Mathematical Equations That Changed the World - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/paulcoxon/status/442706898370834432/photo/1 <comment><USER2> Interesting. But why on earth is Black-Scholes equation on that list? It's not like Long-Term Capital Management took over the world with it. It's a fragile model and does not deserve to be on the same list as these beautiful and useful ideas.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I was also a bit surprised. LTCM's "Long-Term" was ~ 4 years (1994-1998) with a total loss around $4.6 Billion. That time seems to be very small compared to the ~ 2500 years of the list. And $4.6 Billion? It's not even one third of WhatsApp!

<comment><USER4> LTCM was not the only outcome of it. Pretty much of all of modern finance is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's pretty worthless to just present a picture of these equations without any explanation of what their significance is or how they "changed the world". The image format is particularly bad since you can't even copy/paste the text into a search engine if you want more information. Twitter isn't really a good medium for presenting mathematical and scientific concepts.

<comment><USER6> Worthless to you at this moment. Number 3 is differential calculus. That's a big one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Large image: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BiTPlBKCMAARAAw.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BiTPlBKCMAARAAw.png:large)

</comment><comment><USER8> For a bit of perspective about these equations:

I only have a bachelor of science degree with a major in computer science. Mostly through my interest in physics and mathematics, and hence the electives I took, I have a somewhat intimate familiarity with all of 1-5, 9, 13, and 14. I have at least basic knowledge about 7, 11, and 12. I have no idea, really, about 6 and 15-17. I'm a bit embarrassed about #15, given what I do. I have heard good things about Shannon's original paper, so I should give it a read. The ones I never listed fall into a half-half area, where I am aware of their meaning, but not very familiar with them.

At the university I obtained my degree from, just as I was graduating they were removing the requirement for computer science majors to take 6 credits in third or fourth year mathematics courses. All that is required now is first year calculus courses, with linear algebra and statistic in second year. The credits are moved to electives, so interested students can still take mathematics courses, but I feel like few of them will.

It was posted elsewhere in these comments that a proper treatment of these equations is found in Ian Stewart's book "In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World". I had heard of this previously, and now look forward to giving it a read.

Edit: To be clear about something, plenty of my knowledge of these equations came from my choice of electives in second and third year physics courses. So, my moaning about the removal of required mathematics credits isn't precisely relevant.

It was one of the few major disappointments of my time at university that I didn't get to take the proper course in electrodynamics (equations in 11). I have always meant to obtain Griffiths' text on the subject and give it a fair shake, and still plan to do so. Entertainingly, I looked it up quickly on Amazon and see they released a fourth edition in 2012, which has mixed reviews and seems to suffer from the usual publisher hijinx.

<comment><USER9> 6 is Vertices - Edges + Faces = 2

For example, a cube: 6 faces, 8 vertices, 12 edges: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_characteristic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_characteristic)

15 is this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_entropy#Definition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_entropy#Definition)

16 is kind of a cop out to call it "Chaos", it's one specific case, this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map)

17 is in Finance: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_scholes_formula#Black.E2....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_scholes_formula#Black.E2.80.93Scholes_formula)

<comment><USER8> Yes, I'm capable of looking them up. I was only pointing out which equations were hit upon during my education.

Actually, one thing your post made me realize is that I did touch upon equation 6 in a fourth year algorithms class. I didn't know it as related to polyhedra, as we used it in relation to vertices, edges, and faces in complexity analysis of geometric algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This list is the basis of a book by the same author:

[http://www.amazon.com/In-Pursuit-Unknown-Equations- Changed/d...](http://www.amazon.com/In-Pursuit-Unknown-Equations- Changed/dp/0465085989/)

It's extremely easy to find a free PDF download of the book. I'm assuming the free PDF has been authorized, how does one even tell these days short of contacting the author?

<comment><USER4> Easy way to tell is if it is available from the author's website.

<comment><USER11> do you have a link?

<comment><USER4> You do realise it is almost certainly unauthorised?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A nice list, although I'd quibble a bit about dS >= 0 being on there. That entropy increases is important, but the equation itself doesn't really have a mathematical relation like the others.

<comment><USER13> I'd replace it with S = k log(Omega), which links thermodynamics to quantum mechanics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> No. 16, 'Chaos Theory' is actually called the 'Logistic Equation' and it is used in biology to model populations. It does exhibit transition to a chaotic regime for certain values of k, but it's improper to refer to it as 'Chaos Theory equation'.

<comment><USER15> Yep, if anything the Restricted 3-Body Problem (R3BP) should be considered the "chaos theory equation", since it was Poincaré study of chaotic solutions in the R3BP that led to the discovery of sensitivity to initial conditions. Smale's horseshoe map would be another apt equation, since it succinctly describes the dynamics of chaotic systems, through the twisting and warping of the map. The Lorenz attractor is another important example that highlights the concept of deterministic chaos.

<comment><USER16> I don't quite get how chaos theory changed the world. All of the other equations I get (although whether Shannon's equation changed the world or merely described the change is probably arguable.)

How did chaos theory change the world?

<comment><USER15> Understanding deterministic chaos has been the cornerstone of a wide range of fields, including physics, medicine, economics, and business. There are a wealth of everyday applications. Control systems in the real world have to deal with the underlying structure of the dynamics that govern how such systems naturally behave in the feedback loop.

There are a few different resources you can find that list practical applications of chaos theory. Here are a few that I found that I think you will find interesting:

* [http://www.slideshare.net/anthaceorote/chaos-theory-an-intro...](http://www.slideshare.net/anthaceorote/chaos-theory-an-introduction)

* [https://www.csuohio.edu/sciences/dept/physics/physicsweb/kau...](https://www.csuohio.edu/sciences/dept/physics/physicsweb/kaufman/yurkon/chaos.html)

* [PDF] [http://math.arizona.edu/~shankar/efa/efa4.pdf](http://math.arizona.edu/~shankar/efa/efa4.pdf)

And there's plenty more!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting as this is, #13 is not "Relativity", it's the mass-energy equivalence.

<comment><USER18> If I had to pick the single equation for relativity it would be the definition if interval. You can derive the rest from that, and it is IMHO the most beautiful expression of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a grad student in physics, I'd vote for the inclusion of the Dirac equation or Klein-Gordon (can't put the whole standard model in there) and may be the Einstein Field Equations.

Other than that, I agree with most of the list. I haven't heard good things about Black and Scholes, though.

EDIT: Oh, and I thought of another. No doubt: [X,P] = i h/2pi Definitely more important than Schrodinger.

</comment><comment><USER20> See also: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGpb3_XkEvg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGpb3_XkEvg)

Submitted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7291571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7291571) \- although no discussion.

<comment><USER8> > although no discussion

No surprise about that. I imagine a large portion of us completely ignore posts directly to youtube with no context outside of the title. Personally, I also wouldn't have shared around a video consisting only of floating images and text with technoish music playing. Seems like that is the youtube channels niche, though.

Interestingly, the formula for the Fourier transformation is wrong in both of these posts. In the image, the integration is from infinity to infinity, and in the video the limits of integration are negative infinity to negative infinity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's really, really strange to me that F=ma is not on the list. Also very important, but missing: Hooks law, Ohms Law, the Ideal Gas Law. The binomial theorem and Taylor series are just as important as Fourier series, if not more so.

A very strange, almost arbitrary list. Thumbs down.

</comment><comment><USER22> What about e^(i*pi) = -1?

<comment><USER23> Covered by Fourier Transforms.

The equations for Nash Equilibrium and Fermat's Little Theorem are two I would have liked to see.

<comment><USER24> Yes, I think Nash equilibrium will be way more influential in the long-term than Black-Scholes.

<comment><USER25> Neither one of them should be on there. Both rest upon the false assumption of human rationality. They are delusions masquerading as mathematical truth.

<comment><USER26> Black Scholes doesn't assume rational market participants.

<comment><USER4> It does make other bogus assumptions though. Normal distributions, risk free interest rates,...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Fourier Transform equation is wrong. Integral from infinity to infinity? That doesn't make sense. It should be negative infinity.

</comment><comment><USER28> Where's the simplex algorithm? Optimization has had absolutely astounding effects on the modern world, but it's missing there.

<comment><USER29> These are equations, not algorithms.

<comment><USER8> Interestingly, around the same time the book these equations were originally collected in (as pointed out in another comment, this is Ian Stewart's In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World), the book Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers also came out. They were actually published ~5 months apart, but I remember them being close together on Amazon recommendations, list of other books people viewed, etc. at the time.

I haven't read that one either. Looking at the index quickly, it doesn't look like Simplex is in there.

<comment><USER29> To be fair, simplex doesn't really "drive today's computers", at least nowhere near like it did the computers of the 1950s.

This list of important algorithms includes Simplex - [http://www.koutschan.de/misc/algorithms.php](http://www.koutschan.de/misc/algorithms.php) . Others do as well. And some do not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Black-Scholes' is a big deal in economics and finance. Their innovations were risk-neutral pricing (the r terms in the equation) and replicating portfolio argument. These completely changed how to price all securities you see, not just options. The idea was so radical their paper was unable to be published for years.

</comment><comment><USER31> In my opinion, the Schrodinger equation is by far the most important. It provides an accurate prediction of almost all earth-scale (and smaller) phenomena except gravity. Although I suppose some of the heavier elements require KG or the Dirac equation to account for relativistic effects.

</comment><comment><USER32> Poorly documented functions which use single character variables. Maths notation is great for brevity but fails utterly tests for readability and ease of comprehension.

<comment><USER33> You're trolling, right ? Are you kidding ? "Poorly documented" ? I use most of them on a regular basis. I haven't had first hand exposure with only Black&Scholes': But I looked the thing up when I was a freshman as I was interested in stock prices, and was interested in Louis Bachelier, Brownian motion. The rest is well documented through the whole Engineering curriculum. There are a couple I haven't used in a while (Schrödinger's and relativity (hint: Who is Poincaré)).

These "single character variables" are known for whom they matter. You can't have brevity and delimiter-separated names. Equations taking a whole line (or more), good luck with that.

"Maths notation is great for brevity but fails utterly tests for readability and ease of comprehension".. Okay, clearly trolling.

Next thing you know, IEEE will hire Will.i.am or Apple fanboys as consultants to make things "beautiful".

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Where on Earth is integral calculus?

</comment><comment><USER35> As is presented in the image, teh Second Law of Therm is an inequation.

</comment><comment><USER36> well #3 has got a typo in the formula, and #5's title is kind of misleading...

<comment><USER37> #9 as well, the lower limit should be minus infinity.

<comment><USER38> And #7 is missing a minus sign in the exponent. Otherwise the whole thing diverges.

<comment><USER19> I actually didn't catch that! That's hilarious.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are US cellular networks this poorly secured? - <AUTHOR> I've been thinking about xfitm3's recent comment[0] about work by Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek on remote exploitation of motor vehicles.[1]
They report:
> "It turns out that any Sprint device anywhere in the country can communicate with any other Sprint device anywhere in the country."
And no, they don't mean by placing calls. They used a femtocell (miniature cell tower) that had been exploited to allow console (command line) access. In particular, a Sprint Airave. Basically that gave them direct access to Sprint's WAN. So then, just as with Windows PCs in the early 00s:
> "To find vulnerable vehicles you just need to scan on port 6667 from a Sprint device on the IP addresses 18.104.22.168/8 and 188.8.131.52/8."
But this isn't limited to baseband radios of motor vehicles, right?
So using the same approach, adversaries could find open ports on Sprint smartphones and other devices with cellular connectivity. And perhaps exploit them, given that cellular baseband radios are reportedly not well secured. Also, the baseband is privileged over the GUI operating system. And given that baseband firmware is a closed-source blob, it's basically impossible to fully assess any of those risks.
Or am I being overly alarmist?
Has Sprint since reconfigured its cellular network to better isolate devices?
And are other US cellular networks as poorly secured?
0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22024501
1) http://illmatics.com/Remote%20Car%20Hacking.pdf <comment><USER2> The Internet is not and never was a secure network. Devices connected to the Internet need to secure themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially, it was by default trusted. And once it expanded beyond academic and military, it became clear how foolish that assumption was.

Cellular WANs aren't the Internet. And it seems that at least some devices on them are poorly secured.

So what I'm wondering is whether other cellular WANs are as iffy as Sprint's was. And whether they've been better secured.

<comment><USER2> _Cellular WANs aren 't the Internet._

Why do you say this?

<comment><AUTHOR> They're private subnets, right? From the paper:[0]

> Looking at the network configuration of the Uconnect system we can see that > it has several interfaces used for communications. It has an interface for > the internal Wi-Fi communications, uap0, and another PPP interface, ppp0, > presumably used to communicate with the outside world, via Sprint's 3G > services.

       # ifconfig
       lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 33192
               inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
       pflog0: flags=100<PROMISC> mtu 33192
       uap0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
               address: 30:14:4a:ee:a6:f8
               media: <unknown type> autoselect
               inet 192.168.5.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.5.255
       ppp0: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1472
               inet 188.8.131.52 -> 126.96.36.199 netmask 0xff000000

> The 192.168.5.1 address is the address of the Uconnect system to any hosts > connected to the Wi-Fi access point. The IP address 188.8.131.52 is the one > that anyone on the Internet would see if the Uconnect system connected to > them. However, port 6667 is not open at that address. The 18.104.22.168 > address is the actual address of the interface of the Uconnect facing the > Internet, but is only available internally to the Sprint network.

> After a little experimentation, it was observed that the PPP interface's IP > address would change each time the car was restarted, but the address space > always fell within two class-A address blocks: 184.108.40.206/8 or 184.108.40.206/8, > which are presumably the address space Sprint reserves for vehicle IP > addresses.

So these are basically huge LANs that anyone with a suitably tweaked Sprint baseband modem can access.

0) [http://illmatics.com/Remote%20Car%20Hacking.pdf](http://illmatics.com/Remote%20Car%20Hacking.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _Also, the baseband is privileged over the GUI operating system._

IIRC this is no longer true for current-gen chips and designs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd appreciate cites for that.

Isn't baseband firmware still closed-source?

Edit: OK, I see [https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/e9ma76/upcoming_20...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/e9ma76/upcoming_2020_flagship_phones_will_have_baseband/)

However, the effectiveness of baseband isolation on separate chips vs through software is contentious. It seems to me that using a separate modem/router with a wired network link (not WiFi) is the safest option.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Fight email spoofing. A free tool to monitor and implement DMARC - <AUTHOR> http://dmarc.postmarkapp.com

<comment><USER2> There must be some ulterior motive behind why someone would want to entice people into routing their DMARC reports through a filtering service with promises of filtering into "beautiful, human-readable weekly email digests".

DMARC reports generated in response to spam go to the domain owner's reporting address, leaving the spammer in the dark as to what rules are being applied. It's not hard to imagine that access to these reports could be somehow useful to spammers.

Also note how the reports are turned into _weekly_ digests; this means that reports generated by illegitimate e-mails which spoof your domain won't be seen by your eyes for as long as seven days, concealing days of malicious activity.

I think I will take my DMARC reports unfiltered, thanks.</comment>


Why does Siri seem so dumb? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/12/13251068/walt-mossberg-apple-siri-is-dumb <comment><USER2> The difference between Siri and Google Now is the real downfall of iPhone (at least for me). I have enough comfort level with Google Now today that I feel comfortable just flinging any question at it when I'm in hands-free mode (say, when driving) and expect a useful answer of some sort. Trying Siri on friend's or colleagues phones, it's always a frustrating experience.

And this doesn't even include the _automatic_ actions taken by Google Now. Alerting me about travel times, flight delays, sports scores etc. etc. without even being asked.

Ultimately, in Google's vision, the phones are rapidly becoming just a tiny window (no Microsoft.. not you), into all the knowledge and power that actually resides on the cloud. Not so much for Apple, whose core competency is, and has always been, in hardware design and supply chain management.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12693007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12693007)</comment>


Google is bringing new ad types to AMP - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/07/google-is-bringing-new-ad-types-to-amp-including-those-annoying-flying-carpet-ads/ <comment><USER2> If anyone else had trouble finding an example of the flying carpet ads, see [https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3126](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3126)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the benefit of flying carpet over just having the ad in the content?

Judging from the gif in the article it is basically just and image added in- line of the article, except it has a bit if parallex scrolling effects.

Seems less annoying than a sticky ad.

<comment><USER4> \- Greater visibility (since you can take up most of the screen)

\- Likely a much higher chance of accidental clicks (not a good thing for advertisers, but that won't stop people from claiming this format has a higher CTR)

\- Focuses your attention way more on the ad. Instead of something that just scrolls by super quickly with the flick of a thumb, until you get to the next block of content, the image itself is static, so your brain can parse it even in the couple of seconds it is on the screen because it is not actually moving.

<comment><USER5> We spent a lot of time making accidental clicks unlikely (and making sure that scrolling on the ad scrolls the page)

One other benefit is that because the ad is on a parallax pane, it can resize itself without disrupting the page flow (which AMP does not allow).

<comment><USER4> Are you on the team that made these new formats?

I'd love to know what sorts of things you do to avoid accidental clicks. I assume click location relative to the frame of the unit is part of it, and possible pausing to wait for swipe activity to confirm a click, but would really be interested in knowing more (I'm a buy-side ad guy).

Unfortunately, Google isn't the only one with this format, and on many pages I've had false clicks when scrolling through this format. To most users, they will have no clue whether this is a Google ad or not, and I'd be shocked if they didn't equate bad experiences with every network, regardless of whose ad was actually misbehaving.

<comment><USER5> I'm the tech lead of the AMP project.

Our work was mostly related to ensuring that __native __scrolling of the main page works as expected when the finger touches the ad iframe. This is non- trivial and most implementations do it by forwarding touch events from the ad up to the page, which then feels laggy and leads to touches that are interpreted as clicks.

<comment><USER4> Interesting--thanks for the insights.

Overall, I'm curious to see what happens with this. I have my own thoughts on the business side of AMP as it relates to advertisers, publishers, exchanges, DMPs, etc., but from a technical standpoint it is pretty cool what you guys are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By the screenshot it looks like AMP might do Flying Carpet Ads in a way I won't hate.

ASSUMING the necessity of advertising and high profile ads - the type of flying carpet ad in the screenshot, where it looks like it's just a position:fixed; background for a large div that can be clicked - I will be more than happy to scroll past.

Right now, what I really hate are the flying carpet ads where you're swiping up and the ad comes up OVER the content and gets in the way, slowing down the site, etc. Those are terrible.

As long as the page is not adjusting itself on load and the ad doesn't get in the way, I don't see this being a bad thing at all - and I think the AMP team is probably on that same wavelength.

<comment><USER5> That is exactly what we are doing. We spent roughly 4 weeks of pure research to get the scroll UX to 100% perfect (Turns out making a fixed positioned background element scroll the main scroller and be clickable is hard. Which is also why many implementations of flying carpet suck).

The goal is absolutely to make this not annoying at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _[M]ore than 90 percent [of publishers] say they are getting higher click- through rates and most also see better earnings._

On mobile, this is alarming as I suspect it is due to more accidental clicks. A good ad platform will actually see the click-throughs go _down_ as the platform renormalizes to clicks that reflect authentic interest.

EDIT: s/do/go/

<comment><USER5> The primary (but not only) reason is increase in so called viewability of ads (AMP renders fewer ads that nobody ever sees). Because click-through-rate is calculated as percentage of "renders", rather than "views", the CTR goes up when you have less "renders" that don't turn into a "view", because nobody can click on an ad that they have never seen.

<comment><USER7> This sounds like an excellent step in the right direction. I guess that's why the article implied that not all of the pages that saw greater CTR increased revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Half the AMP articles I try to read don't let me scroll on iOS 8 Safari. I like using Google News but AMP has seriously hurt my experience. I would much rather just use Safari's built in Reader View, but of course this removes the ads they want me to see.

<comment><USER5> Would you mind filing an issue with an example article: [https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/new](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/new)

This is definitely not a known issue.

Edit: We can repro and filed [https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3481](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3481) It might be a bug in Google News (Because Google Search is fine), but we'll track it in AMP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Which ad blockers can block all of these?

<comment><USER10> That is the point

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yuk.

</comment><comment><USER12> The title cut out "to AMP", which is fairly relevant here.

<comment><USER13> We've restored that and taken out the baity bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What are ads again? I went ad blind in 1996 and popup blockers just cemented it. I don't go to Cinemas as I don't like paying for ads. I also would never watch any program interrupted with ads. I also would not pay for any cable or satellite service that also contains ads. As a result of all the above, I don't watch any film or television and my life is fine.

<comment><USER15> That's rather impressive but I don't see the point re: this article</comment></comment>


Five insects from hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.coolonpurpose.com/2010/04/5-insects-from-hell-that-arent-cool-on.html <comment><USER2> Spiders aren't insects.</comment>


Mechanical Turing Machine in Wood - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo8izCKHiF0 <comment><USER2> This is fascinating. It reminds me of an art display I saw years ago that looked similar. However I was disappointed to learn that in that case the mechanical stuff was only for show and the algorithm was driven by an Arduino hidden behind the scenes. I'm so happy someone actually made the real thing!

Don't miss the document linked in the video description. It gives some details on how the machine works.

The alphabet on the tape has 3 symbols: "b", "0", "1" \- they are encoded as different positions of pegs in the physical tape. Three non-functional tape blocks mounted on the machine demonstrate the encoding of the alphabet.

There are 3 machine states "a", "b", "c". They are encoded as the major position of the plate on the left of the machine that moves up and down. The plate also has a minor position that depends on the current tape input.

The minimal universal Turing machine the author talks about is [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram%27s_2-state_3-symbol_T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram%27s_2-state_3-symbol_Turing_machine)

</comment><comment><USER3> I once floated the idea of a "simplest Turing Machine" contest that limited materials to wood, nails, screws, and string. The one with the least number of parts wins. Each Nail and screw would be considered half a part, but total score would be rounded up. This is because people tend to consider fasteners as ancillary, but not counting them at all would create too many loopholes and oddities.

</comment><comment><USER4> A wonderful piece of work!

But this remark in the accompanying document did make me laugh:

> Another search on the internet yielded a small list of machines built by > others. Several had electronic controllers controlling the mechanics. I can > hear Mr. Turing say, "A computer running a computer. Whaaaat?"

I'm not sure Dr Turing would have expressed surprise in that manner, and even less sure that he would have been surprised that one computing machine could simulate the behaviour of another.

</comment><comment><USER5> My first question is, could this have been made at the time Babbage was trying to build the Analytical Engine, which (had he completed it) would have been the first Turing-complete machine? Would it have accomplished the same practical results (at least with some scale-up)?

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Personal speculation:

There's nothing about this that someone in Babbage's time could not have build. Removing the negatives from that statement ... this could easily have been built in Babbage's time.

However, it would not have been. A literal Turing machine needs a huge tape and a very, very long time to be able to do useful calculations. Babbage's Difference Engine could be seen to be immediately useful performing a task that was essential at the time. Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine was less obviously immediately useful, but it could do things that were obviously on the way to be useful, so might have got some speculative funding.

But a naked, vanilla Turing Machine is so obviously _not_ (directly) useful, and no one of the time would having funding building one that was big enough to do anything of practical interest.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. The 'Turing machine' was proposed by Turing as a thought experiment. It was the simplest implentation of a universal computing machine that he could think of. Any physical implementation of it would be incredibly inefficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Forget nanobots; I believe that a "clanking" self-replicating machine can be made from sources of wood and metal feedstock (and mechanical power). This could be the control unit.

Is anyone else interested in this kind of thing? Looking for community.

<comment><USER8> L.S. and S.V. Penrose did some experiments around this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_9ohFWR0Vs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_9ohFWR0Vs)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the link, that's interesting.

All the "self-replicators" I've come across are either digital (e.g. Conway's Game of Life) or like the ones in this video, that is they require specialized parts as their "food." You could say they are all "carnivores" in the sense that they consume other machines. My interest is in "herbivore" self- replicators, those that reproduce by consuming raw materials and energy from their environment.

<comment><USER9> The cell does some mind boggling stuff. What the macro organism achieves is boring in comparison. Hence clanking replication could be very hard.

<comment><USER7> Agreed; I'm proud of our little constituent buddies!

I can't help thinking about how close a water-powered lumber mill feels to full closure (i.e. it produces all the parts it uses). Humans perform the chopping, move things from station to station, and assemble the finished parts into new buildings and machines.

<comment><USER9> What about the saw blade? It's probably hard to cut wood with wood...

Usually you require a few different material "paths" for replication. You have a hard material that can be softened with chemicals for example, so it can be shaped with machinery that is softer than the end product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Somehow I expect there to exist a minimal mechanical Turing machine, I expect it to be highly symmetrical and I expect it to be very beautiful and fascinating to watch.

</comment><comment><USER11> So could one enter the code of an universal turing machine here and write a program directly on the tape?

</comment><comment><USER12> Being able to take the configuration "table" and change the input quickly is a neat feature!!

</comment><comment><USER13> Too bad they didn't give it an infinite wooden tape :)

<comment><USER3> I cheated by letting it sit around a long time, and termites ended up doing all the work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Want! :)</comment>


Firefly fans: 'Help Nathan Fillion Buy Firefly' - <AUTHOR> http://helpnathanbuyfirefly.com/ <comment><USER2> No. Let it die an honorable death. There is no shame in this - the death of a series that has brought fine episodes.

<comment><USER3> Why let it die?

We can never recreate the cast, but that doesn't mean that we can't watch Firefly:TNG just like we did with Star Trek.

Of course we will then end up having endless who is best Mal or rbanffy.

Personally I hold out for Mal, but that is just me.

<comment><USER2> Their universe is interesting and someone may be able to get some good, solid sci-fi out of it.

But, apart from the Firefly name and brand, what would be left? Would we still call it Firefly without Mal?

<comment><USER4> Anything Joss Whedon calls Firefly, I'll call Firefly.

The cast made the show, to be sure, but they did so on top of Whedon's words, and Whedon did the casting. He's proven over and over again that he can put together a compelling, poignant show (or comic book) no matter the premise.

I've scoffed at every single show he's ever put out: \- Re: Buffy; Who's gonna watch a remake of that movie? It's gonna suck. \- Re: Angel; Spinoff? Really? Vampire in sunny LA? Dumb. \- Re: Firefly; A space western? What? Stupid. \- Re: Dollhouse; Wow, that's abstract, even for Joss Whedon. How are we supposed to care about characters that have no character?

Every time I've ended up happily eating my words, and while I still consider Firefly to be the best science fiction TV show of all time (personal opinion), I have no qualms about somebody trying to resurrect it, so long as that somebody is Joss Whedon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Pre-sell DVD sets of a season 2, Kickstarter-style

\--- No money moves unless goal is met

\--- Donor receives box set if donation is at least $40

2\. Upon XYZ pre-sales, commence season production

3\. Collect revenue from advertising, as usual, during season run

4\. Produce DVD sets of season 2

5\. Send a set to all donors

6\. Collect a bit more revenue from new, fringe fans who will also buy DVD sets

<comment><USER6> I'd definitely buy. Have a feeling the result would be some crappy tv though. Just a hunch.

<comment><USER7> It would depend on who is involved. The last time Fillion and Whedon were idle (read: writers strike), they made some pretty good content for the web with a pretty small budget. <http://drhorrible.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is exactly what incorporations were initially built for.

5 local businessmen want to build a ferry across the river. Nobody can afford it, or the risk. They all think it will benefit their community, their businesses, and maybe bring in a few bucks.

So they buy "shares", sharing the costs and the benefits.

I'd consider putting some cash towards a Whedon-backed production company, and then buy the DVD (though being an Aussie, I'm not sure if I can buy US shares). He might gain or lose money, I don't really care - it would be worth the risk just to see what he does.

<comment><USER9> unfortunately, some of the suggestions are coming dangerously close to what US securities laws were initially built for.

the kickstarter route, where fillion owns the property seems fine, but once you're talking about offering shares of a company to fans that would own the franchise, that's hard to see how that wouldn't be a violation of securities laws as an unregistered public offering.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, he'd need an IPO to offer shares to the general public. And that requires a lot of work (which is why investment banks often take a big slice).

I'm not sure what obstacles there are to an IPO though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> $40? As long as Joss and the original cast are on board I'll happily pay $100, maybe even $200, even if it's only another half season. Just promise not to start this project before Castle has stopped being good, since I love Nathan in that as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if there is a germ of an idea here. Crowdfunded TV shows (or movies). Somebody proposes an idea for a TV show, gets some talent on board who sign up if it gets X amount of cash, people vote with cash donations (maybe with signed merchandise and other goodies).

Maybe Kickstarter could do it, if not might be a startup in there.

<comment><USER12> Any script in a world with a significant existing fan base could pre-sell dvd copies of movies before production, to generate capital and provide proof-of- support-of-concept. Why don't franchises like Marvel or Star Trek do this? Or do they already?

<comment><USER11> In a sense, Star Trek did - it was a franchise rescued from obscurity after being cancelled by its huge fanbase, and went on to make the series of movies, TNG and so on.

There may be earlier examples, but it's the first case I'm aware of where the fanbase had a direct influence on the resuscitation of a show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fringe has become the last series I truly enjoy watching these days.

I'd definitely be in for $40 if there was a good chance for another 13 episodes of Firefly.

They should maybe use WePay for the largest collective payment ever?

</comment><comment><USER14> Given that Nathan Fillion doesn't even know the site exists and the actual people behind it refuse to reveal their identities, I wouldn't trust this site as far as I could throw it.

The simple fact of the matter: If Joss wanted to do this, he would do it, and have a much easier time promoting it than these people will (did anybody see the profits from "Dr. Horrible"?). And Firefly with Nathan Fillion the only returning cast or crew member isn't what the fans want. But right now, Nathan is doing other things and Joss is doing other things, and that's their choice. If this isn't a scam, it's a poorly thought-out plan.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe it'll be as good as the recent revival of Red Dwarf.

<comment><USER16> Ouch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it's important to note that no one, at any time, has talked about _new_ Firefly episodes. This is just about distributing the existing series.

<comment><USER18> That's not true. This particular project is specifically aimed at purchasing the rights to the brand and producing new content.

<comment><USER17> Quoth Nathan Fillion in the interview: "Yes. Yes. I would examine very closely Fox's reasoning — I'm a little gun-shy. If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to Firefly, make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet."

Note that he's still committed to doing Castle, and the only definite thing giving Fillion the rights would get is free Firely for all. That's a good thing, but it's not _new_ Firefly. What Fillion did _not_ say is "I wish I had $300 million so I could make new Firefly episodes." Of course, Firefly isn't Firefly without Joss Whedon, and he has said nothing.

<comment><USER18> "...make it on my own..." implies otherwise.

Regardless of his intentions however, the point of this website and the project behind it is to convince them both to do new episodes. It's a long shot, sure, but that is precisely what they intend. See the FAQ.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: TabNotes – Markdown Notes in new tab - <AUTHOR> https://tabnotes.bansal.io/ <comment><USER2> The problem with it is that once it is installed - every new tab opens as a note. There is no way to only open a note when you want a note. And you can't set "open new tab" in the settings. The app completely takes over the browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice. I was looking for something like this.

Was using brisk note before this, although creator has stopped supporting it and it no longer syncs across the machines

Would like functionality to rearrange notes order in sidebar.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good idea :)</comment>


Android apps found to be sharing data - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11443111

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a direct link to the research paper [PDF]:

<http://appanalysis.org/tdroid10.pdf></comment>


Show HN: Engelbart's Chorded Keyboard - Built at SHDH42 yesterday - <AUTHOR> http://paulisageek.com/chord/

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea, but it's rather odd that the keystroke for P is pressing <SPACE>, but the keystroke for <SPACE> is a four character combination when <SPACE> should be its own chord. While the binary incrementing keystroke combination is somewhat logical, I would imagine that a more frequency-based assignment would ultimately be more successful as muscle memory is far more important than remembering that the chord for V is binary+1 of the chord for U.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was really interesting to play with.

I kept getting caught up cognitively on the fact that the thumb corresponded to the 5th box in all of the chord diagrams. I feel like some visual differentiation would have made that easier to grok.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. I tried to do a <sub> and it looked funny, and adding a full   was too wide. Maybe I'll play with a smaller space character.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you can make it too wide. Even if it was twice as wide or three times as wide it would be good enough for the brain to grok

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cute. But I'd need a lot more than this for programming, which uses many special symbols. Even regular English requires being able to type quotes, question marks, exclamation points, numbers, etc..

Also, as far as the implementation of this particular typing tutor goes, it needs to let the user retry to type a given chords until he gets it right, instead of immediately moving on to the next one.

And the chords should be taught in small batches, rather than trying to teach them all at once.

While we're on the subject of chording, I should mention that there's a vim plugin that will let you map chorded keystrokes:

<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2425>

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember reading about Steve Roberts building chording keyboards into his "handlebars" on his Winnebiko years ago. Since he had well more than 2^5 bits using both hands[1], he was able to assign macros that helped significantly with his effective typing speed.

Englebart says that his layout is not intended for speed typing, with the typical trained typer being able to type 30-50wpm. He observed that typing speed on conventional keyboards does not have a strong correlation with typing speed on his chording layout. Sight-reading piano players have a bit of an advantage here, of course.

I've always wanted one of the Twiddlers, and am kind of excited they're back on the market, but I'd vastly prefer a wireless version. I've also been looking forward to the release of the FrogPad. It would be nice to have a better-than-touchscreen keyboard for emails on the iPad or iPhone.

[1] I can't remember the exact layout now. If it used all ten fingers, or if it had multiple positions for, say, thumbs, à la the BAT keyboard, it's gone from my memory. Regardless, it used both hands.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was inspired by Englebert's "Mother of all Demos" shown at Super Happy Dev House 42 and decided to actually try out the device that was in his left hand.

<comment><USER7> How did it look on the big screen? We got a DVD copy of the original tapes from the Stanford library!

<comment><AUTHOR> It was amazing on the IMAX. I was a little sad that it only displayed on about 1/5th of the screen infront. I assume it only fit onto one projector instead of the software cutting it up to fill the whole dome.

It is a little slow at first, but once he gets to explaining the tech, it was wonderful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're looking for a one-handed chorded keyboard on which to type, the BAT has been around for many years: <http://www.infogrip.com/product_view.asp?RecordNumber=12>

</comment><comment><USER9> It's funny how it's not optimized at all. "E" and "T" are both incredibly hard to type; this would give you RSI problems in no time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, exactly. He just enumerated the binary representation. A=1, B=2, C=3...

Maybe I should build a Dvorak-ish version of this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a pianist; it was easy as cake, actually would be even easier with finger numbers, or represented as notes :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't type G for the life of me. Maybe it has to do with the number of simultaneous keypresses on my keyboard?

<comment><USER12> After 5 minutes: I can not get G either!!!

Paul, can you change time intervals to to catch less accurate chors?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have it set to 125ms. I bumped it to 200 and it felt really unresponsive.

When in doubt, make a configuration option right? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> is there a standard mapping for chorded keyboards? i feel like X has a much easier combo than E. would be interesting to use data on people's error rate for different key combos and then remap frequently used letters to easier combos.

<comment><USER5> The only standards I'm aware of are standards for stenotype machines (chorded keyboards that stenographers) use:

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Stenotype>

And there are a fair number of competing standards and keyboard layouts (especially if you count layouts/standards for various languages).

Stenotypes machines and musical instruments are really the only chorded keyboards in wide enough use to develop any kind of standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I found it very hard to do this with my left hand. Especially since the first bit is so widely used and my pinky on that side is pretty weak.

I guess you can tell that I'm not an emacs user :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, totally agree. The key mappings need some work. I just wanted to emulate his original one. I'll do a Dvorak one, might be easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I spent a happy year with a MicroWriter chorded keyboard in the early 90s. My right hand still knows the letters, so there must be something in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat. What was they keyboard layout? The same as this one or was it frequency based?

<comment><USER16> I believe they are the same as the descendent <https://sites.google.com/site/cykeybellaire/cykey-codecard>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is it lefty?

<comment><USER16> I guess because Englebart's was.

[http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_fall/projects/fol...](http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_fall/projects/follow_me/hw4/first_demo_large.jpg)

Right hand for navigating (mousing), left hand for typing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you get busy with when you need to wait? - <AUTHOR> When I do work in software, I very often need to wait some short amount of time.
Right now, I am waiting for an SQL query to return some data I need to continue my work. The delay is not too long (less than a minute), and not too short (more than a few seconds).
Since it's not too long, I don't want to switch to a different task, because of the mental overhead of switching tasks. Since it's not too short, I don't want to simply stare at the screen until the query is done running.
What do you do when you need to wait when doing software work? <comment><USER2> you're looking at it.</comment>


Ask HN: favourite computer and iOS games? - <AUTHOR>

what are your favourite computer and iOS games to pass the time? <comment><USER2> I play video games very rarely. Monument Valley is the only game that I've downloaded in the last couple years that I keep coming back to.</comment>


Fisheye Distortion with D3 - <AUTHOR> http://bost.ocks.org/mike/fisheye/

<comment><USER2> Harry Beck used a fish eye distortion for this exact purpose, when he designed the classic London Tube map in 1931. The scale is larger in the dense inner city, where the stations are closer together, and smaller in the outer suburbs, where the stations are further apart. The net effect is that the density of the stations is roughly constant across the map.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Beck>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's great that the distortion isn't done on a pixel level but rather at the object level -- it's mesmerizing to see the edges move ever so slightly when mousing over a region

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's an interesting 3D effect. From the article,

> This is particularly useful for disambiguating edge-crossings in static > layouts: edges between distant nodes are distorted more strongly than local > ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's funny how the objects at the edge of the distortion are compressed; information here is lost rather than created. I'd rather see the distortion spread to the image boundaries. Then I can still see the whole image, but there is no weird annulus of compression.

<comment><USER5> Some compression is inevitable; to give space to some part of the visualization, you must to take it away from somewhere else. But yeah, there are variations of this approach that apply a global distortion rather than one localized to the mouse. For example, click on "Distortions" then "Fisheye XY" here:

<http://flare.prefuse.org/demo>

It'd be a nice feature to support multiple modes of distortion.

Also, you can open the JavaScript console and adjust the fisheye distortion parameters. For example, you can make the area of distortion much bigger:

> fisheye.radius(480).power(4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Expected an article about Nikon hardware, but still enjoyed it.

The author has a lot of neat looking posts, I recommend giving them a look.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love the 3D effect, it really lets you get a feel for the data.</comment>


PrudentBear - <AUTHOR> http://prudentbear.com/index.php/featuredcommentaryview?art_id=10333 <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this as a contrast to the post about housing ready for a second drop. What I find hard to buy into is the "no-brainer" that rates are poised to go up quickly when the Fed stops buying mortgage paper.

I don't see how rates can go up a lot, there's not a lot of demand for money out there.

<comment><USER2> Calculated Risk (<http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/>) one of the best real estate blogs around, thinks that rates won't go up very far - 30 or 40 basis points, iirc.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Consumer hardware setup for long-term backups? - <AUTHOR> The iCloud development has gotten me thinking about my usage of major cloud storage solutions, including Dropbox. I've been getting increasingly annoyed with Dropbox's product changes lately anyway, so I'm thinking about setting up my own solution.
In terms of size, half a terabyte (or maybe a terabyte to be comfy) would do. My main priority is durability: I don't want to worry about a drive failure (durability is the main reason I've used Dropbox for so long; my house could burn down and my data would be safe).
Presumably I should go with an SSD for durability (?) seeing how sensitive HDDs are to movement/magnets/mechanical failure in general. Should I bother trying to do some kind of RAID redundancy setup, or is that overkill? Any other thoughts or suggestions? All-in-one backup solutions would also be interesting, as would cloud storage solutions that are end-to-end encrypted. <comment><USER2> In my opinion, unless you need high speed backups, I would not worry about SSD. Rather, I would get several external USB3 drives and label them by day or week. Then alternate external drives to back up to. To keep multiple versions of files, you could use rsnapshot which is just a perl script that does some fancy linking of identical vs changed files to save space. [1] All drives fail, no matter how expensive they are. If you have multiple drives and multiple backups, then you can even store one offsite somewhere, just in case. There are plenty of free tools for each OS to do disk encryption on the USB3 drives.

[1] - [https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot](https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot)

<comment><AUTHOR> > unless you need high speed backups, I would not worry about SSD

They're cheap enough now and my space needs are small enough that I think the tradeoff is worth it: I don't have to worry about jostling them if I move, for example.

> I would get several external USB3 drives and label them by day or week. Then > alternate external drives to back up to.

That's a neat idea. It does mean more hardware and would make it tricker to do things like network syncing, which I was interested in setting up, but it would take care of both the reliability issue and rudimentary versioning in one stroke. I'll give it consideration.

<comment><USER2> For the networking aspect, you could create a hybrid. i.e. set up a VPS VM, though 1TB disk space will be pricey... but then you could have sftp chroot and use lftp and it's mirror subsystem to get the same effect as rsync, but more secure, then have a client at home which pulls down that data to the USB drives. Maybe it just does lftp to one USB drive at home, then rsync copies from that drive to a second drive for redundancy and/or use rsnapshot for versioning.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What happened? - X-combinator

couple screeenshots :
http://i.imgur.com/p6e9kUn.png
http://i.imgur.com/fLpcz6L.png
Actually seems to be fixed now that I'm submitting this.
Anyway what causes this to happen? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickables:

[http://i.imgur.com/p6e9kUn.png](http://i.imgur.com/p6e9kUn.png)

[http://i.imgur.com/fLpcz6L.png](http://i.imgur.com/fLpcz6L.png)</comment>


Dreams Detoured: Struggle After the Recession in Greater Cincinnati - <AUTHOR> https://www.cincinnati.com/in-depth/news/the-long-hard-road/2019/03/27/long-hard-road-beginning-80-miles-struggle-after-recession-heart-greater-cincinnati/2850397002/ <comment><USER2> I grew up here. Cincinnati is a place full of really hard working people who care about family and have a lot of pride.

The comment about the father not wanting to accept aid because he is too proud hurts because my family was the same way. I didn't get basic medical or dental care until college unless I was taken to the ER. There were many nights we went hungry and many times we had to sleep on grandma's floor because we had nowhere else to go. I do wish that families would discard their pride with regards to helping their children and accept as much aid as possible to ensure that they are healthy and prepared for the future.

<comment><USER3> Many forms of aid come with a different sort of price.

When people attach stigma to public assistance for political purposes, this is what happens. People with a demonstrable, provable need for charity refuse it. Whenever someone prattles on television about people on the dole being lazy, someone who is emphatically not lazy refuses a handout that might have allowed their child to get a dental checkup.

It may not occur to them that the person on the television is so far removed from the realities of poverty that they don't even know how false their words are when they say them. And so poor people, who actually do want to work, are constantly looking for jobs, turning over ever possible lead, and yet still unable to meet living expenses. And then, rather than giving up, they try even harder.

You can examine case after case, and find, time after time, that there is nothing there that anyone could point to and say "Aha, solve this one problem, and this person would not be poor!" You can find a lot of instances where the family was teetering on the knife-edge of solvency, and then just one unexpected event, completely beyond their control, sent them tumbling into an abyss. For a disturbingly large fraction, that is a medical expense--and occurs even if they had medical insurance. For a still-significant fraction, it is a major employer closing down local operations and moving the work elsewhere.

That's not a situation that one can blame on the poor. It comes from a systemic disrespect for the least-valued humans in the community--a disrespect that is compounded by a myth that they alone are responsible for all their hardships.

It is not pride to believe that a poor man should be treated at least as well as a rich dog. And it is not charity if it requires that the recipient throw away their sense of self-worth. There are a lot of things your family could have done for money--prostitution, smuggling contraband, stealing, fraud, etc. --and that sense of self-worth also kept them from doing those things. To discard that "pride", and do anything to survive, means to literally _do anything_ to survive. If your moral foundation is to have things because you earned them lawfully, and you then shift to taking things because you _really_ need them, that does not necessarily stop at things given voluntarily, or in keeping to the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't grow up in the Cinncinnati area specifically but Akron, OH is not that far away. The stories are similar. These are hard working, friendly and virtuous people that grew up on values that if you worked hard good things will happen.

However, it's not turning out to be the case any longer. I am so grateful and luckily to have found my way into computers at a young age. I really feel for my neighbors and family who are in similar situations.

I grew up in this place and I feel very proud to call it my home, I left it years ago but it's a special place.

It's hard to describe this feeling to anyone that didn't grow up in the rustbelt. It's so easy to take for granted the things you have and the money you made in our tech bubble. Outside of it there are many real people facing insurmountable odds to make ends meet with limited options for themselves.

I try to keep these things in mind whenever I think I'm having a bad day.

</comment><comment><USER5> I grew up in Cincinnati. I finished college at the start of the Great Recession. As career opportunities in Tech were (at the time) nonexistent there, I couldn't find a future for me in Cincy. I moved away in 2009 to Chicago; and then to San Francisco 5 years later. I feel a little bit guilty for leaving my childhood friends and family behind to move on with my aspirations.

It's been hard to listen to my parents complain about how terrible the region has become; yet I am grateful for their continued encouragement to pursue my own goals - even if elsewhere.

It's easy to say "why don't they move?"

It's a question I bring up all the time to myself. As it turns out, it is really hard to relocate an entire family once roots are put down - my aging grandparents, my sisters and their families, my fathers' business, and my mothers' career in commercial banking all anchor them to Cincinnati.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know these people. Some are family. I live in the Cinci metro. This article illustrates the reality of life for what I think is most of the country. They are constantly on the edge of financial ruin. Living everyday under that kind of stress is hard and hard to watch.

<comment><USER7> Definitely sounds like Wisconsin. I was reading the whole time thinking, man, things must be exactly the same everywhere?

<comment><USER6> I doubt it's like this every where but it's certainly like this for many across the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Staggeringly good piece, and should be required reading for anyone on HN.

<comment><USER9> Excited to read this. Their piece on heroin won a pulitzer last year: [https://www.cincinnati.com/pages/interactives/seven-days- of-...](https://www.cincinnati.com/pages/interactives/seven-days-of-heroin- epidemic-cincinnati/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I grew up just a few miles from that blue line they drew. I got good grades, went to a good college, and when I was looking for a job it just seemed like all the promising careers weren't in Cincinnati. I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and have lived here ever since.

My little sister had a similar story, but she moved to Chicago. My other little sister had a similar story, and also moved to San Francisco.

San Francisco just has a better economy than Cincinnati. What feels wrong to me is that this better economy is only really open to the top end of jobs.

It isn't that you can't make a lot of money for low end jobs in San Francisco. While you can struggle in Cincinnati to make $20 an hour even with some useful skills, San Francisco gives people $184,000 a year in salary + benefits to pick up poop off the street.

The problem is that high rents prevent people from moving to San Francisco, even if they could make a lot more money here. I feel like one of the best things our country could do for poor people in the middle states is to figure out how to make rent cheaper in the coastal states. Not just for some protected class that happens to currently have rent control, but for everyone who is looking for a better economic opportunity and wants the chance to move to a more vibrant part of the country.

<comment><USER11> > San Francisco gives people $184,000 a year in salary + benefits to pick up > poop off the street.

You are 100% disconnected if you think this is true. The wage gap is an even bigger issue in SF than Cincinnati.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like a relative newcomer to the Bay Area. Newcomers are, generally speaking, always a bit disconnected, and tend to have odd ideas about the area they've moved into. Over time, I'd expect that poster to get a better view of what San Fran really is. As you said, "prosperity disparity", "income inequality", whatever you want to call it, is a good deal worse in San Fran than it is anywhere in the rust belt. That's for sure.

Unskilled laborers moving to SF thinking it's the land of opportunity are likely to be disagreeably surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sadly not available in the eu...

<comment><USER13> Videos aren't here, but the text and most images are: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190502180114/https://www.cinci...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190502180114/https://www.cincinnati.com/in- depth/news/the-long-hard-road/2019/03/27/long-hard-road-beginning-80-miles- struggle-after-recession-heart-greater-cincinnati/2850397002/)</comment></comment>


Facebook Builds Chip Team, ASIC - <AUTHOR> https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333716 <comment><USER2> This is a weird article.

Headline says they are building an ASIC. Provides absolutely no details other than facebook are hiring hardware engineers. It could be a CPU (CPUs are ASICs too), it could be a GPU. It could be something related to machine learning, or it could be enterprise great switching fabric. Who knows?

Then the article goes off on a huge nig tangent about how facebook is working on a compiler for generic machine learning accelerators. The article explictly says that this compiler targets all machine learning accelerators, especially a bunch that are already in development or released by other companies.

These are completely independant chunks of news, nothing facebook has said links one to the other. Yet by putting both news items in a single article, the author implies that facebook are working on a machine learning chip, while providing absolutly no proof.

<comment><USER3> Why would Facebook build a CPU or a GPU? Custom routers generally use _off the shelf_ switching fabric chips with custom software stacks, but it's board- level hardware design, not ASIC design.

Machine learning consumes a huge amount of compute, and GPUs waste a lot of power executing the workloads. Specialized accelerators for it pay back their investments quickly.

<comment><USER2> Facebook is a large company with many projects going on. While I admit that machine learning accelerators is a likely candidate, there are a huge number of possibilities for potential ASIC projects.

Facebook owns Oculus, I could easily see Oculus needing a custom ASIC, maybe a low-latency display driver. Or a high-powered SoC if they decide to do an untethered Rift. This is also where I could see them potentially making a GPU. Making a whole SoC is hard, why not take an off the shelf one and attach it to a custom mobile GPU chip.

It's also possible that Facebook might have a smartphone project on the go (again). A custom SoC could be useful for that.

Or facebook might be considering post smartphone devices. There are lots of places where a SoC could be useful.

Facebook has been making their own open servers (and switches) for a while. But they still built around "backdoored" intel CPUs. I could easily Facebook wanting a high-performance server grade open CPUs (probably RiscV based).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This title is misleading, they are not building a general CPU (like x86 or ARM) but a Application Specific IC, which in this case is solely for executing machine learning programs faster than what a CPU could do.

</comment><comment><USER5> Are they hiring?</comment>


A server crash has halted all AirIndia operations globally, thousands stranded - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/airindiain/status/1121973677568827393 <comment><AUTHOR> How dependent are we on technology to run the economy. Shouldn't a system this reliant on technology have sufficient contingency plans and regular mock- failure-tests every often?</comment>


How Bad Is Your Colormap? (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/10/16/how-bad-is-your-colormap/ <comment><USER2> I highly recommend this accompanying video, which takes jake's idea and goes into the details of how viridis replaced the ever-naughty Jet.

Colormap selection is surprisingly fascinating.

"A Better Default Colormap for Matplotlib (SciPy 2015) Nathaniel Smith and Stéfan van der Walt" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU)

<comment><USER3> Related: [https://bids.github.io/colormap/](https://bids.github.io/colormap/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there any articles out there that give advice on choosing/adjusting color maps for a particular situation?

I understand why some maps are awful, but have had a hard time finding a color map which I like perceptually for interpreting LIDAR forest canopy maps.

I've tried using viridis and a few others, but exceptionally tall trees get lost in the noise (not enough contrast), especially when using transparency to overlay canopy height on the LIDAR intensity data.

Is this just a case of not clamping the ends of the range properly?

<comment> semi-extrinsic I guess if your underlying data is not uniform, a uniform color map isn't going to do great?

Say, if you have a bimodal underlying distribution and you're interested in coloring according to quantiles, you want to have a similarly bimodally distributed color map.

The easiest way to achieve this is to compute the quantiles for your data set, and color by that (rather than height).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not enough people know about rainbow colormaps being problematic. This is a pretty cool tool that scans bioRxiv for preprints that use Jet and then automatically sends the authors an email asking them to improve the colormap, e.g. to viridis, parula.

[https://jetfighter.ecrlife.org](https://jetfighter.ecrlife.org)

</comment><comment><USER6> The piece makes some good points about problems with converting certain color schemes to grayscale. This is a not insignificant thing. It is quite common to print charts and graphs in grayscale, either because the only available printer is black and white or because color printing is substantially more expensive.

<comment><USER7> That's not the point.

Everyone's eyes/brain interpret colors by taking signals from the 3 types of cone cell detectors and combining them into 2 color-difference signals (red–green and blue–yellow) and 1 brightness signal. The latter of these has the best spatial/temporal resolution and is used for interpreting textures/fine details, edges of shapes, motion, depth, etc.

In a sense, everyone's vision is primarily grayscale, with lower-resolution color information layered over the top.

<comment><USER8> And then you have to take into account that our sensitivity to some colors then others. Our cones are tuned to what can be approximated as three different bands of wavelength, which are centered in and sufficiently overlap around the green wavelength to result in our being most able to discern the color. Human eyes can discern at least twice as many distinct shades of green than they can red or blue in a uniform distribution, and color science has to take that into account to prevent such an image from appearing overwhelmingly green.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One area where I would like to see more perception research is in 2D colormaps for values that have both an angle and a magnitude (complex numbers). The "state of the art" seems to be throwing it all into max-saturation HSV but I know we can do a lot better than that.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a Processing library [1] that allows you to select perceptually inform colors in any range (but remember there are holes where normal sRGB monitors cannot fill, see the API docs [2]). If you haven't heard of Processing, check it out! [3]; it is a generative graphics tool with an Arduino-like interface and IDE.

[1] [https://github.com/neilpanchal/Chroma](https://github.com/neilpanchal/Chroma)

[2] [https://github.com/neilpanchal/Chroma/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/neilpanchal/Chroma/blob/master/README.md)

[3] [https://processing.org/](https://processing.org/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Matlab (somewhat) recently ditched jet as the default colourmap in favour of Parula.

[https://blogs.mathworks.com/steve/2014/10/13/a-new- colormap-...](https://blogs.mathworks.com/steve/2014/10/13/a-new-colormap-for- matlab-part-1-introduction/)

Since most folks (typically students) simply use the default this should help end the tyranny of jet.

I do still like jet for on screen visualisation, the extra contrast can be useful.

<comment><USER12> Isn't the whole point that the contrast is factually incorrect? It looks pretty but is a lie.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, but when you're looking at small variations in a gradient it's a reasonable tool to use before you delve deeper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I do CFD and have really begun experimenting with various colormaps for each project and it has made a significant business impact.

Each color map has a specific type of story it is best at telling and using program defaults is a really bad practice. For the type of phenomena you are trying to highlight and explain there is a color map for that problem and I think this is something that is understudied and under discussed for its impact

<comment><USER14> You might like this colourmap set then: [https://matplotlib.org/cmocean/](https://matplotlib.org/cmocean/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> About that _luminance-correct_ grayscale: [https://entropymine.com/imageworsener/grayscale/](https://entropymine.com/imageworsener/grayscale/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Can we tag this with [2014]?</comment>


How China got a U.S. senator to do its political bidding - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-china-got-a-us-senator-to-do-its-political-bidding/2017/12/17/8eee82c6-e1dc-11e7-8679-a9728984779c_story.html?utm_term=.24c2a532b45c <comment><USER2> Foreign influence in congress may not be the biggest threat to Democracy, but it is one of my biggest pet peeves. A country has vastly greater resources that any other individual, business or entitity. A foreign country's intentions are also potentially far more nefarious than a company lobbying to make more profit in a capatilistic system or an individual wanting government policies to be shaped more according to his needs.

A foreign country should not be allowed so much access. This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation. China is far far worse than a small country and this is peanuts in the grand scheme of things. I sincerely don't understand why no one can publically reprimand China for turning into a dystopian dictatorship before our eyes. Xi orders complete video and cellphone surveillance, black bagging without trial, abolishes term limits, makes disappear any rival billionaire or elite, and no one says a darn thing. Instead, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerburg are in the front row clapping. Literally. Xi announces all this and they congratulate him and clap in the front row.

We take a lot of tech freedoms for granted.

<comment><USER3> The article bangs on about how China got a single US congressman.

Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress.

[http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2017/07/17/aipac- sti...](http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2017/07/17/aipac-still- biggest-foreign-agent/)

Mearsheimer and Walt is still the big book on the subject:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy)

The US give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. Allows them to disgregard UN resolutions and prevents the recognition of Palestine.

Israel has nuclear weapons and is outside the Non proliferation treaty and yet the US goes crazy about other countries that try to get weapons.

Meanwhile AIPAC isn't even registered as something foreign.

This can be happily discussed online and in every non US country it amazes people how a tiny country like Israel can get the US to support them no matter what they do.

Now even Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, by one country in the whole world.

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of how the NRA is supported by a small but active part of the population that votes.

Jews may be small in number but I would bet dollars to Latka's that they vote.

If Tech issues brought people out to vote like guns or Israel I bet we would have more engineers in Congress.

<comment><USER5> The Jewish people aren't a monolith. Some of us prioritize freedom, democracy, and peace for all people and stand against theocracy. You're probably right about voting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The US has decided that its politicians are for auction. I don't see why its a problem if the bidding is from China instead of Comcast? Besides foreign governments have been lobbying in Washington for decades. There is a whole industry about it.

<comment><USER7> What particularly strikes me about this story is the highly selective concern. What about all the lobbying done by Israel and Saudi Arabia?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The amount of corruption I've heard against US Senators is staggering. I had no idea stuff like this was done except maybe in some cartoon version of the 1870's Gilded Age.

Good example, Max Baucus shorted various financial companies for petty/risky wins as he was helping construct the 2008 bailout. He then later became the ambassador to China :(

> Financial markets were experiencing the greatest volatility on record. > Trillions of dollars in stock profits were being washed away. But for Bachus > it was different. According to his financial disclosure statements, Bachus > netted as much as $50,000 in capital gains by aggressively playing the > market during this volatile period. And he netted tens of thousands more in > early 2009, when financial reforms were put in place. What makes these > results impressive is the fact that options trading is extremely risky. > There is a rule of thumb in the financial industry that 75% of options are > worthless when it comes time to redeem them, and that 80% of options traders > lose money.

[http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/excerpt-peter-schweizers- bo...](http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/excerpt-peter-schweizers-book)

<comment><USER9> Congress specifically excluded themselves from insider trading laws. It's outrageous but that makes it pretty much a free for all for US congress folks to do insider trading.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-insiders-above-the- law...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-insiders-above-the-law/)

<comment><USER10> I've often wondered about starting a fund where I simply follow any trades certain congress members are making. That's not insider info at that point, right? I guess this strategy can't work for some reason (or others would be exploiting it) but what is the reason? Time delay?

<comment><USER11> I don't think the trades of congress are public record. You simply aren't able to get that information. And if you are able to get that info, and the rest of the public doesn't have it, then that's inside trading.

<comment><USER10> I thought trades past a certain size had to be disclosed? But yes, this is probably the reason: I simply wouldn't be able to know until long after the fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These allegations are tame compared with what Richard Blum's (husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-CA) financial interests with the Chinese have done. The Chinese even benefited from elements of her so-called Desert Protection Act.

<comment><USER13> Is there an article you could link to? Interested in the details

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> China is an extremely interesting study in geopolitics.

Nations should _never_ be able to do this, rise in prominence completely unobjected. You see examples of this throughout history, whenever one nation starts to expand its power and influence, another nation or group of nations tends to deploy power to check the rise.

Accession of new geopolitical powers is therefore an extremely rare event, a complete failure of the nation's rivals to provide an adequate check. Those checks go all the way to declaration of war if it becomes necessary.

We're seeing that with China, and no one is quite sure why. Russia is falling in line with Chinese interests, the US is just keeping mum, in the same way Europe kept mum for decades while the US rose in prominence.

My theory has to do with nuclear weapons making the 'buck-stops-here' solution politically infeasible. Nuclear weapons didn't meaningfully change conventional warfare, but it threw a monkey wrench into international diplomacy, creating a situation in which China can push relentlessly hard to rise without a corresponding check.

<comment><USER15> There are several reasons for it, including your nuclear weapons practical consideration.

\- The US allowed China into the WTO, urged by globalist corporations who thought it would be massively to their benefit. That was the spark that sent their economy skyrocketing. Their economy had been growing at a healthy clip, however immediately after joining the WTO it doubled in size in just five years from $1.4t to $2.8t. It is still widely believed, perhaps naively hoped for, by major US corporations and financial interests that China can be a growth opportunity for investment and trade. That keeps the criticism more subdued than it otherwise would have been (and that appears to be gradually fading, as it becomes obvious China is running an almost strictly mercantilist economic nationalism strategy).

\- China repaid some of the trade imbalance, which provided them with vast piles of dollars, by buying up a small chunk of US debt. China recognized it as being in their self-interest, just as it was with Japan, providing some additional influence. That bought them a small amount of political cover.

\- China has largely stayed out of several prominent spheres of US military dominace, including in the Americas, the Middle East and Europe. That may change of course, as China has begun pushing its military outwards. [1]

\- The US has a slightly unusual liking of China, which goes back a century or more. The US protected China from being nuked by Russia in 1969 [2]. The US destroyed the Empire of Japan and fought side by side with the Chinese to push the Japanese out of mainland Asia. The US was primary in working with China to open its economy, including work done by politicians like Nixon / Kissinger, and US companies / investors. The US is among the few global powers of the last 500 years that didn't seek to invade, conquer or humiliate China, but instead traded massively with them and invested massively into them (despite the fact that they were hard Communists and the US Capitalist). There's some kind of kinship (despite the occasional adversarial tones) between the two nations, the US maybe sees some of itself in China's rise. On the _economic side_ there was actually less hysteria in the US about China's rise to global power than there was with Japan during the 1970s and 1980s (with Japan actually overtaking the US GDP per capita figures by 1987), despite China's climb being far more dramatic.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/china- djibo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/china- djibouti/533385/)

[2] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461/USSR- planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html)

<comment><USER14> I don't think any of these are salient.

In the first place, politics is more often the driver of economics than the other way around. No way would American political leaders sacrifice the good of the nation for the good of individual corporations. To allow China to do this literally means they're sleeping at the wheel. Americans have always been fiercely America-first, up to and well beyond the point of being willing to go to war over it.

This is, quite literally, the one job that a lot of people in government have, to come up with foreign policy strategies and assess the situation and recommend policy to political leadership. Those people are still there, doing their jobs, assessing and recommending. Yet we still have not started pursuing an effective strategy for containing China. Why?

Your other theme, that Americans just somehow like China, doesn't really hold water either. Americans had a similar like for Russians, but that didn't stop us from fighting a decades-long proxy war with them.

American leaders just seem legitimately confused over the direction the nation should be going, allowing China to fill a leadership void. It almost seems like we're just tired of global hegemony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Old news: [http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-foundation- scandal...](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-foundation-scandal- echoes-clinton-china-controversy-from-1998/article/2600931) .

Also Russia, Ukraine, Saudi.

Our current POTUS seems will not be influenced by China.

<comment><USER17> Probably because Russia outbid them.

<comment><USER18> That is probably why we stopped fracking when Trump was elected. To help the Russians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also worth reading (linked in the sidebar of the OP):

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- opinions/chin...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- opinions/chinas-foreign-influencers-are-causing-alarm-in- washington/2017/12/10/98227264-dc58-11e7-b859-fb0995360725_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.9664f091930d)

</comment><comment><USER20> What a piece of corrupt shit, pardon my french. I have a strong belief that US senators are, in its vast majority, completely innocent and this does a lot of harm to the 'clean' ones.

<comment><USER21> Barbara Lee was the only representative in Congress to vote against the 2001 AUMF

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What I thought was really funny was how the Clinton foundation lost pretty much all it's foreign funding in a matter of weeks after Hillary lost the election.

Who knew that even Australia, both the premier privately AND the government bribed the US president ?

I wonder what they pay for ...

[http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian- economy/au...](http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian- economy/australia-ceases-multimilliondollar-donations-to-controversial- clinton-family-charities/news-story/219577919ed8dfbd79cf808321234eba)

Ukranian billionaires: (who, by the way definitely did not earn his wealth. In a way, this guy got it from Putin, or at least certainly approved by Putin)

[http://prn.fm/clinton-foundations-deep-financial-ties-to- ukr...](http://prn.fm/clinton-foundations-deep-financial-ties-to-ukrainian- oligarch-revealed/)

Norway's government:

[https://www.thelocal.no/20160704/norways-funding-of- clinton-...](https://www.thelocal.no/20160704/norways-funding-of-clinton- foundation-under-scrutiny)

Irish "businessman" (who got his wealth from government monopolies, I might add)

[https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/denis-o-brien- and-d...](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/denis-o-brien-and-digicel- biggest-irish-donors-to-clinton-foundation-1.2764987)

Googling around you find many others, like the beheader-in-chief, the king of Saudi Arabia. Chinese politicians. More Russian oligarchs. Etc.

And here is what they paid for:

[http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/emails-foundation- resource...](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/emails-foundation-resources- used-for-chelsea-clintons-wedding/article/2606615)

And VERY well paid jobs for the extended family:

[https://www.dailywire.com/news/8561/7-things-you-need- know-a...](https://www.dailywire.com/news/8561/7-things-you-need-know-about- clinton-foundation-aaron-bandler)

An example of thier projects an extremely expensive "public" library garden, which comes with a "private residence" and a mini-golf course. The Clintons stay there "on an off", according to the NY Post. (needless to say, most of it was financed, not even by the Clinton foundation itself but by local government)

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

[https://nypost.com/2016/10/02/bill-clintons-executive- suite-...](https://nypost.com/2016/10/02/bill-clintons-executive-suite-is-a- private-pad-above-165m-library/)

No worries, the Bushes have something similar, and Obama is constructing his version.

<comment><USER23> NY Post, Washington Examiner, The Daily Wire, and a blog written by someone whose bio starts out "An internationally renowned expert in the field of health and nutrition...".

Perhaps you have sources that aren't part of an insane right-wing echo chamber? Oh wait, no, of course you don't, or you would have posted them. Must be some of that Deep State infecting the MSM (am I doing this "right")?

<comment><USER22> Okay, let's give a few more links ... let me know which one is sufficiently left wing (none I guess). Also, please state what exactly you're claiming ... there are plenty of links in here by organisations that certainly have a reputation for integrity so slant, sure, factually inaccurate, certainly not.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/arts/design/an-earnest- bui...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/arts/design/an-earnest-building-for- a-complex-president.html)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2014-10-17/bill- clin...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2014-10-17/bill-clinton-in- bubbaland)

[https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/mar/12/20010312-02...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/mar/12/20010312-021554-4736r/)

[http://www.greenroofs.com/projects/pview.php?id=190](http://www.greenroofs.com/projects/pview.php?id=190)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/11...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/11/18/AR2007111800379.html)

[https://www.npr.org/2017/03/01/517840118/arkansas-weighs- whe...](https://www.npr.org/2017/03/01/517840118/arkansas-weighs-whether-to- remove-the-clinton-name-from-little-rocks-airport)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Senators do a lot of underhanded stuff.

But, in this case, if it were put to a vote, probably the senator's constituents in Montana would want him to do exactly what he's doing?

</comment><comment><USER25> WaPo had been doing great reporting these days. I just don't know how much money they lose in ad revenue by being behind paywall. Any summery of the article?

<comment><USER26> Sorry, if you think they are doing great reporting, isn't it worth to pay for a subscription? It is dirt cheap for Prime members

<comment><USER25> No it isn't because there are other dozens of such outlets there. I can't buy dozens of subscriptions for everyone doing good reporting. Either they have to come up with some subscription bundle that covers large number of outlets (like Netflix or Google Music) or rely on ad revenues. I just don't know why these people don't think of this and just assume people would just swipe away their credit cards for new subscriptions.

<comment><USER27> How many newspapers do you need to read in order to be well informed? I subscribe to two newspapers and a magazine. I don't feel like adding more would give me additional value. Surely you wouldn't feel the need to read every newspaper in existence to feel well informed. I encourage you to subscribe to one or two that you feel provide a valuable product to you.

<comment><USER24> If there was a way to get a single subscription for access to every article linked from HN (whether it be from NYT, WaPo, WSJ, or whatever) I might pay for that. I don't think most people read a newspaper front to back anymore.

<comment><USER27> "I want to buy some Lucky Charms but I only want to pay for the marshmallows because I don't eat the other bits."

"I want to rent this apartment but I don't use the oven so I dont want to pay for that portion."

"I want a whopper from BK on a bun from Mickey D's, And I only want to pay for one burger with that combination."

"I want iOS on my new Galaxy."

I'm sorry for mocking you but I find your stipulation for paying for journalistic content absurd. However, this is not the first time I've heard similar conditions requested for things that are not the speaker's to place conditions on. I'm wondering where this line of thinking comes from. I seem to hear it from the younger generation (20s/early 30s). (I'm not tying to be purposefully ageist or overgeneralize.)

<comment><USER24> I didn't request anything. I merely stated some conditions under which I would feel inclined to pay for journalistic content. Nowhere did I say that anyone is obliged to create such conditions for me.

Just like I don't buy lucky charms because I don't like all the things in there. That doesn't mean I think they're depriving me of something to which I'm entitled. It just means they're not getting my money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> S&P and Moody's and other credit rating agencies need to downgrade the US for our total and complete political dysfunction. We are being passed by as other counties address real problems, while we argue about plain as day facts that only one political party in the world still refuses to acknowledge. America's power will continue to fade the longer republicans are in power.

</comment><comment><USER29> One hopes this is just the daily recommended dose of general "fear foreigners!" pablum that WaPo is assigned by its CIA handlers, rather than the first rumblings of the foredoomed "Operation Tibetan Freedom". We've gotten our asses kicked enough this century already; let's chill out for a few decades.

It is ridiculous to think that beef export, in particular, should be held hostage to concerns about injustice in Tibet while the rest of the economy happily bubbles along doing billions and billions in business with China. If WaPo dislikes Montana beef people so much, why not get them kicked off the federal lands they destroy while paying pennies to rent? Ranchers like me who have to actually pay for the land their cattle graze, could support that.

</comment><comment><USER30> First, Chinese government has no human rights abuse in Tibet; they developed the area and treat the people well. Second, corruption is everywhere, if there is not China, there will be another country. The election system is not to find the people loyal to voters.

<comment><USER31> Don't spend your 50 cents all in one place.

<comment><USER29> If that's what an account that old with that much karma is doing, we have to be impressed by the commitment at least.</comment></comment></comment>


Is there an open source neural network library for iOS? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! I found a couple but aren't fully featured:

[http://www.findbestopensource.com/product/neurosis](http://www.findbestopensource.com/product/neurosis) (school project)

[http://nikolaypavlov.github.io/MLPNeuralNet/](http://nikolaypavlov.github.io/MLPNeuralNet/) (only perceptron, no back propagation)

I also found a C library that I could theoretically integrate in:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18704779/how-to- install-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18704779/how-to-install-and- use-fann-with-xcode)

</comment><comment><USER2> I found a couple Objective-C libraries here:

[https://github.com/nikolaypavlov/MLPNeuralNet](https://github.com/nikolaypavlov/MLPNeuralNet) [https://github.com/devongovett/SNNeuralNet](https://github.com/devongovett/SNNeuralNet)

I can't comment on how it's designed, or whether it's easy to use. But it looks pretty good.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice for seed-stage startup funding firm in India - <AUTHOR>

HN Folks,
I am reposting this thread from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=964957
I am looking your thoughts on what all went right with YC, other than PG and team being there. I mean I see a lot of potential in India. A lot of good talent can be used internally to work on problems more relevant to Indian landscape. What you think should be done to get this rihgt.
If you would like to discuss this via email, you can email me at firstname.lastname@example.com
Info: I am planning to launch a seed funding company which takes the YCframework and applies it to Indian Markets, as YC is not yet present in India. My firm will emphasize on more non-internet based companies eg: Agriculture, Education, Medical Research, and Rural Innovations. <comment><USER2> APart from the money what makes you a good investor?

<comment><AUTHOR> What makes me a good investor: 1\. I am an Engineer, with a keen sense of problem solving 2\. Worked on 4 new products from conception to final product 3\. I know there is a need in India to encourage people to start taking the entrepreneurial path, I am ready to provide the platform and I understand the risk. 4\. There is an inherent approach in India by investors to only go after IIM's and IIT (Best Colleges in India), which doesn't make sense in long run. I have seen and faced this and I am sure I can change it. 5\. Finally, I am passionate about Ideas and making India better.</comment></comment>