An Analysis of SpaceX's Falcon 9 Crash Landing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/analysis-falcon-9-crash-landing/ <comment><USER2> A key piece of information we don't have, but Space-X does, is how much fuel was left at landing. Landing has to be done with minimum fuel, since it comes out of the fuel budget for putting payload into orbit. They have thrust vectoring on the main engines, and have attitude jets near the nose. They have to land vertical, at near zero velocity, with near zero angular rate, with an underactuated system. Underactuated means there are more degrees of freedom to control than there are controllable parameters. They have 5 controllable degrees of freedom - 2 axes of engine vectoring, main engine throttle, and 2 axes of relatively weak nose thrusters. They have to hit a point with three translation constraints, three linear velocity constraints, two angular constraints, and two angular rate constraints. So they have 5 DOF in and 10 DOF out. That, mathematically, is what "rocket science" is.

This under-actuated maneuver has to be solved as a two-point boundary problem, or, in practice, re-solved continuously to cope with problems such as wind gusts. You can see what happened; they had too much angular rate at landing, requiring more torque than the nose thrusters could impart to keep the rocket upright once the main engines could no longer help. It looks like they made a big correction shortly before landing to hit the target, and lost angular stability doing so.

If they'd had a bigger landing area, so they didn't have to apply big corrections to hit the tiny target, this would have worked.

<comment><USER3> Elon - "Looks like the issue was stiction in the biprop throttle valve, resulting in control system phase lag. Should be easy to fix."

AKA lost constrol of the engines. It could of landed in a field and it would of still crashed. Man there are so many armchair rocket scientists.

<comment><USER2> Aviation Leak says that message was "withdrawn."[1]

[1] [http://aviationweek.com/space/spacex-checks-throttle- valve-a...](http://aviationweek.com/space/spacex-checks-throttle-valve-after- flawed-falcon-9-recovery-attempt)

<comment><USER3> [2] ITAR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Guys please.

The sideways oscillation of the rocket is an obvious control loop problem. When it's working correctly, the booster will remain rock solid vertical and land gracefully. Elon's (now deleted?) tweet said as much.

Let the real rocket scientists fix their rocket. They know how. It's really unbelievably close to working. Amazing really.

<comment><USER5> The fact that he deleted it implies they decided that wasn't the case after all, or at least wasn't the whole story.

They didn't handle media very well this launch, what with the fumbled video release and then a retracted tweet.

<comment><USER6> My read on the deletion is that they didn't want bad press going into the next attempted landing, which is going to be on land.

<comment><USER5> Is it? Do you know which flight?

<comment><USER6> This is all I know: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9387929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9387929)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting to think about a case where Just Read The Instructions (the barge) might cooperate in the landing. Perhaps it could have an XY stage that could help compensate for residual X,Y or X,Y roll rates at touchdown.

Looking at the video, if JRTI could have slewed a platform quickly to the left after contact, it might have been able to return the tilting booster's center of mass to a stable position.

That's probably not much of an incremental engineering effort over what SpaceX has done already in this work. I'm completely awed by what they've accomplished so far.

(edited because I can't do word->initial strings late at night...)

<comment><USER8> I keep hearing lots of great ideas about how something other than the rocket could help the rocket land (catch it, move the platform, use a net, etc. etc.)

I honestly think SpaceX have no intention of learning how to do any of those (even though some might work great) because they want to learn how to land it in a place with no "smart" landing pad already setup.

i.e. Mars

<comment><USER9> Can a Falcon Heavy get the full center core of the rocket, including the first stage into orbit? Maybe with no payload? If so, this would mean transporting and landing a stage on Mars, for use as a return launcher, would be possible. Is this a possible long term plan?

<comment><USER10> I expect the more difficult part is getting the necessary fuel to Mars to escape. Obviously you could do it if you took enough trips, but that would likely be prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER11> the plan that makes most sense is to produce fuel on site. allegedly there's water below Mars surface, so LOX/LH should be doable. maybe there's more stuff to synthesize methane, RP-1 or other fuels.

<comment><USER5> One plan I've seen for ISRU on the moon is to use a Al-Lox hybrid engine, since Al2O3 is all over the moon's surface. I wonder if there's enough on Mars to do the same thing, or if you could do something with iron oxide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The title is misleading, should say "analysis of video of F9 crash". I know the current tittle is the title wired put in it, but the crash is not actually analysed at all, just the video of it, and that analysis doesn't provide any information of importance.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would not call such an article "an analysis".

<comment><USER14> Oh come on. Generating graphs of the rocket's vertical position and angular deflection from vertical over time, using a video analysis and physics modeling package, is not analysis? Sure, having the actual telemetry data from the rocket would be better, but suppose you were a competitor to SpaceX and wanted to understand what their capabilities were and whether this approach is feasible, this is exactly the sort of investigation you'd want to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Overall, I'm very impressed by SpaceX's efforts. However, I'm wondering why they haven't tested the Grasshopper out on a water barge? It may be no different than on land, but that seems like a large assumption to make and a crucial variable to ignore.

<comment><USER16> Would that save them much development effort? I would think they would have to do a lot of refit each time they dumped it in the ocean.

<comment><USER15> Very good point. It may not in terms of pure time or money. But in terms of eliminating "unknowns", it will certainly save them many headaches. Generally the unknowns are what cost you in development efforts. In this case, was it the variability of a water platform (however minute) that caused the over correction, or was it a fault of a piece (i.e. valve or something similar) in the rocket?

When doing something new it's much easier if you eliminate all unknown variables except for one. So first, develop a controlled rocket that can hover and land on land (grasshopper). Next develop one that can hover and land on water. Now all major unknowns are eliminated except for the big one, landing a rocket from space, on either a water platform or a land platform. However, you will now be able to discern whether the issue is related to the water platform or just the general difficulties of landing a rocket hurtling down from space.

<comment><USER16> Wouldn't saving either time or money (or both) be the entire point of using a specialized test vehicle? They are anyway working their way through the unknowns by trying to recover the boosters.

I think they are also pricing the launches so that at least all the direct costs are covered, so these tests are 'free'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I didn't see a mention of Musk's tweet, which labeled the YouTube video as "slow motion". That will make a difference (though likely just a scalar?) in the calculations.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm interested in why they haven't built another grasshopper to primarily use for the pad abort and inflight abort to get some bonus testing with.

Does SpaceX have a location they could fly such a test rocket? They can't go over a km in their texas location.

</comment><comment><USER19> The video shows a lot of white caps in the ocean so the wind was blowing pretty hard. If the wind was gusting on top of that it's not hard to see why it would be hard to keep the rocket from being blown over even if it landed properly.

<comment> david-given The first stage will be empty of fuel and is basically a big empty metal balloon with a huge lump of metal at the bottom. The centre of gravity is very low, so while it looks really unstable it's much less bad than it looks --- like a double decker bus. OTOH, as you say, there'll also be a huge amount of windage from that big empty metal balloon...

SpaceX seem to be competent, so I assume they'd factor this in. I'd be interested to see an analysis, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They were so close!

Previous landings where more elegant, this one "looks anxious" (like done in a hurry). If they leave more fuel towards the end for error margin maneuvering then it can aproach landing with less momentum

</comment><comment><USER21> Landing attempt video: [https://youtu.be/rAzwuEmZcmE](https://youtu.be/rAzwuEmZcmE)

</comment><comment><USER22> This doesn't seem to take into account that the video was in slow motion?</comment>


Elon Musk ordered Tesla engineers to skip a critical brake test on Model 3S - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-orders-engineers-to-stop-brake-and-roll-testing-2018-6?r=DE&IR=T <comment><USER2> I doubt it is that "critical", they likely have other cross-checks and enough production data to make that call.

Granted time crunch, but they aren't the old school with the old baggage either.

Pending disaster? Doubt it. We will see I guess.</comment>


How one man died so a whale might live - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/20/how-one-man-died-so-a-whale-might-live <comment><USER2> This is in my area of the world The Maritimes in Canada. I think it's important to note (as of Sept 2017) of the thirteen, not seven, whales that died two were tangled in fishing gear but the other eleven were killed either by blunt force trauma or it was inconclusive.

Blunt force trauma is from a ship running into the whale. Operators of cruise ships, oil tankers, ore barges, shipping container ships and other large vessels wouldn't even know they hit anything. This area has a large amount of smaller fishing vessels, some medium but many large ships are heading to or from the Great Lakes region via the St. Lawrence river. South of Nova Scotia would see ship traffic heading to busy large ports on the US east coast. The Bay of Fundy is busy too with oil tankers, cruise ships, high speed ferry boat, various types of fishing vessels.

I can probably speak for most in my region when I say last summer (2017) it felt like 'suddenly whales!'. The occasional dead whale would wash ashore and often it was deemed natural causes but last year it seemed every other day there was news of a dead whale. And not just any whale but a Right whale.

There isn't any one solution it's not only fishermen or only tankers and cruise ships. Fishermen this year have heavy restrictions on rope size for traps and nets. And fishermen are now told to immediately stop fishing when a whale is near, and I mean immediately with only a few minutes notice. Cruise ships have been told to use idle speed in areas where whales have been reported, many cruise ships just cancel visits turn around and go somewhere else.

It's been bad for the local economy with fishermen not able to fish during their designated season of eight weeks, closures for whales doesn't extend the season. The loss of thousands of cruise ship passengers to small town ports also has a big impact for small business who make or break during a few months of the summer.

Here is a DFO report about the incidents PDF [http://www.cwhc- rcsf.ca/right_whales.php](http://www.cwhc-rcsf.ca/right_whales.php)

<comment><USER3> I think it's starting to feel like "suddenly whales!" in the SF Bay Area this year too. We've had something like 8 dead whales wash up in the past month or two, and many are thought to have died from boat strikes. There was an article in Wired a few weeks ago about the dead whales in SF: [https://www.wired.com/story/the-messy-malodorous-mystery- of-...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-messy-malodorous-mystery-of-the- dead-60-foot-whale/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Joe Howlett worked saving whales caught in fishing lines. Immediately after making a second cut (of fishing lines), the whale struck the kodiak with its fluke, which did something to Joe that killed him.

It is unclear from the article whether that second cut freed the whale, or what the whale was attempting to do with its fluke, and the article does not list a cause of death.

The title is answered in the two paragraphs beginning with "Joe took his place at the bow, standing ready with his gaff"

<comment><USER5> Whales and, dolphins also, are muscular animals that can kick really hard. The whale probably just wanted to dive, lowered the body, and put the head vertical. The tail follows and raises quickly in the air in this case before the dive.

> "The tail struck Howlett with roughly a tonne of force"

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/campobello- whal...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/campobello-whale-rescue- funding-1.4287869)</comment></comment>


AlphaZero: A general reinforcement learning algorithm that masters chess - <AUTHOR> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419/1140 <comment><AUTHOR> If you want to see a chess grandmaster go through one of the games, Daniel King is always excellent: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFtY7gNRVRI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFtY7gNRVRI)</comment>


Why you shouldn't keep your startup idea secret - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdixon.org/?p=338 <comment><USER2> "In terms of the risk of someone stealing your idea, there are at best a handful of people in the world who might actually drop everything and copy your idea."

Sure. But what if there are others who are already working on something similar and, on hearing about your idea, glom some interesting features, or get motivated to push something out before you do.

I guess I'm skeptical that that there is zero downside to having your competitors know what you are doing.

<comment><USER3> If you already have "competitors" (that is, if _they_ see _you_ as their competition), you're past the idea stage. If you don't, then they're as likely to listen to you as to an anonymous email telling them to do features X, Y, and Z.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would agree that its important to get feedback from everyone around you. But, there's something scary about throwing out an idea on Hacker News. The author mentions that only a handful of people will drop what they're doing and copy your idea. I would imagine that your odds are a LOT greater around here! :)

Of course, I'm half kidding here... but I cant be the only one who ever worried about this.

<comment><USER5> There has to be a difference between "talking to everyone who will listen" and "broadcasting your idea to the world". You might want to talk about your idea to 99% of the people you meet, but specifically avoid 1% for one reason or another - putting it in front of an anonymous audience makes that control impossible.

<comment><USER6> I've yet to see that come true, ever. I've seen lots of people _try_ to do that, but invariably types like that will go for the low hanging fruit. Their heart won't be in it and as soon as the next thing comes by that looks like less work they'll start chasing that.

Building a business takes dedication and tons of effort, the idea is a minor part of it all. Sure, you need an idea to get started but if your execution is excellent it will take a very determined party to try to compete with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."

<comment><USER8> that's Howard Aiken, for the record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I strongly agree with this post. Summary: you have more to gain in idea refinements and reality checks than you have to "loose" from competition. Also NDAs are almost worthless.

<comment><USER6> > Also NDAs are almost worthless.

That's so true. It's gotten to be such a formality now that plenty of parties don't even bother with them any more. In the US maybe less so that in Europe, but the last NDA I signed is already 2 years ago and it's not like I haven't done anything in that period.

By the time you need that NDA you probably have other problems to attend to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I personally sit on the fence here.

It's funny because just a few weeks ago, this article was on HN. Don't these 2 arguments contradict each other?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=660720>

<comment><USER11> _Don't these 2 arguments contradict each other?_

Let's get to the real issue here: you seem to be under the impression that airing a variety of viewpoints is somehow problematic.

<comment><USER10> That's not what I meant. I meant, I am on the fence... here is an article (and comments) with the opposite viewpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I mostly agree. There are a few corner cases where this does not apply. I'm working on a new app right now which I feel there is no value in openly exposing it prior to launch. Even after launch, I'm only going to market directly to my end user and not seek wide-scale exposure. I have discussed the niche I'm going after with a few trusted advisors and that is all I need to verify I'm thinking straight. Exposing it early may not introduce a copy cat, but in my case may cause other problems. I know, I'm being a bit mysterious, but there it is ;).

</comment><comment><USER13> I personally think you should share ideas with people if you respect their ethics and skills.

</comment><comment><USER14> If your idea is so easy to steal, copy, reproduce that there mere act of telling someone about it is a threat, then

        1) Your idea (like all ideas) has minimal value.
        2) Someone else probably has/is/will come up with it independently.
        3) When you do reveal/launch it and it's worth anything someone with more money/laywers/customers/clout/power/marketing than you will take it anyway.

Ideas are nothing. Implementations of ideas maybe something. Good/successful implementations are hard to reproduce/steal. The article points are about helping you achieve that good implementation. Something which secrecy hinders.

Also note, that currently for most the world, people with money/power can generally make ideas not worth stealing via various patent/copyright laws and the general high cost of litigation.

</comment><comment><USER15> I kept my idea secret for years because I thought that as soon as someone else knew it, they would steal it, execute it, and become a billionaire while I'd be stuck in a cubicle forever.

I thought I was so smart, but looking back, I can't believe I was so stupid.

Once I started sharing my idea (only parts of it at first), I got instant feedback, what was good, what was stupid, how to improve it, who else to talk to, etc. You get the idea.

My dream took wings and became my project only after I shared it with others.

<comment><USER16> The funny thing is that would-be novelists have same illusion and face the same failure - except the ideas of writers don't have to be as original...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am starting a new project and have decided to keep quiet about it until I am a little closer to release. This has challenged my idea of confidentiality a bit, and I will start revealing more information a bit earlier.

As a side not. I Created a quick sign up page at: <http://141312.com/launcher>. I find it interesting that most people who have signed up have marked that they would be willing to sign an NDA for an earlier beta.

I'm not sure if I will require an NDA, but I plan on using people's willingness to sign one as an input for that decision.

<comment><USER18> You might consider using a <http://friendda.org/> instead. It's not likely you'd actually try to sue one of your beta testers anyway; it's more of a social gesture than anything, a friendly request to your community asking that they not talk too much about Fight Club.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd love to see pg's input on this

<comment><USER20> I'd love to know _your_ input on this more. This whole comments thing isn't just to kill time before pg decides to pipe up.</comment></comment>


Rich Hickey on Clojure (SE-Radio podcast) - <AUTHOR> http://www.se-radio.net/podcast/2010-03/episode-158-rich-hickey-clojure

<comment><AUTHOR> I found out about this interview thanks to Dave's comment on <http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/09/thoughts-on-clojure/>

He also links to a post discussing the interview: [http://whiley.org/2010/06/23/rich-hickey-on-clojure-se- radio...](http://whiley.org/2010/06/23/rich-hickey-on-clojure-se-radio/)</comment>


First Open Banking API Sandbox in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://ukopenbanking.com <comment><USER2> If you're in the UK and want a banking API (including payments and transfers), I'm building [http://teller.io/](http://teller.io/). It's been in private beta about 2.5 months and access will be opening more broadly soon. I couldn't wait for banks to get themselves into gear so I reverse engineered all of their mobile apps, took their private APIs and expose a single unified API through Teller.

Here is a video of me cURL-ing my bank account yesterday: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwWccFD0wv8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwWccFD0wv8)

Here is a CLI one of my beta testers @sebinsua/@nouswaves made for his bank account: [https://github.com/sebinsua/teller- cli](https://github.com/sebinsua/teller-cli)

So far the RBS banks, e.g. Natwest are in prod. If you bank with them, want super early access, understand it's beta product and will give some feedback: sg <> @ <> teller.io

<comment><USER3> Do we have to give you the full login details?

I'm somewhat impressed though - I was defeated by certificate pinning on one UK bank's mobile app. How did you get round that?

<comment><USER4> There's a BlackHat presentation on this: [https://media.blackhat.com/bh- us-12/Turbo/Diquet/BH_US_12_Di...](https://media.blackhat.com/bh- us-12/Turbo/Diquet/BH_US_12_Diqut_Osborne_Mobile_Certificate_Pinning_Slides.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Finally loaded_. Here is the blurb from their website:

UK Open Banking

A demo of Open Banking APIs in the UK

In February 2016, a group of experts from the banking, FinTech, security and open data communities published a framework to deliver an open standard for Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for UK banks. This work, led by HM Treasury, aims to increase competition and innovation in and around banking to improve outcomes for customers and thus further support the UK's world-leading FinTech industry.

The European Union is rapidly advancing legislation (PSD2) that will, upon implementation in the next two years, require banks in the EU to open their payment and transaction systems to certified third parties. This is a good moment for the UK to take a leadership role and influence the EU and beyond.

We took this opportunity to reveal the first Open Banking API sandbox specificaly targeted at supporting discussion around the UK Open Banking standard. The sandbox we are showing today provides a selection of API calls relevant to the UK Open Banking Standards report. Feel free to explore the calls. We believe our technology gives the UK a tremendous headstart and access to a vibrant Fintech developer community.

Click below and enjoy!

<comment><USER5> Twitter: [https://twitter.com/OpenBankProject](https://twitter.com/OpenBankProject)

Github: [https://github.com/OpenBankProject/OBP- API/](https://github.com/OpenBankProject/OBP-API/)

API Documentation: [https://github.com/OpenBankProject/OBP- API/wiki](https://github.com/OpenBankProject/OBP-API/wiki)

API Explorer: [https://uk-apiexplorer.openbankproject.com](https://uk- apiexplorer.openbankproject.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are interested in this, take a look at Mondo: [https://getmondo.co.uk/docs/](https://getmondo.co.uk/docs/)

Some news coverage here:

[http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jun/29/digital- banking...](http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jun/29/digital-banking- mondo-hopes-to-become-the-google-or-facebook-of-the-sector)

[http://www.thememo.com/2015/06/25/meet-mondo-the-app- thats-g...](http://www.thememo.com/2015/06/25/meet-mondo-the-app-thats-got- the-banks-worried/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/24/mondo/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/24/mondo/)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-18/mondo-s- ce...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-18/mondo-s-ceo-wants-to- build-a-bank-for-people-who-hate-banks)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been dreaming of a standardized banking API for as long as I've been using online banking. It crushes my soul every time Mint makes me send them my actual log in credentials just to scrape transaction data. Really hope this catches on, but I think too many orgs have a vested interest in being the gate-keepers of your banking data.

<comment><USER8> Mint has always pulled my data automatically from BOA, Chase and Wellfargo. Which banks are you using??

<comment><USER7> Mint is logging in on your behalf, unless you have a different service than I do.

<comment><USER9> Yep, the OBP approach is to use OAuth (currently 1.0a) so the App doesn't have to see the credentials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "...require banks in the EU to open their payment and transaction systems to certified third parties" Does anyone know if this will mean that average Joe can't just write a script to access his account, because he isn't a "certified third party"?

</comment><comment><USER11> see also teller.io for the UK, Stevie gave a great talk on the same issue at a hackernews london meet up last year.

</comment><comment><USER9> Folks, Sorry about the initial slowness we had to tweak apache configuration in front of jetty. Here is the url again: [https://uk.openbankproject.com/](https://uk.openbankproject.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This doesn't look HM Treasury-ey is this by some other organisation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Let by us at the Open Bank Project (www.openbankproject.com)

<comment><USER12> How does this work. Will banks be using the same API structure in general, or is it more sort of an advice type of thing.

Also what type of operations are intended to be supported (read/write?)

<comment><USER9> The report sets out a framework rather than a specification at this point. It talks about a phased approach starting with open data (e.g. branches, products) then transaction history and then write (e.g. payment) options. PSD2 from the EU might well influence the operations supported first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just gave them my email address and was taken through to Mailchimp, where their address is given as being in Berlin! Strange that this is supposed to be led by HM Treasury.

<comment><USER13> I think the language is slightly confusing on their website. It appears they took part in a HM Treasury led consultation, along with 38 other organisations. [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/413766/PU1793_Open_data_response.pdf) (page 13)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to think the banking industry in Australia might follow this lead, but I'm not hopeful.

</comment><comment><USER15> seems to be struggling with load. Anyone else?

<comment><USER5> Not working for me either. I haven't read it all yet but I think this article is related: [http://www.theguardian.com/media- network/2016/feb/16/banking...](http://www.theguardian.com/media- network/2016/feb/16/banking-industry-uber-moment-standard-open-banking- working-group)

<comment><USER16> [https://github.com/OpenBankProject/OBP- API](https://github.com/OpenBankProject/OBP-API) seems to be related to them.

The snazzy writeup suggests loads of people are involved but the project has a pretty low number of contributors. Is this the whole organisation or a subset of people doing some work relating to the concept.

The idea of a common API is really fantastic mind you.

<comment><USER9> Hi Folks, Simon here from the Open Bank Project. We're based in Berlin but were involved from the early stages in the report published by the UK Treasury. We put up the sandbox to get feedback on the APIs etc. Guess we have some high load on one of our servers at the moment! Feel free to ask any questions. (AMA??)

<comment><USER17> While I wait for the pages to load... Any fintechs (or other) actually planning on implementing this API? What is the relationship like with the industry? (Is there feedback being implemented in the API?)

More information would help. There seems to be interest around the world to change/modernize the financial industry for consumers. Thanks for taking questions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Big Does a Minority Have to Be to Reshape Society? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/ <comment><AUTHOR> previous discussion found:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17272120](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17272120)</comment>


The Future of Content - Cheap and Plentiful - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/business/media/08carr.html <comment><USER2> The wired article goes into more detail and is also quite interesting. <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia>

<comment><USER3> This article pulls my favorite description of Demand Media from that article:

"Imagine a classroom where one kid raised his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else."</comment></comment>


Chad Perrin: Apollo 1.0 -- not exactly the moon - <AUTHOR> http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=223 <comment><USER2> It took 11 Apollo missions to get to the moon!</comment>


WD Red SMR vs. CMR Tested - <AUTHOR> https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/ <comment><AUTHOR> Back when the CMR vs SMR WD issue came up, a big question came up: "Will the users ever notice the difference in technology"

For many desktop users, maybe not. But this ServeTheHome test indicates the big issue with SMR Drives in one test: [https://www.servethehome.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/05/SMR-...](https://www.servethehome.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/05/SMR-RAIDZ-Rebuild-v2.png)

A RAIDZ-rebuild happens on occasion for NAS users. The CMR drives all completed their rebuilds in 17 hours, but the SMR drive took 229 HOURS (over 9 days) to rebuild.

It is these kinds of "sustained write" workloads which NAS-users will come across that typical desktop users won't. The poor sustained write performance of SMR really shows in this particular use case.</comment>


Internet Blocking Begins In Jordan - <AUTHOR> http://7iber.com/2013/06/internet-blocking-begins-in-jordan/

<comment><USER2> Jordanians[regime] are worried of spill-over from Syria and now Turkey. This is compounded by number of Syrian refuge as well as the past Palestanian refugees, not to mention common regional issues of youth unemployment and lack of general opportunities. Jordan probably wants to preemptively downplay the regional uprising lest it motivates internal uprisings.

Additionally, Potential uprising in Jordan will give second thoughts to global players who have been wanting to arm the Syrian rebels (mainly to block Iran's retaliation path from Lebanon against an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facility, now and in the future). Danger of Jordan falling and turning further toward an Islamist regime could cause more problem for Israel than Iran's influence in Lebonan via Syria. If we see uprising in Jordan, we'll soon forget about Syrian rebels.

<comment><USER3> There has always been internet censorship in Jordan, I don't think this is particularly motivated by a "potential uprising".

<comment><USER2> Sure...but you want creat the illusion of free press. That said, the third- world countries are not as suffesticated as western world when it comes to controlling the media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What saddens me is that this kind of censorship (blocking news sites, making them adhere to older stricter regulations for paper news, making site owners responsible for comments, etc) is widespread in Europe as well and people think this is how things should be.

«Censorship should exist in some form on the Internet: 71% somewhat or strongly agree; 24% somewhat or strongly disagree; 5% don't know / not applicable.» <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Censorship>

Poland: "Polish Courts Say Websites Should Be Registered As Press" <http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/8306>

Italy: <http://censura.bofh.it/>

UK: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/12/dafamation_bill_huma...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/12/dafamation_bill_human_rights_joint_committee_report/)

<comment><USER5> A month or two ago, my GF attended a lecture where everyone in the room (except her, who stood aghast in astonishment) agreed that:

\- Twitter is too much freedom of speech and it should be censored.

\- freedom in general is going rampant these days in our societies, and should be significantly reduced by coercion.

They literally advocated for Thought Police. We're talking about top of the line students and professors, notably in Law.

I seriously don't know what the world will look like tomorrow, but I don't like where I see it headed right now (lots of semi-isolated islands of controlled GroupThink).

BTW, if anyone is versed in French, may I recommend reading "La Zone du Dehors", a fantastic novel by Alain Damasio (a dystopian novel showcasing a glimpse of the future, and a spiritual sequel to 1984)

<comment><USER6> Anecdotally.. were they afraid of terrorism attacks [ or eg. cybercrime ]?

<comment><USER7> I think that threat is quite small and it shouldn't warrant blocking websites. However, the media likes to make out that the internet is a breeding ground for hundreds of thousands of terrorists and hackers, so probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Censorship = Admission of Fear

</comment><comment><USER9> But... but ... I thought the Internet was supposed to route around damage.

<comment><USER10> Yes, the Internet has continued to work for me even though whole countries have implemented large scale filtering.

I'm not in any of those countries, but no-one ever claimed that the Internet would continue to work in the areas that were damaged.

EDIT: Freedomhouse has an interesting article about the state of Jordanian Internet censorship in 2011 and 2012. (<http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2012/jordan>)

As an aside: was robustness (routing around damage) ever an aim of the DARPA project? I hear conflicting things, and it seems to be part of the folklore now.

<comment><USER9> That's a really good question. The phrase is sometimes called [John] Gilmore's Law. [http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet- article.h...](http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html) It has certainly been said many times that DARPA was "researching a decentralized system that would be robust enough to survive and function even if most of the network were destroyed".

<http://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/history.shtml>

<http://www.ciec.org/trial/complaint/facts1.html>

But that was in the event of a nuclear attack - presumably a bit more random than governments with Big Switches. Of course, NO networks, NO re-routing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If there are Jordanians reading this, could you spend some time testing out Lahana[1] - both nodes and clients and see whether or not that helps?

[1] - <http://lahana.dreamcats.org/>

<comment><USER12> I'm sure you mean well, but dogfooding crypto software in this sort of situation seems like a bad idea.

<comment><USER11> You're right in that I do mean well and I think you have a very valid point about dogfooding crypto. I'm aware of (and have tried to point out) the limitations of the crypto in Lahana but others might not read it and I think I jumped the gun in that respect. Thanks for making me think twice about it, I appreciate it.

To Jordanians - I would ask that you try it out, but only on things that wouldn't get you into trouble - i.e. things that are blocked but perhaps not contentious. I accept that if Lahana and it's wider goals are successful that maybe people will suffer for using it but I built this with the goal of helping people in mind, not hurting them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The internet as we know it will one day be used to enslave large groups of humans where it would be otherwise impossible to do so.</comment>


Show HN: my weekend project - Bookmarks made serviceable - <AUTHOR> http://memorypool.io <comment><USER2> Now.it can be done even better by adding a windows 8 or spotlight style search :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, will add that. Thank you for testing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like this notion of the desktop metaphor being extended to bookmarks. Actually I was quite disappointed to see that Google missed this trick with their new Chromebooks, preferring to stuff app links into a bar at the bottom of their desktop. Your approach makes a lot more sense.

Quick bug report, there is a display issue when one's browser window (or screen) isn't wide enough, it chops off whatever is meant to be at the right hand side at the top: <http://i.imgur.com/GfNtJcv.png>

Another issue is that sub-memorypools with identical names can be created. Not sure if that is intentional or not.

Also a suggestion, I think that dragging a bookmark icon on top of a memorypool icon should move it into there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey ryiytrye, thanks so much for your feedback. I will make my possible to figure out how I can solve that bug. Also, I'm currently implenting the icon move, copy and paste. Stay tuned (it's for tomorrow) ;)

edit: good remark. Memorypools are links too. So if you create two memorypools with the same name, they will "point" on the same "desktop" as expected :)

<comment><USER3> No problem, it's been fun playing with it :)

Two more issues: <http://i.imgur.com/uBpTr0m.png> \- somehow managed to get two links superimposed ("meteor" and "j"), and moving blocks of links took a rather long time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really like it, few bugs though:

You can drag an item to below the fold and it extends the screen and adds a scrollbar. This then causes the logout and the number (which is?) next to it to stack looking weird.

It's weird having to drag a select box to select only one item. Took me a minute to figure out you could even do that (remembered it was based off desktop) but before I was grabbing one, moving it, and then dropping which leaves it selected before I could delete.

Folders have a %20 in the name at the top once you enter them, but no on the icon display.

<comment><USER4> Seems you can't drag items into folders/memorypools or out of them yet either.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, I'm implementing that. Thank you for your feedback:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since I still buy into the benefits of the spatial metaphor, I like this kind of stuff.

But, lately, I've been moving to a more search-driven experience where I can add content/bookmarks/files/whatever to the system and forget about them until I need them later, so I'm not sure if this would scale to the number of bookmarks I've been adding lately.

But, still, neat. At the very least, I see some potential in this approach for curated "launchers", sharing sets of bookmarks with others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, your feedback is very valuable. May I ask you which piece of software do you use for that?

<comment><USER5> For my bookmarks, I got lazy and now just use Firefox/TenFourFox/Iceweasel with a local sync server. So, I use Firefox's system, which allows for hierarchical and tag-based organization, and searching based on title. Prior to that, I used Delicious, which also had tags, and searching.

I can't speak for anyone else, but these days I use bookmarking as a contingency, in case I remember later and need or want the link to whatever. So, I'll bookmark just about anything and everything I might possibly remember, regardless of real value or intention. In the past, I used bookmarks to represent an active intention to go back and follow up on whatever, so I would carefully curate and organize my collection.

Your project seems like it would be very useful for the latter. And these days, for me, the latter comes up most often when I also intend to share the collection with others. For example, sharing a set of bookmarks to websites covering candidates or ballot issues in a local election.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting. Is there two typical usages, or a continuum whose two poles are what you describe? Do you never use again bookmarks as you did?

I thought a little bit about sharing and social but I didn't see exactly yet how it works, but I will work on that of course. Your comments will definitely help me to orient things, thank you so much for them.

<comment><USER5> Like I said, I can't speak for everyone. I wouldn't be surprised if there were many different ways to approach bookmarks, some not even falling on a continuum between the two I described.

But nor would I be surprised if a lot of people took the search-oriented approach these days, as that's a common approach not just with bookmarks but with all kinds of content.

Personally, I very rarely take the intentional, curated approach. The example I gave, about sharing a collection of bookmarks relevant to local voters, is the only time in recent memory that I took the time to properly manage a set of bookmarks. And by "in recent memory", I mean in the last 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great idea!

I'm reminded of <http://www.allmyfaves.com/> (although you've obviously improved on their concept dramatically). If you're looking for a way to monetize your project, I believe they do pretty well just off of affiliate links (for the ecommerce sites).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, that's very kind. Also that links rocks, I didn't know it. Good idea for monetization. About that, I was thinking vaguely about customization (wallpaper, color scheme, buttons, icons etc.) - in case this site is worth one cent for at least one user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really love where you are going with this. Overall idea is pretty solid, I would say unique even though it is like win8.

As for feedback I saw in comments so far, first thing would be search and organizing in groups like win8 does. Then tagging as alternative way to organize would be good. Overall really nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks desireco42, I'm glad you liked it. I feel the same about the feedbacks and it's going to be a lot of fun to code those amazing suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice, this will be good combined with this Chrome extension [1] to set a custom URL for new tabs.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab- redirect/i...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab- redirect/icpgjfneehieebagbmdbhnlpiopdcmna)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting idea, but I find that spatial systems are problematic for people like myself who end up falling behind on their organizing.

Personally, I use a tagging model because it's easy and quick enough to catch back up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. Very valuable feedback, thanks ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice one.

Can we have a bookmarklet or chrome extension for this? Just a click and the website should be added. I'm using G+'s +1 for this so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Can we have a bookmarklet or chrome extension for this?"

Yes we can :) Thanks for your suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I make a mistake in the address it will not let me delete or edit the address. I also get logged into other users bookmarks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback. Sorry for the inconvenience. I will address that quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If the title/label is very long, can you make a tooltip to show the whole label/title on :hover? Much appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh, god, the color scheme...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah? Any resource so I can improve that?

<comment><USER13> Yes, sorry for the quick criticism without constructiveness. My bad.

Play with this tool: <http://colorschemedesigner.com/>

Currently you have a color scheme based on similar brightnesses of very similar hues—green and blue are very close together on the color wheel, thus it's difficult to tell them apart and in some sense they "clash" with each other.

The grey you've chosen is also very similar in brightness, which makes the whole theme quite low contrast, and thus difficult to read.

Analogistic color schemes like this can work, but they need to be relatively high contrast so that there's enough of a difference in perceived color to make text readable and transitions more clear. And to prevent clashing, which is just generally perceived as unpleasing.

I'd go with your little memory-chip icon. Take the green off of that (#60B660) and the chip grey (#424242) and choose a contrasting accent color. You can go with a blue, but I wouldn't recommend it, and if you do I'd go with either very dark or very light used in places where it won't clash (such as maybe the top nav bar). Against the green, I'd use an orange or red or magenta in there, or just go with one main color and adjust brightnesses as needed (pretty failsafe).

Something like this would be similar to what you have, but with a better accent than blue (dark magenta) : <http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/132637/Odd_but_trendy>

Here's an analogistic color scheme that works due to the contrast and hue separation: <http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/81885/Hymn_For_My_Soul>

It's hard to explain how good color schemes are really created, other than by following the color wheel somewhat and your sense of aesthetic above all, but you can take any of these as a start for reference on what's "good." -- [http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/most-loved/past- month/m...](http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/most-loved/past- month/meta?page=1) \-- Yours isn't too bad, there's just something off about it due to the low-contrast high-similarity colors used. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's down at the moment.</comment>


Ask HN: Which cloud provider to use in 2017? Azure, AWS or GCE? - <AUTHOR> Google cloud has grabbed a number of huge customer in 2016. However it doesn't seem to dent AWS's growth figures. I personally don't know much about Azure, but would love to find out.
Some criteria on which the clouds can be judged:  Performance, Cost, Features and Ease of use
What do you guys think based on personal experiences?
Please refer relevant articles and benchmarks. <comment><USER3> Azure is lacking in very basic features: I'd run away from it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13501433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13501433)

\---

That being said, I think for the traditional use cases they're all pretty comparable. I'd go with what's easier to learn/use and what will get better adoption in your org.

<comment><USER4> That's only a problem is you want to use blob storage to host the root of a static site content... blob storage can be used for a lot more than just as static content hosting.

I think the ease of Azure Storage (Table/Blob/Queues) is pretty awesome, and getting up and running with Azure SQL is nice as well. Both are _FAR_ easier to get started with than the AWS and GCE equivalents.

By comparison I think that AWS is really painful in the number of options for any given service, and their cost model makes it more expensive to get started with. On the flip side, it feels like Azure's compute nodes are pretty overpriced as well.

If you're willing to roll your own, Linode or DigitalOcean may be better options.

I haven't used GCE enough to comment really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've used AWS quite a bit and recently started using GCE for a project. One thing that stands out is Google Cloud Platform does not feel as mature as AWS, some features are still beta or invite only (like Cloud Functions for serverless code). Also, AWS I believe has more data center coverage around the globe.

One major pro is Google Cloud's pricing was much more straightforward and easier to estimate.

</comment><comment><USER4> From what I've read GCE offers better performance numbers, but I haven't worked with it so can't comment.

I will say I find that Azure's service offerings (blobs, tables, queues, and sql) much easier to get started with, and for less cost than the AWS equivalents, but compute nodes are more expensive and less performant.

</comment><comment><USER6> What about Azure as well? I work for MSFT under the Azure umbrella so feel free to ask questions. I'm a no BS guy who was a long time AWS guy and know where Azure falls short and where it might be better.

<comment><AUTHOR> updated the question

<comment><USER6> :)

So as someone who has been knee deep in Azure for around a year but who had previously used AWS for 2-3 years I would say: it depends. If you are looking at PaaS offerings, specifically around the application hosting side (not database) I would say Azure is an awesome fit. The idea of deployment slots in their Web Apps offering is really cool I think. I personally like the ARM templates for automation compared to something like AWS Cloud Formation. Of course if you are using a Microsoft stack the integration with Azure is going to be pretty tight. 3rd party products are bit hit or miss.

If you are looking to do all IaaS or some type of PaaS database outside of MSSQL I'd point you at AWS. I think all of the providers at the core level are probably pretty similar when it comes to IaaS VMs but AWS has a leg above when you look at the whole process. AWS has tons of tooling (both native and 3rd party) built around it, plus you can typically find answers for issues via Google, something I think that is less likely with Azure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We were using GAE, Amazon EC2 (also Elastic Beanstalk), Rackspace, Heroku and Jelastic. So I can share some feedback. With GAE, it was easy to setup environment. The only drawback is the limited control over certain things related to domains and forwarding etc. That did not allow full functioning of our project technology. Then we turned to AWS and Rackspace. There we had complete control, but it was very hard to set up things manually. Every time we need to configure the project, it was a total pain, and we had to do more IT tasks than we should. Now we stopped on Jelastic having control over environments with ease of setup. At first, we were using their public cloud (the choice of hosting providers with prices are stated here [https://jelastic.cloud/](https://jelastic.cloud/)) but after growth moved to private on premise (license based per server price).

</comment><comment><USER8> I have tried using AWS and Digital Ocean for personal stuff, and Azure at work.

AWS for me personally was too complicated interface wise. It was easy to lose track of running instances and being billed for things, the vast amount of types of things you can spin up also made it sometimes hard to navigate without lots of reading. I think if one of my side projects ever gets to a point where it needs a CDN, scalable EC2 instances and things like that, I'd research AWS, but probably only move to it if I had to. With all this said I do use Amazon SES for my newsletters I run as it's so cheap, I send a 4k subscriber list an email a week, costs about 60p a month.

Digital Ocean is my go to. It's stupidly easy to use, a great UI, genuinely a pleasure to use even compared to work VMWare enterprise stuff. I've been thinking lately about AWS due to load balancing being built in without me having to run my own keepalived stuff, but DO have announced load balancers are almost ready, so I'm rethinking. Here's a shameless referral link that'll give you some free credit: [https://m.do.co/c/f24e8a65668a](https://m.do.co/c/f24e8a65668a)

Azure is Ok. It's not great, it could be worse. The original interface is now called 'legacy', and that's good because it was pretty bad. The new one is a lot nicer to use, but as someone who's biased towards Mac/Linux for the desktop, it feels like Microsoft designed it. It can be a bit clunky, it can be difficult to figure out what the IP of something is instead of its hostname or to jump between different places without having to go through tons of breadcrumbs.

Price wise you can figure that out yourself using publicly available calculators, specific to your needs. DO is probably slightly more than AWS, but for the instant VM spin up from a really nice drag-drop UI (with lots of prebuilt images), easy automated backup, auto SSH key deployment and so on - <USER2> can't see myself leaving DO unless I have a specific requirement they can't meet.

</comment><comment><USER9> GCE is faster and cheaper. The number of features are less though. Azure has the advantage of deep integration with enterprise suites already in use.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been pleased with Azure. VMs and SQL can be expensive, so make sure to plan ahead on those. Some features I'd like to see aren't available or deep in the priority pipeline. However, overall it's been a good platform.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd add Digital Ocean to that list, super easy to spin up instances and their support is first rate.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's 2017. You may not need cloud provider since hard drive and processor costs are way below than it was few years ago. It would be cheaper in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER13> AWS or GCE are the way to go. Azure is horrible. Stay away from it.

<comment><USER14> I've only ever used Azure, and I've been pretty pleased with it. Care to elaborate and let me know what I've been missing out on?</comment></comment>


Getting Started With Django - <AUTHOR> http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in this you might like to read the extensive discussion from two weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5098832></comment>


Visual Programming Languages – Snapshots - <AUTHOR> http://blog.interfacevision.com/design/design-visual-progarmming-languages-snapshots/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad this is still being updated.

When people announce loudly that visual programming is the future, I'm often one being skeptical, and one of the points I try to make is that it's not a new idea. Not only has it been tried, it's been _comprehensively_ tried, in multitudes of domains and variations. If you think this is the solution, you really ought to spend time studying what has already been tried.

This make that point a lot easier, and makes it a lot easier to find the things to study.

If nothing else, this screenshot display ought to put to rest the idea that visual programming makes programming "intuitive" or "easy to understand".... most of these screenshots are just as opaque at first glance as any block of code is. (And if their secrets are revealed once you learn the language and understand what is being said... well, that's true of code, too, you know...)

<comment><USER3> > I'm glad this is still being updated.

We are too. There are a lot of languages out there and as we find them we add them (we have someone who is searching and adding them).

> If nothing else, this screenshot display ought to put to rest the idea that > visual programming makes programming "intuitive" or "easy to understand".... > most of these screenshots are just as opaque at first glance as any block of > code is.

I'm not sure if I totally agree with your conclusion of what the VPL - Snapshot page is bringing to the table. I think this page shows that there are many different ways people form mental models. Not only in the domain of textual languages but even within the domain of Visual languages.

The intuitive or easy part comes from people being able to program a computer using the mental models they are most comfortable with.

As for VPLs being tried comprehensively, I think this is true in the case of domain specific VPLs and I think they are becoming more and more main stream. For general purpose, domain agnostic VPLs, I don't think we've even touched the surface.

<comment><USER2> If you want to create a nice general-purpose VPL, go nuts. I won't be offended. I'm skeptical, but open to being proved wrong.

However, I'm _really_ tired of the "Hey, guys! We can just fix programming by _MAKING IT VISUAL_! How come nobody ever thought of this before? Everybody else must be stupid! I'm going to go work on this for three to six months and revolutionize programming as we know it! Be right back!"

And no, I don't think I'm particularly exaggerating that, up to and including the "everybody else must be stupid!" bit. The periodic conversations on HN every time this comes up definitely have that in them, with a selection of people slapping their metaphorical forehead and going "Yes, that's so true!". VPLs may _work_ , and may be good in certain domains, but they aren't the Holy Grail. If they were, we'd already know, because in fact it's been tried _tons_ of times.

Yes, I know that's not what you intended, but it's part of what's there. It's not a new idea, it's not something that magically makes all complexity go away, it's actually a well-explored field. If you want to contribute to it, I suggest learning about what's actually been explored, and then trying to figure out why your contribution won't have the same failures as the previous attempts at general-purpose VPLs. Maybe you have an answer to that question, in which, like I said, go nuts. But don't waste tons of time replicating the obvious answers, again, all the while thinking Revolution is just around the corner.

Visual programming isn't the only place where this comes up. Another one is "Hey guys, what programming really needs is a _PERSISTENT ENVIRONMENT_! How come nobody ever thought of this before? Everybody else must be stupid!" followed by a description of, basically, Smalltalk. I've actually clocked some time in persistent environments... there are reasons why it's less desirable than you think. If you can't fix them, or even see them, it's unlikely you're going to revolutionize the world. (It would be interesting to see a pure- functional take on that idea, though, while I'm musing.... a pure functional optional-and reactive environment would actually address a lot of the problems you can get there...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking at all these visual programming languages, I'm struck at how complex many of them are.

For example, I can almost always understand a recursive Fibonacci generator written in a new procedural or functional language that I've never seen before, yet I struggled to figure out what was happening as some of these visual languages generated the same Fibonacci sequence.

Why create that kind of complexity in an effort to avoid text?

<comment><USER5> Because generally you'll want to deal with a bit higher-level structures using the visual paradigm. So, a Fibonacci generator should be just a box, not a whole graph.

Visual programming can help keeping track of data flows within complex and/or parallel programs.

<comment><USER6> I rather like Martin Fowler's view of diagrams being sketches used to communicate rather than blueprints from which to build stuff:

"comprehensiveness is the enemy of comprehensibility"

I like nice simple diagrams (I joke to colleagues about having a limited budget for boxes and arrows or drawing things in crayon) - having these kinds of things where you try and include _everything_ in your diagram seems to miss the point to me.

[http://martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, except that in our system the graphs are still executable: [http://noflojs.org/](http://noflojs.org/)

<comment><USER6> So are your components written directly in a "lower level" language (JavaScript etc.) and then the high level structure relating those components defined in the diagrams?

<comment><USER5> Yep, in NoFlo you write components in JavaScript, though you can also use other diagrams as "subgraph" components.

In other environments compatible with the FBP protocol ([http://noflojs.org/documentation/protocol/](http://noflojs.org/documentation/protocol/)) the components may be written in other languages. For example, MicroFlo components for microcontrollers are C++.

<comment><USER6> Thanks - that makes sense. I just get a bit nervous with the idea that it makes sense to use a diagram-based representation all the way down the stack.

<comment><USER5> Here is one example of a project where we used FBP on Node.js, browser, and microcontrollers. The components in the graph you can see there are quite high-level:

[http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/ingress-table/](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/ingress- table/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> More suggestions:

* Microsoft InfoPath - form designer, visual "rules" language, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_InfoPath](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_InfoPath) , pic: [https://cdn.lynda.com/video/130286-219-635215935570714090_54...](https://cdn.lynda.com/video/130286-219-635215935570714090_540x960_thumb.jpg)

* Microsoft SharePoint Designer - visual workflow language, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SharePoint_Designer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SharePoint_Designer) , pic: [http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC620514.png](http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC620514.png)

* Microsoft Powerpoint - visual tweens, timeline, navigation buttons and advanced animation, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint) , pic: [http://www.brainshark.com/~/media/2012%20Ideas%20Blog%20Imag...](http://www.brainshark.com/~/media/2012%20Ideas%20Blog%20Images/Bright%20Carbon/animations%203.ashx?h=263&w=450)

* Macromedia/Adobe Flash IDE - visual tweens, timeline and interactive buttons, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash) , pic: [http://pad2.whstatic.com/images/thumb/1/17/Make-a-Simple-Ani...](http://pad2.whstatic.com/images/thumb/1/17/Make-a-Simple-Animation-in-Macromedia-Flash-Step-5.jpg/670px-Make-a-Simple-Animation-in-Macromedia-Flash-Step-5.jpg)

* Arena - simulation program - [http://www.arenasimulation.com](http://www.arenasimulation.com) , pic: [http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/W_9_bTn2LZE/hqdefault.jpg](http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/W_9_bTn2LZE/hqdefault.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Two more:

* FME - a lovely GIS data proccessing language - [http://www.safe.com](http://www.safe.com)

* IEC_61131-3 - the main way of programming industrial controller devices - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61131-3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61131-3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's an amazingly comprehensive list. Would be great if there was a summary table, or some kind of more organized shorter form view.

I'd never heard of Google Web Designer. Looks useful, going to try it out.

<comment><USER3> > That's an amazingly comprehensive list.

Thank you. There is so much we could do with this list and would like to add more meta-data. We have someone who spends part of their time finding VPLs and adding them. When we run out of VPLs we can find (and there seem to be so many), we'll try to organize them a little better than alphabetical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> More discussions from the last time this was posted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274674)

</comment><comment><USER11> Last time this came up ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274674)) I had been working on a sort of hybrid between visual programming languages and the traditional "text in files" approach most people have been using for the past few decades. I still think that text seems to be the best way to express _exactly_ what we want out of our programs, but I'm not convinced "text in files" is the right way to go about programming, at least not for all cases.

I'm working on Code Connect ([http://codeconnect.io](http://codeconnect.io)) with a friend and we're trying out some of the ideas first demonstrated in Code Bubbles. Instead of working with files, one works with individual functions. You can see a demo here if you're interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQ8NJOypqs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQ8NJOypqs)

We're currently building it for Visual Studio, but we should be branching out into other languages and IDEs shortly after we release.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274674).

Submitters: please check whether an article has been posted before. In this case, running the title through HN Search returns the above immediately.

Once a story has had significant attention on HN, we generally don't allow reposts for about a year.

<comment><USER13> Just a suggestion -- have the submission routine search for prior appearances of the offering, especially effective when the URLs are identical. Then diplomatically suggest that the submission might make the submitter look like a craven copycat. :)

<comment><USER12> HN's dupe detection has always been an honor system. We leave it so porous because we want to give the best stories multiple cracks at the bat. Otherwise randomness and churn, especially during peak hours, would bury far too many. Of course, this also makes the dupe detector easy to game, so we ask people not to game it. A small number of reposts is ok.

Several users have complained that randomness and churn are still causing many good stories to disappear without a trace. After looking at the data, we agree, and we're working on some experimental solutions for it.

If there's one driving idea behind HN, it's optimizing for curiosity, which cares about quality over quantity, so losing any of the best stories is a big (bad) deal.

<comment><USER13> Nice reply, thank you. Well put.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Shameless plug: Filter Forge, [http://www.filterforge.com](http://www.filterforge.com)

We even added (limited) loops and recursion in v4.0: [http://www.filterforge.com/features/version4/loops-and- recur...](http://www.filterforge.com/features/version4/loops-and- recursions.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a pretty insane example of using Pure Data ([http://puredata.info/](http://puredata.info/)) to make procedurally generated music for a game: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xr4aL1C24E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xr4aL1C24E)

</comment><comment><USER16> It's close to the end of the list, but it's worth hearing more about Scheme Bricks and the music people do with it.

[http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/2013/05/algorave- practice/](http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/2013/05/algorave-practice/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm excited to see Sikuli on the list this time around (it wasn't there last time). I use Sikuli quite often, and it's basically just Python but with pictures thrown in, so it's really easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER18> Also very interesting: [http://www.subtext-lang.org/](http://www.subtext- lang.org/) Schematic tables in particular are a novel interface that is really interesting.

</comment><comment><USER19> Everything from Automagic (Android automation package) to Alan Kay demo (from late 60s it seems) to LabVIEW to Alice, Squeak, Automator and a lot I haven't even heard of before.

</comment><comment><USER20> Whatever happened to IRIS Explorer by NAG, is it still available?

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, I had no idea how many of these exist(ed). Also, thanking my lucky star that I don't have to use any of them. Bad memories of LabView and HP Vee.

</comment><comment><USER22> Very neat. I found a bug.

What is listed as "Foundry Modo" is actually a different product called Katana by The Foundry.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why is the Hypercard one a picture of MacOS 6's Control Panel?

</comment><comment><USER24> No one has figured it out...yet..</comment>


Detect.location: Access iOS location data without actually having access - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/KrauseFx/detect.location <comment><USER2> I'll be the contrarian and ask why this is surprising? Of course if an application has been granted access to files of type X, the application can access those files and read / parse / write / etc those files and the data contained within them.

As a user, I'd be pretty annoyed if I used Instagram, FB, Camera +, or one of the many other camera or photo editing apps on my phone and they did not have the ability to read and write the location data.

<comment><USER3> > I'll be the contrarian and ask why this is surprising?

Because users aren't actually all that aware of there being location data attached to their photos. If you told them that an app could stitch together a relatively accurate map of where they'd been in a day based on the photos they took, most users would be surprised.

<comment><USER4> There's a map in the albums showing where all the pictures were taken. Also IOS creates memories(machine generated albums) with location names. You'll have to be pretty naive to think it wasn't storing location.

<comment><USER3> > You'll have to be pretty naive to think it wasn't storing location.

I think you'll have to be pretty naive to assume that users inherently realise that "photos have location attached" automatically leads to "third party app can read location in these photos" and can lead to "build a profile of you based on your photo locations".

It's not that people can't put these things together, it's that they don't ever really think about it. When you download a photo editing app you're thinking about editing a photo, not about the metadata you might be leaking in doing so.

<comment><USER5> exactly - users don't use logical deduction to work out what information an app is capable of inferring.

If i didn't give the app permission/information, it stands to reason that said app shouldn't be able to infer, or deduce it. If the app is able to do so, then they ought to be legally obligated to disclose this fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I never thought about the privacy implications there. Creepy. I hope apple comes up with a fix for this. Thanks to the creator for bringing this to my attention!

</comment><comment><USER7> It used to be that apps that tried to get the raw images had to have permissions to see the users location, otherwise the exif data would be stripped.

Did this change?

<comment><USER8> I remember when I uploaded photos in early versions of IOS, there was no location data accessible to me when I looked at the files on our server. Not sure what changed or if we never had access back then.

<comment><USER9> How did you upload them? Apple strips location data when sent in an mms/iMessage for example. Not sure what all avenues they do this for, but it could be a related cause in your scenario.

<comment><USER8> I just remember getting the image the standard way either from the library or the last camera photo, then examining the data that got uploaded, and not finding the location data. Then I think I looked at it in the debugger in XCode and there was no location data there either. Our apps at that time had location and photo permission and definitely could see the location information in the IOS photo app for the same photos. Just wrote it off as a quirk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Clever but its just symptomatic of a complete lack of ethical constraints and an all out assault on users rights and privacy.

Its like going to your doc for a checkup only to discover they have stolen your genetic information and peddling it to advertisers without your consent.

10 years ago spyware had meaning, now everyone seems to be building it and worse completely indifferent to ethical questions around harvesting user data and build intrusive profiles.

It's only a matter of time before there is a huge backlash against this rampant unethical behavior by the industry and its clear we need tough regulation and consequences.

<comment><USER11> > It's only a matter of time before there is a huge backlash against this > rampant unethical behavior by the industry and its clear we need tough > regulation and consequences.

Don't count on it. Outside of the tech community (echo chambered here), people seem to just not care. Otherwise Google and it's products would not have been so successful; all the click-bait adware nonsense would not have been successful. People are cheap and just don't want to pay for anything. Regulation could solve this, but Google and Facebook have so much lobbying power in the US, I fear nothing will change for the better, but, indeed, most likely for the worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh wow. Facebook and instagram _already_ have access to this collection of location data then. This feels increasingly uncomfortable.

<comment><USER13> Foursquare buys location data from instagram and then resells it to companies. Then they look at the location data and figure out that people are going to places like an Apple Store and then they take appropriate actions.

See [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-31/you-re- us...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-31/you-re-using- foursquare-all-the-time-you-just-don-t-know-it)

EDIT: Changed from Hedge fund to companies. Couldn't find source of Hedge funds.

<comment><USER14> Buys data from instagram? Not in source given.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've tried to mitigate this by not giving most apps access to my photo library, especially since I use iCloud Photo Library and it has hundreds of gigabytes of photos. Instead of using a photo picker implemented by the app, I try to use (a) share sheets extensions by going to the Photos app first, or (b) document pickers and then select my photo library as a source of document.

<comment><USER15> Note the if you choose "Save Image" on a Share sheet in iOS 10, the app is given full access to your Photo Library (you are prompted to allow it though).

Looks like this was restricted to write only access in iOS 11.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is ingenious! This is still a huge part of why privacy/security is still a long way off across all platforms. The attack vectors are much more nuanced and complex than the simplified permission system we think about

</comment><comment><USER17> There should be separate permissions for just photos vs photos with exif data.

</comment><comment><USER18> It reminds me of PeteWarden's iPhone Tracker back in iOS 4, which took the location data from the phone instead of the photos.

[http://petewarden.github.io/iPhoneTracker/](http://petewarden.github.io/iPhoneTracker/)

(I then wrote an AppleScript to use this tracking data to tag locations of photos in my iPhoto library, because my camera at the time didn't have a GPS).

</comment><comment> dorian-graph It's possible to give permission for a single photo on iOS, as opposed to the whole library—hopefully more apps will begin to be that fine-grained.

<comment><USER19> Is this an iOS 11 feature? I don't remember seeing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very creative, I like it and it creeps me out a lot! Whenever I am on my computer and I upload something to most places I try to remember to wipe the metadata, never thought of apps pulling this data straight out of the library on my phone. Luckily I don't have many apps with access to photos to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think the speed figures are accurate. I wasn't going 300+km/h when I took this, lol.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/fvgoo3qs3ku5eg0/2017-09-28%2000.45...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/fvgoo3qs3ku5eg0/2017-09-28%2000.45.02.png?dl=0)

</comment><comment><USER22> The proposed solutions are a total sledge hammer approach. How about if you want PHAsset to give you location information, you have to ask for the Location Permission? Problem solved. Devs can use their custom pickers and cameras and can't spy information they haven't asked permission for.

<comment><USER23> Agreed, that's actually part of the proposal as well

> An alternative approach would be to have an extra permission layer to access > the picture's metadata.

<comment><USER22> Actually, that's not what I said. It's location information, use the Location Permission, not an additional permission. Why should I need to have an extra permission beyond Photo Permission to get information like shutter speed, aperture, and timestamp?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So not live location data, but still a pretty damn representative list of location data.

<comment><USER25> The data is as live as the last photo taken. For many people, that's about the same as any other 'live' location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't this issue applicable to Android as well?

<comment><USER27> Yes, and every camera with EXIF data (and a GPS tracker) ever made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This only works if you've given the camera app location permission allowing it to geotag your pictures.</comment>


PyPy gets faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.ripton.net/blog/?p=59 <comment><USER2> Not that I'm a big fan of Jython, but including startup time in a benchmark is only useful for very short running command line tools. It says nothing about the speed of the JIT or the code that's being tested.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, there are a lot of small scripts and utilities that are written in Python, so it is a useful metric for quite a lot of use-cases.

<comment><USER2> I don't see why I would want to benchmark those kinds of utilities.

<comment><USER3> Because the start-up time of the interpreter will affect you every time you run one of those utilities.

<comment><USER2> Sure, and I did mention command line utilities. The issue I see with the benchmark is that it compares apples and oranges. For some programs it tests JIT performance and for others it tests startup time. If I want to test startup time, I just use a hello world program. To test JIT/interpreter performance, I try to exclude startup time.

<comment><USER4> Hello world programs only ever rely on the bare runtime, though; real utilities have to load libraries _after_ the runtime loads, which incurs further delays (which might depend on JITing/interpreting speed if they're not pre-compiled.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone done any recent memory benchmarks with PyPy?

I'd like to see magnitude of the memory trade-off for using a JIT compiler. As a web developer my programs are mostly IO-bound, not CPU-bound. I'm also bootstrapping and trying to squeeze as much as I can out of my 512MB linode.

<comment><USER6> Comparisons with LuaJIT (<http://luajit.org/>) would be particularly nice.

<comment><USER7> LuaJIT is a nigh untouchable work of art, we might never see a faster dynamic language JIT.

PyPy is significant because of the nature of Python itself: the language specification is much more complex than Lua and there are currently many more users and applications.

[the more complicated the language specification, the harder it's going to be to prove things about, the harder it's going to be to write a compiler]

<comment><USER8> > LuaJIT is a nigh untouchable work of art, we might never see a faster > dynamic language JIT.

Well Mike Pall disagrees in that he says there are still a lot of possible optimizations. Also all the process of by hand optimization for specific architecture can theoretically be automatized and decoupled. You're totally right about Python complexity though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Competition in the python-vm space is _fantastic_ and I'm actually really, really happy to see PyPy maturing.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's really nice for PyPy. Although Eulers are mainly numerical tests. Most of the work done in many programmers "real world" are work on strings, which CPython is very good at since all its strings libs are implemented in C. So i'd like to see a comparison with a better benchmark i guess :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to see IronPython included in the comparison. (do they handle 2.7?)

<comment><USER11> Yes, I'll include IronPython next time.

IronPython is at 2.6. PyPy and Jython are at 2.5. psyco is at 2.6.

Most of my Euler solvers are compatible with Python 2.5. The ones that don't work in 2.5 end up getting excluded from the benchmark, because the benchmark only shows programs that worked and finished in less than a minute on every tested Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just to be clear, what are the specified numbers? execution time in seconds?

<comment><USER11> Yes, execution time in seconds. And I throw out any program that fails on any Python, or takes longer than a minute on any Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> PyPy needs epoll!

<comment><USER14> epoll was new in CPython 2.6, PyPy currently targets Python 2.5, we have a branch where we're working towards Python 2.7 support (we skipped a step), that will include epoll support.

<comment><USER13> Ah, okay, that totally makes sense!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Years and years later and they are finally able to (very slightly) beat psycho. Sigh.

<comment><USER14> Sure, but we have a 64-bit backend ;) After years and years still no one wants to write one for psycho.

Edit: Psycho also broke Python's semantics in a few very subtle ways, in that sense it isn't a truly fair comparison.

<comment><USER15> Hey, don't get me wrong, it's great that you're making strides, and I still hope the project is a success.

My viewpoint comes as someone who was very excited initially at the thought of a drop-in replacement for CPython whose goal was to be "faster than c". It's been a very long time and it seems like pypy still has a long way to go to achieve production-readiness, so it's hard to continue being excited about the project.

<comment><USER16> Aside from the rapid performance gains in recent months and the fact that it's twice as fast as CPython...

<comment><USER15> ... _in these benchmarks_ , which are mostly tight-loop math code, from what I understand.

Being a drop-in replacement also includes things like virtual crashproofness, full stdlib support, runs major third-party packages flawlessly, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is tweetdeck down? - <AUTHOR>

I am unable to login into my tweetdeck account. Is there some problem with the site ? <comment><USER2> [http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/30/2914764/tweetdeck-taken- do...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/30/2914764/tweetdeck-taken-down-user- allegedly-able-to-access-hundreds-accounts)</comment>


Ask HN: Do You OK Google or Hey Siri in Public? - happy-go-lucky <comment><AUTHOR> I use ok-google around friends when I want to look up a fact or something to show them. It's a nice way to get some information and still stay involved in the conversation without having to stop, look at my phone, type something in and read the result.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would if Siri worked for basic use cases. I tried to create a timer on my Mac with Siri and it couldn't even do that. Sad really.

<comment><USER3> Why don't you make your own? It occurred to me the other day to do this. I want some experience with hardware, so I'm going to install a microphone next to a drawer and a speaker on the drawer itself. I'll be using a Raspberry Pi and figure out what else I need, if anything, as I go. I'll be using it for the main thing I talk to Google for: to manage time.

I hate the fact that I can't tell Google to cancel an alarm for example. If I say "Cancel my alarm". It should ask back - if there are multiple alarms - "which alarm would you like to cancel?"."List alarms" should answer back with my alarms. "Cancel my alarms" should return "Would you like to cancel all of them?". That kind of thing.

If I ever have any need of invasive suggestions - which I don't - it's just encouragement to learn some DL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It really depends on what's going on. If I'm out and I remember that I need to do something, I have no problem at all saying "Hey siri, remind me when I get home to switch the laundry around." It'll show me a geofenced reminder to switch my laundry when I get home. I haven't had any problems with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Never use hey Siri. Much easier to hold down the button to summon Siri. I do use it in public (rarely) and also voice dictate texts sometimes (less rarely)... but only if I can do so fairly discreetly.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use it when i'm walking / driving.

I only use it around friends when checking a disputed fact (usually for a bet)

</comment><comment><USER7> Not opposed to it, but rarely find it necessary. The time when I find OK Google most useful is actually just when my hands are busy and I'm trying to find out if I'm running early, on time, or late. I ask the time. Perhaps I should just have a wall clock.

</comment><comment><USER8> The only use I've found for Siri that seems to work consistently well is when I say "Raptors score" or "NBA schedule." :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nope, but it's one of my favorite benefits of working from a home office. I use it to create new reminders all day as my GTD inbox system.

</comment><comment><USER10> Obviously, if there's no one around. Who are you going to impress?

</comment><comment> happy-go-lucky All it proves is when you have a _name_ , whatever you create, it lingers but it's not of much use to anybody.

</comment><comment><USER11> I do, but mine only works when unlocked on my desktop screen... it's just faster than typing for quick searches.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think I have but possibly only if there was no one around.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nope.</comment>


What Solitary Confinement Does to the Brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> I found this part interesting.

"Many prisoners find survival in physical exercise, prayer, or plans for escape. Many carry out elaborate mental exercises, building entire houses in their heads, board by board, nail by nail, from the ground up, or memorizing team rosters for a baseball season. McCain recreated in his mind movies he'd seen. Anderson reconstructed complete novels from memory. Yuri Nosenko, a K.G.B. defector whom the C.I.A. wrongly accused of being a double agent and held for three years in total isolation (no reading material, no news, no human contact except with interrogators) in a closet-size concrete cell near Williamsburg, Virginia, made chess sets from threads and a calendar from lint (only to have them discovered and swept away)."

It seems that isolation works like a virus attack, slowly rendering the mind incapable of working properly. Somewhat like a mental Gom Jabbar. Some people at least seem to fight back by consciously creating stimulation. Hack and Counter Hack.

<comment><USER3> During 10 days of silence and meditation, I had entire movies play in my head, in great detail, line by line, scene by scene. Movies I could normally barely remember. I didn't have to try, it just happened. In fact I was trying not to think. My mind wanted any kind of content to play. I think it happens naturally.

<comment><USER4> Fascinating. Makes me wonder what evolutionary necessity drove this need to constantly have content playing?

<comment><USER5> Who knows, maybe it's part of the the low-level threat scanning aspect of our nature. Maybe it has something to do with our capacity for self-consciousness, maybe it's a side effect of being sentient.

I somehow doubt that it's a purely socially ingrained tendency though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Everyone's identity is socially created: it's through your relationships that you understand yourself as a mother or a father, a teacher or an accountant, a hero or a villain."

This drew my attention in particular. Is this true for all people, truly, including devout introverts, or is it merely a generalization? Does it perhaps have varying degrees of applicability based on how intro- or extroverted someone is?

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's a matter of introversion vs extroversion. Also, I don't think it's generally true.

Certainly, a large part of our identity is socially created. Yet, at the same time, there is a pretty large kernel that's there whether or not we're in our usual social circles, whether or not we change our career, location, etc. And, for some, that kernel is more important than the socially-dependent aspects.

I'd add that some parts of that kernel override whatever environment we're in. A gentleman is still a gentleman in the gutter, as they say. Just because you're in the company of thugs doesn't mean you're going to define yourself as a thug.

So, while we certainly do adapt our behaviour to the role that we're presenting, it is ultimately just a role - not our identity.

<comment><USER8> I'm unsure how this "kernel" isn't socially created too.

Whether we decide to act like those around us, or different than them, is irrelevant. The article is saying that just having _someone_ around us to interact with in _some_ way is vital for our brain to even function.

Introverts still have plenty of social interaction -- maybe not in the small area of recreational socialization that gets so much attention from extroverts, but our society is still made up of a bunch of people. You have to interact with them to do much of anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For an overview of the context of the state's research on, and use of, solitary confinement I'd recommend the book "Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control": [http://www.amazon.com/Brainwash-Secret-History-Mind- Control/...](http://www.amazon.com/Brainwash-Secret-History-Mind- Control/dp/031232572X). Despite the sensationalist title, it's a sober, wryly humorous look at the evolution of psychological coercion techniques in modern states.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly (with reference to another thread), "solitary confinement" is a necessary requirement of some forms of meditation. Of course, that confinement is by choice, and of a duration chosen by the participant. There's no doubt that the lack of communication has an effect on the brain; whether this effect is always deleterious seems disputable.

<comment><USER11> That's the beauty of the whole thing. I've seen grown men who appear to be perfectly happy break down and cry like children after only three days of meditation. Isolation puts you in very close contact with yourself. You can't distract yourself any longer, so you're left with your own thoughts, repeating delirious patterns, second guessing yourself, second guessing your life, and your environment. If you do meditation wrong (succumb to these patterns instead of returning to your breath), it can drive you insane, literally inducing psychotic lapses.

Yet if you do it right, your mind become incredibly calm and alert. Concentration becomes easy, your mind snaps into gear with a tiny push. And you end up playing a game that's trivial to learn and unbelievably difficult to master. Slowly, you peal away layers of your psyche, becoming intimately familiar with it in the process, until you get to the pristine awareness your mind inherently has.

There is wisdom and strength in isolation. You just have to learn how to get through the demons in the darkest corners of your mind.

<comment><USER12> It also makes a tremendous difference when isolation is voluntary, versus being held prisoner in solitary confinement.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. A lot of the "defiant" behaviors of the prisoners seemed to be efforts to exert some control over their environment. Also, the newer British system allowed more control in addition to less confinement.

I wonder if there's much overlap at all between the psychological effect of voluntary solitude and forced solitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This story made me thought not about the prisioners who obviously have reasons to get crazy, but rather on ourselves, so called hackers, who sometimes adopt by own choice a life style based on short human interaction. What can be the effects of that?

Even given the fact that we're usually very social beings in the virtual world, talking to a lot and developpping strong relationships over the web, what can be the affects of the lack of talking for example? Will we lose progressively our hability to express ideas by talking and getting stronger in the writing?

I think there aren't many studies on this kind of isolatio

</comment><comment><USER14> The keyword here is Freewill. I think you could isolate for months if it is your own choice. But if you are forced to be isolated for 3 hours it makes a huge difference.

<comment><USER15> This reminds me of a guy named Tehching Hsieh, who voluntarily isolated himself in a cage in his New York City apartment for a year. The cage and pictures of him are on display at MoMA.

<http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/322>

<comment><USER16> Anyone remember the name of the Japanese game show where the comedian was locked in a room for (n) and had to win his way free via magazine giveaways? I always thought it was fake/marketing, but an interesting.

<comment><USER17> Nasubi - <http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/nasubi.html>

It's like a study of this in action - insane but you can't look away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Duplicate: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565661>

</comment><comment><USER19> What about Richard Proenneke: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke>

_remained there for most of the next 30 years, coming to the lower 48 only occasionally_

Sane hermits are rare but not unknown, I wonder what makes them different?</comment>


Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Switch Docked vs. Undocked Comparison+Frame-Rate Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpqaTdflkNU <comment><AUTHOR> Sad to see such a beautiful game marred by what we can only hope is a poor porting performance issues. Hopefully another patch is due.</comment>