Ravens score just as high as big-brained chimps on cognitive tests - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/when-it-comes-to-brains-size-doesnt-matter/ <comment><USER2> My fascination for corvus started when I saw Joshua Klein's Ted presentation in 2008[1]. Inspired by these recent findings I two weeks ago decided to get to know some crows. I bike commute every weekday and pass a place were I've noticed there's almost always a flock of hooded crows (corvus cornix).

I decided to feed them twice a day (when going to work and when leaving work). The first time they were very reluctant to pick up the nuts and seeds I threw to them. Me throwing things in their direction understandably made them hesitant. After I left however, I saw from a distance how they inspected the nuts and picked them up.

I did this two times a day for two more days. The day after that I saw a crow sitting on the ground a few hundred meters away. Soon it started flying straight towards me on the bike path. I slowed down and it landed straight in front of my bike and started cawing. I picked up the plastic bag of nuts, and it came right to me.

Fast forward to now. When they are at the place they come to meet me. A few times they have also showed up from nowhere (almost eerily) when I stop with my bike. One second I swear I can't see a bird anywhere, and a second later they land next to me. I've also had a fantastic experience were 10-20 crows flew with me and right next to me (when riding my bike) for a few hundred meters.

It has become a nice part of the day that lightens up my commute. I will keep doing this and see how things evolve. All in all, I would recommend building some interspecies relationships with crows. :)

[1] [https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_o...](https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows)

<comment><USER3> We've had previous discussions on here about crows etc and I vaguely remember a story about someone who managed to start a gang fight between rival crow gangs. I wish I could find the link.

<comment><USER4> You may be thinking of the famous World War Crow greentext from 4chan: [http://i.imgur.com/f50IZJS.png](http://i.imgur.com/f50IZJS.png)

<comment><USER5> Very cool! But sounds a little poetical - makes a good story anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I was a teenager I found a baby crow that had been attacked by something and was in a bad state. I took it home looked after it for a month or so feeding it on cat food and keeping it in a garage. Maybe not the best move but I was a teenager. It grew up and lived in the wild in the end but would sometime fly down and land on my shoulder as I walked to the shops etc. I would stick it on a post box buy a few things and it would hop back on my shoulder when I came out. Made me feel quite badass ;)

<comment><USER7> Crows are extremely intelligent and they live quite a long time. When I was a kid I went on a vacation with my family to a cabin by a lake. A man living in the neighborhood had a pet crow. The crow would get cosy around our dining table that was outside trying to grab some food, so my mother chased it away once. After that for the next 2 weeks we stayed there the crow would fly over every day and take a shit on my mother's laundry. There were 5 people in the family, but the crow would always pick my mother's clothes. This is a true story.

<comment><USER6> That is hilarious, I wonder if crows have a sense of humour, sounds like they like toilet humour?

<comment><USER8> Whenever this topic comes up I always find myself thinking "why not?"

We know humans are animals, and as far as we can tell, toilet humor is universal across cultures. Animals aren't as intelligent as humans, sure--but does anyone think that poop jokes require a lot of intelligence to get?

I feel like the history of studying animal cognition can be thought of as long process of us just getting over how special and unique we think we are. First it was problem-solving vs. pre-programmed instincts, then it was "man, the tool user", then it was language, and now sense of humor? Well why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a phenomenon where individuals with hydrocephalus, a condition where the brain cavity is filled with fluid, can still exhibit normal intelligence. I suppose the two broad explanations are that brain matter is either denser in these individuals, or that a brain can still compute well with less brain matter at least in some cases (possibly by sacrificing on some other not- easily-measured mental faculties)

 _" There's a young student at this university," says Lorber, "who has an IQ of 126, has gained a first-class honors degree in mathematics, and is socially completely normal. And yet the boy has virtually no brain."_

[http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB6099/brainnecessary.pdf](http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB6099/brainnecessary.pdf)

<comment><USER10> One guess is that our brains are "lazily" allocating neurons to tasks, since we have so much space available compared to most animals. The signals are simply allowed to branch out / propagate much further (and redundancy is probably involved too). The paths are simply built where the signals goes.

But when it is constrained, and there's still enough of all the important brain structures, the density (interference?) of different signals probably causes them to propagate much less such that the processing of each signal will get processed by fewer neurons, and the same functions are still achieved.

Kind of like a space optimized FPGA design vs a lazy one that uses all the logical elements because there's no need to be compact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In our neighborhood we see quite a few corvids, crows, scrub-jays and Steller's jays. The jays in particular are entertaining. They are very fond of raw peanuts in the shell. When the birds are visiting, tossing a few peanuts leads to observing bird behavior not unlike that of human primates.

They get into "arguments" with each other over possession of the nuts. Sometimes they seem more interested in "fighting" than eating. So they are sort of competitive with each other, yet they also cooperate, since most of the jays wind up with the opportunity to grab a peanut or two.

A few individuals have physical deficits: one's missing part of its lower mandible, another one has only a right foot. Yet they adapt to these handicaps figuring out ways to get a share of the peanuts and other goodies we supply.

Reading about avian neuroanatomy shows very differently organized brains. Of course their brains are smaller in absolute size vs. primates. I've wondered if the nuclei-organized avian brain is a more efficient "processor" vs. mammalian layered brain. Maybe that accounts for the surprisingly excellent corvid performance.

<comment><USER12> Glad you posted and I like how you describe the adaptations and determination of that particular group. Good notes! Regarding your last point and line of thinking, I've been studying a lot of flight processing resources and that might also be a characteristic of their brain structure. Being able to use the motor skills and air conditions for flight - to me - seems like it's more complex than walking around on two legs. Fun to think about!

<comment><USER13> You should talk to an experienced skydiver about what it's like to operate in 3 dimensions. I skydived long ago, and while I never got really great at it, I remember doing things "instinctively" to make or avoid something happening. For example, dipping a shoulder, especially without thinking about it, to move somewhere or out of the way of someone.

I guess bicycle riding is another example of making things happen in unnatural or differently constrained environments.

<comment><USER14> Also playing first person games. It is a weird feeling when the buttons "disappear".

<comment><USER13> Musicians sometimes talk about freeing themselves from their instruments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ravens are just better programmed for obtaining difficult to access food (makes sense, see insects).

Compare human and goldfish intelligence according to whom better understands tiny currents and you'll find the goldfish wins every time, even against oceanographers.

<comment><USER16> Chimpanzees are known to 'fish' for termites, which is a fairly complex behavior involving a hidden food source, so I'm not sure the test is obviously biased toward ravens (unless they also administered the Raven's Matrices). It would be interesting to see if there were any sex-related differences in performance, as it is female chimps who do most of the insect hunting, and teach it to their daughters).

<comment><USER17> > Chimpanzees are known to 'fish' for termites, which is a fairly complex > behavior involving a hidden food source, so I'm not sure the test is > obviously biased toward ravens (unless they also administered the Raven's > Matrices)

Caledonian crows fish for/spear grubs (hidden in wood) using small twigs, fashioning them into hooks when the sticks aren't naturally barbed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've yelled at a squawking crow every time it cawed for a few minutes. After that I stopped and hid from the crow under various rooftops and the crow would fly around to get a visual vantage point on me (still cawing of course), I would move out of its visual range, it would fly to a new position to spot me. It was eerily fun.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Study suggests we don't yet know how to design meaningful cognitive tests. Ravens score just as high as big-brained chimps."

</comment><comment> awinter-py intelligent birds use a structure called the 'visual wulst' for reasoning tasks, a highly-evolved brain 'bulge' used for making decisions about visual stimuli.

It's in some ways different from our cortex but similar in that it's a recent structural addition, under selection pressure and impairs learning when damaged.

There may be some truth to the author's claim that 'absolute brain size is less important than relative'. Spider brains are so important that some small jumping spiders have neural tissue spreading into their legs for lack of space. (Not the same phenomenon as octopi with distributed brains in their arms; spiders have one large central brain). And jumping spiders have a reputation for learning / reasoning smarts.

</comment><comment><USER20> At first I thought it meant the Baltimore Ravens and I was like, "No way..." but now I see they mean those birds and that makes more sense.

<comment><USER21> Anticipating such tests to be on the horizon the Baltimore Ravens drafted this guy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a bit confused "forgo a quick reward in favor of a bigger one that comes later" but as I read it, it was smacking head against glass or not?

<comment><USER23> Yeah, that was a bit awkwardly written. I tried looking up more info on it but got worried the article itself was some kind of meta test to measure human intelligence and decided to just move on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > [Animal a] could do [task]. [Animal b] could do [task].

Ok, but it doesn't follow that they are similarly intelligent. You may have just picked a too easy task to distinguish.

<comment><USER25> They did not tested if the animals were intelligent or not, that was a known fact. They seem to have tested the intelligence relative to different species (instead of testing the intelligence absolute limit) and it wasn't an easy task at all because even primates like gorillas failed more at it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you click through one of the links in the article, you'll see a couple crows instigate a fight between two cats. I was wondering if they were trying to get one cat to kill the other, so there'd be something to eat. That'd be some long term thinking.

Also, honeyguides are birds that guide humans to beehives, so the humans will open the hive for their own purposes. The birds then eat the leftovers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_honeyguide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_honeyguide)

</comment><comment><USER26> I never knew how smart they were until I saw them at a small zoo and the keeper gave a talk.

Apparently they will setup bait in their cage for other smaller free birds so they can capture and eat them.

They also sometimes trade their treats with birds on the outside. Thug life.

</comment><comment><USER27> > The Corvus species performed on a similar level to the great apes, despite > vastly smaller absolute brain sizes. A chimpanzee brain is roughly 26 times > larger than a raven's; nevertheless, both species achieve 100% success.

I don't think that you can conclude from that that ravens and chimps have similar intelligence. Rather, you test was too easy. You need some level of failure to be able to measure a difference in performance.

</comment><comment><USER28> For some reason, not being a native English speaker I thought this referred to the Baltimore Ravens, and not to the animal of the same name...

<comment><USER29> Even worse, Raven's is an intelligence test.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Conveniently next up on my Kindle reading list is a book about why we should look at the number of neurons in a brain rather than the brain volume when thinking about how intelligent a creature is.

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/human- advantage](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/human-advantage)

</comment><comment><USER31> AI has reached peak hype. I think it's time to start an uplift breeding program to create intelligent animals. I say we start with ravens or octopuses.

<comment><USER32> [http://www.thecrowbox.com/](http://www.thecrowbox.com/)

> The Crow Box is a device designed to autonomously train crows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33>
       Except, as the researchers on this new study point out,
       the original study did not test corvids, known to be among
       the most intelligent birds.

There has to be more to it than this. How could supposedly-intelligent researchers make an error like that?

<comment><USER34> They are just big apes in the end...

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Prior to clicking the link I really thought this would be about concussions in the NFL Baltimore Ravens. I chalk that up to a working "raise awareness" campaign.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nevermore.

</comment><comment><USER34> It is best to give wildlife some money, take them to the shop and let them pick what they like.

<comment><USER37> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540734) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Pragmatic Functional Programming - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/07/11/PragmaticFunctionalProgramming.html <comment><USER2> "Why else? Well, FP is easier to write, easier to read, easier to test, and easier to understand."

Only after you get your head around the paradigm shift required to use FP fluently.

<comment><USER3> Of all the technical problems we face as programmers when managing codebases, lack of familiarity with a tool is pretty much the only one that never gets worse. Learning is what humans do best.</comment></comment>


VideoJS (Zencoder, YC W10) re-launches with new site, new features, still free. - <AUTHOR> http://video-js.com

<comment><USER2> as a designer, I can't thank you enough for making a video player that is easy to skin and more importantly... responsive.

scrubbing the timeline produced no noticeable lag whereas flash-based players seem to crap out on me all the time. maybe it's just the streaming server but it seems too consistent across multiple sites to be a server issue.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree, no lag whatsoever. I really wish I knew about this before for a site I was making. And great plans - I love the pay-as-you-go pricing. As a person who doesn't do too much video editing but occasionally makes long videos, this is perfect for me. I don't have to be forced to subscribe to a monthly plan on vimeo, which doesn't justify the occasional video I make (which goes beyond their restrictions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just curious, what does "re-launches" mean here ?

It certainly doesn't look like you guys are pivoting away from Zencoder, since the overlap between the two seems minimal.

This is a side-project, correct ?

<comment><USER5> It's a complimentary project. Most people who need video encoding also need a video player.

The headline is a little ambiguous; it is VideoJS that is relaunching (new version, new site), not Zencoder relaunching as VideoJS. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great video player. I will be pushing clients to use this instead of flash- only players for sure.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, that looks really amazing.

Some strange things happen when opened at my android phone though: \- I see a plugin placeholder (does it resort to flash on phones?) \- When clicked, the video started playing, including sound (even though my phone was set to 'silent'). That last part was really annoying, why can't I just use my phone's volume control buttons?

For the rest it worked awesome :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice work — unfortunately full screen fails to work on Safari 5 for me =(

this.video.webkitEnterFullScreen() causes the following error: INVALID_STATE_ERR: DOM Exception 11: An attempt was made to use an object that is not, or is no longer, usable.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's strange. It's working for me. Does it happen for you every time? Any other info?

<comment><USER8> Yes, it happens every time — even after restarting the browser.

Short of debugging it properly myself, is there a debug mode that i can enable to get info to help you find the problem?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome! One thing that jumped out at me (especially when comparing the Vimeo / YouTube skins) is that the play buttons are not anti-aliased. I highly recommend making them inline base64 PNGs, so they look smooth as well as still being optimized.

</comment><comment><USER10> Small bug: when you click to fullsize and then exit you lose your scroll position, occasionally putting the video out of sight. Try it on one of the bottom videos on the skins page.

It looks _awesome_ , though. Nice job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, totally. "Full window" mode sets overflow:hidden on the document to get rid of any scroll bar. Which then resets the page to the top. I could probably restore the scroll position afterwards. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow. Never will I resort to Flash again!

</comment><comment><USER12> Good work guys!

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great! I wish this supported (or vice versa) Vimeo Plus videos.

</comment><comment><USER14> So say you want a single video on your the home page of your website to demo your application. What would be the advantage of using this over just embedding a Vimeo video or something?

<comment><USER5> Up to you. Would you rather have full control over the video (encoding quality, size, hosting, player), or a one-stop solution? Each has a place.

(Vimeo explicitly forbids commercial content, or used to, but you could s/vimeo/another_provider).</comment></comment>


Coronavirus: Queen tells UK 'we will succeed' in fight - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52176222 <comment><AUTHOR> So there you have it. There's no arguing with the monarch, after all. :-)

<comment><USER2> Re-read it using the royal 'we'.</comment></comment>


Facebook is building a new campus that includes 1,500 apartments - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/7/7/15935032/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-new-campus-expansion-willow-menlo-park <comment><USER2> The company store returns!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0)</comment>


Sound waves transport a small amount of mass, according to theory - <AUTHOR> https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/23 <comment><USER2> If this negative mass measurement turns out correct, does it mean that a powerful enough sound wave at a frequency outside hearing range could be the answer to the anti-gravity belt?

Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER3> > The new calculation indicates that for ordinary sound waves in most > materials, the mass carried is equal to the sound wave energy multiplied by > a factor that depends on the speed of sound and the medium's mass density.

Since the effect is proportional to the density of the medium, you can't get actual antigravity. The mass is always positive. It can just be lighter than the other matter around it.

Practically speaking, you definitely can't use this for levitation or anything. This is E=mc^2 stuff; you need far more energy than conventional levitation would take. The energy in normal sound waves is very low, so high energy sound waves are very destructive.

For reference, the reference level sound intensity is 1 picowatt per square meter. That's zero decibels, the human audible threshold or the quietest sound we can hear under ideal conditions. A conversation is ~60 decibels, or 1 microwatt/m^2. Hearing damage comes at >90 dB or 1 milliwatt/m^2. >140 dB is quite painful, but it's only 100 watts/m^2. A household extension cord can carry about a kilowatt in less than a square centimeter- millions of times more power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have a nonlinear interaction of a wave with a media, you might have a quadratic term A^2 cos^2(wt). If you remember your trig identities, you'll remember that two sinusoidal functions multiplied together decomposes into the sum of signals at the sum and difference frequencies: cos(w_1 t)cos(w_2 t) = 1/2*(cos((w_1 + w_2)t) + cos((w_1 - w_2)t)).

In this case the sum wave is at twice the frequency of the original wave, and the difference wave has 0 frequency - it is just mass transport. I have a feeling that is what is going on here.

<comment><USER5> Agree. It's standard quadratic medium rectification, and they've dressed it up so much they can't see it. The rectification will be associated with a uniform translation of the sample the sound wave travels through.

<comment><USER6> The article said that it involved interaction with gravity and wasn't from GR, so that doesn't sound like a complete explanation. Nonlinear phonon interaction has already been demonstrated experimentally, but that doesn't seem to include the additional complexity of the interaction with gravity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In fact, sound waves literally means _moving matter_! Transporting mass along the wave propagation is a whole different thing. It depends on the matter that is moving/vibrating. While the propagation of kinetic energy through a medium cannot have mass, the mean mass transport through a closed surface _should_ equal zero. However, if they've discovered that it, in fact, isn't - then it's a big deal.

<comment><USER8> Sound waves are often compared to water waves in this way. The water just moves up and down, and the horizontal movement is (mostly) an illusion.

But everyone knows intuitively that the water is moving horizontally at least a little bit. Some ocean water gets left on the beach or the boardwalk, or perhaps your toy or ball gets swept out to sea on the waves.

Is this the right analogy, or are they talking about something different?

<comment><USER9> The water moves in circles/ellipses.

<comment><USER10> Not in closed circles/ellipses. With finite wave amplitudes, a fluid parcel in wave motion experiences Stokes Drift ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes_drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes_drift)).

In water, this effect arises because the fluid is deeper at the crest of the wave than at the trough, and wave velocities are faster in deeper water. The fluid parcel moves up -> forwards quickly -> down -> backwards more slowly.

I'm curious about whether the researchers here have demonstrated a similar effect for sound waves. Pressure waves have similar dynamics (with faster particle movement at lower pressures), and the researchers mention that this is a finite-amplitude effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was on a plane today thinking about recent research that uses vibrational/waves to interact with objects. Researchers can suspend and manipulate objects with these waves.

I was thinking, why isn't it possible to use this technology to create levitating objects or vehicles???

Like UFO type flight.

Just attach powerful emitters around the craft.

This article makes me think this might be possible.

F= m*a

If waves possess mass, then it could be used as a means of force.

<comment><USER12> "I was thinking, why isn't it possible to use this technology to create levitating objects or vehicles???"

It can, at least if we squint a bit. There is a clear mathematical relationship with all the various bits involved. Compute the amount of energy required to create the amount of sound to levitate, say, something with the mass of a car.

You'll compute an amount of energy sufficient to destroy any conceivable emitter and any object it is targeted at. My intuitive guess is that you'll actually require an amplitude of sound that isn't sound anymore; there's actually a maximum volume that sound can have, because the bottom of the wave can only go to zero pressure. It can't go past vacuum.

Also, I'd have to think about it a bit more, but I believe it would require the emitter to be separate from the thing being levitated... I think trying to self-levitate with a sound emitter would be the mathematical equivalent of trying to fly by pulling up on your hair.

So don't think full-sized UFOs dapperly zipping about with discreet little "blip blip blip" sounds in the distance... think a train car running underneath a levitating car, with a speaker giving off energy comparable to continuously-exploding bunker-buster bombs, if not nuclear bombs.

Definitely better off with a helicopter.

There is a reason all the things you've seen lifted are little bits of styrofoam and ping pong balls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do sound waves have mass or transport/displace matter? The article does seem clear on this to me. Not a physicist so I could be totally wrong here, but having mass is not necessarily the same as being matter, correct? Since matter is made of atoms, and sound is just waves. Maybe someone can help explain this to me.

<comment><USER14> Electrical engineer here. Sounds waves are called transverse waves because their displacement moves in the positive/negative y directions, which appears to give the impression that the wave is a single traveling particle. Instead the sum of the displacement creates the "traveling wave", which is similar to a wave an audience might do at a sporting event. I don't think this article did a great job describing what they meant by mass. I believe they blow the word "Phonon" a bit out of proportion. High energy physics is an incredibly hard topics where very few people are smart enough to read such a paper with confidence so these are just my humble thoughts.

<comment><USER6> I think you might have got transverse swapped with longitudinal, transverse is perpendicular to the axis of propagation (string waves and EM waves), longitudinal is parallel (sound waves in fluid), and mechanical solids can support both (you can have a transverse sound wave in an iron bar but not in the air).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Random idea this brings up... Some of the faster than light drive concepts worked by compressing space in front of the ship and expanding it behind. If sound waves carry mass maybe they could be harnessed and focused in a way to warp space time and impact travel speed? I wonder how the medium impacts the mass?

<comment><USER16> Here's one for ya ~> Which came first: Sound or light?

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

<comment><USER17> does light make sound?

<comment><USER16> Gravitational waves resonate at audio frequencies [1], but I am not aware of any findings on that wrt light.

However, you can convert light into sound through the photoacoustic effect [2], and curiously enough, you can recover sound from images through light [3].

[1] Listen to the sound of the kilonova -- the Gravitational Waves Announcement Chirp [https://www.ligo.org/science/GW- Inspiral.php](https://www.ligo.org/science/GW-Inspiral.php)

[https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-you-can-hear- gravi...](https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-you-can-hear- gravitational-waves-when-things-collide-in-the-universe-92356)

[2] Converting sunlight into audible sound by means of the photoacoustic effect: The Heliophone [pdf] [https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80794107.pdf](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80794107.pdf)

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

[3] Veritasium: Can You Recover Sound From Images? [video] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUzB0L0mSCI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUzB0L0mSCI)

See the research Abe Davis is doing on visual vibration analysis: [http://abedavis.com](http://abedavis.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. Assuming this theory gets verified in duplication studies, I feel there's a good market opportunity for vocalization (voice) therapy in the weight- and inch-loss industry

</comment><comment><USER19> Does the mass have to be transported at the same speed as the sound or like electron drift in a conductor is the mechanistic speed of movement/translation far far slower?

</comment><comment><USER20> Possible explanation for the emdrive?

</comment><comment><USER17> does low frequencies have more mass? ;D

</comment><comment><USER21> Really, "phonon"?

<comment><USER22> Yes, vibrations in a lattice are quantized: they can only occur at a discrete set of frequencies and energies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't read the paper but the physical mechanism for how anything like this manifests is so obvious they'll be embarrassed to miss it: the entire solid must translate a small distance.</comment>


Please support high-density housing in Mountain View next week - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kevinburke/public-comments/blob/master/north-bayshore-mountain-view/2017-06-19-mountain-view-explainer.md?hn <comment><USER2>
      The Environmental Planning Commission is meeting Wednesday June 21, 7pm, at 500 Castro Street.

Here's an experiment: drive from the (yes, it's misnamed) Shoreline Amphitheater to the meeting, leaving at 5 PM.

It's a mere 3 miles.

See how long it takes you with just the current state of traffic. Then, try to imagine evacuating the entire region on short notice (for example, it's all a flood zone). There are only 2 routes to get to the other side of 101.</comment>


Secret Court Ruling Put Tech Companies in Data Bind - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/technology/secret-court-ruling-put-tech-companies-in-data-bind.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Read the court order. It is, as NYT says, heavily redacted, but it's also full of interesting stuff about the FISA process.

</comment><comment><USER3> Decentralization is the only way.

It seems the only way to solve this is to force all big companies to have servers in every country they offer their services to and limit all local traffic to these servers only and be made to comply with local law.

Completely impractical from the internet architectural point of view but that would make information on foreign citizens quite hard to get

That way any information retrieved from these servers and sent to Americans can be considered and act of treason in that country.

Everybody seems to be forgetting that the internet is global and if they are going to comply with one countries laws then they should be forced to comply with every countries laws.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hate the way nytimes misuses "trove" to mean "a valuable collection". The word is from French "trouvé" through the expression "treasure trove", meaning found treasure. It has a technical legal meaning: treasure apparently hidden so long ago that its original owner can be presumed dead and therefore can be kept by the finder.

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

</comment><comment><USER5> > FISA requests can be as broad as seeking court approval to ask a company to > turn over information about the online activities of people in a certain > country.

I wonder what the source for this is. It contrasts interestingly with Google's statement regarding Prism:

> Until this week's reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order > that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand > over millions of users' call records. We were very surprised to learn that > such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing > information about our users' Internet activity on such a scale is completely > false.

If Google received one of these broader requests, wouldn't they have had to comply with it? If the requests can be that broad, it's hard to imagine they never did. It's harder to imagine why they would deny it so strongly if they did receive one.

<comment><USER6> Yes, if they challenged it and lost, they would have to comply with it.

Assuming David Drummond and Larry Page's denial is accurate, there are various possible explanations. Two that leap to mind:

\- the government has so far held off on a broad order for Google because they assumed that Google would challenge such a broad order (whereas given past history Verizon and most other telcos would be likely to go along meekly).

\- perhaps internet-based orders can be targeted more precisely, so Google's gotten requests for tens of thousands of user but not millions

<comment><USER7> > (whereas given past history Verizon and most other telcos would be likely to > go along meekly)

Weren't varous telcos co-operating with this program before it was strictly speaking legal? I seem to recall something about them being given retroactive immunity. Indeed, I'd guess that Verizon's broad metadata order is less a means to really compel Verizon than a convenient sicknote for them, giving immunity and some PR cover in the event of discovery.

<comment><USER6> Yes indeed, almost all the telcos (except for Qwest) cooperated with the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping in the early 2000s. The Protect America Act in 2007 and FISA Amendments Act in 2008 made it legal -- as a bonus the FAA included retroactive immunity for telcos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> " _Small companies are more likely to take the government to court, lawyers said, because they have fewer government relationships and customers, and fewer disincentives to rock the boat._ "

This makes the increasing concentration in IT and communications more worrying.

</comment><comment><USER9> > It also highlights a paradox of Silicon Valley: while tech companies eagerly > vacuum up user data to track their users and sell ever more targeted ads, > many also have a libertarian streak ingrained in their corporate cultures > that resists sharing that data with the government.

Bizarre definition of "libertarian."</comment>


Improbable: A final statement on SpatialOS and Unity - <AUTHOR> https://improbable.io/company/news/2019/01/11/improbable-a-final-statement-on-spatialos-and-unity <comment><USER2> Well this has been interesting to follow.</comment>


The future's looking more Pythonic than ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.divio.com/en/blog/the-futures-looking-more-pythonic-than-ever/ <comment><USER2> <sarcasm>But Django is not JavaScript so you are wrong</scarcasm>

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't even dare comment on what the future of JavaScript will be. I can barely keep up with its recent past.</comment></comment>


Nadella: Microsoft will sell war tech to democracies to "protect freedoms" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/nadella-microsoft-will-sell-war-tech-to-democracies-to-protect-freedoms/ <comment><USER2> I understand why people are uncomfortable with this, but in the end I'm with Socrates. If we accept the protection and benefits of a society, it is incumbent on us to contribute to it's defence. Furthermore in a democracy we get to vote, and in doing so agree to be bound by it's outcome even if we disagree with it. That's the deal, like it or not.

Of course that doesn't mean we can't protest, or campaign for a different outcome, or explore legal means to prevent or limit policies we disagree with. Those are legitimate forms of engagement, they're taking a stand and taking some personal moral responsibility I can respect. Ultimately though, our freedoms and those of our allies and neighbours have to be fought for if we are going to keep them. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait could not be allowed to stand. Russia's annexation of Crimea and bullying of Ukraine should not be allowed to stand. Britain's occupation of the Chagos islands probably shouldn't be allowed to stand either, it's not a perfect world.

Of course there are extremely complex, dangerous issues that are hard to resolve out there. Those problems won't go away by refusing to think or worry about them and refusing to do anything about it. Inaction is just as much of a moral choice with it's own potentially catastrophic consequences.

I'm not advising anyone what to do. Sure, make up your own mind. But I don't think it's obvious that refusing to engage is a morally superior position.

<comment><USER3> > contribute to it's defence

What defense? Against whom? When was the last time the United States had to defend itself against invaders?

We've grown accustomed to how military technology (for killing people) is called "defense". It sounds benign. It feels better to work on advancing "defense" technology than on building tools to kill people.

Pretty much all "Defense" technology after WWII has only been used to invade and occupy other countries (by means of killing people).

<comment><USER4> > When was the last time the United States had to defend itself against > invaders?

Every. Day.

The fact that you are able to ask this question means the military is doing this job well and most people don't even notice.

<comment><USER5> Where, when, how? Reference needed.

<comment><USER6> Against our very dangerous neighbors Mexico and Canada, obviously.

<comment><USER7> I just realized a wall is actually a defensive technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of the "don't want to work on killing people" rhetoric is arguably a bit naive. First, sometimes governments legitimately need to use weapons to defend us, and they don't grow on trees. More relevant to big tech specifically, some of the technologies (facial recognition, AR etc.) can legitimately claim to help improve targeting (and thus reduce chances of killing innocent bystanders). It's rarely black and white. At the end of the day, if you are an employee who (quite legitimately) is uncomfortable with it, is it ok to petition company should stop, as opposed to simply taking your labor elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't like it. But it raises another problem: What's a democracy? Is Turkey a democracy? If not, why not? Is it a flawed [1] democracy then?

[1] Like the US? [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/america- de...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/america-democracy- rated-donald-trump-not-fully-democratic-us-president-report-the- economist-a8195121.html)

<comment><USER10> Democracy is a dictatorship of the majority.

The problem with our form of democracy is that once voted in, the winner is given power.

Instead, power should be expendable.

Votes that a party wins should be able to be used to either to push through legislation or to defeat legislation, and once those votes are used, they're gone. This would lead politicians to be much more careful about how they expend their power, spending votes in what they really want, and spending votes to stop what they really disagree with.

Closely related concept is that it should not be "one person, one vote". Instead, everyone should get 100 or 1000 votes to distribute across the politicians/parties that represent their many interests and values.

<comment><USER11> This already happens in most countries. No one votes for a lone representative's crazy proposal.

I notice something, with your proposal one person can keep proposing 100 to 1000 votes to make all taxes go to them, effectively killing the government.

<comment><USER10> Actually it should definitely be the case that a line crazy proposal can be put up by an independent politician, who backs it with the votes they won. If other politicians oppose it, then they can spend their votes/power on defeating it. But of course if they spend all their votes on defeating things then they get nothing done. So so small initiatives would be able to get through, that currently cannot because there is currently no cost to politician opposing things.

Expendable power is the idea, not unlimited power, which is what we have now.

<comment><USER11> Well, having trillions of dollars go to one person instead of defeating a bill because a politician wants to cling to power. That's.. unrealistic.

In fact, if I offer 1 billion dollars to each politician that votes for my bill of 1 trillion dollars for me? Well, I get 1 trillion dollars, and politicians get a cut. I keep at least 600 billion dollars. Still overall a loss for democracy.

I think culture is the issue. Independence of judiciary and anti-corruption investigations will lead to a golden democracy. Few countries can accomplish this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If/when the missiles start flying, I'd like to feel that the US systems are built by America's best technology companies, which yes, very much includes Microsoft.

Other large, economically successful countries are spending huge on military tech and have their best people on it.

You'll care when it matters.

If you've got a fundamental point of principle disagreement with the idea of there being a military, and the need for countries to project power, then you should perhaps consider working in a different corner of the it industry.

If anything, the world is heading to a much more militarized future. Rising economic powers are spending vast amount of money on building modern naval capability. Only a fool would think that now is the time to turn away from the countries need for increased military capability.

<comment><USER12> Is nobody else here old enough to remember the 80s and MAD? The doctrine back then was that once the missiles start flying you have about four minutes left before every city in the US is nuked.

We have to be realistic about the actual threats, which are either trivial or overwhelming. There's no scope for the US to fight a roughly equal opponent.

<comment><USER13> Skirmish and proxy wars can be carried out without turning to the nuclear option. For instance Vietnam was in part a proxy war between the US and China -- both nuclear powers at the time. Even outright war might not result in the nuclear option if it looks unlikely to threaten a nation's sovereignty.

There is asymmetric warfare. Imagine a scenario where a large unit of e.g. terrorists attack a city. Imagine what just 100 armed and armor wearing individuals could do. This would likely result in a military response and the skill/capability of the military is largely going to determine the outcome and 'efficiency' there.

Finally there is also the issue that nuclear deterrence may not always be a thing. Anti-missile technology is constantly improving and we could develop even more efficient means of developing any sort of concentrated nuclear threat. If and when we reach this time, the world's geopolitical equilibrium would radically shift overnight and trying to play catch-up from that point would be unlikely to be effective.

<comment><USER12> > Vietnam was in part a proxy war between the US and China

Perhaps; but why? What, ultimately, was the point of that? In whose interests was it fought? Did the loss of Vietnam (now an independent country) make any long term difference to the US?

> Imagine a scenario where a large unit of e.g. terrorists attack a city. > Imagine what just 100 armed and armor wearing individuals could do

City in the continental US, or are we talking about somewhere like Raqqa here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The normalization of obvious lies in corporate communication. They are doing it for money and not selling to "bad" governments for maybe ethical, maybe PR, maybe staff protest reasons.

<comment><USER15> Not selling to "bad guys" can also be influenced by the state, directly or more often not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Democracies can be just as bad as anything else if there is no protection from tyranny of the majority.

<comment><USER17> Democracy is exactly about majority.

<comment><USER16> Yes, obviously. And sometimes that's the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As we have seen in the case of the US even democratically elected govts do reprehensible stuff like the Iraq invasion and the Contras.

<comment><USER19> I think the focus, then, should be on holding elected officials accountable for their actions. I don't think Nadella's argument is particularly persuasive, but we should all understand our way of life is worth fighting for, and in those justified circumstances our government should have the required tools to carry that job out, no matter how unfortunate war is.

<comment><USER20> So if India and Pakistan, both democracies, go to war over Kashmir, whose way of life is worth fighting for?

<comment><USER21> Pakistan is a faux-democracy at best. Their army controls the government[1], and I would rather not talk about their proxy war against India and terrorist funding, given my strong bias towards my country. Perhaps a neutral party can elaborate.

India, on the other hand, is a melting pot of multiple cultures, ethnicities, and religions that have managed to co-exist harmoniously, despite the odd riot or skirmish. Based on this alone, I would support India's "way of life" to be worth fighting for.

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

<comment> saiya-jin I tend to agree with you, I love India and even if it has many flaws (I think corruption is the worst), it is fascinating and very diverse place which is considered biggest democracy in the world. Can't comment on Pakistan since I was never there, but I would expect more homogeneous place. And I guess everybody heard about ISI supporting terrorist groups and fueling problems in Kashmir.

I don't think though it makes sense to try to paint every single conflict as good-vs-bad, democracy-vs-dictatorship, since you can easily have full democracies fighting each other for any possible reason (imagine potentially UK-France, Yugoslavia breakup or anything else)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Si vis pacem, para bellum"—if you wish for peace, prepare for war.

</comment><comment><USER23> A lot of people are switching banks because they don't like that their current bank is investing in war.

I think Microsoft is going to lose users over this. Not much for sure, but it's naive to think people don't care.

<comment><USER24> Yeah not really actually, people don't care everyone is on their phones reads this once and then moves on. Its not the 70s any more, just because people say on social media they are going to do something doesn't mean they are indeed following through... I do sincerely wish you were right, but sadly you are mistaken.

And let's face it, The military is a big part of the American institution - you can disagree and argue against it but that will not change reality. They also have the biggest pocket book, so Google, Amazon, Microsoft will always do business with them. If you disagree - leave Silicon Valley or those companies and join an NGO - I am sure they need technical help these days and cannot afford the talent.

<comment><USER25> > Google, Amazon, Microsoft will always do business with them

Really? Always? What about the Project Maven cancellation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> While I admire pacifists, the sad reality of the world is sometimes you have to stand and fight. Is making tech for war in the interest of ending the conflict, and dying, as quickly as possible "for the greater good"?

<comment><USER27> Stand up and fight for what? Most people are completely blind to the realities and driving forces behind various conflicts. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times et al are usually not telling an accurate or comprehensive story.

<comment><USER28> And yet, we have fairly good evidence from the relatively recent past that sometimes you do need to stand up and fight, and it may be for the safety of yourself, your faimily or even for the safety of people across the world.

WWII was a thing, the Nazi party came to power and started pushing their agenda, and the holocaust actually happened. And the farther back in history you go, the more it becomes apparent that it's not really all that much of a statistical outlier except in scale.

That we don't need to continuously make sure we're strong enough to defend ourselves is a fiction that people in countries with strong governments that enforce the rule of law like to tell themselves. That's only possible because the government is there to be the ultimate arbiter, and as libertarians will quickly point out, that's only possible because they have, and ruthlessly enforce, their monopoly on violence (to our collective benefit, IMO).

No such thing exists for nations between themselves, except for pacts like the U.N. or NATO, and that's not a solution, it's just kicking the problem up the chain so we can act like it's not our problem.

<comment><USER29> If the US is worried about China and Russia it could:

* stop making China rich. All the stuff they're building is built with US money.

* vote for a president that isn't more friendly towars the US's traditional adversary Russia than towards European allies.

Military hardware is useless if the politicians continue to make strategic blunders.

<comment><USER28> Economic and military strength are related, and one can lead to the other, but it generally seems to be delayed when going from economic strength to military strength (because it's a matter of actually investing in developing new technology or buying it).

Do you think not helping China as much economically (read as: hurt us both economically to suppress them somewhat) would prevent their research of military technology, including both hardware and software/network capabilities?

I disagree with how the current administration is dealing with Russia and China, as I disagree with a great many (most!) the things they do, but I don't think that really affects the calculus of the equation on whether we should continue to invest in our own military technology.

I do not _want_ it to be this way, it's just how I perceive it to be, and as much as people have taken exception with my statements, I'm not seeing a lot of arguments that explain how it's wrong or can be escaped.

> Military hardware is useless if the politicians continue to make strategic > blunders.

It's also useless if it doesn't exist. Available but unused when needed is a step up from not available when needed. The ultimate outcome might be the same, but one is a precursor to "available and used when needed" and the other isn't.

<comment><USER30> > Do you think not helping China as much economically (read as: hurt os both > economically to suppress them somewhat) would prevent their research of > military technology, including both hardware and software/network > capabilities?

Obviously yes. It's absolutely evident that the large majority of the economy of China is based on export towards rich countries. Without US investments China would be extremely poor.

Yet, the US decided to embargo communist Cuba (and Vietnam) and invest heavily in "communist" China. The latter being very capitalistic.

<comment><USER28> > Obviously yes. It's absolutely evident that the large majority of the > economy of China is based on export towards rich countries. Without US > investments China would be extremely poor.

You say obviously, yet fail to link why making China poorer would significantly affect military investment and which type. How much money does it take to throw people at software? And people are something China has a LOT of.

Depending on how you measure it, China's economy is between the 1st and 3rd largest in the world (I think first largest is a stretch, but there's apparently some metrics which rank it that way based on purchasing power).

The United states is not the only country that China exports to. It's a large chunk, and it would hurt, but as we're seeing, China is not willing to let the United States dictate everything in the relationship. Why would they let the United States use economics to tell them they can't research what they would describe as technologies used to protect themselves when they aren't willing to do so for lesser reasons, as evidenced by the current tariffs?

At most, we'll cause them to hide their activity. Why would they stop in light of the aggressive stance by other countries to dictate their future? North Korea certainly doesn't seem to like it, and China is in a position of _much_ more power.

> Yet, the US decided to embargo communist Cuba (and Vietnam) and invest > heavily in "communist" China. The latter being very capitalistic.

Well, yeah. Because doing otherwise hurts us economically, and economics drives a huge amount of decision making. And barring a concerted world effort to to China to stop investing in any military tech, while the rest of the world would undoubtedly continue, I doubt China would be willing to stop. It's not all that different than if some nations came to the United States and told us to stop researching and building up our military. We'd tell them it's none of their business and they have no say in what we do. Why would we expect China to act any differently?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Stallman: You have to protect freedom.

Nadella: We've got it.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Some 250 staff are said to have signed the letter

So 0.2% of 134,944. That takes vocal minority to a whole new level.

</comment><comment><USER33> It sounds like they're doing this with very good intentions and so they will surely pave the way to... somewhere... a better world maybe? I don't know, that doesn't quite sound right...

</comment><comment><USER34> Are we also upset about how many military computers run Windows?

</comment><comment><USER35> Freedoms such as killing millions a year with opiates? It's all about letting the big global companies continue to operate in those countries, right?

</comment><comment> m-p-3 All I can foresee is the erosion of freedoms..

</comment><comment><USER36> Meanwhile, I've seen today a video of a new product from a Russian manufacturer (Kalashnikov), of Kamikaze drones.

I applaud Nadella.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm just surprised people think that the Hololens is a useful piece of technology.

<comment><USER38> Imagine getting a Windows update pop up while in the middle of a firefight in the desert.

<comment><USER39> And having it clog your supply lines, unrequested and unwanted, at the expense of needed materiel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The contested sale of 100,000 HoloLens sets....

I think Quark has a hand in this, somehow.

</comment><comment><USER41> could this be tied to India and Pakistan conflict? Maybe Nadella senses $$$ for Microsoft given his connections with India.

</comment><comment><USER42> Github is now a defense contractor

</comment><comment><USER43> tl;dr: Microsoft will sell to any USA-approved entity because their number one goal is to maximize shareholder value as a USA-based corporation.

Unless they're a public benefit corporation, an FFRDC, or one of any variety of non-profits, this is their only goal. (probably missed a few, but you get the point)

\---

Obvious point aside, here's a challenge: if this bothers you as an entrepreneur, start your next idea off as a public benefit corporation or equivalent, or roll your existing firm into one. Tread new ground. Need inspiration? [https://www.navapbc.com](https://www.navapbc.com)

Further reading: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public- benefit_corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-benefit_corporation)

<comment><USER44> In practice, there are a lot of ways to arguably maximize shareholder value, so this gives management a lot of leeway to do what they want. For-profit company cultures can differ drastically.

The real driver is stock options and other ways that employees (including the CEO) get rewarded for making the stock go up. This does not necessarily mean that it's the company's only goal any more than getting paid necessarily makes you a soulless worker drone who will do anything for money. But it does tend to encourage people to celebrate profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So how come SpaceX employees don't revolt over the use of their rockets for military payloads?

Elon Musk is literally out there launching a satellite surveillance network to help the military spy on the entire planet, meanwhile Microsoft employees are getting hung up on a headset that will maybe improve their aim, or maybe lead to fewer deaths in the field.

Besides that, was there ever a time where Microsoft wasn't selling their services to the U.S. military? It's hard to resist a contract from the world's largest employer.

<comment><USER46> > So how come SpaceX employees don't revolt over the use of their rockets for > military payloads?

Vonce ze rockets are up, who cares vhere zey come down? Zat's not my department, says Wernher von^W^W SpaceX employee #4512.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why is anyone surprised by this? For Microsoft employees to suddenly worry about the morality of their employer is somewhat laughable.

<comment><USER48> Who is surprised?

To the contrary, it seems that you are the one who is surprised about the idea employees should and can put pressure on management.

You write "suddenly worry about the morality of their employer", but presumably most of the Microsoft employees _didn 't_ sign up to work for a company which directly worked on weapons development, because:

> The employees behind the open letter say that even with these contracts, > Microsoft itself was never engaged in weapons development; it was selling > general-purpose software that others then used and adapted. The IVAS > contract is perceived to be different, with Microsoft, rather than third > parties, working to increase battlefield effectiveness and lethality.

Perhaps that's the surprise? Should all employees expect that their employer can become a weapons developer, and not give any pushback should that happen?

<comment><USER49> > presumably most of the Microsoft employees didn't sign up to work for a > company which directly worked on weapons development

can't people pack up and leave? i mean, there's probably a queue of other people who will happily work for MS.

<comment><USER48> Can't Microsoft _not_ do weapons development? I mean, there's probably a bunch of other profitable projects they can work on.

But to the larger point, employees have many ways to provide pushback when management is doing something they don't like. They can complain to their boss, complain to HR, take it up at shareholder meetings, and much, much more.

While there is the view that the only possibilities are to follow orders or quit, that isn't very effective management practice for programming.

In the intermediate, it means people are no longer enthusiastic about their work, leading to worse quality. People in most fields, not just software development, do more than their job specifically requires. "Rule-to-work" is one way to push back, by doing only what one's job requires.

In extremes, it leads to strikes, as you see see with teachers in the last few years.

Or even sabotage.

These all might reduce shareholder value.

<comment><USER49> > Can't Microsoft not do weapons development?

do you think this question is being asked in the Syrian arms factories? just seems extremely naive to me.

it's in the same vein as "can't we all just stop causing global warming?" no, of course not.

> But to the larger point, employees have many ways to provide pushback when > management is doing something they don't like. They can complain to their > boss, complain to HR, take it up at shareholder meetings, and much, much > more.

Best form of protest is to quit. the worst possible effect for any company is to lose an employee. not for the employee to protest or whatnot, but to actually lose him to a competitor.

<comment><USER48> I'm sorry, but I don't see the relevancy to Syrian arms factories. Is your logic that all companies should be engaged in weapons development because there are Syrian arms factories?

Nor do I see how my comment is any more naive than your earlier one. (Indeed, my comment was meant to highlight why I didn't find your earlier comment persuasive.)

I think that not only is your analogy to global warming incorrect, but it's hard to make any good argument by analogy. Please instead make a counter- argument on the topic itself.

You write "Best form of protest is to quit".

The history of labor actions show that isn't always true.

Strikes - in effect, a threat of collective quitting rather than the slow effect of individual, uncoordinated quitting - can be more effective. (Though of course not always.)

I even pointed to the recent teacher strikes as a counter-example, so it's not like you needed to guess what I was referring to.

As another example, do you think that the best way for me to object to racist practices as my place of employment is to simply quit? US civil rights law says that not only do I have the right to object, and publicize my objection, but that my actions are protected, such that it is illegal for the company to retaliate.

Consider Google recent decision to end its relationship with the DoD's Project Maven. A dozen staff resigned, while thousands signed a petition in protest.

Do you think Google would have ended its relationship if only a dozen people resigned and no one else spoke up against it while being employed? How many people do you think would have needed to resign in order for Google to change its mind?

<comment><USER49> the whole "stop weapons development" seems a bit naive to me because these weapons will be developed no matter what. i'd just prefer for Microsoft to do it, rather than another much less scrutinised/less exposed outfit. i would like to bring everything out in the open rather than hiding it in some corner of the economy.

regarding quitting, I would assume that for any huge corp it's a mixture of staff resigning + publicity + the general "root for the underdogs". but for any other smaller and/or less public corp, I would again assume that staff resigning would count a lot more than any petition no one will see/care about.

<comment><USER48> To be more precise, this isn't "stop weapons development" as a general statement but "stop the newly stated weapons development program at Microsoft".

It seems like your argument is that since there are 'Syrian arms factories' then every company in the US should be involved in weapons development (presumably so long as it is profitable?).

And therefore it seems like you think that every employee should expect that their company may switch to weapons systems development, and so therefore no one should object should that happen?

Your statement "[X] will be developed no matter what" has been the justification for a huge amount of unethical practices. Just last month I saw [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/space- ch...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/space-childbirth- babies/579064/) about a company trying to justify organizing a birth in orbit by 2024 :

> Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, one of SpaceLife Origin's advisers and Edelbroek's > cousin, is convinced that if this company doesn't do it, another will. ... > "I think at some point this will happen anyway, so we better do it in a very > open and transparent manner," Zwenne says. "If it's somebody working on his > own, in isolation, not in contact with the rest of the world, you may > discover that something happens and you can't reverse it."

Yet that project is, by modern medical standards, completely unethical. I'm sure it would not be hard to find many other unethical examples.

Remember too that your argument would also justify using chemical weapons again in WWII, and justify a nuclear first strike, and justify all sorts of other barbaric military practices. We should torture our enemies first, because we know they would torture our troops if they could, and it's better that American Freedom does it first. /s

I therefore cannot accept that as a valid argument, and instead see it as being very naive.

You write: "i would like to bring everything out in the open"

Well, that's not going to happen, so what's your backup plan? That is, name one open military weapons project.

Regarding "regarding quitting", since Google and Microsoft _are_ huge corporations, your reply acknowledges that it can be effective for employees to protest without (or before) actually quitting, in order to change policy. Which is what you are seeing here.

Why then are you saying that it isn't effective?

It does not appear that you know much about the history and effect of labor actions, so I do not believe anyone should trust your assertion that the "Best form of protest is to quit".

<comment><USER49> > And therefore it seems like you think that every employee should expect that > their company may switch to weapons systems development, and so therefore no > one should object should that happen?

This assertion is so preposterous I'm not going to reply to it. You have personal issues with weapons systems development. I get it. But why should anyone stay with a company that isn't to their liking? Is it a sense of nostalgia as to "how things were before"? Is it peer pressure? Companies changes, products change, people come and go. It's the course of life.

>You write: "i would like to bring everything out in the open" Well, that's not going to happen, so what's your backup plan?

It's already out in the open. No backup plan needed. That's what happens when the likes of MS or Amazon are involved. Again, I'd rather keep it that way. You want to send it back to Raytheon so that we don't hear about it again. No, thank you.

> Regarding "regarding quitting", since Google and Microsoft are huge > corporations, your reply acknowledges that it can be effective for employees > to protest without (or before) actually quitting, in order to change policy. > Which is what you are seeing here. Why then are you saying that it isn't > effective?

One can quit and then tell the world about what's going on. That would make the prevailing narrative very convincing. Or one could continue to collect their paycheck while at the same time protest. Making their narrative extremely skewed, even hypocritical.

<comment><USER48> You've never answered my question, and the only clues you've given lead to that 'preposterous' interpretation.

"You have personal issues with weapons systems development"

To quote you, "Preposterous." Where have I ever said or even implied that?

"But why should anyone stay with a company that isn't to their liking?"

Of course they shouldn't. But the entire point of my comments is the flip side - why shouldn't an employee try to change the direction of a company?

There's plenty of history to show that that's possible.

Your last paragraph is simply that there are only two options: work without public complaint or quit. Over and over again, labor history shows that other options exist and are effective.

I would argue even more effective. On the one hand we have the Oakland teachers' strike, where the teachers got what they wanted - [http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/this-is-why- oakland-t...](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/this-is-why-oakland- teachers-are-on-strike.html) .

On the other hand, we have Oklahoma, where over 1/3 of the teachers have left over six years, due to lack of funding, lack of respect, and excess workload - [http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2019/02/ok-voting- with-60...](http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2019/02/ok-voting- with-60000-feet.html) . But in that case the teachers individually walked out.

The narrative of the collectively striking teachers of Oakland has been much more convincing than the narrative of the individually leaving teachers of Oklahoma in making policy change.

"It's already out in the open."

Umm. Okay, so please define "open", since it appears to be "whatever Microsoft does which Raytheon wouldn't have done."

Microsoft doesn't have a long, traditional history of being "open" either, as the AARD code, the so-called 'Halloween documents', and others show.

But suppose they are now "open". What is the basis of that openness? Is it part of the corporate charter, or employee contract? If they decide to not be open, or are found to not be open, what should the employees do?

It sounds like your only response is "quit", which leaves them in the same place they are now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Its an interesting conundrum. I dont have an answer for it.

Democracies are (supposed to be) representative of the masses. A few angry employee's in a tech company are not.

Democratically speaking they dont have a right to demand a company doesn't make software/hardware used in war. Shareholders on the other hand are a perfectly acceptable place to object.

</comment><comment><USER51> Naughty naughty. Selling to DOD is one thing. Becoming an international arms dealer makes me willing to divest Microsoft and everything Microsoft hosted. Ahem _Github_ _Linkedin_ ...</comment>


Kiss Space Goodbye - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/kiss_space_goodbye.php

<comment><USER2> Because all things that are the same stay the same right?</comment>


Researchers confirm that narwhals and belugas can interbreed - <AUTHOR> https://news.ku.dk/all_news/2019/06/danish-researchers-confirm-that-narwhals-and-belugas-can-interbreed/ <comment><USER2> Beluga and narwhals are surprisingly tolerant with each other [1] but whales have "cultures". What mother eats is eaten by the offspring. A different diet points towards a captive animal. Hybrids in dolphins happen with relative ease in captivity. Maybe related with beluga experiments by Russian navy, maybe the former inhabitant of a zoo.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJhGf7S4cSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJhGf7S4cSQ)

<comment><USER3> A captive whale is a very interesting theory. Could the different diet be the result of being fed by humans?

I found this[0] interesting story from April about a tame beluga that approached a Norwegian fishing boat. It was wearing a tight harness, apparently meant for a camera, with markings that suggest a Russian origin.

I also found a very recent case where a Russian company illegally caught nearly 97 belugas and orcas and kept them in pens[1]. 8 of them were to be released today. This company supplies whales to aquariums.

[0] [https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2019/04/29/strangely- behavi...](https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2019/04/29/strangely-behaving- beluga-wearing-a-russian-harness-raises-alarm-in-norway/)

[1] [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/russia- mo...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/russia-moves-orcas- and-belugas-from-whale-jail/)

<comment><USER2> Could be. Diet study in skulls is all about isotopes. Different isotopes mean different preys, or preys from different trophic chains that in practice mean different locations.

Would be interesting to know details about the death of the animal and how old and how was preserved the skull. If is a very old skull could mean also that the ecosystem in the same area has changed, and the whale feeded on preys that became rare later. Is well known that fisheries flourished in both world wars by the presence of submarines and frigates. Offshore fishing was a very dangerous activity in those years, so our common "war against fishes" stopped for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to say the teeth are absolutely fascinating.

> The hybrid skull has a set of long, spiraling and pointed teeth, that are > angled horizontally.

Narwhals do not not have teeth (beyond two vestigial ones behind their spiraled tusk). Belugas have 40, which are vertical. This cross-breed ended up with 18, _spiraled, horizontal teeth_. Which it seemingly adapted to raking the sea floor with.

</comment><comment><USER5> Huh, narwhals and belugas aren't even in the same genus. Most well-known hybrids like tigers and lions, horses and donkeys, and tomatoes and potatoes have been between species in the same genus. Maybe this discovery will prompt biologists to place narwhals and belugas in the same genus? It must be lonely being the sole member of a genus, after all.

<comment><USER6> by a strict definition of species, this means they are in fact the same species.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure there is a strict definition of species. Take a ring species where A and B can interbreed and B and C can interbreed but A and C cannot. If some event kills all the B's, then you have two species instead of one. That you can make new species by killing only seems quite odd.

<comment><USER8> "Ring species" are a fascinating thing, they really turn out to be a litmus test for testing notions of speciation.

I think it turns out just that "species" is just a human construct. It's not something hard-and-fast that nature hews to. It's nothing but a construct we use for convenience in our drive for labels.

<comment><USER9> I think colors are a good analogy. Colors exist and are distinct at certain distances from each other, but things start to get blurry the closer two colors are to each other. For instance, is turquoise blue? Is it green? It's kinda both.

Same with organisms and populations. The farther away (evolutionarily speaking) two populations of interbreeding organisms are, the easier it is to distinguish them into different species. The closer they are, the more things start to look like turquoise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing I'm curious about is how the researchers even tell that the hybrid is a bottom dweller. They have only seen the skull, not what was inside the hybrid's stomach. Can some biologist shed some light here?

<comment><USER10> So I was still thinking about this question while taking a shower. Did the researchers come to that conclusion by analyzing food stuff that was still lodged in the jaws?

Oops, upon rereading, I just spotted "isotope analysis". How different are isotopes between water-column diet and bottom diet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Move aside Liger.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very, very carefully

</comment><comment><USER13> What are the offspring called...

narlugas

belwhals

..?

<comment><USER14> It depends, probably. I know with big cats it depends on which species is the father and mother.

Tigons and Ligers are both a thing.

<comment><USER15> With regard to horses and donkeys a "mule" is the offspring of a male donkey and female horse [1], while a "hinny" is the offspring of a female donkey and a male horse [2].

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

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

<comment><USER16> TIL: Hinny

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> reddit 10 years ago would've been all over this.

Q: "what time does the narwhal bacon?"

A: "when the belugas are near!"

<comment><USER18> But, they bacon at midnight

<comment><USER17> now we know why :)</comment></comment></comment>


How Acupuncture May Work - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703630304575270792112727252-lMyQjAxMTAwMDAwMTEwNDEyWj.html

<comment><USER2> These methods for how acupuncture may work seem to be reaching, especially for something that has been shown to be no more effective than a placebo. Some better reading on acupuncture may be this great book that I read: [http://www.amazon.com/Snake-Oil-Science-Complementary- Altern...](http://www.amazon.com/Snake-Oil-Science-Complementary- Alternative/dp/0195383427/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275404320&sr=1-1) Also you can check out the links at this great website: <http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/acupuncture/>

<comment><USER3> Interesting that you mention placebo, given the criticism it has been receiving lately (e.g. placebo studies often rely on patients stating how they feel, rather than measuring chemical levels). The study published in Nature essentially opens the possibility to study acupuncture without relying on patient-reported data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Flaccid lede. A very flat and not particularly informative article.

<comment><USER3> The paper on Nature is much more in-depth, if you're interested.

[http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.25...](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.2562.html)

This is actually a somewhat big milestone for acupuncture. It's been historically accused of being snake oil because there was no known mechanism of action. Now there is.

This part of the study is particularly promising:

"Acupuncture combined with pharmacological suppression of AMP deaminase activity should theoretically increase the availability of adenosine and thereby enhance the clinical benefits of acupuncture. As a proof of principle, we found that mice treated with a Food and Drug Administration approved deaminase inhibitor, deoxycoformycin, exhibited more potent increases in adenosine and benefitted from a longer-lasting suppression of chronic pain following acupuncture."</comment></comment>


Would You Like to Decide What Online Ads to See? - <AUTHOR> https://youadnet.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is the draft version of new online ad service which I hope will be useful for all 3 parties involved: advertisers, publishers and all other people who surfing the web. Everyone will be able to specify what is interested to him currently and see only ads about the topics which were configured. Advertiser can show ads only to people who really interested in it, so even small business can afford it. Publisher can show ads to the people who want to see them, which will improve user experience to their site as well as will provide support to it. What do you think about it guys? I would appreciate any opinion on this idea and the site.</comment>


Canadian Tech Is Having a Moment - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-14/canadian-tech-is-having-a-moment-the-trick-is-not-to-mess-it-up <comment><USER2> "Silicon Valley venture firms are hustling to Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal and Vancouver to invest in Canadian startups."

What is the Montreal tech scene like for an Anglophone?

<comment><USER3> Very very fun.

You don't get paid like an ultra rockstar that lives in a different strata of society than other people, but it being Montreal where rent is affordable and events like the International Jazz Fest, Tam Tams, or drinking wine in one of the many parks is free, and you move all over the island with high quality public transport, it's for the better.

However, it feels a little bit hollow sometimes and like not a lot of real tech work is being done. Lots of stuff geared towards yuppies and going to coffee shops and renting pads and shopping, not a lot of really groundbreaking stuff.

There's gaming companies (eg: Ubisoft), old ex-startups (eg: Shopify), new startups (eg: Transit), Google and Microsoft have offices here, big investment into machine learning research in local universities, etc. It's a college town... for 5 universities... in the downtown of a great city.

There's probably better places to go if you want a super prestige-track career, but I doubt there's many places that are more fun or better balanced.

<comment><USER4> Though it should be noted that Quebec has much stricter immigration rules than most of Canada.

To elaborate, Quebec has additional requirements to verify your ability to integrate into society. Here's an article that explains some of the differences:

[http://correresmidestino.com/immigrating-to-quebec-still- wor...](http://correresmidestino.com/immigrating-to-quebec-still-worth-it/)

<comment><USER5> Can you explain this?

I'm Canadian and unless I'm missing something, or just really don't understand our immigration policies, once you are in Canada you can move where ever you want.

I mean provinces, including Quebec, should have absolutely zero say as to if you can live in them once you are in Canada.

<comment><USER6> It's been a long time since I looked at this, but IIRC under some visas the federal system gives you extra points for selecting certain provinces. The rationale is that otherwise every immigrant will choose Toronto or Vancouver. Under those visas, you have to be resident in the province you picked for a certain amount of time (again IIRC I think is was 1 year) as a condition of your visa. Quebec is one of the provinces where you can get extra points to get in, but only if you satisfy the Quebec requirements (which generally means French language skill or agreeing to take French language classes, I think).

Disclaimer: when I say it's been a long time since I looked at this, I'm talking 20 years or so. Things have probably changed (or I have misremembered). But it gives you some idea anyway. In my recollection, if you choose not to get extra points for selecting special regions to settle in, then you can settle anywhere you like. Programmers, doctors, nurses etc almost never need the extra points, so it's kind of moot in this discussion.

<comment><USER7> I don't know but suspect this is no longer the case, Quebec still offers the ability to more or less buy citizenship, even though the federal program was shut down. All you have to do is say you "intend to" settle in Quebec (wink wink) - they get the financial benefits, and the majority of the participants immediately move to Toronto or Vancouver, typically buying a few houses upon arrival as a store of cash. Of course, this is all "speculation", as the Canadian government deems the statistics on this sort of thing to be none of the business of citizens, who are the ones who experience the positive or negative consequences.

[http://www.investorimmigrationcanada.com/](http://www.investorimmigrationcanada.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd really like to see some comparative historical coverage of the development (and fall) of US technology hubs. There's been some recent discussion, but I can think of a few:

* New England, 19th century. Early manufacturing and milltown works, first water-powered, later steam.

* Late 19th century industrialisation. Edison (New Jersey), Bethlehem and U.S. Steel (Bethlehem and Pittsburgh, PA)

* Early 20th century: Detroit

* Mid-20th century: Rochester & Buffalo, NY, Boston / Route 128, Research Triangle Park / NC, Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center, Santa Monica (RAND).

* Late 20th / early 21st: Seattle, Boulder, CO, Austin, TX, and of course, Silicon Valley / SF-SJ corridor.

If anyone has some solid recommended reading, I'm all ears. Or eyes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Brain drain will continue until compensation in Canada rises to match compensation in the US.

<comment><USER10> If you factor in health care costs, housing costs, maternity leave, etc. Canada is a better deal. Our political climate isn't as toxic either.

<comment><USER11> A quick estimation [1] shows that a $130000 salary in the US is equivalent to around $105k / 139k CAD. There are some of the top companies in the SV who pays this as base salary, is is there 139k CAD companies in Montreal? What's the highest base salary for the local Netflix/Google/... of Canada?

[1] [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$130000+in+San+Francis...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$130000+in+San+Francisco+in+Montreal+Canada)

<comment><USER12> I've done those sorts of calculations before and that aligns with roughly what I figured out at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe Trump will end the TN visa. Boy, then you'll see the canada tech scene - especially Vancouver, blow up.

<comment><USER14> Yeah sometimes I wonder if Canada anticipated the massive brain drain the TN visa has ended up being. It would be ironic if Trump shut it down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We are a small (2+ person) consulting company in the distributed and data spaces. We've been at it for 8 months and understand the needs in enterprises after working as principal consultants for the time. We have a good model, and there is demand, so we're looking to go through our first round of hiring but need a small investment to make the leap. If you're looking for somewhere fast and low risk to turn some money around... :)

<comment><USER16> Can you add some more details?

<comment><USER15> get at us through redelastic.com if you want to reach out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Calgary's a city to keep an eye on too. Companies like IStock photo and SMART were built here. And now Benevity's a big up and comer.

<comment><USER18> Also RocketSpace will be opening their first Canadian office in Calgary. The local government is starting to push for a bigger tech industry and add diversity away from the oil/gas industry that has dominated the city. Also the climate isn't so bad with plenty of sunshine and warm Chinook winds occasionally during the winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What is the tech scene at Halifax, Nova Scotia? I am landing there in a few weeks and have been researching about it for a while. I could not get much through the Ask HN[0] post I submitted a while ago.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14428966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14428966)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm always weary of "having a moment" stories. It often means the author is going to try to string together unrelated events into a narrative.

<comment><USER20> Clickbait, vapid article.

Canada will "begin to have a moment" when a $20bn exit spawns a legion of millionaires happy to become VCs.

Except they probably wouldn't want to become VCs since they don't see many successful VCs around them, there aren't many big exits, and there isn't a huge startup ecosystem.

Chicken and egg problem.

<comment><USER21> Canadian government should get involved with a billion dollars a year pumped into the startup scene via seasoned VCs that only see a dime if there is an exit or an IPO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Toronto is a major Bitcoin hub.

<comment><USER23> Toronto also has a vibrant Etheruem presence as Vitalik grew up there and started Ethereum while living in Toronto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The trick is to ensure leadership is strong and coherent, preventing implosion from within, and maintain salary growth to keep the workforce healthy.

</comment><comment><USER25> Really wish they would go to London Ont, cost of living is still relatively cheap and it would be good for the city.

</comment><comment><USER26> CTRL+F "OpenText" 0 results CTRL+W

<comment><USER27> I assume they mean the startup scene. OpenText are great, but they were founded pre-dot-com...

<comment><USER26> Ok, then SOTI. They just cherry picked companies to support their point.</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing NGINX Plus R8 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-plus-r8-released/ <comment><USER2> Anyone using NGINC Plus? $1900 per server is a pretty steep price, or so it would seem.</comment>


Scott Carpenter, Mercury Astronaut Who Orbited Earth, Dies at 88 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/us/scott-carpenter-mercury-astronaut-who-orbited-earth-dies-at-88.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> If you ever get the opportunity, go to an air and space museum and try to get a look at a Mercury capsule if you have one.

It's basically a trashcan with a person inside, stuck atop an ICBM. Pretty rad.

<comment><USER3> I've never seen a Mercury capsule, but the most striking thing to me is its small size [1]. I know that the flight duration was quite short (longest was 22hrs) but the thing is _tiny_ and there is basically no extra interior space.

Gemini was slightly bigger [2], but I'm always amazed that the Gemini 7 crew spent _fourteen days_ in a space about as large as the front seats of a compact car.

Exceptional people.

[1] [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Mercury-s...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Mercury- spacecraft-control.png)

[2] [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Gemini_sp...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Gemini_spacecraft.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Gemini was actually more cramped than Mercury. It had 160% the habitable volume of Mercury, but twice the crewmembers.

Gemini was known as the Gusmobile, because Gus Grissom basically lived at McDonnell during its development and tailored the design to his own preferences. And really tailored. Because Gus Grissom was the shortest astronaut at 5'5" (1.65 meters), Gemini turned out to be uncomfortable for everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Too sad.

Just want to say that the mentioned book "The Right Stuff" exists also as a 3 hours movie from 1983. You'll find it on youtube, too (two parts). I really recommend this movie to everyone who's into spaceflight. Full with details and beauty, a true homage.

<comment><USER6> OMG it just sank in that there are people who might be too young to know that movie exists. Yes! See it as soon as you can. It's a beautiful dramatization of the early days of space exploration, with Bill Conti's perfect soundtrack.

<comment><USER7> Fun Fact for Hipster Youth:

Zooey Deschanel's parents are both involved in the film. Her father Caleb Deschanel was cinematographer and her mother Mary Jo played Annie Glenn (her role is remarkable because she portrays Annie Glenn with a severe stutter.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most famous of the seven Mercury astronauts, John Glenn, is now the only survivor. As the article kindly submitted here reports, Scott Carpenter was the only astronaut who was also (later) a deep-sea explorer, living at depth in Sealab for a month. These were the childhood heros of most Americans in my Baby Boom generation.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you get the chance to meet any of these guys - grab it with both hands. I've recently met Al Worden (CMP Apollo 15) and Charlie Duke (10th man on the Moon). Tonight I'll be meeting Alan Bean (4th man on the Moon), and already getting excited.

These guys are amazing. Both Charlie Duke and Al Worden were absolute gentlemen, with fascinating stories, and intriguing insights.

OK, so I'll be just one of a few hundred people in the audience, but it makes the history come to life, and serves as a reminder that there are people who did, and others who are still doing, amazing things.

Aspirational and inspirational.

</comment><comment><USER10> Did these guys ever exercise more control over the "spaceship" than the various primates and the Soviet space dogs we've put to orbit? Don't get me wrong, they were heroic and all that cause unlike Laica they knew exactly what they were getting into, I am just wondering .. For instance, could they do something wrong and crash the damned thing?

</comment><comment><USER11> A minute of weightlessness... :-(

<comment><USER12> This PBS documentary has some extra explanation as to why Carpenter only got one flight that only seems to be be hinted at in the NYT story [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jia78xRMTEc#t=3303](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jia78xRMTEc#t=3303)</comment></comment>


No company should ever have a noreply email address - <AUTHOR> http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/09/no-company-should-ever-have-a-noreply-email-address/#

<comment><USER2> It's up to the particular business.

Some people believe in the hyperlean "Four Hour Workweek" theory where you ought to be as scarce as possible.

Some businesses are about building a community. Particularly if you're looking for customer one, two or three, that's going to be a high touch proposition.

Personally, Zappos drives me nuts. I can't see how their "high touch" approach to selling clothes online can be profitable at the prices they sell things for. Perhaps it isn't, and Amazon is a sugar daddy that's going to let them make a name for themselves as people get used to the idea of buying clothes online -- Amazon can fund them for the five years or a decade that it will take for the boutiques to go out of business.

</comment><comment><USER3> dupe: see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1723421></comment>


Show HN: FOSSA – Effortlessly track and comply with open source licenses - <AUTHOR> http://fossa.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN — founder here, and really pleased to share FOSSA with you!

Over the past year, we've been incubating the product at some amazing companies like SolarCity and SmartThings (more announcing soon!) to scale it across cutting-edge engineering teams and get it ready for this moment.

Today, we're also announcing a $2.2MM seed round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from humbling angels including the founders of Salesforce, Skype, YouTube, Cloudera, Tinder and others — read more about it here: [https://medium.com/fossa/announcing-fossa-public-beta- fundin...](https://medium.com/fossa/announcing-fossa-public-beta- funding-8cf56cf8ebc6#.q3kusnp26)

Excited to hear your feedback on what we've built. You may have used a free resource on OSS licensing that we created and maintain: [http://tldrlegal.com](http://tldrlegal.com). We see FOSSA as an attempt to tackle similar problems in a commercial scenario.

</comment><comment><USER2> (I'm an investor in Fossa)

Open source is ubiquitous, and few seem to have a great handle on what they are using. Excited to see Fossa take a stab at this in a way that is developer-friendly.

Also check out tldrLegal, software licenses in plain english: [https://tldrlegal.com](https://tldrlegal.com).

<comment><USER3> Already so much value from TL;DR informing FOSSA!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

If I knew the giants I stood on, it is by the work of Fossa.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've known Kevin for a long time -- smart, persistent, and on top of things. Cheering for him and Fossa!

<comment><USER6> A long-needed solution to an increasingly important problem -- I hope they keep a free version after the Beta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Big fan of Fossa and the team. They're solving an important problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome</comment>


Show HN: Markov Contact – a dynamic audio journey - <AUTHOR> https://demos.samgentle.com/markov-contact <comment><USER2> Link to the writeup of Markov Contact: [https://samgentle.com/posts/2016-12-11-markov- contact](https://samgentle.com/posts/2016-12-11-markov-contact)</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone been experimenting with NIR for productivity? - <AUTHOR> Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21042018
Subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21042852
After a subthread blew up about a month ago my brother and I have been going back and forth on whether or not to pick up a NIR light and give it a shot.
I'm curious specifically about concentration times (I go for maybe a minute before my concentration breaks) and perceived efficacy.
Has anyone tried using NIR for performance hacking? What was your experience? <comment><USER2> I haven't tried it but I too was intrigued by that thread and added it to my list of things to try. It seems like the risks are relatively minimal.

What NIR light are you considering purchasing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've purchased this one: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075F7NV56](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075F7NV56)

I'm awaiting receipt.

I've been putting some thought into how I want to quantify outcomes; sleep, perceived energy levels / fatigue, ability to focus (not sure how to measure this). Nothing else has occurred to me yet.

If you had to measure, what would you choose to keep track of?</comment></comment>


The .NET Micro Framework - Hardware for Software People - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheNETMicroFrameworkHardwareForSoftwarePeople.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ScottHanselman+(Scott+Hanselman+-+ComputerZen.com)

<comment><USER2> This is really cool. I love C#, it's a great language and this opens up some cool new possibilities.

Interesting to see MS doing so much open sourcing these days too.</comment>


Magic Leap: What We Learned from CEO's 'Ask Me Anything' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/blog/2015/02/magic-leap-what-we-learned-from-ceo-s-ask-me.html

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in AR then I highly recommend checking out CastAR. Magic Leap may never be released or it may be a better version of Googles failed glass project. CastAR is already in the hands of developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Im curious what the feedback is so far on CastAR. What's interesting to me about MagicLeap is the approach of sending images into the eye vs projecting and eye tracking.</comment></comment>


Time on the Horizon – Graphing time series on one line (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/time_on_the_horizon.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Root of cubism (<http://square.github.com/cubism/>) - definitely worth the read.</comment>