Andromeda 2.1 reduces GCP's intra-zone latency by 40% - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/11/Andromeda-2-1-reduces-GCPs-intra-zone-latency-by-40-percent.html <comment><USER2> BTW, since the blog post doesn't make it explicit: we're down to ~40 microseconds round trip between VMs in the same zone. No placement groups or infiniband required :).

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

<comment><USER3> Is this available on GKE? Any action required (e.g. node pool flags) on our side to get this working?

<comment><USER4> Yes, this is enabled for all VMs running on Compute Engine (which includes GKE VMs), however the in-guest iptables &c. bits add non-trivial overhead (I don't have numbers handy, apologies).

<comment><USER3> Thanks, good to know.

Regarding in-guest iptables -- there's not much we can do on GKE/Kubernetes about that. I serve about 1.2M requests per second on my GKE cluster through GLB and see this overhead very well.

<comment><USER2> The new Alias IP stuff should help with that (though I imagine there will still be some iptables shenanigans left, so I'm not sure how much it will help)

<comment><USER3> AFAIK for GLB to work with GKE (via GLBC) I would still need NodePort service that routes exclusively via iptables?

FWIW I also look forward to IPVS in k8s 1.9 that should improve this slightly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why don't AWS people actively contribute in HN discussions about their achievements?

There're 8 comments on this thread and 3 of them are from GCP people giving less marketing-y insights. Thanks @jsolson and @boulos (it's always interesting to read your comments).

<comment><USER2> Glad you appreciate it! Jon and I both just like explaining and clarifying. In this case he did actual work, and along with Jake and others deserve the credit (I rarely contribute directly to Compute Engine these days, but I still pretend like I can explain what Jon and others do).

I don't begrudge the folks that prefer to work silently. I'm not adding the names of any people who worked on this (and there are many!) but perhaps don't want to be publicly visible. I assume that's why there are less AWS folks for their launches here, and it's a purely personal decision. You also might be biased since Jon and I are particularly loud and slack off a lot at work :).

Fwiw, please call us out if you think we're straying into Sales/Marketing. That's not the intent, and part of why I make sure to put the disclosure on my posts. Clearly, Cloud is a business, but I'm (still) an engineer. My goal is that we should build an excellent product, and hopefully that convinces you or others to use it. If it's not excellent, keep complaining until we improve!

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare/relate to the AWS "enhanced networking"?

<comment><USER4> They're different approaches to solving the same problem (improved throughput with lower latency and jitter). The major thing they have in common is that they both dedicate hardware to the problem.

With respect to AWS, in the historical "enhanced networking" case Amazon dedicated hardware by offering SR-IOV capable NICs. SR-IOV is a well understood and effective technique for approaching bare metal performance for virtualized environments, but it tends to lock you into a particular vendor, if not specific model, of hardware. I gather ENA does something a bit different, but I don't know the details.

In Google's case, we dedicate hardware to the Andromeda switch in the form of processor cores (the "SDN" block in the linked post). This allows us to be flexible in terms of NIC hardware while presenting a uniform virtual device to guests, in addition to simplifying universal rollout of new networking features to all zones/instance types.

Both approaches have tradeoffs, although I _think_ even with ENA AWS hits ~70µs typical round-trip-times while GCE gets down to ~40µs. Amazon's largest VMs in some families do advertise higher bandwidth than GCE does currently.

(I was the tech lead for the hypervisor side of this launch — Jake, the post's author, leads the fast-path team for the Andromeda software switch)

<comment><USER6> Hmmm...

      [ec2-user@ip-10-0-1-56 ~]$ sudo ping -f 10.0.1.111
      PING 10.0.1.111 (10.0.1.111) 56(84) bytes of data.
      .^C
      --- 10.0.1.111 ping statistics ---
      115480 packets transmitted, 115479 received, 0% packet loss, time 5385ms
      rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.037/0.039/0.226/0.008 ms, ipg/ewma 0.046/0.040 ms

<comment><USER6> Different c5.18xlarge instances with netperf TCP_RR, no significant tuning:

      [ec2-user@ip-10-0-2-191 ~]$ netperf -v 2 -H 10.0.2.52 -t TCP_RR -l 30
      MIGRATED TCP REQUEST/RESPONSE TEST from 0.0.0.0 (0.0.0.0) port 0 AF_INET to 10.0.2.52 () port 0 AF_INET : first burst 0
      Local /Remote
      Socket Size   Request  Resp.   Elapsed  Trans.
      Send   Recv   Size     Size    Time     Rate
      bytes  Bytes  bytes    bytes   secs.    per sec

      20480  87380  1        1       30.00    21178.69
      20480  87380
      Alignment      Offset         RoundTrip  Trans    Throughput
      Local  Remote  Local  Remote  Latency    Rate     10^6bits/s
      Send   Recv    Send   Recv    usec/Tran  per sec  Outbound   Inbound
          8      0       0      0   47.217   21178.689 0.169     0.169

<comment><USER4> c5 wasn't available to me when I made that comment, or at least c5 numbers weren't — we have them now, although we're observing ~10 µs worse than your one-off in ours.

It's certainly a nice improvement over what we see on the c4s. Is that using a placement group to ensure proximity (I believe our tests do, but I'd have to double check)? Our benchmarking philosophy is generally to aim for "default" numbers for GCP and "best" numbers for others -- keeps us honest about our "fresh out of the box" behavior.

Also, if we should be seeing better on earlier instance types, I'd love to know what we're potentially doing wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What prevents the hardware offloading from being used on public interfaces? Even if microsecond-level jitter reduction on public networks is negligible this should reduce CPU load in high PPS deployments, right?

<comment><USER4> edit: It's late here and I think I misread this originally :)

The differential between public IPs and internal IPs is tied into the path packets take after leaving the host. The path out of the guest is identical for both, but using VM public IPs (rather than internal) can result in passing through additional hops versus being routed straight to the target VM. Common firewall configurations can also impact perf here.

Original comment:

With respect to guest CPU, the approach used by Andromeda 2.1 eliminates VM exits both on transmit and for interrupt delivery (where supported by Intel). In that regard it's essentially identical to PCIe passthrough. There are customers running DPDK to further reduce variance (and eliminate the cost of interrupt handling entirely).

The choice to not pass through host hardware comes down to a few factors, but high on the list are supporting live migration and NIC vendor flexibility.

(I worked on this effort; see other comments for specifics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Andromeda description link explains that there are special OS drivers for it. Anyone know what part of the magic is guest side?

<comment><USER2> Which bit are you referring to? I think the blog posts make this a little too abstract. It's virtio-net and as mentioned elsewhere, we like and contribute to the latest kernels to do things like better multiqueue support.

For example, here's the script we install in our guest images and encourage people to run to make sure interrupts are paired to queues: [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/compute-image- package...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/compute-image- packages/blob/master/scripts/set_multiqueue)

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud but don't know much about networking.

<comment><USER8> This bit, "Some of the most valuable enhancements enable VMs built on supporting Linux kernels to exploit offload/multi-queue capabilities"

I was wondering what is offloaded. I guess virtio-net is a good keyword, thanks.

<comment><USER4> At the time Andromeda was originally introduced it took a fairly recent Linux kernel to get support for multi-queue networking and offloads with virtio-net. Today anything even moderately recent has support baked in -- specifically Linux 3.8 and above include multi-queue support (as well as the offloads we support).

In terms of specific offloads, the big ones are TCP segmentation offload (TSO) and TCP large receive offload (LRO). These substantially reduce the compute burden on the guest. Less impactful (although still important) are checksum calculation and verification offload.

(I was the tech lead for the hypervisor side of this launch — Jake, the post's author, leads the fast-path team for the Andromeda software switch)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this improvement also available in standard Linux? If not, can it be ported to benefit all Linux VMs?

<comment><USER10> It sounds like this feature is akin to vhost which has been available in Linux for a few years. Using vhost-net and OVS or vhost-user and VPP you could build something similar to Andromeda.

<comment><USER4> It's similar, although distinct. By building on a common foundation of Google networking dataplane bits, Jake's team (and peer teams) get easier integration with Google's other networking infrastructure for features like DoS protection, encryption, etc. The core bits underlying Andromeda 2.1 are related to those used for Espresso ([https://www.blog.google/topics/google- cloud/making-google-cl...](https://www.blog.google/topics/google-cloud/making- google-cloud-faster-more-available-and-cost-effective-extending-sdn-public- internet-espresso/) — HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14037830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14037830)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations, y'all!</comment>


Ask HN: How to (re-)motivate myself to work on side projects? - <AUTHOR> I've been working in the industry for nearly 10 years, and before that I'd been programming for another 10 years. A lot of my skill I attribute to having worked on side projects - nothing has really been successful, but working on side projects allowed me to learn new things and explore new ways of working. And most of all, I found it a pretty fun way to spend spare time.
That was up until a year or two ago. Three years ago I got married, and so my spare time has been reduced, but even when I have spare time now, I feel really unmotivated to work on side projects. I'd rather play computer games or watch TV (by myself, not necessarily with my SO, in case you thought that might be why).
I'm getting rather frustrated by it, as there are lots of new technologies and things I'd like to try. I even have a side project that has been mildly successful with a few paying customers, and with more effort I believe it could provide a substantial amount of my income. Other ideas I have are projects that won't necessarily make money, but are useful enough that I could justify the time spent building them.
But alas, I just don't feel motivated to work on any side projects outside of work. Over the last two years I've gone from working remotely pretty stress free, to working in an office with a lot of stress and overtime, and back to working remotely, so it's  not an issue with my day job taking all my energy.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> It's not a bad idea to pursue hobbies outside of programming, even temporarily. I've found every time I take a break for a while, I want to sit down and just _program_ again.

That said, you could also try to find interesting things you actually are interested in working on. Building yet another demo website- boring. Building some sort of useful tool or home tech project- cool. At least, that's what works for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like it's more of the habits you have, that are leading you to feeling 'unmotivated to work on side projects'. In your free time, you're in the habit of doing something that gives you instant gratification and pleasure, that is video games, instead of doing something that seems like work and will provide pleasures (of learning, getting results etc) much later.

What I would do is to employ a technique called 'habit stacking'. Meaning:

\- Take the habit you already have - that is playing video games in your spare time.

\- Make a small commitment to yourself, that whenever you will feel the urge to play a video a game, instead of following the usual routine: turning on the console --> choosing a game --> playing it, you will add 5 minutes working-on- my-side-project habit right before. So your routine becomes: feeling the urge to play video games - working on the side project for 5minutes - turning on the console --> choosing a game --> playing it

That's it. You're taking the habit you have, and inserting a new, desired habit right before it.

Some extra tips:

\- 5 minutes working on your side project could be spent researching, ideation, sketching, coding etc.

\- I know 5 minutes looks ridiculous and it would take ages to produce any tangible result, but at this stage, don't focus on the result, focus on becoming a person that works on his side project regularly. 5 minutes every day is regularly. You might feel the urge to keep on working for more than 5 minutes, but make a conscious effort to stop after 5 minutes - this way you will develop a craving.

\- print out the calendar of the next 2 months, stick it on your fridge and mark X on the days you actually worked on your side project at least 5 mins. Try building a chain. If you miss a day - don't stress, come back to it the next one.

\- of course, 5 minutes is just an example - you can do 10, 15 or 3 or whatever. It just has to be an amount of time that looks ridiculously small and you'll be able to do it, even if you're unmotivated.

\- Do this for 1-2 weeks and then increase your base time from 5minutes, to let's say 10. Repeat that for another 2-3 weeks and you'll see how you'll end up having a habit of working on your side project before playing video games. It's nothing wrong about wanting to unwind after a day at work. We're not robots. But if you want to have positive changes in your behavior - don't approach it with all-in-or-nothing attitude - this fails 99% of the time.

Good luck!</comment>


This is what happens when use the design sweatshops - <AUTHOR> http://www.specwatch.info/dec.1.2009.html <comment><USER2> [http://www.woodlandssolutions.com/images/Woodlands%20Solutio...](http://www.woodlandssolutions.com/images/Woodlands%20Solutions%20Logo%20-%20Small.gif) they've put up a new logo.

The article doesn't appear to go far enough in determining the actual creator of the logo nor if anything [legally] wrong has actually taken place.

It comes down to "is there a problem with using free-libre designs in 99designs submissions"?

From what I see the original designer used their design for crowdSpring and won. Fine. They sold/gave the same design to Vecteezy. Fine. Someone downloaded the design from there. Fine if licensed¹. And used it in a 99designs submission. Which seems like it should be fine I don't know 99designs terms without looking.

¹ _Vecteezy are not "free vector art" as the designs present are given without notice of rights to use them, one has to contact the uploader (creativemyk in this case) to ascertain if rights can be had._</comment>


Equifax hack checker: For "Test" and "123456", data has been breached - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/zackwhittaker/status/906247688768905216 <comment><USER2> In a situation like this it's safer to say that your profile is safe only if that specific identity is on a white list of known safe identities. Thus things like test will by default, Show as unsafe which is better because it hides information about who is unsafe. If designed right, random form data will simply return unsafe silently. Maybe you could try testing for that.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not like they can tell you "Name and SSN not found" when you put in gibberish. That's a public facing interface to brute forcing what somebody's SSN is. Just try numbers until you get a yes or no back.

If people are upset about this, what's the better option?

<comment><USER4> This message is horribly misleading, though: if you're not in the database, by definition you _haven 't_ been part of the breach. For example, I have no credit history, but if I put my name and SSN into this site (I'm not going to, for obvious reasons) it would tell me that I was probably hacked.

A better solution would have been to not put this on a website to begin with: give everyone an extra free credit report on top of their usual three yearly, and add a field to it saying whether or not you were hit. This re-uses all of the regular security precautions of that process, rather than hastily inventing a whole new procedure.

I can also see a potential advantage for them: since it's more annoying to request a credit report than to put your name into a website, fewer people would find out that they were part of the mess and get angry at them, while they could say "look how generous we are, we gave everyone an _extra_ credit report!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know why people are trusting the checking service since it was built by the same company that leaked the damn info in the first place.

This isn't even taking into account that it's a bare metal WordPress installation with a shitty (aka, free) ssl certificate</comment>


Silencing Hackernews - <AUTHOR> https://blog.notryan.com/015.txt <comment><USER2> May 20 his reality hits home, experiment ended. HN is the best and only decent forum for tech on the internet that isn't overrun with garbage posts and comments being jammed down my eye holes by an "ai" "ad" negative feedback loop machine.

Thanks for being great HN!

Maybe the key points are

\- single shared feed

\- all post start out equal*

\- no following or social features other than comments

* HN companies have some special privileges

</comment><comment><USER3> See

[https://ontology2.com/essays/HackerNewsForHackers/](https://ontology2.com/essays/HackerNewsForHackers/)

and

[https://ontology2.com/essays/ClassifyingHackerNewsArticles/](https://ontology2.com/essays/ClassifyingHackerNewsArticles/)

Later on I built a workflow system for handling a job application workflow based on the same principles. The first article was a big hit on HN (e.g. a good use of the "No True Scotsman" trope) but the second has never really appealed to people for some reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have made a habit of mining HN's Algolia search engine. You can uncover some real gems if you just put in the effort to narrow down your search to the particular topic you're interested in. Also: to avoid bias I wrote a script that opens random stories from the HN main page in my browser tabs, and am often surprised and refreshed by what I read (As most stories that gain popularity on the main page have vague titles)</comment></comment>


This KickStarter campaign might change the way how you learn to code - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2102567670/learn-python-and-swift-3-from-zero-to-hero <comment><AUTHOR> We've launched this course for everyone who want to learn to code by creating real life startup apps. This course is about Python & Swift 3 and we will teach you by creating platform with Web dashboard and iOS app like UberEats, Doordash, Postmates.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER2> Why not something platform independent? Launching iOS only is like having huge technical dept for a not yet existing Android version.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main purpose of this course is education so we pick Python and iOS. So that anyone who want to learn Python and Swift can join this.

Hybrid apps sounds good but native apps still play huge role in reality.</comment></comment>


74% of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewable energy – HodlHodl news - <AUTHOR> https://news.hodlhodl.com/news/74-of-bitcoin-mining-is-powered-by-renewable-energy-according-to-coinshares-research-3137 <comment><USER2> ...wasting renewable energy power that could be replacing non-renewable energy for actually useful stuff, instead of wasting it doing "proof of work" calculations designed to perpetually increase in complexity.

see "Niagara falls communities see factories paying more per kw/h due to crypto miners using up all the cheap electricity" types stories over the last 3-4 years.

as a former afficionado, I can't see an ecological upside to crypto- currencies. (yet another coffin nail for us...)</comment>


There is No Legal Mechanism to Put Something in the Public Domain - <AUTHOR> http://www.rosenlaw.com/lj16.htm <comment><USER2> This article is slightly misleading. It says "Under basic contract law, a gift cannot be enforced."

The _promise_ of a gift cannot be enforced. But, once a gift is delivered and accepted, it cannot be taken back.

If Developer Dan offers his software for free, to use as you wish, no strings attached AND you download and use it (clearly "delivered and accepted") he cannot decide later you can't use his software.

He could decide later he wants to stop giving it away (to new people). But even in that scenario, YOU have a reasonable argument that YOU are entitled give his software away to anyone you wish.</comment>


Ask HN: What are Your Predictions for the World in 10 years? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think that we are at the front end of some very dark and hard years. In 10 years time, I think we'll be reaching "peak dark" and the pendulum will start to swing back to better days.</comment>


How To Shrink A City - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/09/05/how_to_shrink_a_city/

<comment><USER2> Link to single page: [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/09/05/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/09/05/how_to_shrink_a_city/?page=full)

I _hate_ having to click a bunch of times to view a single article

<comment><USER3> Even better, a link to a single page version without the adds, scripts and popups:

[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/09/05/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/09/05/how_to_shrink_a_city?mode=PF)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This line of thinking is about ten years too late for Detroit. At this point, I don't think the city even has the resources to manage its decline. They're struggling just to keep the whole city from going up in flames.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an exciting problem space for the right entrepreneur. I'd be wary of dealing with government, because then you have political issues in addition to business issues, but I'm sure it's nice to have government contracts ;)</comment>


The Scientific 7-Minute Workout - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/projects/workouts/ <comment><USER2> I tried the seven minute workout for a little while and saw no improvement in any dimension. This[1], on the other hand, has gotten me some significant results so far, five months in.

[1] [http://stronglifts.com/](http://stronglifts.com/)

<comment><USER3> I find it hard to believe that you can do squats more than one day a week. It takes a while for large muscles to recover, especially when you're doing heavy weight.

<comment><USER4> Just about every powerlifting or strength/mass program, from novice to expert, has multiple squat days a week.

The theory is that because the large areas (ex: leg, back) are actually composed of many muscles, you can hit them more frequently with slight variations (working different parts/ranges/etc.) and still recover.

<comment><USER2> I have never heard of that. To my understanding, the important elements are:

        - Recovery doesn't take seven days.
        - Squats target the biggest muscles.
        - The biggest muscles produce the most testosterone, enabling you to make gains in other muscle groups more easily.

Given those and the constraints of safety and putting up the most weight you can for a decent amount of volume, you want to squat as often as possible. Not just for your legs, but because it enables you to do more elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> Molecular biology student here. I've never heard muscles producing (synthesizing) testosterone. It's synthesized in male testicles and adrenal gland. Care to elaborate what do you mean?

<comment><USER2> Maybe its just bro science, but most natty lifters talk about the importance of squats in terms of the additional testosterone released by growing the largest muscle group.

Ex. [http://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/new-study- pi...](http://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/new-study-pits-barbell- squats-against-leg-press-machine). The muscle may not produce the testosterone, but it is produced by working the muscle.

That's all I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The 7 minute workout is for people who want to feel like they are working out with minimal effort. It's kind of ridiculous. I tried this for a few weeks 4 times a week and saw/felt almost no benefit. Then I upped it to a 30 minute workout using the same set of exercises and saw quite a bit of progress.

That's really the difference. You need your heart-rate pumping for 30 minutes to really see benefits from this, not for 7 minutes. I doubt any "scientific" claims that 7 minutes a few times a week is all the exercise someone needs.

At the very least double it. Do 14 minutes. I remember trying this while out of shape (hadn't done any intense exercise in months) and with 7 minutes I barely broke a sweat. Unless you're morbidly obese you need to do more than this.

If you really want a god exercise buy some weights or go to the gym. Moving around really heavy objects for 30 - 45 minutes is the best bang for your buck workout you can get.

<comment><USER7> Try to do the same intensity I do during 7-minute workout if you can't break a sweat ;-)

\- 56 push ups \- 44 abdominal crunches \- 36 chair steps up \- 35 squats \- 56 triceps dips on chair \- 30 lunges \- 20 push ups with rotation

(all in 30 seconds)

I thought the point of this exercise was to slowly allow you to raise your intensity to have a real interval training, all while being constrained by time.

<comment><USER8> 56 pushups in 30 seconds? It seems to me the only way to do that is to either a) do them with extremely bad form, b) not go down completely, c) both of those. People like eshlow (author of "Overcoming Gravity") at /r/bodyweightfitness recommend a tempo of 10x1: lowering yourself for one second, staying 0 seconds at the bottom, pushing up as hard and fast as possible (x = explode), and holding for one second at the top. Using this tempo, you can do a max of 15 per 30 seconds.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's a different form than you described. I go all the way down and basically go extremely quickly up and down without slowing down the fall phase. My muscles are explosive, I am a good natural fit for tennis, squash, basketball, ice hockey, alpine skiing, sprints, etc. not for endurance (this needs a lot of work). Moreover, I have a very good skeletal maneuverability that doesn't inhibit my movements as is the case with many other muscular people. Also, it took me ~6 months to get to this level. YMMV

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nothing beats working out to the 7 Minute Workout musical: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LezARmLDu6U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LezARmLDu6U)

<comment><USER10> I prefer my 7 Minute Workout Bash-Script: [https://github.com/vlaube-de/7min- workout](https://github.com/vlaube-de/7min-workout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My reaction to this is similar to this one: [http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html) (Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years)

I've been exercising regularly for a long time and know pretty well what my "equilibrium" exercise time is, and it's about 5 - 6 times longer than 7 minutes. If I thought it could be shorter, then I would make it shorter because my #1 goal is to minimize the number of minutes of my life I spend on exercise.

All I can say about this is that 7 minutes strains credulity and sounds like marketing nonsense to me. At a very minimum, I need to sustain an elevated heart rate for a few minutes to feel good.

<comment><USER12> If it makes you feel better, each hour you spend exercising extends your life by around 3.5 hours (net 2.5 after the hour you spent) on average. These are just rough numbers, backed up by the Framingham heart study and an analysis of the Framingham data by Jonker, et al.: [http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/1/38.full.pdf](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/1/38.full.pdf) They say 2.5 hours per week over a 75 year lifetime makes you live 3.5 years longer, and 2.5 hours per week over 75 years is around 1 year.

(Of course, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow, but that's true whether you exercise or not. I guess you should avoid exercising near traffic.)

<comment><USER13> Question is, would you rather have an hour in your prime, or 2.5 hours in retirement.

<comment><USER14> This is also why I smoke, I'd rather lose the shitty years at the end.

That's how it works, right?

<comment><USER13> My parents were heavy smokers. Their day to day lives were filled with a lot of coughing, even in their 30s.

Myself, I'm not overweight - I weigh about 60kg, and am 1.75m tall - but I don't exercise. I don't see that it's worth the amount of time it takes out of my day.

My perspective may change if I find myself physically challenged in anything I do. But that seems to be some way off just yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm building a site like this at the moment and things like this made me happy we chose video and real humans - instead of vector images. Showing people how to exercise in 7 minutes is easy - but motivating them to exercise is a totally different thing.

I get that this is probably for people on the go, but at least having a voice telling you what you're doing and giving you tips would make this so much better.

Also, don't just say "science". Tell us what kind of "science" and link us to specific research that maybe we want to know about.

<comment><USER16> This is just the page for the exercise, the article (with link to the science) is here: [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I should be able to do better than this. Presenting The Broscientific 7-Minute Workout:

A: 5x Back Squat 5x Weighted Chin-up or Barbell Row B: 5x Deadlift 5x Olympic Press

Repeat alternating. Do as many warm up singles as you can fit (max 5) ascending in weight before each heavy set. Increase weight on every exercise as often and as much as possible. Get or make some micro plates to extend linear progress when you can no longer sustain 5lb jumps. If you have a few minutes extra, throw in an extra set of as many reps as you can comfortably do with 70% of the working weight on each exercise. If you can't do these movements spend 7 minutes a day learning form and improving mobility until you can.

<comment><USER18> Your workout costs money. The other workout is free.

<comment><USER19> True, but the other has no effect for people with an average fitness level. It lacks intensity.

<comment><USER20> People who work out less than 6 minutes per day are all below average fitness level.

<comment><USER17> Consider the audience. For an overweight person who only walks to their car and back the routine in the article could get them to a meager level of fitness. For someone who walks or bicycles for any of their transportation or for pleasure it won't have any effect. As a European this is most people I know.

<comment><USER21> The nyt article is pretty high intensity - walking alone (i speak as one who walks everywhere) doesn't get your heart rate racing unless you really put some effort into it, and certainly doesn't stress any muscle groups. Your average sedentary individual would not be able to complete the 7 minute workout. If they were signicantly overweight they would likely collapse 2 minutes into it.

The goal of this type of training is to yield the greatest amount of impact with the least amount of effort in the shortest amount of time.

Anybody who did the nyt 7 minute exercise at max intensity for a couple months is going to be in good shape. Do it everyday for 6 months and they will be in the 90th percentile of physical fitness in the United States for their age group.

Which I think is a pretty good return for 7 minutes out if your day with no equipment other than a chair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> To anybody trying to get back in shape, I can't recommend Nerd Fitness ([http://www.nerdfitness.com/](http://www.nerdfitness.com/)) enough. I used it to get back in shape 2 or 3 years ago, it's very approachable even with no real fitness knowledge. I am not affiliated.

Bottom line though:

\- Fix your diet (whatever works for you, for me it was getting rid of carbs),

\- Make time for this and build up the routine (I get most of my workouts done in under 35 minutes all included, I do this at least 3 times a week),

\- You don't need a gym; you can get dumbbells for cheap, but even without it there is a lot you can do (I haven't lifted anything in a year, doing mostly bodyweight).

</comment><comment><USER23> I tried this about a year ago and blogged my results:

[http://www.developingandstuff.com/2013/09/50-days-of- scienti...](http://www.developingandstuff.com/2013/09/50-days-of- scientific-7-minute-workout.html)

<comment><USER24> Are you still doing it? No offense but it doesn't seem to have had a tremendous effect besides making you feel better, which in and of itself may be totally worth it for 7 minutes of work anyway. Regardless, the only reason I say this is because I don't think that this is a good program, and I think the science around it is short sighted and not very well carried out.

The major problem is that the studies are not nearly long enough. The human body can adapt really well, and these exercises don't really provide any meaningful level of progression (besides just doing them more). As a user of this program continues, they will have to keep adding cycles, and eventually they'll just be doing it an hour every morning.

As a way to trick yourself into the habit of exercise I think that's great. But the concept that 7 minutes a day can really make you healthy is kind of absurd. There is no question it's better than nothing ( _especially_ for people who are already significantly overweight), but it's too bad it's not being sold as an intro to exercise program, rather than The Only Thing You Ever Have to Do Ever.

<comment><USER25> True, but I think you should consider another perspective.

For most, the problem is getting started and forming a habit. By the time 7 minutes a day gives you diminishing returns, you've probably got a good routine going. Once you have a good routine is very easy to increase the duration or intensity. So, in a sense, it doesn't make people healthy but it does get them on the right track.

You seem to get this, because you said you wouldn't mind so much if it was being sold as "an intro" instead of a "silver bullet." While it's technically true, it would probably do more harm than good. Seven minutes is something that just about everyone, including very unhealthy people, feel like they can achieve. Which do you think is more likely to get people interested?

* Get healthy with just 7-minutes exercise a day!

* Get healthy by increasing durations of exercise starting at 7-minutes a day!

Both have the same result in the end, but my guess is the first will attract more. So, all I'm saying is, I would rather get more people started and then let them figure it out once they've got a routine.

<comment><USER24> > You seem to get this, because you said you wouldn't mind so much if it was > being sold as "an intro" instead of a "silver bullet." While it's > technically true, it would probably do more harm than good. Seven minutes is > something that just about everyone, including very unhealthy people, feel > like they can achieve. Which do you think is more likely to get people > interested?

I heavily disagree with this. People run these programs and do them as written and don't dig any deeper. They don't achieve results, and that leads them to develop (completely warranted) distrust for the fitness industry. This makes them feel like exercise only works for some people, and they must not be one of those people. People feel like their weight is genuinely uncontrollable.

On the other hand, a realistic approach gives them the tools they need when they are ready by starting out easy and gradually progressing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Sorry, Well Workouts requires iOS 7 or greater, the Android Chrome browser, or Internet Explorer 11."

So Android Firefox users aren't supposed to view their website?

</comment><comment><USER27> A neat website, but where are the links to the "Science" ?

<comment><USER28> My thoughts exactly. There is zero science here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Science is that if you work out all major groups of muscles with maximum intensity you use up all of the stored ATP energy and trigger anaerobic energy delivery mechanism which builds up lactic acid [0].

Do this for all major muscle groups and you get significantly raised metabolism throughout the day as your body deals with replenishing ATP, cleaning up lactic acid, and repairing small amount muscle micro tears.

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

</comment><comment><USER30> 12 exercises in 7 minutes seems a little rapid. I usually manage 4-5 in 30-45 minutes...

I guess if you're beginning from a very sedentary level, this is probably a great starting point. It exercises most major muscle groups and will at least activate them far more than just sitting in an office chair.

</comment><comment><USER31> Link to the original research article from ACSM: [http://journals.lww.com/acsm- healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/050...](http://journals.lww.com/acsm- healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/05000/HIGH_INTENSITY_CIRCUIT_TRAINING_USING_BODY_WEIGHT_.5.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER32> I managed to develop a 5 minute workout that performs remarkable well for the time involved (it is not a pleasant 5 minutes though). The basis routine is 30 seconds absolutely flat out on an exercise bike cranked right up, then 30 seconds slow recovery. I do this first thing in the morning (before having a shower) and after fasting for at least 12 hours. I then don't eat for 3 hours afterwards.

It works remarkable well to keep me fitish (basically fit enough to do all the other physical activities I want to do) and at keeping my weight down. I find that this intense exercise makes me feel sick afterwards. This takes away my hunger until a few hours later so it is not too difficult to avoid eating for the 3 hours.

<comment><USER33> Do you fast 12 hour straight or do you break every 3 hours? I'm thinking of fasting too to keep my weight down but don't know what routine to follow

<comment><USER32> Well the 12 hour fast is basically from dinner the night before until morning the next day. This fasting is easy as most of the time I am asleep :)

The 3 hour fast afterwards is remarkably easy. I start to get hungry around 9.30am to 10.00am (around 2.5 hours in), but as I am usually hard at work at this time it is not too hard to resist eating until 10.30am. Other than this I eat whatever I like when I like.

One of the good things of this program is I only need one shower and I can cool down under warm water saving even more time. Most short exercise programs are much longer once you add in all the ancillary activities like changing clothes and showering - mine really is 5 minutes only.

<comment><USER33> So I should do the 7 minute exercise before dinner or after dinner?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The old Canadian RAF exercise program 5BX worked reasonably well for me when I did it. I got as far as the highest level, "A" on Chart 5 I think. Chart 6 is marked as "only champion athletes can do this" and I couldn't even finish the lowest level on that chart no matter how hard I tried.

The most famous adherent is/was probably the writer Tom Clancy.

</comment><comment><USER35> Since we're all tossing our favorite regimens into the ring, I've been using bodyweight training site [http://fitloop.co](http://fitloop.co) (free site made by one of the members of r/bodyweightfitness) for 5 months now, and the progress has been pretty amazing. A good diet is important too, of course.

</comment><comment><USER36> If I remember correctly from a BBC documentary it's important to have a warm up session first before you do an intense workout like this, especially when you're just starting out. You don't want to risk injuries. Be nice to your muscles, tensons and joints: damage can be permanent, I know from experience.

<comment><USER37> Part of the genius of this workout is that it's not throwing you into a position to injure yourself, all the vigorous motions are aerobic and the strenuous exercises are isometric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder, what is the ratio of exercise programs articles vs. people who actually follow them?

</comment><comment><USER39> Note that this "workout" isn't going to put on much (if any) muscle mass nor will it help you lose significant weight. Resistance training and diet is required for the former and diet is absolutely everything for the latter.

</comment><comment><USER40> Whole lotta "I'm fit and this did nothing after 3 days. All I had to do was go to a gym and workout for an hour every day, and then I saw gains"

You're dubasses, all of you.

</comment><comment><USER41> The true scientific one is called Body by Science [1]. If you have 100 minutes, invest watching this [2] from God himself (Doug McGuff M.D.).

P.S. The next The 21 Convention will be in January 2015 [3].

[1] [http://www.bodybyscience.net/](http://www.bodybyscience.net/) [2] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdJFbjWHEU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdJFbjWHEU) [3] [http://www.the21convention.com/](http://www.the21convention.com/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Please note you are supposed to do the 7 minute workout 2-3 times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? The original piece (which apparently was popular enough to get the NYT devs to make an app) pushed the premise that 7 minutes could produce "molecular changes within muscles comparable to those of several hours of running or bike riding"

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-mi...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-minute-workout/)

> _The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds > for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8 on a > discomfort scale of 1 to 10, Mr. Jordan says. Those seven minutes should be, > in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you're done._

The article was updated today (which is where I saw the app link) ([http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/the- advanced-7-minu...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/the- advanced-7-minute-workout/))...it talks about how the 7-minute workout is "not meant to be your sole exercise"...but that's out of concern that it "will become monotonous and demotivating"

<comment><USER43> The original study said the 7 minute routine should be repeated 2 to 3 times. It also listed a sample regimen which most people took too literally. You're supposed to vary the exercises and there are dozens of options. Johnson and Johnson have a really good app with lots of options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> what?! unless you're really in top shape and have done a lot of leg conditioning and weight lifting there is NO WAY that you can do a wall sit for 30 seconds straight!

most people, even in good shape (not overweight or obese) can only do 10-15 seconds before their quads burn into a cinder

try it! its a good exercise but 30 seconds? c'mon!

also, another reason why this suggested 30 seconds duration is bad is that it will mean that most people who do try to meet the unrealistic 30 second duration will collapse down as their legs give out and this is NOT what you want to happen because risk of injury from this exercise is greatly increased if you don't get out of the position by standing up

<comment><USER45> I could do a wall sit for about 45 seconds before I ever did any leg work.

<comment><USER46> Yeah I have to concur here, this should be totally feasible for a beginner.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby? - <AUTHOR> I work in mergers & acquisitions (math major undergrad, Python classes) but enjoy looking at interesting financial and non-financial datasets in what little free time I have.<p>What project(s) have you worked on? Can a self-taught hobby data scientist produce solid/meaningful statistical analysis/results products? <comment><USER2> While working as a Software QA Engineer at Apple, I wrote a large amount of statistical blog posts to get a breadth of skills outside of my role (story: [http://minimaxir.com/2017/05/leaving- apple/](http://minimaxir.com/2017/05/leaving-apple/))

I did have a statistical background before starting at Apple however. Most of my projects were self-taught and done as self-research (I am not a fan of the take-a-million-MOOCs strategy everyone likes).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link!

I'm mostly interested in self-research.

How'd you know you were doing sound stats?

<comment><USER3> Oh that's easy ... put money on it, it'll make you a better statistician in no time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> With a team of data-scientists-as-a-hobby, we are building www.17-56.cl, which displays insights from data about Chile. It is in Spanish, but feel free to look around. For example, I created a map that displays the votation in the Chilean primary elections: [http://fernandoi.cl/mapascomunales/primarias/primarias.html](http://fernandoi.cl/mapascomunales/primarias/primarias.html). Simple, but informative and fun.

Probably as a hobby you will not be able to write an analysis that will get published in a paper, but there is a lot of descriptive analysis out there that can be very interesting.

<comment><USER5> Awesome, I saw that we have so much data published by the government but it was always buried in endless spreadsheets. Thanks for working on this!

<comment><USER4> Yes, it is mostly government data! Also, this year there are presidential election in Chile so there is a bias towards that topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yup, from time to time. I also use data science in one side of my business (online marketing), but as a hobby I periodically do data analysis of the computer game DOTA2.

There's a large (huge, actually) available dataset, and lots of interesting information you can mine comparatively easily.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like doing data science courses for fun. These days I am reading CS 229 mathematics and a book Python Machine Learning. Once in a while I get tired of coding in JS, or adding things to side projects; and then I like doing simple learning, just for the sake of learning and trying to understand (no strings attached). I like the maths part of data-science and maybe would pursue it as a theoretical endeavor. Or just repeat what people have posted on GitHub and see the results - like kids soldiering circuits. It would be fun to take part in some Kaggle competitions next year, around healthcare. Back in 2014, I spent some time working on an SVM classifier for news.

</comment><comment><USER8> My project is [https://finintelligence.com](https://finintelligence.com)

It provides access to public/private companies financials, documents search and some custom reports. I have tons of ideas in my mind: configurable stream of companies events, alerts, intelligent search for companies data, etc.

I launched it just about a month ago, so it is still in a semi-stealth prototype mode, but I am happy to receive any feedback, feature requests and first real users )

</comment><comment><USER9> Built model + app (Splunk app) to predict medicare and opioid prescription fraud based on published medicare claims datasets at data.cms.gov

<comment><USER10> How did you know which claims were fraudulent?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm really just wanting to do my own self research on topics and datasets that seem interesting, but also want to ensure the analysis im doing is sound.

<comment><USER3> Learn to cross validate. Typically by predicting something out-of-sample. Or by sense checking what your model says about things you're sure about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Absolutely, been doing it for years with stock market data and Python - developing trading algos and very successfully I might add, actually I can retire tomorrow, but every year I am postponing, because of the team I lead...</comment>


The Replication Crisis Over the Pygmalion Effect - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/2018/04/03/weve-been-here-before-the-replication-crisis-over-the-pygmalion-effect/ <comment><USER2> tl,dr; it was a flawed psychology study claiming higher expectations lead to increased performance. The idea that success may be a matter of self- fulfilling prophecy is so seductive that it spreaded like fire and influenced public policy despite the failures to reproduce the study and other criticism.</comment>


Ask HN: Multiple computers same ssh keys? - <AUTHOR> If you are using git from two different computers often, do you setup each machine with the SAME ssh key or make two different ones and add the other key to gitlab/hub? <comment><USER2> Two keys. You don't want to be involved in the mess when one of the keys gets in your opinion compromised.</comment>


Introducing Tacklebox for Fish Shell - <AUTHOR> http://justinmayer.com/posts/tacklebox-for-fish-shell/

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to answer any questions about Tacklebox, so feel free to fire away. (^_^)</comment>


GoPro needs a hero - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/11837018/gopro-storyteller-desktop-app-video-editor-ceo-nick-woodman-interview <comment><USER2> I have my smartphone in a case that is ruggedized, slim, and waterproof. I can have the case mounted in a RAM Mounts X-Grip clamp which is easily removed yet easy to secure to a pole, boat, bike, etc. I've had my phone over and under water capturing and transmitting live video and pictures. I've worn it on my person while streaming live video.

Don't I have a GoPro killer? The camera is on par with the GoPro save the fisheye lens and "ProTune" settings which I'm going to color correct in a video editor anyway. My phone has many mounts and mounting surfaces. It has video editing programs on the capture device. It is continually plugged into video distribution and social networks. And it has a much better battery.</comment>


The Government Comes Through For Tesla With A $465 Million Loan - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/the-government-comes-through-for-tesla-with-a-465-million-loan-for-its-electric-sedan/ <comment><USER2> _When the mess gets sorted out, I'd like to have a conversation with whoever's in charge at the time the car czar or whoever and say 'I'd like to run your plants, if you don't mind,' Musk said (<http://tinyurl.com/km5e4h> )_

Sounds like Elon will fit right in at Detroit. Run an unprofitable car company and dip into our pockets when you can't do it right.

<comment><USER3> (a) Musk says they're on track to be profitable in months. Do you have evidence to muster that he's lying? I'm sure he could be, but it's not very interesting just to say he is.

(b) Detroit auto companies have historically been very profitable.

(c) The auto industry is structurally inhospitable to newcomers. Legacy manufacturers have locked up supply chains, locked up distribution channels, and are entrenched in a regulatory environment designed for 12-figure industrial bohemoths. That there may not be a way to "do it right" is an argument in favor of propping up Tesla.

<comment><USER4> I like Tesla like the next guy, but when it comes to investing, especially public money, the burden to prove profitability comes on the company.

I'm glad this happened, but the GP is not wrong to criticize this. It's still taking public funds and putting them in a company who still hasn't made a profit.

<comment><USER2> You summed it up very well.

"Profitable in a few months" means you're unprofitable. We can draw up all sorts of extrapolations based on preorders and expected order rates etc., but until the _past_ month's income statement shows green, a business is not profitable. It really is that simple.

I hope nothing but success for Tesla in that they usher in an electric car revolution (just imagine if the USA became the primary source of electric cars for the world), but until then I'd like to see some numbers if I'm paying for Elon to run his mouth.

<comment><USER5> I'd rather own stock in a company (early Google for instance), that is a few months out from 'profitable', with a sales curve that is trending up, up, up, than stock in, say, GM, in the last month or two that it was profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It will be interesting, a few years down the line, to compare what Tesla does with its $465m compared to what GM does with its billions. Obviously not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it might illustrate the cost of the inherent friction in massively bureaucratic companies.

Regarding Tesla's profitability, it's EBITDA profitability, and in the words of Warren Buffet:

"References to ebitda make us shudder-does management think the tooth fairy pays for capital expenditures?"

Certainly this is an important milestone for Tesla. It means that they're getting a handle on their supply chain, but this doesn't make them anything close to a stable company. They still have to get to a point where their cars aren't just profitable, but profitable enough to pay for the factories they're built in. Hopefully this latest influx of cash will be enough to get them there.

<comment><USER7> GM will use it's billions to come out with the Volt with production in hundreds of thousands. A car for the public that has the best of both worlds, Electric for short range trips, with gas as backup for when you run out of charge.

Tesla will use it's millions to come out with the Model S, with production of 1-2000 units a year. A car for the more luxurious segment, that's electric only, that'll leave you stranded if you forget to recharge the battery.

<comment><USER8> Re GM: That's quite optimistic. Most of the money and effort with GM will go into making it a stable employer for as many as possible.

Re Tesla: Quite possibly true, but you shouldn't build infrastructure from scratch to build millions of cars. They should validate their business and market at 2000 units/yr and expand if it works.

Comparing the two, the GM money is to prevent downside, the Tesla is to capture upside. Both are valid reasons for investment and only hindsight will tell if either was a good bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just a quick question. Why is Tesla more deserving of a loan to accelerate their development of electric cars than a company like Aptera (<http://www.aptera.com>)?

This is the fundamental problem. The government is not funding direct research in a University setting, they are directly funding one company over another in a nascent industry. Why do Tesla's shareholders get this advantage over other startup company shareholders?

This is one of the problems this conservative has with this situation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Along with the huge NASA cash ($billions) for SpaceX, it's a good year for Musk.

</comment><comment><USER11> at least we know that money is going to a company that is actually building cars that will run when the oil runs out.

<comment><USER11> no fans of electric cars here, I see.

<comment><USER12> No, it's just a bunch of people whining about "their money" being used to foster innovation. It's OK when someone invests money in their web app for displaying porn with rounded corners and "type centric design", but it's a waste when the government tries to encourage the development of sustainable transportation technology.

Gotta love the conservatives...

<comment><USER13> I'm more or less fanatically liberal. But I happily set that aside while visiting HN.

Please don't bring in such broad attacks. I almost voted it down as well (despite agreeing with the sentiment), for the exact reasons pointed out by radu_floricica.

Let's maintain a high level of discussion for HN.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


500M IPO for Candy Crush - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestreet.com/story/12401315/1/candy-crush-maker-king-digital-aims-for-500m-ipo.html

<comment><USER2> I like they felt the need to say King has more user on Facetube apps than Microsoft.</comment>


Hadoop & Startups - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/17/hadoop-startups-where-open-source-meets-business-data/ <comment><USER2> [http://tcfast.com/2011/07/17/hadoop-startups-where-open- sour...](http://tcfast.com/2011/07/17/hadoop-startups-where-open-source-meets- business-data/) (readable version)

</comment><comment><USER3> _"Hadoop futures and enhancements"_

[http://www.dbms2.com/2011/07/10/hadoop-futures-and- enhanceme...](http://www.dbms2.com/2011/07/10/hadoop-futures-and- enhancements/)

 _Monash Research / Hadoop news :_

[http://www.dbms2.com/category/products-and-vendors/hadoop- pr...](http://www.dbms2.com/category/products-and-vendors/hadoop-products-and- vendors/)

</comment><comment><USER4> For those living in Toronto and interested in Hadoop, we are trying to bootstrap a local Hadoop User Group here: <http://www.meetup.com/TorontoHUG/>

<comment><USER3> Hadoop : 58 Meetup Groups worldwide

<http://hadoop.meetup.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Hadoop is technologically superior"???

\- Cost-effective? Yes.

\- Pragmatic? Yes.

\- Technologically superior? No!

<comment><USER6> What do you see as being better than hadoop?

<comment><USER5> There is no one-size-fit-all.

Hadoop/MR initially was addressing narrow niche for large-scale consumer Internet companies and now it's pitched as a silver bullet.</comment></comment></comment>


GT vs F1 speed comparison - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0&feature=related

<comment><USER2> I have never seen these side by side. I'd also like to see a normal car going 80mph.</comment>


FBI accused over removal of Megaupload data - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18352289 <comment><USER2> That's unbelievable! The man got ripped-off of physical things due to alleged theft of non-physical possessions, then FBI got away because the agreement wasn't specific on non-physical evidence!?</comment>


IPhone 3G Versus E71: A Comprehensive Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.manu-j.com/blog/iphone-versus-e71-review/202/

<comment><USER2> I switched from iPhone to E71 because of neatly designed keyboard. iPhone makes me mad when I need to type anything, no matter whether it's an SMS or a web link in the browser.</comment>


What to Do After Finding Hot Connectors on Overhead Power Lines (2017) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piQpLL5nD18 <comment><AUTHOR> This video shows an aerial line crew (lineworker and pilot in a helicopter) bypassing a high-resistance splice in a 220kV overhead power line, attaching a large bolt-on shunt while the line is still live. The lineworker sits on a platform on the outside of the helicopter while doing the work, in an incredible demonstration of precision helicopter hovering.

<comment><USER2> It is hard to overstate how difficult it is to hover a helicopter this precisely for this long. Helicopters are dynamically unstable. If you take your hands off the controls, they start to flip over almost immediately and become unrecoverable within 2-3 seconds.

The best analogy I've heard: imagine trying to stand on a basketball. Now imagine trying to stand on a basketball without flailing your arms around. Now imagine trying to do that for half an hour while someone's life depends on you not screwing up even for a single second.

<comment><USER3> Okay I've actually flown helicopters, and it's not that hard. Harder than fixed-wing, but much easier than standing on a basketball.

<comment><USER4> If I read your parent correctly, you need to compare standing on a basketball, not with _flying_ a helicopter, but with precision hovering one.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. Hovering is definitely harder than forward motion, because among other things the tail boom acts as a weathervane during forward motion. But hovering is still easier than standing on a basketball. I've done the former, and I can't imagine even trying to do the latter.

<comment><USER5> Are you rated for the Basketball? How many hours have you logged on the basketball? /s

<comment><USER6> I got my "single basketball on grass" rating a couple of years ago, and have been meaning to schedule a checkride for my "single basketball on hardcourt" endorsement for a long time, but honestly I don't know when I'd ever use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those who are interested, the helicopter is an MD-500. They're well known for being very stable and have pretty good control feel through mechanical- only linkages. As such, they're fairly popular for this kind of precision work. Another big application is aerial tree trimming: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXcIqR01_d0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXcIqR01_d0)

</comment><comment><USER8> I couldn't help but burst out laughing when the voiceover dude explained, "The pilot and the lineman are both doing an outstanding job despite very high wind conditions." Who on earth decides that very high wind conditions are a good time to hover your helicopter connected to a 230,000-volt power line? Couldn't they postpone the job for a day or two until the winds die down?

The arc when the helicopter finally disconnects from the power line is pretty astounding. To the lineman, it's all in a day's work, I guess.

<comment><USER9> It kind of looks like they are in a plains state somewhere. Having lived in the midwest nearly all my life, I can say with confidence that you are going to spend a lot of time waiting if you are waiting for a calm day.

They probably just make sure the wind isn't gusting too much.

<comment><USER10> It's actually eastern Pennsylvania, the helicopter has a Pennsylvania Power and Light (PPL) logo on it. If you look carefully in the background you can see the Delaware Water Gap in the mountains.

Nevertheless, it's the same for the weather, Fall/Winter is gonna be windy enough you can't wait around for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is excellent.

I don't understand why there's an arc at the end when the lineman disconnects and pulls away the safety rod. That's there to keep the helicopter at the same potential as the transmission line, right? So why's there a potential difference when the safety rod is withdrawn?

<comment><USER12> It's a low-current arc. The circuit is completed by the capacitance between the helicopter and the ground.

Assuming a spherical helicopter 1M in radius, the capacitance to ground is

      >>> 4 * pi * 8.8e-12
      1.1058406140636071e-10

The current, at 220 kV and 60 Hz can be calculated

      >>> 60 * 2 * pi * 220e3 * 1.1058406140636071e-10
      0.009171625977844317

or 9 milliamps. Enough to feel a good tingle. The power in the arc is

      >>> 220e3 * 0.009171625977844317
      2017.7577151257497

or 2 kilowatts, so you can see the arc in daylight.

<comment><USER13> I chuckled at "Assuming a spherical helicopter".

<comment><USER14> This is how you know the parent is an engineer.

<comment><USER15> Nah, physicist. If parent was an engineer, he's just reference the row and column from some table of helicopter capacitances. ("See p.34, table 7 for the MD-500. The one in the video is a 530, but close enough")

<comment><USER14> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have to admit, it was a fascinating video. The precision of the helicopter pilot is amazing. Just one wrong move though and both are dead. Surely there's a less risky way of doing this?

How did the lineworker and helicopter not get electrocuted? Is it because they attached themselves to the transmission line, similar to how a squirrel doesn't get electrocuted? Or were the lines taken down or something (I find that hard to believe but maybe). At those levels, if they were at the same voltage as the lines, isn't there still a risk of arcing to another line?

<comment><USER3> Yes, most definitely. They still have to be careful about that. I expect it's an easy thing to avoid unless you're working on an inside conductor.

<comment><USER17> The whole thing is a conductor. Those lines are insulated only by air.

Edit: Misreading on my part. Parent meant "a line closer to the tower" not "a conductor within the line."

<comment><USER18> Pretty sure by "inside conductor" he means one of the lines closer to the tower. In the video I think he's working on the outermost conductor, i.e. the one furthest from the tower.

<comment><USER17> Ah, good point. Grandparent is correct. Carry on!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's an article on the pilots/flying: [https://www.verticalmag.com/features/highvaluecargo/](https://www.verticalmag.com/features/highvaluecargo/)

</comment><comment><USER20> As an inventor how does one convince oneself to allow overhead wires carrying life threatening currents or any other such inventions. There exists so many inventions I would never pursue even if it occurred to me first, yet they exist and make our lives better.

<comment><USER21> I suppose someone figured that, after a point, the only question is how far your red mist will be spread should you have contact with a line. I mean, I'll put money on the fact that you're sitting in a room _right now_ with nearly- exposed electrical contacts that can kill you. I guess it's not a great leap from there to "go ahead and hang them overhead, and try to make sure they won't fall down".

OTOH, the only thing I've ever seen take down high tension towers was an ice storm so bad, they collapsed under the weight.

<comment><USER22> Yeah overhead on a strong tower is probably the best place for them. Underground they're way more likely to get hit accidentally and if the shielding failed it'd be impossible to tell where the danger was from the surface without specialized equipment.

<comment><USER23> underground is more resilient to damage but harder to do maintenance and actually much more expensive at the distribution level

<comment><USER22> It would also increase the cost a lot due to the digging and actually requiring insulation that will hold up where the overhead lines are bare aluminum insulated by air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What caused the line to overheat in the first place, requiring a splice?

<comment><USER25> Usually (internal) damage, caused by wind, rain, ice, etc. Could also be a manufacturing flaw.

The damaged section will have a higher electrical resistance than what it was designed for, and as a result that section will dissipate more energy (heat). The splice/patch effectively increases the cross sectional area, which will lower the resistance, which will lower the dissipated energy, which will lower the heat.

<comment><USER22> The new splice also simply offers a lower resistance path full stop so most of the electricity will flow through the new splice instead of the damaged splice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There was a video a few years ago that explained how this works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_1T2_l43Xo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_1T2_l43Xo)

</comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of one of my favorite youtube videos of all time

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBJyyEAw-6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBJyyEAw-6g)

I sincerely hope it's the actual lineman talking and that he takes a job in voice work when he retires.

</comment><comment><USER28> This got me interested into what it takes to become lineman. For Canada, it's: \- extended driver's license requirements \- some high school requirements (graduate, math and sciences) \- physically fit year-round \- pre- apprenticeship program \- 3 year apprenticeship program, $30 pay \- standard trade rate is $40

You probably get good benefits and disability securities, and overtime pay. But it means working in dangerous, frequently laborious, conditions, working away from home all over the province/country, and working frequent overtime. Makes me scratch my head when the people holding the infrastructure together get compensated so little.

<comment><USER29> > Makes me scratch my head when the people holding the infrastructure together > get compensated so little.

Because they are very far away from where value is captured. That's a seriously annoying part of the way capitalism as we know it works: you only get paid a substantial fraction of the value created if you are near the point of value capture. That's why sales people tend to earn well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In the overhead camera views, you can see about half a roll of duct tape on the lineman's helmet to hold the go-pro on, eg [https://youtu.be/piQpLL5nD18?t=1m47s](https://youtu.be/piQpLL5nD18?t=1m47s)

Although looking closer, it looks like it's the flexistrap type mount put over a smooth helmet, so makes sense.

Point is, kludges are everywhere!

<comment><USER31> A) That's electrical tape, I believe, and all the more appropriately so.

B) you can also see someone holding the other camera on the ground, as well, which is interesting to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Don't you measure electrical resistance between two points? How is the guy measuring resistance on the line at a particular point?

<comment><USER33> If you look closely at the rod there's a separate wire sticking out the side about 10 cms. It probably measures impedance over that 10 cm space. You can definitely see him use it to measure impedance between the line and the clamp, but the first one is hard to see because it's behind the clamp. The second is far easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I had the pleasure of watching something like this a couple of weeks ago on I90 in southern Minnesota. I came upon what looked like a helicopter entangled in the transmission lines, but after slowing down and opening the window, it was obvious the pilot was skillfully hovering there on purpose. It was impressive to see!

</comment><comment><USER35> Sometimes I wonder why I have convinced myself that a desk job is the way to go. Then I remember that thats 220kV haha

<comment><USER36> I've learned that massive injury is actually less scary than mild or moderate injury because your body is overwhelmed, and you don't really feel anything.

<comment><USER37> Yes, being dead does hurt less than a papercut.

<comment><USER36> I do not appreciate the useless dismissive statement. I'm talking about something intense I've experienced personally, and you are being rude.

<comment><USER38> Just because you are talking about it doesn't mean it automatically commands compassion or respect, and I am not saying this to be rude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There's some great videos of installing spacers on multi-100kV live lines and of the Bond villian tree-trimmers.

</comment><comment><USER40> Couldn't we use something like that on wildfires for chopping down trees quickly?

<comment><USER41> Like a big chain?

If you're referring to the helicopter,I believe they already have helicopter mounted saw blades for trimming trees, in particular, for transmission line corridors.

See here: [https://youtu.be/Pla06PO6Odk](https://youtu.be/Pla06PO6Odk)

</comment></comment><comment> ur-whale What what happens at 2:57 in the vid. Did you spot the large spark?

<comment><USER42> I missed that, but it's also not all that surprising.

The first thing they do is attach the platform to the cable. They use the "wand thing" first, so that their hands are away from the inevitable sparks, and allow the platform he's sitting on to equalise (voltage wise) with the wire. In other words, he's sitting on a platform thats 10k or more volts! Once equalised, a hook is attached - this is also conductive.

Once the job is done, the wand thing comes back out - the hook is detached, without sparks as their is an alternative path for the electricity through the wand, and then the wand is slowly removed.

Linemen are nuts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> how much do those guys make?

</comment><comment><USER44> Came for the video, stayed for the comments.

</comment><comment><USER45> Multiple passes on 20 bolts on each side? Does it really have to be that complicated?

<comment><USER46> You need multiple passes, because while doing the first pass, contact is still being made on an angle. Tie all the nuts at least once, then you won't have an angle and will be able to tighten better.

Same like you should do on your car wheel. First put them all ass much as you can without force, then apply force. In a star bolt pattern.

<comment><USER47> I suspect the other element is that if the line fails completely in the middle, the new splice is now structurally critical to holding the line up - so you need it to be as good, or better, than the original manufactured line.</comment></comment></comment>


This neural net would like to deliver these petitions - got-any-grapes https://aiweirdness.com/post/184919085542/this-neural-net-would-like-to-deliver-these <comment><AUTHOR> Finetuning GPT-2 is where the real magic will happen; the demo of the 345M model ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19840758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19840758)) is _nothing_ compared to a model that is finetuned on the type of content you want to generate.

</comment><comment><USER2> For every time I read about the threat general AI poses to humanity I try to find an article like this and it calms my nerves.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, general AIs, which randomly sample language models, would be ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The primordial soup of a technocracy

</comment><comment><USER5> To think I bought this might be profound.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Letting neural networks be weird" is the name of the blog; this article's title is "This neural net would like to deliver these petitions"

<comment><USER7> Thanks! Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Occupied land of the arapohoe nation? Is this edginess or satire?</comment>


Is Positive Sentiment in Corporate Annual Reports Informative? - <AUTHOR> http://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2019/08/26/is-positive-sentiment-in-corporate-annual-reports-informative/ <comment><USER2> Very odd study. The usual reason why people introduce sentiment analysis into a model is that they don't have enough data or aren't comfortable enough with NLP to train a classifier against their own labels. Instead they grab pre- trained sentiment analysis model off the shelf (e.g. Vader) and now the have the much simpler problem of determining if a binary variable (sentiment positive/negative) is related some response variable which can be tackled with statistics 101. This can also be seen as an attempt to leverage transfer learning because such models are trained on a very large corpus with gold- standard labels; this can be beneficial when your corpus is too small to be a representative sample of the entire english language.

But in this study, they manually label and train 8,000 sentences taken from their 10-K dataset. (A terribly small corpus, but the unsupervised word embedding step should help with that, at least a little.) Not great, not terrible. But they label them with _sentiment_ and only later look for an association with the real variable of interest (abnormal return!) Why the extra step? If you're training your own model anyway, why not label the data with the real variable of interest from the start?

I also don't see any attempt to control for the obvious confounding variables, such as the actual numbers in the 10-K. This leaves open the question of whether the effect is mediated by the other, more structured information in the filing. It's entirely possible for sentiment to have some mutual information with the variable of interest but for its benefit to entirely disappear once these are taken into account (a phenomenon known as mediation.) I would prefer to see this a single end-to-end model which is fed both the unstructured text data and the structured financial information as input features and the actual performance change as the output. The actual contribution of the unstructured text data could then be assessed with a tool like LIME (Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Using abnormal returns to train a classifier, as suggested by olooney, is not appropriate in this study for two reasons. First, there is not enough observations. The classifier labels sentences not the entire report. Each report contains more than 1000 sentences on average and there are 60,000 reports and 60,000 returns. Second, the purpose of the study is to see if textual content (in this case sentiment)is related to return. Using returns to train a classifier would assume that sentiment is related to return, which is the question that paper tries to answer. Also, the paper does control for the quantitative information in corporate reports. All the control variables in the regressions are from the reports.</comment>


Upcoming: World's first RabbitMQ summit – what do you think about the speakers? - <AUTHOR> http://rabbitmqsummit.com/ <comment><USER2> What do I think? Well since you asked.....

I think that any conference that in 2018 creates a panel consisting of all men is frankly, more stupid than can really be grasped.

It's called a "Manel" and once this gets onto Twitter this conference will be crucified.

There will be much apologizing, excuse making, back pedaling, explaining that 'we tried but there's no females who know anything about RabbitMQ' and then finally the existing speakers, under public pressure, risk pulling out and then the conference risk being cancelled.

At a minimum, Microsoft will be targeted and the Microsoft speaker will pull out, followed by the others who care about the public perception.

Almost certainly Pivotal and Goldman Sachs will pull out too.

Let's wait and see how much of this actually happens.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for pointing that out! We would, of course, love to have female speakers on the summit. We had an open call for talks, which was promoted on the web, Twitter, newsletters etc., but there were only male speakers applying, unfortunately.

In the talks committee, Dormain Drewitz (who leads Product Marketing at Pivotal) and Lovisa Johansson (Marketing Manager / Software Developer at CloudAMQP), two female professionals highly experienced in RabbitMQ, was participating in choosing the speakers. In terms of the panel discussion, it will be lead by Dormain.

Lovisa is very skilled in RabbitMQ, and has written ebooks, technical documentation and tons of blog posts on the topic. However, she couldn't participate as a speaker or in the panel discussion since she will have other commitments during the summit.

Diversity is a high priority for us, and we have a lot of females working behind the scenes as project leaders managing the summit.

<comment><USER2> I simply do not believe it was not possible to make a panel including women with relevant things to say.

You should research "manel" .... you'll find "no women applied to speak" is almost always the excuse and it's really inadequate and just a way to try to literally excuse the outcome. You have a much greater obligation than to just wait for applicants and then shrug and say "wel no women applied".

It's very silly to say you value diversity with a panel of all men, whilst pointing to the people who organized the conference to say that's your diversity. "All the brainy men are doing the talking and being smart while all the assistants and helpers and organizers and running around helping them". Ugh. I'd advise you to put that line of argument in the nearest garbage bin... it is not going to lead to people thinks "oh yes they employ women, that is an excellent and inclusive diversity strategy and shows deep commitment to diversity". That's like saying "hey I have a mother, that's my diversity strategy".

If you want to save your conference from possible cancellation then it's in your interest to replace 2 of those men with at least 2 women before the internet gets wind of this.

And when asked, don't make the lame excuse you gave me.... you should say "yes that's a terrible mistake we handled it badly and were fixing it fast." It sounds stupid to say "we couldn't get any women".

And it sounds doubly stupid and deeply patronizing to say "we deeply value diversity, look at all our helper women".

Frankly sir you seem to lack wisdom.

And you're in for a big shock if you think you'll get to the end of this conference with only me raising the issue.

If I were you I'd take all information regarding the panel offline and say you're revising it, until you fix it properly. That might save you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Speakers include: \- Keynote: Gavin Roy. VP of Architecture @ Amweber Communications \- Keynote: Jonathan Skzrypek. Executive director @ Goldman Sachs \- Michael Klishin. Core RabbitMQ developer @ Pivotal \- Ayanda Dube. RabbitMQ Expert @ Erlang Solutions \- Carl Hörberg. CEO & Founder @ CloudAMQP \- Gerhard Lazu. Core RabbitMQ developer @ Pivotal \- Monish Unni. Cloud Architect @ Polynomial Factors \- Nathan Herald. Software Engineer @ Wunderlist/Microsoft \- Matteo Cafasso. Software Engineer @ F-Secure Corporation.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm looking forward to hear Nathan from Wunderlist/Microsoft talk. We had the same investors back in the day and I remember they had serious trouble with synchronising to-dos between team members. Something they allegedly solved with RabbitMQ.</comment>


A Video Recording of an NYPD Officer and an Uber Driver - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/an-nypd-cop-on-a-power-trip-verbally-abuses-an-immigrant-uber-driver/389390/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> "If the coming years bring more citizens training cameras on police officers, as well as more police administrators willing to punish misbehavior"

It is the second, and not the first, that is a change of pace here. We've been recording police officers doing terrible things for decades. We expect them to go unpunished. That's why we're surprised this go round. For now at least.</comment>


Mathematicians Have Found Crazy New Ways to Cut Pizza into Equal Slices - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmodo.in/science/Mathematicians-Have-Found-Crazy-New-Ways-to-Cut-Pizza-Into-Equal-Slices/articleshow/50500173.cms <comment><USER2> This is fun, but I see it as a little "unfair" to previous mathematicians because saying "it's never been done before" kind of says that people couldn't figure out how to do it. The traditional pizza slicing problem ([http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CircleDivisionbyLines.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CircleDivisionbyLines.html)) requires the cuts to be straight lines. If you allowed non-straight cuts then sure, you can come up with lots of new and cool looking slices. The reason nobody has done this before is that we considered it an "out of bounds" area, not because it is particularly novel.</comment>