to figure out how improve this via YARN).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess they did not analyze joining two large datasets (I am assuming because M/R would win hands down). Someone more experienced please tell me if I am "thinking" correctly.

<comment><USER8> What does it mean to "join two large datasets"? I can think of many meanings. What part of the method description in the abstract did you consider yourself too inexperienced to understand?</comment></comment>


Thunderstrike 2 OS X Firmware Attack Self-Replicates to Peripherals - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/thunderstrike-2-os-x-firmware-attack-self-replicates-to-peripherals/114124

<comment><USER2> How would one go about learning these things? I have no illusions that I will be coming up with new exploits, but I am curious about the tools that are used to find them. How do you write code that winds up on a Thunderbolt device? How do you read from -- let alone write to -- EFI?

<comment><USER3> Lots and lots of reading of lots and lots of sometimes obscure documentation. For writing code that ends up on a thunderbolt device, you need to keep in mind that other than the endpoint, thunderbolt devices are essentially PCIe devices. So, a device with an easily writable firmware, like certain broadcom chips that come with a lot of apple hardware [1] can be easily programmed to suit the whims of the attacker. Regarding reading, and writing, there is a ton of info that is kept on a partition on disk, actually, in the EFI system partition [2]. Additionally, there are basic uefi development tools out there that let you write your own uefi payloads [3]. Finally, take a look at TianoCore for an Open reference implementation of UEFI, as it has a lot more ins and outs as how to do all this [4].

[1] [https://www.broadcom.com/collateral/pg/57785-PG105-R.pdf](https://www.broadcom.com/collateral/pg/57785-PG105-R.pdf)

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

[3] [https://github.com/rhinstaller/shim](https://github.com/rhinstaller/shim)

[4] [http://www.tianocore.org/](http://www.tianocore.org/)</comment></comment>


A website to make 3D geometry shapes out of paper - <AUTHOR> https://felixboiii.github.io/paper-plotter/ <comment><USER2> There's a 3D graphing application for TI-83+ series calculators [1] and an easter egg was that it could plot the head of a duck. [2] (it had the equations for the surfaces in the code somewhere, presumably.)

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw that you can upload an equation on this site is, 'I wonder what the equation is for a duck?'

[1] [https://www.detachedsolutions.com/graph3/](https://www.detachedsolutions.com/graph3/)

[2] [https://www.detachedsolutions.com/features/graph3-3.gif](https://www.detachedsolutions.com/features/graph3-3.gif)

<comment><USER3> Why a duck?

<comment><USER2> I don't know. However I would guess it's because the main portion is a sphere and that's easy enough to show on the 96x64 pixel screen of the 83+ series calculators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did this for a bathymetric map, but I it was hard to get the resolution I wanted, I used a laser cutter that was too small, so someone just exported the model and showed me it in AR which actually was a better experience. So this works well for small projects, but it gets insanely work intensive to do for larger projects.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of Graphica Obscura - Paper and Plotter: A 3D Surface (1977). [http://graficaobscura.com/surf/index.html](http://graficaobscura.com/surf/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is super cool! One suggestion I have is to try to optimize the arrangement of the cut-outs to use the paper more efficiently. In some cases I think up to 2x the cut-outs could fit on a page.

You may also want to consider trying to arrange the cut-outs so that the flat edge aligns with the flat edge of the page. Might result in less cutting for the user.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice! This reminded me of when a friend showed me his collection of early 20th century paper theatre dioramas. Fascinating stuff.

I think I'll try to create an actual set-design using the generator/plotter.

Thanks for sharing this!

</comment><comment><USER8> So... can anyone convert the Batman Equation to a format this site understands?!

<comment><USER9> I am guessing you are talking about [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=batman+insignia](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=batman+insignia) which is a 2D silhouette, but this website is for 3D geometry, so I am not sure what the goal is here.

<comment><USER8> To try to convert the Batman insignia to draw on this!! Just meant to be a bit of fun!</comment></comment></comment>


Air conditioning, Or: How I learned to stop worrying and accept death - <AUTHOR> http://sommer.co/blog/2012/12/air-conditioning-or-how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-accept-death

<comment><USER2> Very thoughtful and somewhat insightful for an eighteen year-old</comment>


Parental Incentives and Early Childhood Achievement - <AUTHOR> http://www.nber.org/papers/w21477 <comment><AUTHOR> Paper at: [http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/gecc_final.pdf](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/gecc_final.pdf)</comment>