'Flat Design' or Swiss Design? - <AUTHOR> http://chrisgillisdesign.com/design/flat-design-or-swiss-design/

<comment><USER2> Well said. I'm not the first to make the observation, but the principles of flat design also owe a great deal to the data-density work of Edward Tufte (<http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php/Data-Ink_Ratio>) and the functionalist school of industrial design as exemplified by Dieter Rams'"10 Principles of Good Design"(<https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design>). Where flat design diverges from these principles, I say go with originals.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I love that Dieter Rams page, so true. Tufte's book 'Envisioning Information' has always been one of my favorites.</comment></comment>


Dole Food Had Too Many Shares - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-02-17/dole-food-had-too-many-shares <comment><AUTHOR> Look at it this way - Dole foods has people who think they own more 10,000,000 shares than exist. And this is not because of shenanigans about Dole specifically but the "usual" operations of finance (shorting, being lax about what ownership and beneficial ownership means, in ways that would have knife fights in any real world situation)

but imagine, just quickly, that all the shares in all the world had to be registered - let's say some awesome tax avoidance measure. And when all the people who think they own stuff find out that they cannot own stuff because there was not enough shares to go round.

Does this mean the global wealth just drops? Does this mean that we just assign them some monetary value (effectively they "borrowed" that much stock value)

Or what?

Basically there is no double entry bookkeeping for shares - there is for share transactions ... but the DTC "chill" is an example of foul up.

No imagine we create a global online ledger - suddenly these problems become manifest. Fun times

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am clearly posting waaay too many Bloomberg notes but this one - this one is beautiful

If after reading this you don't want to throw out the whole stock clearing system and migrate to some basic ledger then you did not read it right</comment>


Steve Jobs tells investors to "hang in there" in leaked email - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/350280/steve-jobs-tells-investors-to-hang-in-there-in-leaked-email <comment><USER2> This is very un-Steve.

But either way - Only in SV would employees complain about 100% YOY growth. Come on people!</comment>


The Post drops the 'mike' – and the hyphen in 'e-mail' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-post-drops-the-mike--and-the-hyphen-in-e-mail/2015/12/04/ccd6e33a-98fa-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> "I called email "an abomination." That was 15 years ago, but I'm still surprised anyone ever thought to write the word that way.

While it's true that commonly used two-word or hyphenated compounds often solidify into single words over time, that had never before happened with a compound based on a single letter. We had T-shirts and X-rays for a long time before electronic mail showed up, but we still aren't writing about tshirts and xrays."

Maybe that's because Both T and X are consonants and E isn't?

<comment><USER3> > we still aren't writing about tshirts and xrays.

You and I might not be but a lot of other people are. Google returns 54M hits for x-rays and 28M for xrays.

The status of T-shirts is a bit clearer 340M versus 18M.

And of course I haven't taken into account how Google handles word variants.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you still enjoy toys as adults? - <AUTHOR> Open to whatever your interpretation of a "toy" is. Could be fidget spinners, model trains, RC planes, drones, action figures, etc. Physical things that provide entertainment and are fun to play with. <comment><USER2> Rubiks cube is always worth a scramble :) On a more extreme end I'd say balisongs, although I've had a long break from those.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, I don't play with toys anymore. I still have some toys left, but I'll probably donate them sooner or later.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still occasionally enjoy a yo-yo.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the value of consulting experience? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all,
I'm a current college senior dealing with an existential 'post college' dilemma. One form of this question is, "Does working at a good consulting firm teach you skills valuable for running your own startup?" or - does it teach you something worth more than what you would learn by trying and failing at something else?
In my estimation, the best way to learn is to actually do something, but the chance to get exposure across different companies and industries does have a certain appeal to it. This being said, I am obsessed with the opportunity cost of such an action, especially in terms of my ability to task on more risk now (debt notwithstanding).
I'm passionate about tech and have worked in different capacities  within the industry to date from a business side. I do some web-based work for myself and continue to try to improve my coding abilities, but it's not my forte at the moment. Thus, I'm contemplating taking a consulting gig, killing my life with work, and trying to learn a lot in a year or so before poaching my CS friends from Google, Facebook, wherever they are and trying to get them to jump in the deep end with me.
Thoughts? I'm hesitant about taking such a 'path of least resistance,' but know that it's not quite as if I am selling away my soul forever. Curious for perspectives from the community here. <comment><USER2> My last two employers did consulting as their business model. I am a much, much better engineer for having a few years of professional experience, and my users are _much_ better off for it. It is why my website doesn't crash on a daily basis. It was an opportunity to learn workflows, practical system architecture, build processes, source control, disciplined use of processes/tools, etc, all that stuff that the CS curriculum doesn't cover but will totally wreck you if you ignore.

I also got web development experience, which I was severely lacking at graduation.

Something which I didn't learn while working at the consulting firm but picked up when I actually started consulting: selling stuff, negotiation, moving orders through the pipeline, and the ability to look a CEO in the eye and not be reduced to a quivering blob of Jello. These all help.

</comment><comment><USER3> Consulting is like a honey trap or golden handcuffs. The better you are at what you do, the harder it is to get out. Plus the more you earn the more you spend, and the more trapped you become.

All you'll learn at a big consulting firm (or any large corporate) is how to enjoy a high income and learn to accept getting bogged down by corporate bureaucracy. You'll pick up more useful skills faster elsewhere without learning the bad habits.

Get out there and make something people want instead.

<comment><USER4> well said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The main benefit you get from being a consultant for a while is that you get to learn just how much BS lies at the heart of most "consulting", as well as the companies that like to hire (tons and tons of) consultants.

That is, mostly consultants are hired for (as other have said here) psychological / CYA reasons, rather than for the actual business value of the advice they provide (which is often mediocre). And of course when it comes to technology products, the actual (source code) contributions of consultants, dollar for dollar, is often especially low, indeed.

Another nifty thing you'll learn when doing consulting, which is hard to learn otherwise, is that the higher rate you charge, the more people value you and you work, for some reason. Which is a very useful thing to have a visceral, bone-marrow-level grasp for, indeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, these would be management consulting gigs, albeit in some cases focusing on technology business problems. Some combination of strategy and process/operations.

They also all charge quite high rates, I would imagine, so hopefully my work would be valued - if not valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You seem to have figured out the pros/cons very well already.

I'm going to be practical and suggest you take the job and save some money (assuming you don't have tons of it already). You will need to survive a few months without income if you're going to work on a startup.

PS: Make sure you don't get too comfortable with your new job! Try to keep an inexpensive lifestyle or otherwise, you might never again get the courage to jump in startup land.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a big problem, yes. The momentum that you build up. I say it's like getting on a train. You can always get off later, it just gets harder and harder, and you are less and less able to leave for riskier or less immediately lucrative things.

For instance, I am probably trading away the chance to go spend a year doing more intensive language study in China if I take such an offer.

One reason to try to do _something_ is that, as of right now, I really don't have much runway to actually start something. I guess I could try to put together some brilliant MVP in time for S'11 YC, but... :)

<comment><USER6> Funny, I just came back from a 4 months stay in China. It was the best experience I had in many years.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was there last year for a semester and had a really great time. The window of opportunity for 外国人 to come and really be entrepreneurial is less open than it was in the past, I think, but there are certainly still opportunities. This is one frame of opportunity where I think some previous experience could really be helpful; working in a garage with friends on an internet something- or-other, less so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Large consulting firms deliver low value at high prices. The clients hire them to cover their ass. The partners in the firm rake in huge incomes. You will only learn how to work that system. Not bad if high income, high status are your priorities.

If you want to make the world a better place in some way, then just jump in the deep end now! You will learn more by doing. Keep reading HN, there's a ton of great stuff to learn.

</comment><comment><USER8> I dont do consulting as often now, but when I do need some money, I do UI consulting. It's a little annoying IMO, especially with all the restrictions and working with someone who has no taste in design whatsoever yet they still keep on pushing their ideas forward....But, here are the somewhat positive sides I've managed to branch out from it:

* The ability to keep on working even though you want to kill someone how annoying their project seems to be.

* The ability to keep on iterating small changes which unfortunately are just warm ups to even more iterations.

* It's very annoying, even though you are probably making a good chunk of money. Great thing about it, once you move onto your project/startup(which I really suggest you do as soon as you have a proven idea and market) you'll pretty much love it and become very good at building something good.

* Oh, not to mention that you'll have a better outlook on things after you've worked on a few projects for clients.

</comment><comment><USER9> Depends on what you mean by consulting. Accenture, deloite and friends have little to do with startups. Culturally, they may be a step backwards. You will learn a thing or two about enterprise sales at a place like that, however.

If you mean freelancing or small company consulting, then yes, you'll learn a lot of practical skills that will be directly applicable to a startup.

In a broader sense, working _anywhere_ will help you with a future startup - some jobs will just be more useful than others. High end consulting, banking, and the like are way down on the utility list.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you really want to do a startup and want hands-on experience, clarity and opportunity then go work with a startup. Can't find a job? Do it for free! Post an 'Offer HN'.

Noting goes better than working at a startup.

Caution: Working at a startup is addictive and can hamper your employability or comfort level at a corporate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Problem here is that there doesn't seem to be a really good role for me anywhere. Or, better put: Startups the size I want to work at are either not on my radar, or don't seem to want my kind of services (since I don't have _so_ much obviously on tap, though I think I offer a lot!), while those that are bigger offer more narrowly functional (non-technical) roles.

On the other extreme, I did interview for a PM position with Microsoft, but because of location issues wasn't really able to follow through there further. I'd love a way to work while building out these talents more.

<comment><USER10> Dude, beggars can't be choosers. What do you mean size of startups you wanna work with? Are you referring to money invested in them?

Startup is a startup - regardless of size.

Do an OFFER HN with list of all that you can do. I am sure you will get enough insight of what kinda people need you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean by number of people, that kind of thing. Maybe money is a proxy for that, but not necessarily. The key consideration is: where can I learn the most, the fastest? I am happy to work 90+ hr weeks if I feel I'm working towards something meaningful, or learning a lot. And I think I would be learning more at a start-up than at an established company of any kind, whether consulting or otherwise.

Good thoughts on making an Offer HN - I'll try that out and see how things shake out. My strategy the last few months was to try to pitch myself to different startups that I liked, mixed results. I should have networked more the last two summers in SF bay!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, article like this remind one that it's a great time to get involved in the startup space... or maybe a bad time! [http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/11/17/the-daily- sta...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/11/17/the-daily-start-up-a- bubble-by-any-other-name/)

</comment><comment><USER5> BTW also: you're young, and most likely have neither a family, nor a terribly serious relationship that can't buck the strain -- so go ahead, kill yourself with work for a year or two.

</comment><comment><USER11> What type of consulting firms are you talking about?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a fair gamut, from the very small ( < 100 people) focused on tech, to the very large (~5000) and well-known, and some places in between that emphasize fast development and advancement.</comment></comment>


Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32063587 <comment><USER2> I'm struck by how these pilots (chilling in itself that it's happened enough times to count as its own group) are described as being suicidal. While technically true, it detracts from the greater truth that they are mass- murderers. If someone shot up a mall and killed 150 people then ate a bullet, would we describe them as suicidal?

I don't have a greater point I suppose, but it seems worth thinking about. Except, perhaps-- how do you go about 'screening' for inclination to mass- murder?

<comment><USER3> As there have been quite a few incidences of a pilot intentionally crashing a plane, It would be interesting to see if the ratio of mass-murdering pilots to pilots is larger than mass-murderers vs the adult population.

<comment><USER4> This would have to be adjusted to the fact that most people is not usually in a position to easily kill this many people, while pilots are in a mostly daily basis.

<comment><USER5> You could check against bus drivers for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These doors very effectively mean that control of the plane would be put into the hands of the cabin crew, but magnifies the cost of a rogue operator -- I am certain the risks were evaluated and the challenge of a determined suicidal pilot was ruled outside scope.

And yes, there are emergency override codes, but there are also time override- overrides from within the cabin. Even if the protocol where two members of staff are always in the cabin was broken (or absent), again, that does not stop a rogue operator from despatching with the other person.

The question is (hypothetical at this stage, there are a lot of details still unknown): have these type of doors already saved more lives than the ~150 tragically lost this week?

<comment><USER7> Or to put it in a more general way: is security theatre now costing lives?

<comment><USER8> To be fair, reinforced cockpit doors is pretty much the one measure that's NOT dismissed as security theatre.

<comment><USER9> I can't imagine a more false statement, as the business model before 9/11 was do nothing and cooperate and everyone will be safe, and the business model after 9/11 is every person on the plane must rush the hijackers or thousands will be killed. So the reinforced door is a response to a problem that no longer exists.

Ideally you'd have a door that is strong enough to be "people proof" for long enough for the entire passenger compartment to rush a dude, but not strong enough to survive the entire passenger compartment trying to get in and save the plane in this situation. Something that can survive a couple kicks but isn't a bank vault door. Pretty much a typical apartment door would be about right.

<comment><USER10> > _So the reinforced door is a response to a problem that no longer exists._

I very much disagree. Previously, an attacker could get to the cockpit by surprise and by suddenly overwhelming cabin crew. That is now much. much more difficult.

<comment><USER11> How? The door is still locked, just not heavily reenforced. Passengers are going to notice someone trying to kick the door down and you can believe that person will be taken care of quickly.

<comment><USER10> Safety procedures in airplanes are generally not based on "passengers are going to notice and react". If you have a specific role for some passengers, like subduing disruptive individuals or opening and operating an emergency exit, the passengers are informed and qualified for the job. For instance, if you sit on an exit row, you need to be physically agile enough, and the crew instructs you to learn how to operate the door.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of course it's really early so you have to be _very_ careful as to making judgements at this point, but if it really is pilot murder/suicide there is some (limited) precedence:-

* An EgyptAir flight in 1999 - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990)

* A Silkair (Singapore airline) flight in 1997 - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkAir_Flight_185](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkAir_Flight_185)

There is debate in both flights as to whether it was murder/suicide, but the evidence is totally overwhelming that it was. Horrific but thankfully massively rare (as you might expect.) I do hope this isn't the cause here :(

<comment><USER13> The Egyptair flight had the crashing pilot saying prayers to Allah all the way down, captured on the voice recorder. The engines were shut off and the other officer was fighting the stick all the way down. There is zero doubt as to what happened, only a political cover up by Egypt air authorities after they realised what had happened.

<comment><USER12> Yes this is what I said - 'but the evidence is totally overwhelming that it was'. But it is worth highlighting, particularly in the Egyptair case!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> First, remember the Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Airline Edition ([https://media2.wnyc.org/i/620/620/l/80/1/BNCHAE.jpg](https://media2.wnyc.org/i/620/620/l/80/1/BNCHAE.jpg)). Second, I'm sure that Mr. Robin is a nice guy, but there's no need to publish his stray speculations just two days after the crash.

<comment><USER15> The co-pilot was breathing normally for ten minutes while the door was being hammered repeatedly. Interpreting this as 'deliberate' inaction is hardly 'stray speculation'.

<comment><USER16> Isn't that a little bit off he didn't mutter any words after seizing the opportunity of his co-worker's unplanned leaving of the cockpit ?

<comment><USER17> Do we know that he didn't? My impression from investigations like this in the past is that facts tend to be released along with the conclusions that they support, presumably to keep public speculation from getting way out ahead of the actual investigation.

I would not be surprised to learn in the coming days that he did say things. But I don't think we'll find out until the investigators have a solid grasp of what this means for the investigation.

<comment><USER16> Fair point. But if he did I suppose it would clarify the situation and we would know it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Germanwings did not have a policy of requiring a second person in the cockpit in situations where the captain leaves the cockpit. I imagine this is going to become fault standard in aviation from now on.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how much that would have helped in this case though.

Someone determined to crash a plane would not have too much of a problem incapacitating any cabin crew member (by surprise most likely) before his attempt. I believe that having a second person in the cockpit is more useful (and seemingly essential) if the Pilot/Co-Pilot loses conciousness in order for the door to still be opened.

<comment><USER19> It's not an absolute solution, but it makes such a crime both psychologically and physically much more difficult. Turning a knob is impersonal and easy, but killing someone with your hands is neither.

<comment><USER20> "Turning a knob is impersonal and easy, but killing someone with your hands is neither."

Killing someone is extremely easy if the other person trust you. You get behind her and hit her with a heavy object in the head or in the nape.

If the pilot is busy doing something like piloting the plane, it is very easy for a copilot to get rid of her.

<comment><USER17> > Killing someone is extremely easy if the other person trust you. You get > behind her and hit her with a heavy object in the head or in the nape.

That makes it _physically_ easy, but the psychological demands of that situation are clearly very different from turning a knob. I think there's good reason to think that there are people who would do the former, but not the latter. If the pilot is inclined to crash the plane due to overwhelming depression, for example, I doubt that this pilot is likely to also kill a flight attendant with his bare hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems clear that in this case the co-pilot's actions were voluntary, but what if a co-pilot were to have a medical emergency while (s)he's alone in the cockpit? Would the pilot be able to re-enter?

This seems like a huge risk that wasn't considered when the new strengthened cockpit doors were installed.

<comment><USER22> Yes. The pilot can reenter using a numerical code, unless the co-pilot actively blocks it. Even that lock will unlock again after 20 minutes.

<comment><USER23> In an emergency event you are most likely to forget secret codes. Some kind of biometric sensor would be better, although then attackers could take the authorized person hostage, so it is best to have it shared among two random crew people, simply by voice recognition.

<comment><USER24> Apparently the other crew (flight attendants) knows that code, too. I think it's unlikely everyone would forget it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is leaving for toilet the only reason for the pilot to leave the cockpit? I seen some comments on having a third person with the co-pilot if the pilot leaves, but is not another "simplistic solution" to have a toilet for pilots within the cockpit lock doors? I understand it is not as simple as "just add a toilet" but I was thinking for of future designs.

<comment><USER26> Pilots will leave the cockpit to check on parts of the plane if necessary, like looking out the passenger window to look at the wings.

On long flights pilots are also rotated in and out of rest breaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can someone with aviation experience share how often pilots receive psychological evaluation?

I just asked a friend who used to be a pilot for Ryan Air and he said he had never received one.

<comment><USER28> I am not a pilot, but my father was and I have a brother who is. When my dad flew, up until the early '00s and past the WTC attacks, there were only yearly medical exams. No psych exams. Like many other pilots, my brother is an alcoholic, and this has given him trouble with some airlines, so he has taken jobs in the Arab world and east Asia (we're Mexican, from Mexico). As far as I know, the airlines have never offered him direct help for his alcoholism.

Btw, my brother knew some details about the accident before they were public news, I assume there must be some pilot grapevine where more details about the accident must be shared. Like I imagine most other pilots must be, he's very shaken by the incident. It's a matter of professional pride amongst the pilot community, I assume.

My father would sometimes be called as an expert witness for blackbox analysis. As a child, I remember him falling into deep depression whenever he had to do that, and he was always given a couple weeks' vacation time whenever that happened.

<comment><USER29> There's actually a forum called the Professional Pilots Rumour Network: [http://www.pprune.org/](http://www.pprune.org/)

<comment><USER28> Thanks, I didn't know this. There's some fascinating speculation from two days ago about what happened in this thread:

[http://www.pprune.org/rumours- news/558654-airbus-a320-crashe...](http://www.pprune.org/rumours- news/558654-airbus-a320-crashed-southern-france.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's strange that pilot didn't leave a "voice suicide note" \- it was very easy to do for him, but he chosen silence.

The paper quoted in "suicide note" wikipedia article ([1]) says that "the note-leaving rate remained almost constant (23.4–36.2%)"

[1] [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1819.2005....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1819.2005.01364.x/abstract;jsessionid=9F5B2ADA229BB387091FBC959F7ACDA8.f01t04)

</comment><comment><USER31> This is all very premature, isn't it?

It would be nice before someone is accused of deliberately killing 150 people for no reason to confirm that

\- the correct code was put in \- there was no malfunction in the door release system \- and the descent was deliberate

I haven't read anything on possibly alternate scenarios causing the crash, yet they all seem more probable.

<comment><USER32> You have a point, but it's pretty telling that they could hear the guy breathing and not responding to ATC, and that he took the plane into a nosedive the second the captain left the cabin. I really want to see what the data recorder says, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's still amazing how some obvious procedures aren't standard in many airlines until something horrible happens. There should be two people in the pit at all times. If the pilot goes to take a leak an attendant takes his place until he returns. It's not really a hard procedure to implement.

</comment><comment> Dorian-Marie

        2020: Airbus announces no-pilots planes
        2025: All airplanes are now required to be auto-piloted
        2030: It's been 5 years without a single accident

<comment><USER34> 2025, Q2: Airbus remote execution vulnerability discovered. (Did you just assume 100% reliable HW+SW, _on Hacker News_? That's some serious handwaving...)

<comment><USER35> You can hardly compare an embedded software running on an Airplane to an Internet facing web server.

<comment><USER34> Why not? What is the crucial difference, from the unauthorised intrusion POV? "This should not happen, therefore it cannot happen" is not an appropriate response here. [http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK- SCADA...](http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK-SCADA- Systems-Are-Online-Now.html)

(Note that I didn't mention anything about webservers, or Internet; are you _sure_ the in-flight entertainment systems are separated from the control network by anything else than a firewall rule? See other embedded systems, and how secure they are. Start with...IDK, Toyota's gas pedal code, see how well such safety-critical code was written: [https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...](https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_slides.pdf) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How is it that each pilot doesn't have a key of their own, so as not to be locked out. No body saw this coming?

<comment><USER37> There is a code pad that unlocks the door in case the pilot(s) don't answer the requests to open the door via intercom. The code does not however unlock the door immediately but activate a light and a beeping sound inside the cockpit for 30 seconds. Within this time frame the pilots can either decide to open the door immediately or to overwrite the unlocking, which locks the door for 5 minutes. This is to prevent attackers from entering even if they threaten to kill the crew member and thereby pressured them to enter the code. If the pilots don't react during the 30 seconds the door unlocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Passengers were not aware of the impending crash "until very last moment" > when screams could be heard

This is nightmare fuel. I cannot imagine what they went through. No human should have to end their life this way...such a tragedy.

<comment><USER38> It's also unlikely to be true. If they can hear the pilot trying to break the cockpit door down on the CVR, then there is little doubt that most passengers on an A319 can also hear/see same.

Maybe they didn't start screaming until it was obvious that they were going to crash, but they knew that the captain couldn't get back into the cockpit long before that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Any ideas for future improvements to the current mechanism?

A possible idea is to release the lock (allowing entry using the PIN) if the board computer determines that a crash is likely. (This is safe, because it's unlikely that there is an attacker who wants to enter the cockpit and at the same time a situation likely to result in a crash.)

This clearly only helps against the problem with the locked door, but it seems comparatively easy to implement.

Edit: Another idea: The autopilot should prevent a crash and the only way to disable it should be by pressing two buttons at opposite sides of the cockpit (so two persons have to cooperate).

<comment><USER39> Self driving planes... Sorry.

Honestly, I wanted to help with something constructive here but I don't think we will ever solve the problem of crazy people in the cockpit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is the other side of the coin of giving someone too much power.

After 2001 the pilots were considered "good" and the rest of the crew and passengers "bad".

But what happens when pilot intentions are not good? In this case the crew and passengers are impotent to save their selves.

This is probably what happened in the last two missed airplanes too.

The same is happening with the Government, after 2001 the people have given too much power to the Government because they considered it "good" against the "bad" guys. But as the people in Germany knows, the people in the Government could be the bad guys.

</comment><comment><USER40> I always wondered why the pilots don't wear some kind of fitbit-like bracelets or something similar that would measure (even imperfectly) their vital signs and record them as a third set of data apart from voice and flight data. There are many (although admittedly unlikely, but still) scenarios that could have happened in this case (the co-pilot might have fainted, someone else could have entered the cockpit unnoticed etc), and all we have is the sound recording telling us that he "breathed normally".

<comment><USER41> Beyond breathing, it's also known that the guy commanded a descent into the ground in a way that's basically impossible to do by accident. That pretty much rules out any sort of health problem (besides the mental kind).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is it realistic that we see human controls largely removed from passenger plane pilots? Or ground-based group overrides? I know that for the largest jets, pilots already operate within some sort of computer-decided 'envelope' (I think it's called) of reasonable decisions.

I think we will see personal driving banned in some cities (CBDs at least) or routes in the coming decades as self-driving cars come to dominate our roads.

<comment><USER43> I'd suspect the risks of a ground-control system would be substantially higher than the chance of a pilot deliberately crashing a plane every decade or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is it the case on all modern planes that a co-pilot could lock out a pilot? Is there any proposal or precedent for a key-code override on the door lock?

<comment><USER45> The NY Times article has a good description of the cockpit door override procedures.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/27/world/europe/germanwings-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/27/world/europe/germanwings- crash.html)

In the best-case scenario, if someone in the cockpit wants to keep people out, it sounds like the security mechanisms provide a way to do for for at least five and a half minutes.

<comment><USER46> Thanks for the link -though I'm baffled why NYT seems to think when I double click I want the page to change zoom levels rather than highlighting the word I'm interested in o_0

edit: oh, they just make it impossible to select text at all... nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Let's call this a suicide attack and this co-pilot a terrorist. Secondly, find out his religion and prefix this with terrorist. Prefixing his race will also be a plus point. Once all unknowns are calculated, ask his religion/race fellows to apologize this act of terrorism.

<comment><USER48> That would make more sense if religion was linked to the attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This might be of interest:

Who, What, Why: How are cockpit doors locked? [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine- monitor-32070528](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-32070528)

Apparently they need to survive a grenade blast!

</comment><comment><USER50> At what point will pilot-lock outs have killed more people than they've saved?

<comment><USER34> If I may venture a guess, "as of last week."

<comment><USER51> There's no way of telling though. Maybe a terrorist attack would have happened a week earlier if the terrorist didn't know they couldn't get past the locked door, so they didn't try it.

<comment><USER11> Horrible logic.

<comment><USER52> why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> We need self driving planes too. Google and Musk, please do the favor. Thanks.

<comment><USER54> Experts are in fact skeptical against fully self-driving planes due to safety reasons.

<comment><USER53> If they are licensed to operate, why they are less secure than human driven planes? It is one more area where automation may drive human jobs away.

May be self-driving planes is next stage of aviation evolution just like drones for military purposes.

<comment><USER55> There was an incident just last November where the flight systems put a A320 into a nose dive towards the ground and the pilots had to restart the board systems in order to pull the machine up.

<comment><USER53> My understanding is, the more hardware/software reliability,durability increases, the less may be the need for humans to intervene.

If we look outside, technological trends and intents of organizational leaders are in the direction of more automation and lesser human dependence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I wonder, how far are we from completely pilotless flights?

Perhaps the numbers don't yet justify proper investment in this area, but we have to be getting pretty close to at least thinking about it seriously now.

</comment><comment><USER57> Does anyone know if there are any authorization levels implemented in airplane software ?

If Pilot had a root pass for the door lock, this could have ended up differently.

My sincerest condolences to families of passengers..

<comment><USER58> Only unless pilot/co-pilot roles were the same. If it were the pilot trying to crash the plane - there'd still be a problem

<comment><USER13> The issue with that is that the pilot can be tortured/blackmailed until they give up the password/code.

The point with the designs now is that once they are locked, they stay locked, and no amount of killing hostages gets it opened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Is there any good reason that auto-pilot could not be enabled to override suicidal actions of a pilot? Perhaps a system that requires input from both pilot and co-pilot to override?

<comment><USER18> What happens when a pilot has had a heart attack and there is only a co-pilot? Averting and intentional maneuver could also hamper the ability to fly the aircraft and given that these incidents, while they result in huge loss of life, are incredibly rare. As such the cost/benefit is not there.

But fuck that co-pilot.

<comment><USER59> I _think_ auto-pilot already can override intentional actions of the pilot. It's my understanding that auto-pilot will prevent a pilot from many actions that would result in a stall?

<comment><USER41> Technically I believe the autopilot is a higher level in the system, and the anti-stall stuff (among others) is part of the lower-level fly-by-wire system. It's sort of like with a car and the difference between anti-lock brakes (fly- by-wire), cruise control (basic autopilot functionality), and autonomous steering to reach a certain location (advanced autopilot functionality).

In any case, you're right that the automation (by whatever name) can already override the pilot in many cases. But it's a really tricky problem because you can easily make things worse instead of better. For example, one reason that Air France 447 crashed was that one of the pilots was commanding the airplane as if it were in a fly-by-wire mode it was not actually in. The plane had already stalled, but he was flying it as if the computers would prevent him from stalling, rather than taking proper corrective action. A proper recovery maneuver would have saved it. This is ultimately pilot error, but automation is a strong contributing factor. For another example, Asiana 214 crashed because the pilot assumed the airplane was doing more for him than it really was, trusting the automation to keep his speed steady, which it wasn't set to do. Again, pilot error, but with automation as a contributing factor.

It seems likely that automation is a net gain when done right, but it requires careful consideration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> An example of the law of unintended consequences. In the process of "terror proofing" airliners, we made them more vulnerable to a malicious/insane crewmember.

</comment><comment><USER54> Honest question. Is this act of terrorism? If not why?

<comment><USER61> 1) No. 2) Because it does not attempt to advance any political agenda.

<comment><USER54> So this means that his reason must be personal and important only to himself. That leaves me wondering, what personal reason can one have to do such a thing?

<comment><USER10> It may come down more to a "state of mind" than "personal reason". I.e. nothing very rational. I guess investigators will look at his relationships, communications with other people before the flight, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm postponing any judgement on the pilots and airline until the information situation has settled down over the next few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER63> Does the A320 have some terrain-avoidance system?

<comment><USER64> It dislikes terrain alright. There's a master alarm and audible "pull up!" warning... If they ever release the complete tape the last minute or so will be very, very grim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> If we can have self driving cars then self driving planes are starting to look essential. At least until judgement day.

<comment><USER34> Without trying to be a luddite, what happens in a self-driving car crash? That is, in court, not physically. This is yet to be tested; also, what happens in a meaningful concentration of autonomous vehicles? I'd wait at least for these to be tested before declaring autonomous vehicles "essential."

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> France also is protecting their airbus business by quickly labelling this suicide and not mechanical failure that caused the pilot to become unconscious.

</comment><comment><USER52> I am astonished how many hn readers do follow this theorie, even it is much too early and too many open questions are left. Hackersheeps?</comment>


D3.express - <AUTHOR> https://d3.express <comment><USER2> this is a signup page for... _something_. What is it, why is this interesting and worth a HN submission?

<comment><USER3> The context you are missing is that the creator of D3 (the best JavaScript based data visualisation tool), Mike Bostock, announced at a conference a new tool called d3-express, which a friend attending the conference describes as something like ipython notebooks for d3/js data visualisations. There isn't much publicly available media to link to, but people at the conference seem excited about it. Not really HN worthy atm without any public posts, media or code.</comment></comment>


Researchers find new phase of carbon, make diamond at room temperature - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-11-phase-carbon-diamond-room-temperature.html <comment><USER2> This sounds like a major breakthrough. Maybe we get a new semiconductor material out of this.

Unfortunately, it's on phys.org and in materials science, where overhyped major breakthroughs in surface chemistry (referred to as "nanotechnology") happen regularly. Note that the picture of some diamonds has absolutely nothing to do with the new development.

The actual paper [1] is more useful. They are doing this in ordinary air, not under an inert gas or something. They're getting an amorphous diamond film, not a single crystal, and may be able to get diamond powder. That's nice, but synthetic diamond powder is only $140/Kg on Alibaba.

[1] [http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/aplmater/3/10/1...](http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/aplmater/3/10/10.1063/1.4932622)

<comment><USER3> > They're getting an amorphous diamond film

If I'm reading the paper correctly the amorphous state is the metastable phase. Once nucleated it's just polycrystalline diamonds,.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know very little about materials, but would I be right to assume this is a genuinely amazing and revolutionary discovery that should impact everyday people in the relatively near future (10 years)?

</comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain what they are trying to say with the whole, "room temperature" thing.

>The carbon is then hit with a single laser pulse lasting approximately 200 nanoseconds. During this pulse, the temperature of the carbon is raised to 4,000 Kelvin (or around 3,727 degrees Celsius)

Are they trying to say that they can make diamonds at STP as opposed to creating a controlled environment in a box?

<comment><USER6> I guess that's what they're saying. Contrast with:

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

Synthetic diamond is also widely known as HPHT diamond or CVD diamond after the two common production methods (referring to the high-pressure high- temperature and chemical vapor deposition crystal formation methods, respectively)

And from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond#Chemical_vap...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond#Chemical_vapor_deposition)

Unlike HPHT, CVD process does not require high pressures, as the growth typically occurs at pressures under 27 kPa.

[...]

and optimizing the substrate temperature (about 800 °C)

<comment><USER5> Thank you for the detailed response. As a layman, the article really confused me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr - Q-Carbon is formed using "elemental carbon" laid on a substrate then hit with laser at 4000 degrees (not room temperature then) but at room pressure.

It is ferromagnetic ("we did not even know that was _possible_ " \- you and me both) and it glows when subject to energy - looking like your next TV will be made of diamond.

Seems that material Science still has power to amaze us

<comment><USER8> Carbon is a gift that keeps on giving. And the most we do with it is burn it ...

<comment><USER9> So much for organic chemistry and the multitudinous industries thereby spawned then!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tried locating the paper "Novel Phase of Carbon, Ferromagnetism and Conversion into Diamond" by Jagdish Narayan and Anagh Bhaumik which is given as one of the sources for the artikel and was supposedly published yesterday. I can't find it though :(

The DOI doesn't check out and it's not on the Journal of Applied Physics homepage. Can anyone point me to it?

<comment><USER11> I noticed the same thing, though it looks like the DOI works correctly now. There must have been some delay in the online publication going live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks for the link, I've added it to my notebook.

I like how they don't know much about how it works but they have filed two provisional patents :-) Reminds me of the early days of Radio in some regards.

There are a lot of theoretically interesting things you can make out of carbon if you can arrange it "just so." The trick is always finding ways to do that at scale. I was fascinated by the carbon nanotube stuff and set about to build some, and while it is "easy" to build nanotubes, it is "hard" to build a specific kind of nanotube, or a nanotube of a specific length, or one with specific properties. All the ways of making them that I explored could make pretty much any kind (single/double walled, conductive/non-conductive). And you can pull one out and say "look here is this cool structure" but there wasn't any way to make a few hundred thousand without going blind looking through a microscope.

</comment><comment><USER13> Between the dinky laser and the STP, this reminds me of the magic radios from A Fire Upon The Deep -- the idea of a technology that could be built by a (moderately) low-tech civilization, but not designed or invented by them.

</comment><comment><USER14> If they don't call it 'Diamond-Nine' I'm going to be disappointed.

<comment><USER15> There was a discovery a while back of a planet composed mostly of diamond. Maybe diamond-nine accidentally formed and turned everything around it to solid diamond :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "In addition, Q-carbon is harder than diamond"

I was under the impression diamonds were pretty much the hardest known material. If that's so, then I imagine that this alone is the most significant part of their discovery?

<comment><USER17> Hardest natural maybe, but not the hardest man made.

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

<comment><USER18> This is splitting hairs a little bit IMO. Diamond is the hardest material. We can make diamond synthetically that can be harder than naturally-occurring diamond, but it's still diamond.

<comment><USER19> As is this - it's all just carbon in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did they sell it?)</comment>


Ask YC: Best Wordpress Plugins - <AUTHOR>

For anything from performance to media to mobile to monetization. List em. <comment><USER2> basics:

askimet, wp super cache (or any caching plugin), all in one SEO pack, google sitemaps, wordpress thread comment, wordpress database backup, cforms2, ultimate tag warrior, exec-php, adsense deluxe

specialized stuff thats good but only if you need it:

feedburner feedsmith, democracy ajax poll, easytube, flickrrss, social bookmark links (or some other similar one)

my $0.02</comment>


UK's disused mine shafts could be used to store renewable energy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/how-uks-disused-mine-shafts-plan-to-store-renewable-energy <comment><USER2> Pfft. Talk about a canary in the coal mine.

There are a million better uses for empty mine shafts... Beowulf cluster anyone??</comment>


Ask HN: How to write the perfect creative brief? - <AUTHOR> I have been working with creative people for around a year now and I am often asking them to create items for me.  These can range from imagery, to video, to UI designs all the way upto game designs (I work in the game industry.<p>I wondered if anyone else had any decent resources, articles or standard practices to writing good creative briefs that get the best results from a range of people? <comment><AUTHOR> I'll start and let you know what I currently use.

1\. I map out on paper my ideas, I either write a spider diagram of words or I try to story board with simple line drawings.

2\. I then either use these directly and talk my ideas through with the artist. If they are on board and understand then that it.

3\. Say the feature needs more logic or is not fully defined I start a google doc, where I take a picture on my iPhone of the art and then I use each slide to talk about one aspect of the design.

4\. I then open the doc up to other product or management people who contribute.

5\. When we are all happy I invite the artists.

This works OK, but I feel it could be better? Any tips.</comment>


Contiki-based product "Thingsquare Mist" to make Internet of Things simple - <AUTHOR> http://www.thingsquare.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> See also: [http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=298766...](http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=29876684)</comment>


Osxc: simple configuration tool for OS X - <AUTHOR> http://osxc.github.io

<comment><USER2> Why does the main repo say "DEPRECATED"?</comment>


Ask HN: What is ONBOARD-2698? - <AUTHOR> I see it in Twitter's robot.txt file, as well as many others:
https://twitter.com/robots.txt
> # Wait 1 second between successive requests. See ONBOARD-2698 for details.
Is this some internet meme? <comment><USER2> I'd guess thats a reference to a twitter-internal bugtracker - JIRA issues have that format.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks a lot like Jira ID of some bug/task</comment>


We Don't Need More Designers Who Can Code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/re-write/we-dont-need-more-designers-who-can-code-b81483d2a0e6

<comment><USER2> I believe that in many organizations, this premise is flat-out wrong. We absolutely need designers who can code - and the kind of "production-ready code" that the author mentions is not the same code that I expect designers to write. It's true that I might not trust someone who is a designer first and developer second with writing a front-end framework. But wiring up a static HTML page with some Angular directives, or even just some jQuery? I feel like to place that beyond the capability of a designer is incorrect, if not plainly insulting. Design itself is not a simple art, and anyone who can get good enough at it to be worth hiring as a designer is certainly capable of learning the bare minimum necessary to be self-sufficient on the front-end.

Designers who cannot code come with lots of hidden costs - if they want to prototype a complex interaction, perhaps with some animation, they need some developer time or are using tools so complex that they may as well just learn to write the code. If they produce a design that doesn't work as well on a phone as it does in Photoshop, that's a lot of lost developer time. In my opinion, these are costs that a lot of organizations can't afford, and don't think about when they hire purely visual designers. All that talk about "you can only be an expert at one thing", while true, misses the fundamental point that designers don't need to be expert developers: they just need to be good enough to enjoy the benefits of being able to bring a design into reality (regardless of whether that code actually makes it all the way to production).</comment>


Learn a new paradigm, not a new syntax - <AUTHOR> http://theburningmonk.com/2015/04/dont-learn-a-syntax-learn-to-change-the-way-you-think/

<comment><USER2> That's pretty much why I insisted on learning functional language (Erlang) instead of another imperative one (Go) for writing concurrent tools. I already see how it affects my Python and Perl code.</comment>


Show HN: API documentation tool Doxyrest 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vovkos/doxyrest <comment><AUTHOR> In this major update: multi-language support (C-family, Lua, CMake), configurable declaration coding style, highlights upon following hyperlinks, footnotes, merging closely-related items into subgroups, support for unnamed structs/union, etc. Various examples of application to open-source projects included.</comment>


Show HN: Waslu.com – Start a free family book. - <AUTHOR> http://waslu.com <comment><AUTHOR> When Grandpa passed away, I realized his story would be forgotten because he wasn't Steve Jobs. History is missing the experiences of "the 99%" \- the rest of us.

But you deserve to be remembered, your family's memories passed on - even if you don't have a coat of arms or family tree.

So we created Waslu.com and "family books" as a safe, private place to share memories with family.

\+ Books/memories free forever

\+ Optional printing (featuring custom binding & paper) at affordable rate

\+ No ads

<comment><AUTHOR> Save your children's memories in a free family book, safe from the "Public" default setting of Facebook posts.

\+ Email notifications help your invitees (e.g. grandparents) follow new photos & stories, or post/comment themselves

\--

Hey guys, founder here. We appreciate redditors' judicious and honest feedback, and would be grateful for your thoughts on the website or idea itself.</comment></comment>


When the Left Turns on Its Own - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.html <comment><AUTHOR> The linked video in the article was "removed for violating YouTube's policy on harassment and bullying." A mirror of the insanity is currently here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0IUx1XckYA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0IUx1XckYA)</comment>


Show HN: Easily add a medical facemask over any photo automatically - <AUTHOR> https://facemaskcyborg.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Please read the FAQ before commenting : [https://facemaskcyborg.com/faq](https://facemaskcyborg.com/faq) (caveat: we know the apps doesn't work 100% of the time)

<comment><USER2> > doesn't work 100% of the time

From the About Us: "Do One Thing and Do It Well." I am surprised that there are no samples showing the filter working correctly. Is it just pasted in the center of the image frame?

We're going to be seeing a lot of face masks before this is all over. I am betting the joke does not age well.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see sample in the FAQ. It is not just pasted in the center of the frame. It work by first detecting face, then detecting eyes and so on. Like all computer vision software it has flaw, welcome to the real world. That's why we say not 100% o f the time. Nothing age well but this at least has been proven 100% of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The mask should cover the nose too! Can you modify the algoritm to change the position of the mask?

A few images in the landing page would be better than having the images only in the FAQ.

<comment><AUTHOR> We added on the landing page the images so it is more straightforward what it does. For the position you are right, nose should be covered, we are working on it.

Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Phisher dupes Conde Nast out of $8 million with just one email - <AUTHOR> http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22435

<comment><USER2> Why was the Secret Service involved?

<comment><USER3> In addition to the Presidential protection mission (added later, after Lincoln), the Secret Service's original function was as Treasury police -- to prevent counterfeiters, financial fraud, etc. Until 2003, they were actually part of the Department of the Treasury, not DHS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reddit should try this to get some extra funding for another developer.

Nice to see that ballsy phishing/social engineering tactics are still in play. I am reminded of the famous deposit slip scam...

<http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/deposit.asp>

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure why this is such a big deal. A human made an error, and I'm sure in Conde Nast's case 8 million dollars isn't that big of a deal. It was probably one of many transactions with that many zeros coming and going that day.

The bigger news is that the guy that did it opened the account in the US and kept the money there? I can't fault some random accounting person for being duped in that manner, but one would expect the criminal to be a bit smarter.</comment>


States Eye Taxes on Streaming Video and Cloud Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/states-eye-taxes-on-streaming-video-and-cloud-computing-1440095146?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> Go ahead a tax it. Who cares? All that does is cut the content producers out of any cash they may have earned from website ads where people access their streams.

Increasing its cost with a tax will drive people to access content based in other regions, from USENET, from filehosts, from torrents, etc....

The people who have these ideas are quite obviously still living in the era of paper and video tape, where the only content was provided by an original content producer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> this approach may lead people to seek lower-cost, untaxed mediums (like torrents) rather than a heavily taxed alternative</comment>


Ask HN: Selling Wordpress plugins - <AUTHOR>

Just curious how many of you sell Wordpress plugins, and where you sell yours. Bonus points if you list the name of your plugin, and/or what sort of revenue it brings you <comment><USER2> I've been developing on PHP for several years, but I've only learned WordPress about half a year ago. Each time a client wanted something new that didn't already exist in the WordPress "ecosystem", I separated that feature into a new plugin. This way, of course, I could reuse the plugin on other projects. On top of that, I've submitted two of these plugins on a marketplace and, to my surprise, made about 1000 USD in 5 months, without that much additional time invested.

Of course, there are downsides. You have to offer support for those customers that have problems (and there will be a lot of them). When they ask for new features, you have to choose to either deliver or refuse them, each option having its ups and downs. When a new major WordPress version comes along, like 3.5 just did a few days ago, you'll have to make sure your plugins support it, or you'll end up with unhappy existing clients and close to none new ones.

It seems it's common practice for clients that experience problems to give you an admin account on their server (either a simple WordPress account or even FTP/Cpanel access). It sure is faster to troubleshoot this way, but I really believe it's a very dangerous practice and you should be wary about it.

Besides all the customer relationship hassle, you have to make sure your plugin supports (almost) all of the possible scenarios that your customers may be using. Things like compatibility with different themes, different plugins, themes or plugins that do not-so-orthodox things in totally unexpected ways, different version of them, so on and so forth.

Overall, I can say it's an interesting ride but I'm not sure whether it's worth it or not. It really depends on a lot of factors.

P.S. I'll post the marketplace and plugin names upon request. I don't want this to seem as self-advertising. Cheers!

<comment><USER3> _I'll post the marketplace and plugin names upon request. I don't want this to seem as self-advertising._

Consider this a request :).

<comment><USER2> The marketplace is CodeCanyon.net and the plugins can be found at <http://codecanyon.net/user/liviumirea/portfolio> . They take a 50% cut, but it may be worth it considering the exposure I received without any marketing whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Consider the fact that your plugin needs to be under the GNU license.

This means:

Anybody that purchases it can then go ahead and give it out for free or even use it in their own commercial project. The main Wordpress site could also give it out for free as part of their services.

I steer clear of all open source projects (aside from some libraries) when it comes to commercial apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this actually true? Wordpress is GPL, but why would a plugin need to be under GPL, unless it used actual code from Wordpress (not just API calls). Can someone clarify?

<comment><USER5> <http://wordpress.org/about/license/>:

 _Part of this license outlines requirements for derivative works, such as plugins or themes. Derivatives of WordPress code inherit the GPL license. Drupal, which has the same GPL license as WordPress, has an excellent page on licensing as it applies to themes and modules (their word for plugins).

There is some legal grey area regarding what is considered a derivative work, but we feel strongly that plugins and themes are derivative work and thus inherit the GPL license. If you disagree, you might want to consider a non-GPL platform such as Serendipity (BSD license) or Habari (Apache license) instead._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't sold any, but <http://codecanyon.net/category/wordpress> has a good selection of people who have.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you just interested in plugins, or are you curious about people selling themes as well?</comment>


Advertising on TV just got easier with Google TV Ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/

<comment><USER2> From watching the demo this looks awesome. I think a good number of startups could benefit from TV advertising and hopefully this will make it easier for them to do so.</comment>


Show HN: Todos: Backbone.js example + Google App Engine (Python) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ccarpenterg/todolist/wiki

<comment><USER2> I did a similar simple Todos application using Backbone.js + CouchDB:

<https://github.com/edc/backbone-sample>

It's about 80 lines of CoffeeScript and 0 lines of server side code.

CouchDB's RESTful API makes it a really natural choice for storage backend for Backbone-powered applications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the demo and source. I am trying out Backbone and GAE too. What I wonder about and asked on StackOverflow but didn't get a clear answer is how to join together Backbone on the client side and ProtoRPC on the server side. Do you have any ideas? Thanks.

<comment><USER4> There isn't really a mapping between backbones models and protorpc. Backbone.js assumes the model layer is RESTful where protorpc assumes you will make method calls, each via a POST call.

I'm interested in what a model layer would look like using protorpc. One idea is to take a similar path of abstraction as the underlying appengine datastore api does: use protocol buffers to express an "entity". So you might have:

        {
          entity_type: 'Book',
          entity_fields: [
            {
              field_type: int,
              field_name: 'title',
              required: true
            }
          ]
        }

This would be a proto definition called, "Entity". From here you could build procedure calls that send entities for doing common routines, such as updates, or deletes. If you can make a structure like this work, you can build an api with javascript which hides the protobufs from you all together.. When you call Model.get('Book').create({title: 'My book'}), it constructs the Entity protobuf and calls the remote call for creating a new entity.

Just an idea! Also - protorpc is in fresh development, so it's a good idea to join the discussion group and make suggestions: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-protorpc- disc...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-protorpc-discuss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is actually great work! What licence will you apply to the source code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Well I'm not sure. Anyway the Backbone.js app and design (html/css/img) was contributed by Jérôme Gravel-Niquet (<http://jgn.me/>) to be included as an example into the Backbone.js repository. All the credits for him.

I just commented one line and added other one to the Backbone.js app. And I've developed the whole GAE application.

<comment><USER5> If you put it on Github, you probably should figure it out. I'm not sure what happens if you don't put any explicit licence in there, but I think that it is just public domain right now. Especially if you say that you don't have any licence in mind.

Just sayin', if you don't mind, public domain is as good as it gets if you want to share your code.

<comment><USER6> Public domain? Based on what exactly?

Unless there is license granting you some rights, you don't have any rights to that code (you cannot legally download, use, modify, copy or redistribute it).

<comment><USER5> Where does it say that exactly? It's a public repository and the author is explicitly linking to it while saying that he has no plans of enforcing any licence.

<comment><USER6> In the "Copyright Act".

Please don't ask me for specific quote, because I don't know US law, but from what I've read on the topic (<http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/crothers.html>, <http://www.wisconsin.edu/gc-off/deskbook/copyrgt.htm>), it's pretty much the same as in the rest of the world, that is:

Copyright is automatically granted to the creator of the work (or his employer, in case of "work for hire") and anyone who wants to legally use it needs permission (license) from the copyright holder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weird, I just did this exact same thing yesterday for another GAE/Backbone.js app! In my case I was using Flask though.</comment>


China's Brightest Children Are Being Recruited to Develop AI 'Killer Bots' - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2172141/chinas-brightest-children-are-being-recruited-develop-ai-killer <comment><USER2> like robot wars? that was a great show growing up.</comment>


The Slippery Math of Causation - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-math-of-causation-puzzle-20180530/ <comment><USER2> Since the OP is prompted by Judea Pearl's new book, I'll ask here. There seem to be at least two schools of thought in causal statistics. The first is championed by Judea Pearl [1,2,3] and the other by Donald Rubin [4].

If I want to learn causal statistics, for use in ML, which school of thought would be more useful? I don't mean to prompt any causal flame wars, but it isn't obvious which approach is more useful.

        [1] https://www.amazon.com/Book-Why-Science-Cause-Effect/dp/046509760X
        [2] https://www.amazon.com/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea-Pearl/dp/052189560X
        [3] https://www.amazon.com/Causal-Inference-Statistics-Judea-Pearl/dp/1119186846

        [4] https://www.amazon.com/Causal-Inference-Statistics-Biomedical-Sciences/dp/0521885884

<comment><USER3> If there is more than one "school of thought," then there cannot be any real difference[0] between their results: because if there was, it would count as an empirical resolution between them. Everything else is metaphysical paint and should be taken according to taste.

[0] In saying this I'm assuming neither one is outright wrong.

<comment><USER4> Are you familiar with Thomas Kuhn? I ask because he wrote a book basically arguing that's not how science works at all.

Because the total amount of phenomenon explainable is too large for any theory, you cannot test or even hold entire concepts of "what each theory says" in your mind.

Schools of science form into communities which determine what is deemed "in scope", what are the grounding frameworks and concepts of the theories that explain the foundational phenomenon really well, informally what is out of scope, and the border territory of active research anomalies.

I only bring it up because I think it's one of the few works of genius and insight into how science and knowledge actually works in practice.

<comment><USER3> > _Because the total amount of phenomenon explainable is too large for any > theory, you cannot test or even hold entire concepts of "what each theory > says" in your mind._

At the far end of "models work very well and the epistemology is solid," physics solves this problem by assigning different people to each phenomenological class (organized by the engineering similarity of the experimental devices needed to probe them) and then using math to check that everyone's individual confirmation of the theory in their area fits in correctly to the bigger picture. As a result even though the frontier of physics is too large for any one person to know, the confirmation of the standard model has been built into an unbroken surface that reaches all the way from the highest energies achieved to chemistry and astronomy.

When you have a theory like that, you can prove mathematically that it is equivalent to other theories. Then, the enlightened can stop arguing about which one is "truer!" If you have two theories that only exist in the form of English sentences (this was true of psychology in Freud's era) I can't imagine what an equivalence proof would look like, even if it would be possible. Fields where you can't formalize anything tend to have philosophies that look more and more like critical theory as you move further and further from pure logic. At the far end, the empiricism is completely phenomenological and the theory is nothing but literature with no predictive power (and as a result, the only way to choose between them is by disguising aesthetic arguments as appeals to this-or-that). I can't think of any fields that didn't look like that in their infancy, and success has usually been associated with progress away from that.

<comment><USER5> > physics solves this problem by assigning different people to each > phenomenological class (organized by the engineering similarity of the > experimental devices needed to probe them)

That's an example of how multiple equivalent formulations of the same theory can be useful for different things even though they are ultimately equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Should any of you care for a more philosophical treatment of the idea of "cause", then I can wholeheartedly recommend:

Bertrand Russel, On The Notion Of Cause

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

New Series, Vol. 13 (1912 - 1913), pp. 1-26

It's also surprisingly funny.

[https://www.jstor.org/stable/4543833](https://www.jstor.org/stable/4543833)

<comment><USER7> Here is a copy of the Russel paper free for all:

[https://users.drew.edu/jlenz/notion-of-cause/br-notion-of- ca...](https://users.drew.edu/jlenz/notion-of-cause/br-notion-of-cause.html)

Thanks for calling attention to this - it is interesting (and funny).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just wanted to throw out a related Quanta article about Sugihara's method: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/chaos-theory-in-ecology- predi...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/chaos-theory-in-ecology-predicts- future-populations-20151013/)

Sugihara's method is a way of quantifying causal relationships in nonlinear systems with attractors that would be cumbersome to model (hence the "equation free" description).

</comment><comment><USER9> The problem with Causation generally is that we choose arbitrary stopping points for "root causes," and fall into the Fallacy of the Single Cause.

Pearl's Bayesian Statistics and Do-Calculus gives us a way to compute likelihoods around different observed events to give us some more insight into these mechanisms but from my reading so far, never give concrete solutions to when we should determine an action is not relevant.

<comment><USER10> > never give concrete solutions to when we should determine an action is not > relevant

Not relevant to what? What is the specific problem that Pearl does not resolve?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If an catastrophic event occurs as a result of multiple necessary conditions, and one of those necessary conditions (even if not sufficient) is that some human was doing something they shouldn't have been doing, then of course it's that human's fault. Cause follows blame. We basically use "cause" as a synonym for "blame" in that situation.

If there is no human there to blame do we then say that the cause is a coincidental combination of multiple spontaneous conditions, all necessary but not sufficient by themselves.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that holds up if you reduce to simple examples that are easily analyzed. If a billiard ball is pushed, it is the contact of the thing that pushed it which caused its motion, an equal and opposite reaction by Newton's 3rd law. If you did statistical analysis you'd discover that the chances of a ball moving depend very highly on whether the last ball to end up in a net was matching suit (colored or striped). But that's not a causal connection in the same sense. There's a causality in this level of physics that works perfectly well. It's not a coincidental combination of multiple spontaneous conditions that the ball moved -- it moved because it got pushed, and if it hadn't been pushed it wouldn't have moved.

<comment><USER13> that seems to be the whole core of those discussions - statistics, as a science, operates only with correlations and has nothing to do with causation. As long as one stays inside the domain of statistics, one can never say whether something is causation or not. Causation is subject matter of other sciences which study specific machinery of various causations.

<comment><USER12> I would suggest reading up on Judea Pearl's Caudality, which is a complete treatment of how to integrate a useful notion of causality into statistical analysis. It can be done; it's just not common practice.

<comment><USER12> *Causality

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So has anyone looked into the issues involved in explaining this level of causation to any AI systems? It seems this might be work, but interesting.</comment>


Write good commit messages - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2013/07/write-good-commit-messages.html

<comment><USER2> I think the article put the finger of something important.

I have had the fortune to work at a few places where developers treat their RCS not only as the repo, but as a tool for communication. And the efficiency of collaboration is truly impressive.

As an example I developed a new memory sub system for an embedded CPU (ASIC) and as soon as I committed the new version (and stating so in the commit message), the dev doing verification checked out the design and ran his test suite on it. (And yes, I had run my own tests before committing.)

But comminicating through the RCS hinges on having good ways of observing changes to the repo (post-commit mails etc) - and providing proper commit information.

The first example in the article looks somewhat verbose for my taste. But it states the what the commit contains, what it solves, any caveats. Very good.

When I commit a transaction that contains several related changes I usually use something like (1) ABC, (2) XYX...

The only exception to good commit messages at one of the companies I talked about was one dev that always used one of three messages: "little change", "big change", "major change". Very helpful...</comment>


3D printing solves watery-ketchup conundrum - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/3d-printing-solves-watery-ketchup-conundrum/

<comment><USER2> This is cute (and cool for the students), but I don't understand why the mushroom shape is important---it seems like the key innovation is the stem that extends past the watery stuff and deeper into the ketchup.

<comment><USER3> Good point. Perhaps the mushroom part is to keep the cap from slipping out?

In any case, this seems to be a solved problem. Fast-food restaurants already have ketchup pumps, with a very long stem that goes nearly to the bottom of the container. For home use, there are ketchup squeeze bottles that sit on their caps, so the watery stuff is on the opposite end of the bottle.

It appears that the real problem is that ketchup companies persist in selling ketchup in bottles that are not appropriate for ketchup -- and consumers keep buying them.

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I solved this problem long ago. I shake the bottle before using it. Shaking also works for mustard.</comment>


Save iTunes - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-itunes <comment><USER2> This is poorly written and has little to nothing to do with iTunes. That means the reader spends a lot of wasted time trying to figure out what's going on.

<comment><USER3> A better title would have been "Save the Next iTunes"

<comment><USER4> An even better—or at least more informative, if less 'hooky'—title might be "We don't like EME" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypted_Media_Extensions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypted_Media_Extensions)), or, slightly less snarkily, "EME will prevent the next iTunes".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Promote Songbird, maybe. It's the closest thing to a cross platform iTunes replacement.

[http://getsongbird.net/](http://getsongbird.net/)

<comment><USER6> Is it cross platform? I just clicked on the link on my Mac, and while the screenshots look very much like a Mac, I'm only offered a PC download link and Windows system requirements.

[In case it was a problem with my ad-blocker, I disabled it, but then I got a huge ad with an embedded Download Now button (directly above the Songbird "Free For PC" button) that links to MacKeeper instead.]

<comment><USER4> It is cross-platform—indeed, one of its pleasant selling points used to be that (on Macs only, I think) it could play FairPlay-DRM'd files just by piggybacking on the libraries that iTunes used to do the same. However, as ahstilde ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11680232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11680232)) points out, it is officially discontinued as of 2013. The Wikipedia page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_%28software%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_%28software%29) has a nice summary, including a link [http://sourceforge.net/projects/songbird.mirror](http://sourceforge.net/projects/songbird.mirror) to the Sourceforge page, and to a "community-supported fork" [http://sourceforge.net/projects/ngale](http://sourceforge.net/projects/ngale) (which I have never tried).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> DRM, bleh.

It's sad that open source browsers and open web standards folks are doing the bidding of corporate interests. At this rate, we won't be able to own a permanent, portable "license" to a work, only rent a license locked to a particular device on a certain platform.

<comment><USER8> You might. There is a blockchain-based technology called "colored coins", and a few startups working to use it for DRM/digital ownership. It will be platform-independent.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Wibe – Watch relevant videos for anything you search - <AUTHOR> http://letswibe.com

<comment><USER2> How does it determine which video to use?

<comment><AUTHOR> Based on your search query on google, they present videos to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you plan developing Firefox version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its in the pipeline, will be out soon.</comment></comment>


Canon Cat Resources – Jef Raskin's Forth-Powered Word Processing Appliance - <AUTHOR> http://www.canoncat.net <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone can help figure out how to trigger the leap keys in the emulator, I'm all ears:

[https://archive.org/details/canoncat](https://archive.org/details/canoncat)

\- - -

It's fascinating to compare a tool like this to the direction the Macintosh actually took — though Jef Raskin conceived the project in the early days of Apple, the graphical user interface took its design cues from the research at Xerox Parc instead. The Humane Interface is Raskin's book on the principles behind a product like this: focus on spatial context with a zooming UI, be forgiving with ubiquitous undo, provide one way of doing things, never trap the user in a mode. A lot of those ideas are embedded in the interfaces we have today, but they feel entirely orthogonal to the discoverability that a Parc-style GUI provides.

<comment><USER2> Left Alt and Right Alt are LEAP left and LEAP right. The MAME source explains the key combinations up top: [https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers...](https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers/cat.cpp)

I tested them in Chrome on a MacBook Pro and they seem to work, but your mileage based on browser/OS/keyboard may vary.

<comment><AUTHOR> It works!!! Thank you for creating this resource. I'm on the hunt for research around this topic, especially on the various manifestations of Oberon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love weird old computing dead ends like this. Pretty good ideas at the wrong time and place in history to allow them to take off. I mean, no mouse in 1987? Task-focused rather than general purpose? I remember reading about them when they were new; Amiga was my obsession by then (though I couldn't afford one for another couple years), but I devoured all the computing media I could get my hands on. They seemed like a toy, to me, and a very expensive one, to boot.

It's cool to imagine what the world would have looked like had we gone down different paths. If this had come a year or two earlier, been a few hundred dollars cheaper, maybe we'd be using a very different sort of computer today. But, probably not. The GUI/mouse interface has been an unbeatable monster for decades now. The windowing GUI may have just been delayed by a year or two. Nerds (myself included) kinda pine for the pre-mouse days now and then, but even so, I don't know a lot of people who use an exclusively text-based UI. I like a tiled window manager and a text editor that's most controllable via keyboard, but I also like having a mouse.

<comment><USER4> I didn't use this one, but the somewhat similar Wang dedicated word processors were pretty nice to work with, and pretty successful until PCs and (mostly) Wordstar wiped them out. Wordstar, no mouse needed, thrived for quite a while as well.

<comment><USER5> George R.R. Martin still uses wordstar to write his books.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure at least a few people here use joe -- with its wordstar like control commands-- as their editor of choice today.

<comment><USER7> Dug joe back up recently after not having touched it in ages. And the first thing that caught me off guard is that unlike most exit prompts, answering Y throws changes away...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those whose interest was piqued by the mention of Forth, it appears the PDF link to the tForth documentation on this page is wrong; the correct link is here:

[http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20tForth%20Documentation.pdf](http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20tForth%20Documentation.pdf)

<comment><USER2> That link should be fixed now. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wrote to Jef in the late 90's to ask if he had one of the Cat's available for sale, to add to my MAC and Lisa collection. He quoted 10K for one, which I thought was too steep. Later learned that he had health problems and was looking to raise funds for his medical treatments. Another visionary from Apple who later succumbed to Cancer.

<comment><USER10> Pancreatic to be exact. He didn't actually know he was sick in the 90s. However, he was trying to send his children to college. Jef never saw any money from the Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope I'm not out of line posting this here, but if any collectors near the SF Peninsula are looking for a Cat, I have one that could use a better home. It's in good working condition with manuals and floppy disks and the daisywheel printer. My email is in my profile if interested.

<comment><USER12> You should contact the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto, they might want it, and then everyone can see it.

[http://www.computerhistory.org/](http://www.computerhistory.org/)

<comment><USER13> I've been there twice and never seen anything like the Cat there. Also if it works and turns on, you can also try the "Living Computer Museum" in Seattle, sponsored by Paul Allen. I don't know their policy, maybe they will even buy it if it works.

<comment><USER10> Have you been to digibarn? It is really fantastic. It is run by Bruce Damer

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> ZOMG, I've been looking for what was the name of this device for some time. We had these in a typing class in middle school, c. 1991. There was a way to get a Forth interpreter booted on it.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20Forth%20Inside.txt](http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20Forth%20Inside.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also checkout his book The Humane Interface ( [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface) ) he writes a little about this system there while describing the ideal interface in his mind.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reading about its embedded Forth makes me ponder how it would be to boot directly into Emacs.</comment>


See more of your world, just hold up your phone - <AUTHOR> https://get.google.com/tango/ <comment><USER2> AR is the new coming thing.</comment>


Posterous (YC S08) 2.0 Is A Group Sharing App With A Website Attached - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/02/posterous-2-0/

<comment><USER2> I presume this is a well-deserved "Hey! We're a group sharing app too!" in light of the Beluga acquisition. Frid.ge should be rebounding off this shot in the press as well.

If I was Twitter, private-group functionality would be way, way up on my whiteboard, with a double circle and maybe even a bendy arrow.

</comment><comment><USER3> I repeat: _I think this company will completely pivot and focus on groups_

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2232628></comment>