Why you might not want that high-paying cybersecurity job - <AUTHOR> http://www.subelsky.com/2010/08/why-you-might-not-want-that.html

<comment><USER2> "Cybersecurity" work in San Francisco means working with startups and the tech giants.

"Cybersecurity" work in Chicago means working with derivatives trading and exchanges and large enterprises.

"Cybersecurity" work in NYC means working with the big financial and media companies (and, presumably, over the next couple years, more and more startups).

Cybersecurity work in Maryland means working for government contractors.

This article is chock full of valid points but might be more of a cautionary tale about working in the greater DC metro area. Contrary to what this article would have you think, most high-end security work is _not_ done for the government.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's fair - I'm sure I am biased by my experiences working on this stuff in the DC/Baltimore area, but I still think my first point, about the danger of becoming merely a gatekeeper, applies widely across all those sectors.

<comment><USER3> s/cybersecurity/government cybersecurity/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TLDR Version: Its really not bad. You'll make pretty good money, in what is otherwise a 9-5 job in a large company. You won't get to use as many toys, and you'll sometimes be told to leave your own toys at home. The job will also involve dealing with people and politics.

<comment><USER5> Plus, there are a lot of restrictions that will annoy you (like not being able to ride to work, leaving you phone at home, possibly no internet access), and you may be forced to use Microsoft for everything, not the best tool for the job.

There is not much worse in my book, at a Microsoft shop where they refuse to consider anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Cyber defense is often the opposite of a creative activity."

Security can also be about identifying and mitigating risks to make a formerly unprofitable certain loss into a viable business opportunity. Big picture example: how many US banks would have offices in China or Russia right now without the help of security professionals? It's not _all_ about bopping people on the head.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good to hear. Where I was (both in the private sector and the public sector) we seem mired in managing the complexity of the tools, which prevented us from being creative in this way. Perhaps that's the real opportunity, making a new generation of tools that's easier to use (or figuring out how to better train people in these skills)</comment></comment>


Bill Gates's Robot Tax Is a Terrible Idea - <AUTHOR> https://mises.org/blog/bill-gatess-robot-tax-terrible-idea <comment><USER2> I wonder if a younger Bill Gates would have supported heavy taxes on his company's computer software that allowed 1 accountant armed with a spreadsheet to displace the jobs of, I don't know, maybe a dozen experienced accountants using paper?

Surely, society is so much worse off with so many workers being displaced because of all of this technological progress created by Microsoft and others and being denied of so much extra tax revenue?</comment>


Microsoft wrestles with HTML5 vs Silverlight futures - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/3127-microsoft-wrestles-with-html5-vs-silverlight-futures.html <comment><USER2> HTML 5 looks more and more like the Win32 API to me (or x86 assembly). At first everyone will use it directly. But people will quickly see that its a bear to be productive with it. Then you'll quickly see new frameworks built over it.

I wouldn't be surprised if Silverlight eventually simply targeted HTML 5. You wrote your code in Silverlight and out comes an HTML 5 page.

I'm not really sure what WPFs future is. It's great technology, but the desktop is increasingly niche.

<comment><USER3> > _I wouldn't be surprised if Silverlight eventually simply targeted HTML 5._

No, that's not possible, as HTML5 is pretty incompatible with Silverlight's selling points.

Besides, the article is flamebait ... Silverlight will be the native API people are going to use for building native-clients on Windows desktops / Windows mobile phones. Add to that list portability Symbian, MeeGo and probably Android.

Silverlight also has a more efficient VM than Flash or the various mobile- browsers, so if they play this card right, it could actually be efficient when running on mobile phones ... windows mobile 7 is actually using Silverlight for its UI ... and from early reports, the interface is snappy.

<comment><USER2> Why is it not possible to target HTML5 from Silverlight? You may have to tweak Silverlight some, but it seems doable?

You map the styles to CSS. The Xaml to HTML (I'd love to have Silverlight layout in HTML). Although the Xaml also includes stuff that you need to map to Javascript as well. The C# code gets mapped to Javascript.

You'd have to map all of the things like databinding, DeepZoom, and animation specially crafted Javascript. Audio, video, WCF, may have to be scaled back for targeting HTML5. But then you can have two versions "Silverlight HTML5" and "FullPower Silverlight".

I'm sure there is tons I missed. But what do you think in particular can't be mapped from Silverlight to HTML?

<comment><USER4> Microsoft Live Labs is kind of doing this with Volta.

<comment><USER3> Volta is dead.

<comment><USER4> Maybe? Well I don't know politics, but they did some solid work that ended up with a paper. Since Volta was not a product but an experiment I would suggest it doesn't make it unlikely, that research could be used to create similar product in the future. It seems potentially like a good fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.itwriting.com/blog/3131-more-on-microsofts- diffic...](http://www.itwriting.com/blog/3131-more-on-microsofts-difficult- choices-wpf-silverlight-html-5.html)

Expanded analysis with explanations for those who don't know what this is about.

</comment><comment><USER6> Properly written semantic HTML5 is a progressive enhancement from HTML4. With Silverlight (or Flash) the documents would just about have to be implemented twice, and few authors have the diligence to actually do that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pretty damning, but it's true that both WPF and its cousin Silverlight have failed to gain traction both on the web and on the desktop. WPF is dead, but Silverlight will be with us for at least a while thanks to WP7.

<comment><USER8> Well, since VS2010's interface is written in WPF, it'll have to stick around as long as that is true. Plus, Microsoft never kills a technology, they just don't improve it.

</comment></comment><comment> Ocho-Bits How are they gonna replace WPF with HTML5? I don't get it.

<comment><USER9> It mentions it in the article, extend HTML5 with a Windows API.

They did it before with HTML, was it HTAs? You could make controls that did crazy stuff. I can't remember the name now, my old work had a few from the days when there was no browser but IE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At the end HTML wins. Flash and silverlight lose.

A victory we all celebrate.

<comment><USER11> No not really - I would be much happier if browsers used Silverlight (or rather the tech behind), since it is much better than the cooked together mess that is HTML. The only thing necessary would be an open-source renderer that worked equally well on all platforms.

But given that that is not going to happen, I am rooting for HTML5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Silverlight is a neat technology but ultimately they limited it to just a box on a page, and in that realm it becomes just another flash substitute.

<comment><USER4> Or canvas substitute. SVG/VML is the technology that actually augments HTML documents. Canvas is just super-slow Flash/Silverlight-like pixel renderer, a "box on a page", as you said.

<comment><USER12> There is a barrier between a Flash/Silverlight app and the remainder of the page, that's not true for the JS code driving a canvas element, it's the same code that drives all of the interactivity on the page. This makes a difference.

<comment><USER4> Why, you can interact with Flash/Silverlight embedded object as well. (A perfect example is using Flash to fake Websockets) And both support Javascript. There's really not much difference.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I concede, you are right. That's how everybody uses Flash and Silverlight, by driving it externally using javascript.

Are you being serious or just a troll? There are holes in the wall between Flash/Silverlight and web pages, but there is very much a wall.

<comment><USER4> Oh come on.

Silverlight let you do things like take a code fragment from HTML page, interpret it and let it execute commands against browser's DOM. (See: <http://www.silverlight.net/learn/dynamic-languages/>).

DojoX GFX (similar to Rapchaël) emulates even SVG drawing using Silverlight object.

And Flash let's you call any Javascript function from ActionScript and an ActionScript function from Javascript.

You must be dreaming up those walls. Or is it just FUD spreading?

<comment><USER12> This is why there's so terribly many flash/silverlight apps driven by external javascript? And why, on average, there's so very much cohesion between flash/silverlight objects and the pages they live with in?

In practice, the wall clearly exists. The average flash/silverlight app is an alien box sitting amidst its host page, with very few and generally comparatively minor exceptions.

<comment><USER4> You claim that less than expected (by you?) people use available technology in such and such way and thus that imply that there's something wrong with technology?

I would suggest there's really not so much use cases for Flash/Silverlight—HTML in-page communication. Or maybe some people just don't know their tools very much? None of these would be solved by creating another similar technology.

EDIT: Just look at the new HN top story for an example of JS-Flash interaction: <http://feross.net/instant/> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They should be kidding. They understand nothing about web and open standards. That is why they loose.</comment>


What happens when non-tech people discover web developer tools - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/embee/status/416121742738739200/photo/1

<comment><USER2> I've found a couple of previous submissions of this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964342)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6966589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6966589)

I'm pretty sure there were more.

</comment><comment><USER3> "child being forced" and "children wrapped in a block"...hahaha...that was a good laugh.</comment>


Energy Efficiency Across Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/view/energy-efficiency-languages <comment><USER2> According to their normalized "global" results, something interesting i see:

1\. Pascal, surprisingly, the most memory efficient of all. I should take a look at the implementation they used.

2\. Rust a good alternative to C which leads in "energy efficiency" and speed.

3\. Common Lisp most energy-efficient _and_ fastest _and_ smallest memory footprint of _all_ the dynamic programming languages in the list -- like Python, Ruby, Lua, Perl, and even Racket (which fares pretty well)

4\. PHP, JRuby, Ruby, Typescript, Perl, Python, being _massively_ slow than the fastest languages, for example Ruby being 59 times slower than Rust or C.

I agree that these languages (in item 4) are "acceptably fast" for many applications, but we can't say they are "close to the speed" of the fastest languages, even more if we consider the fastest dynamic+interactive languages like Lisp (Python being 21 times slower than Lisp.)

5\. I wonder which implementation of Lua they used. Lua can be pretty fast, one of the fastest dynamic languages out there.

<comment><USER3> > 1\. Pascal

Pascal is a "hidden" gem in the area of languages. Sadly not enough pus for it, but imagine if it have the push that other languages have...

<comment><USER4> But why should it's memory utilization be so much lower?

Pascal and C give the programmer basically the same control over memory layout, no?

<comment><USER5> Basically, C's semantics assume too little - everything is a primitive type or a pointer dressed up to look like something else. Pascal has a stronger notion of types and this allows for additional automatic optimization where they're relevant - memory layout just happens to be one such area.

<comment><USER6> I miss the ability to pair structures as "antagonistic" \- aka if one exists the other is not, thus allowing for unions of various datatypes who guarantee that if they exist- the shared memory they reside in is theirs and theirs alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't believe they used the Computer Language Benchmarks Game. Those benchmarks don't reflect real-world workloads at all, and the contest has fairly arbitrary rules about implementations and widely differing implementation quality between languages. This should have been rejected by peer review.

<comment><USER8> > Those benchmarks don't reflect real-world workloads at all…

That's a very definite claim, for which you provide no supporting evidence ;-)

<comment><USER9> Maybe we could get away with a couple smaller claims:

\- It would be weird to expect programs specifically optimized for a performance benchmark, to also be optimal for energy usage or memory. Maybe less weird for energy, if runtime is the biggest factor in how much energy gets used. But I'd expect there to be huge tradeoffs between runtime and memory usage, once we start really optimizing for memory.

\- Running the Benchmarks Game has meant doing a lot of work to figure out what the relationship between "optimal" and "representative" is, and what the rules of the game should be as a result. Even if we take it for granted that we've answered those questions in a way that gives us useful benchmarks for performance, it would be weird to expect the answers to be exactly the same in benchmarks for energy or memory.

<comment><USER10> performance usually == energy efficiency on modern cpus. race to shutdown.

<comment><USER8> Does your comment agree or disagree with what they measure?

<comment><USER10> The implementations in the benchmark game are all targeting performance.

This will almost always also be the most energy efficient thing on modern cpus.

It will not always be the most memory efficient way. I neither agree or disagree with what they are measuring, its just data. I would not look at this if I was trying to get an idea of what languages are most memory efficient, maybe.

<comment><USER8> I wondered if you'd looked at all ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a bunch of years i was writing in Java and driving V8. Now i'm back to native (C++) and am driving Prius these days. I guess that it is my eco- consciousness that is making me shudder in disgust every time i look at Python... pretty much the same way like when looking at Hummers. While of course i love Perl, an M1 Abrams which gets things done despite anything :)

</comment><comment><USER12> A real shame that Forth wasn't included in the tested languages. Chuck Moore has been an advocate for more energy efficient computation for a while now.

<comment><USER13> The tests come from the benchmark game. If you want to see Forth, implement the tests in Forth:

[http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/)

<comment><USER14> @igouy points out that while the old shootout site is gone, its language files are still available[1]. There are about 70 benchmarks, in about 70 languages. I remember them as interesting multilingual browsing.

Unlike the old shootout, adding languages directly to benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org is not an option. "Because I know it will take more time than I choose. Been there; done that."[2] :) Instead, the code is available[3], and communities are invited to document their own benchmarksgame comparisons[2], such as Nim''s[4]. The OP used different code[5].

A brief glance at the current benchmarks, suggests there is some overlap with the old ones. Or at least an overlap of names - the requirements may have changed. So it might be possible to get started fairly easily? Perhaps even to do several languages...

[1] [https://alioth.debian.org/scm/viewvc.php/shootout/bench/?roo...](https://alioth.debian.org/scm/viewvc.php/shootout/bench/?root=shootout) [2] [https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/play.html](https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/play.html) [3] [https://github.com/Byron/benchmarksgame-cvs- mirror](https://github.com/Byron/benchmarksgame-cvs-mirror) [4] [https://github.com/def-/nim-benchmarksgame](https://github.com/def-/nim- benchmarksgame) [5] [https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy- Languages](https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy-Languages)

<comment><USER15> It's a pity that the OP didn't include Nim despite benchmark files for it being available.

<comment><USER14> If a summary of the test data is/were machine readable in the individual language repos, perhaps one could create an automated aggregation? A distributed/federated version of the old shootout. One with lower maintenance requirements. bendmarksgame-results.json?

The data would be crufty, of limited comparability. But combining easily browsable links to colorized source code, with "just for a rough feel" speed relative to C, might be sufficient for the use case of raising language awareness - "What is this C-speed-like language I've never heard of? Oh, that looks pretty! I think I'll explore this language's web page..."

Or alternately, use the language files on github to create a new, broader benchmarksgame. That is, distribute the work of benchmark revisions and makefile compiler options, but keep the testing centralized. I've no idea of the relative costs of those tasks, or of others. But a continuous integration shootout sounds intriguing.

<comment><USER16> > A distributed/federated version of the old shootout

It would be wonderful but how do you ensure any form of hardware consistency?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Note: The PDF of the paper has the a lot more detailed listing of the results (with graphs, explanation, etc) than the results web page: [http://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/pape...](http://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/paperSLE.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Only while printing it, I noticed my university name there! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Rust is fairly competitive with C, but it's memory use was 50 percent higher. I bet if they focus on getting the memory usage down it will perform better too.

<comment><USER20> Rust uses jemalloc by default; I wonder what it would look like if you swapped the allocator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm kinda surprised to see Go score so low on some of these, given that it's AOT-compiled to native code, and that its memory model and safety guarantees are optimization-friendly.

I'm also kinda surprised that OCaml scored that high, considering how high- level it is.

<comment><USER22> OCaml has an incredible optimizer, and many of the abstractions that one would use in OCaml are transparent to the optimizer.

You could say the opposite about Go.

<comment><USER21> Kinda makes me wonder why OCaml didn't become more popular for Unix systems programming, the way Go seems to be becoming now. Looking at the two languages, it seems like pretty much everything that Go has to offer in that department, OCaml has as well - and if it also optimizes better, why is this even a contest?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Higher-level scripting languages. Fast for programmer's time, slow for run times.

<comment><USER18> Not really, if you look into Lisp results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> On of the things with the C set is they didn't use Intel's icc. On our main application (which involved a lot of heavy duty number crunching) it speeds up our application by 100% over the best we can get out gcc.

<comment><USER13> I've seen 20% speedups with icc over gcc; but not a doubling. Is this including mkl over some other numeric library as well?

<comment><USER24> No nothing extra. The code does vectorise well. But even if the result is 20%, it would make quite a bit of difference to the results presented in this paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm suprised at the Java-C# comparaison. When are this numbers from?

The following blogspot explains how the author improved C# implementations after seeing defavorable C# results.

[https://anthonylloyd.github.io/blog/2017/08/15/dotnetcore- pe...](https://anthonylloyd.github.io/blog/2017/08/15/dotnetcore-performance)

</comment><comment><USER26> So go (a garbage collected language) is about as memory efficient as pascal, the most memory efficient language. That comes surprising.

<comment><USER27> Not really. "Manual" memory allocation is usually malloc/free, which leaves a lot of gaps.

<comment><USER28> Go's garbage collector isn't compacting.

<comment><USER27> My point wasn't that garbage collection is more efficient than people think, but that "manual" memory allocation is less efficient than people think.

<comment><USER18> To the point that people used GC enabled systems programming languages to write full OSes[0], but as Joe Duffy puts on his last keynote, winning prejudice is an uphill battle.

[0]- Done at Xerox PARC, DEC/Olivetti, ETHZ, Erlangen, MSR

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have just started looking into Ada and it is cool to see up there with C. Does anyone know a good resource for writing fast Ada?

</comment><comment><USER30> No Julia?

</comment><comment><USER31> I see they monitor a complete process lifetime, not just the active workload. A quick grep of the paper didn't turn up anything discussing this. And it would seem to hurt dynamic languages and runtime-JIT languages a lot. Perhaps the active workload takes long enough that the transient is washed out. Anyone have insights?

<comment><USER13> If you want to tease the startup out, then you can run the game with a null or extremely small input set and then discount the time it takes to run a small/null workload from the actual run.

But really, if they hurt, then they get hurt. There's only so many knobs you can turn and so many runs you can run before you have to assemble a table and submit your paper. They put all the code online so you can try it yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Considering most CPU cores (Arm/X86/etc) are optimized for C/GCC its an unsurprising result

<comment><USER29> Can someone elaborate. I always thought that the compiler was optimized for the architecture, not the other way around. Why would an architecture be optimized for a specific compiler?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd love to see some scatter plots of CPU-time and energu-time, I expected a fairly linear correlation but there looks to be quite a lot of outliers, some but not all are explained with parallelism. Memory seems all over the place too.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why is TypeScript so much less efficient than JavaScript?

<comment><USER35> Guess: its output has more lines of JS than the vanilla JS versions, and since a lot of the variation between scripting languages in these things often come down to how fast they can stop running themselves and start running some underlying C, those extra lines hurt it.

This may also explain why JS is _really_ fast in a couple of the examples. Those script likely do almost nothing but call some built-in function that does all its work in C (or C++, or whatever).

[EDIT] OK, if I'm reading these[1][2] files correctly, it has more to do with the the TS version being written in "modern" "idiomatic" "beautiful" JS with promises and crap, and the vanilla JS one being written in "ugly" "bad" old- school 90's-lookin' C-ish Javascript.

[1] [https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy- Languages/blob/ma...](https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy- Languages/blob/master/JavaScript/regex-redux/regexredux.node-2.node)

[2] [https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy- Languages/blob/ma...](https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy- Languages/blob/master/TypeScript/regex- redux/regexredux.typescript-3.typescript)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Haskell did not shine here. Ocaml did surprisingly well.

</comment><comment><USER37> One wonders how Kotlin (or other popular JVM languages) would compare. And also Objective-C or Smalltalk.

</comment><comment><USER38> I am curious to know, if there is any explanation for why java performs better than Go.

<comment><USER39> Two decades of optimization probably account for that. From the paper:

        Moreover, the top 5 languages that need less energy and
        time to execute the solutions are: C (57J, 2019ms), Rust (59J,
        2103ms), C++ (77J, 3155ms), Ada (98J, 3740ms), and Java
        (114J, 3821ms); of these, only Java is not compiled.

That is an admirable accomplishment. JRE 1.8 has the most efficient "managed" language runtime tested.

The PHP result is interesting; they used 7.x which is roughly twice as efficient as older (5.x) versions; PHP 7 was primarily a (successful) effort to improve performance. If you extrapolate the PHP result to the old version (multiply by 2) it's nearly as bad as Perl and among the slowest/most costly. That certainly corroborates Facebook's several PHP re-implementations.

<comment><USER40> The Java performance was the most interesting part of the results for me. I'm glad it got some attention. I have been developing the opinion for awhile that, as an industry, we've become far too avoidant of "pre-mature" optimization. It is astonishing to me how much slower a lot of this stuff is than Java.

Granted, I also think considering Java to be "not compiled" is a slight misrepresentation since it does get compiled to Java bytecode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It'd be nice if these werent images of the tables ...:-\

<comment><USER42> They're just screen capped from the actual tables in the paper PDF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> brief: C is the winner of all the races ( time, energy and memory)

<comment><USER44> Pascal won on memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Nim compiles to C</comment>


Microsoft wins $927M Pentagon contract - <AUTHOR> http://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1035122 <comment><USER2> This is an ID/IQ, which means that DISA has set aside $927M over five years for optional services and support. ID/IQs are a cool contract vehicle because it gives the government a cost-effective way to buy just what they need as they go along.

Even if they leveraged the hell out of this contract, they're basically buying the full power of MS for $185M per year. That's a hell of a good deal for the government.

<comment><USER3> +-1.5M DISA email users(Navy/MC unclass contracted separately) at 185M a year is quite a bargain.

Not to mention desktop/laptop OS, collaboration tools, web servers, forest/domain management at 800 sites in 70 countries.

<comment><USER2> Oh dang. I estimated tens of thousands. I was off by an order of magnitude and I was the one trying to defend this contract to HackerNews. Lol. Yeah, DISA is freaking huge. We're doing some work for them right now and the scope is massive.

Speaking of which... if any of you have a Secret clearance and want a job... :)

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, if you have a Secret clearance and it expires after 10 years where does that place you on the scale from never having a clearance 0 to having an active clearance 10.

<comment><USER5> Your Secret clearance now expires sometimes within a matter of months of being off a contract or out of a job that requires it. OPM is cleaning up the clearances, and revoking millions of them. I've had employees go from active TS to "eligible" status (which mean no clearance) in a matter of a few weeks after their contract ended. That whole "10 year active period" is not true, at least anymore, unless you are in a position that requires the clearance for that whole period of time.

You're considered lucky to retain a clearance more than a month out of the service now, too. OPM is taking a tough stance on unused clearances and it has negatively impacted the job market for recently separated Veterans because the contracts that come out all require a pre-cleared workforce, which is a rapidly diminishing pool of people to pull from given that clearances are now being revoked as soon as someone gets out of the service or leaves their last position.

<comment><USER6> I don't recall what the actual text says, but when I became a security manager we were always told it was 10/5 years eligible.

But I've never even attempted to get a job that required a clearance after my ETS...

But I think the question being asked is not what you answered. I think he's wondering if his clearance eligibility expired last year, where does he stand in line for getting a job that requires a clearance?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, and having already had a clearance in the past definitely helps speed up the process to "reactivate" it. The big bummer for companies like mine is that our contract says that we have to have employees with an active clearance. So to activate the clearance, we have to hire them, keep them on overhead for several months and they can't start working until their clearance is approved.

It's a painful $20-$40k hit to the budget. :/

<comment><USER3> Do you not have a Prime? They should be supporting these kind of issues with supplement contract workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like articles that consist of just one sentence.

> Microsoft Corp has been awarded a $927 million contract to provide technical > support to the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Pentagon said in a > statement on Tuesday.

> (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham)

In all seriousness, this shouldn't be a surprise given the amount of outdated systems and general reliance on Microsoft tech at DISA.

<comment><USER8> > I like articles that consist of just one sentence.

I like articles like that too...just not when they're packaged in a ~4MiB page sprinkled with ads.

<comment><USER9> The page works fine as a flat page with JavaScript disabled.

And that was the most concise article I'll read all day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU I knew MS shared their code with select customers, but has the DOD always had it?

<comment><USER10> They were one of the first customers of that shared source review program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In other news, Microsoft just bought the most lucrative position for corporate espionage available on planet Earth.

</comment><comment><USER12> How many people are typically involved in this type of decision?

<comment><USER13> It depends on the type and scope of the contract. Federal Acquisition Regulations do a fair job at keeping oversight and "fairness" (depending on a lot of factors), but at a minimum, you'd have:

* A large body of workers and analysts constructing the requirements * A few contracts officers working to codify those requirements into a request for proposal * A handful of technical contracts officers evaluating the mass of responses * A _large_ pool of technical contracts officers and contracts officers ensuring that the statutory grounds of the proposals are met (verifying that yes, this _is_ a small / veteran owned / minority owned business or yes, this business does have prior qualifications, etc.)

After you've separated the wheat from the chaff, and eliminated the obviously incapable parties, the team contracts down to 1 or 2 contracts officers and their staff. This team evaluates the technical feasibility against the requirements, asks a lot of questions to their own technical teams, and then ultimately, votes on the winner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is it deemed "reporting"?

<comment><USER15> There are three times as many public relations professionals as journalists in America. Media companies are being consolidated into a few owners, many of them with tech leadership. Microsoft, for example is the MS in MSNBC (although I think they recently sold MSNBC?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Someone's getting sweet Christmas gifts this year.

</comment><comment><USER17> Here [1] is the actual statement on defense.gov.

[1] [http://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract- View/Article/...](http://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract- View/Article/1035122)

<comment><USER18> We should change OP's link and leave the title.

<comment><USER19> Mr. Zargham certainly is a concise writer.

<comment><USER20> A bit too long-winded for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 simple ways to improve productivity at work - <AUTHOR> https://www.saastraq.com/content/blog/5-simple-ways-you-can-improve-your-productivity-at-work/5e0f12b87c1db31b9bc041ff <comment><AUTHOR> I agree about meeting madness at workplace. This takes lots of time.</comment>


AeroVelo human-powered helicopter officially wins Sikorsky Prize - <AUTHOR> http://www.aerovelo.com/2013/07/11/aerovelo-officially-awarded-ahs-sikorsky-prize/

<comment><AUTHOR> This flight was a month ago, and was briefly discussed here [0]. Video of the winning flight is available [1].

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5884266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5884266)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syJq10EQkog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syJq10EQkog)</comment>


Pakistan blocks Facebook over Prophet Mohammad online competition row - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Pakistan-blocks-Facebook-over-Prophet-Mohammad-online-competition-row/articleshow/5950037.cms

<comment><USER2> Just think of all the money they aren't making from the Pakistanis now.</comment>


2013: Rebuild the Engine; 2014: Step on the Gas - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudflare.com/2013-refactoring-2014-stepping-on-the-gas

<comment><USER2> Great to see they are planning to roll out SSL (perfect forward secrecy) even to the Free Tier.

These days with SSL certs becoming ridiculously cheap (hard to beat Free), I wish everybody would just go enable HTTPS by default. But the extra configuration is a pain for the average "webmaster".

By using Cloudflare and a simple switch, you will be able to get totally SSL'ed from the feet up. Love it! Soon I will be able to easily SSL all my 30 odd toy sites on Cloudflare!

</comment><comment><USER3> The most interesting part of this for me was "China is our second largest market, Brazil is our third", yet they only have one datacentre in CN (in HK), and none in the whole of South America.

Great to see they are addressing this, along with the poorly connected African markets where a locally deployed CDN can greatly benefit the speed of a website.

<comment><USER4> I think it's fairly difficult for a US-based company to (legally) operate out of a mainland China data centre. So it looks like they are doing the next best thing: multiple Asian data centres which are "near" to China.

<comment><USER5> It is not that hard if you abide by the Chinese Laws and System. But that is more of a problem with Ethics and Business practices. I also think there are some technical issues with GF of China.</comment></comment></comment>


Imagemagick - <AUTHOR> http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

<comment><USER2> imagemagick is the command line swiss army knife of image processing and conversion.</comment>


Ask HN: What are my mathematical odds of being sued by Facebook and/or Apple? - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting a company called FaceThyme (facethyme.com) and we're slated to launch in early October. The application we're building is neither a social network nor a mobile video communication tool. However, I'm nervous that two of the biggest bullies in tech will kill us before we get off the ground.<p>What are the odds of FaceThyme being sued by Facebook and/or Apple? <comment><USER2> Apple has trademarked FaceTime: [http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently- apple/2010/06/apple-wa...](http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently- apple/2010/06/apple-wastes-no-time-filing-for-facetime-trademark.html)

IANAL, but Apple's trademark seems to cover software as well as mobile devices.

Meanwhile, Facebook is trying to trademark "face": <http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/trademark-face/>

So I think the answer is: "pick another name". The question I'd ask, is if you have no relation to Facebook or FaceTime in the application and have no expectation to receive goodwill based on those apps, why would you want to have a similar name?

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the DuPont factors for likelihood of confusion is similar or identical pronunciation or sound. Apple would have no trouble suing you and the legal precedent is easy to find. So yeah, pick another name.

<comment><USER4> As a wise man once said, "Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm trying to think what your business might be. An herbal facial treatment? a spice delivery service? A culinary motivational product exhorting people to confront their spice racks? None of them sound very profitable

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL, missed the mark on all accounts, but very creative!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relevant: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2368384,00.asp>

</comment><comment><USER7> Six by nine. Forty two.</comment>


Carrier Group in Recent UFO Encounters Had New Air Defense Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28305/carrier-group-in-recent-ufo-encounters-had-new-air-defense-tech-just-like-nimitz-in-2004-incident <comment><USER3> Funny, a first deployment of a highly complex networked software driven system developed by gov contractors, being admittedly used by newly trained people (a training program called COMPUTEX as per the article), makes me even _more_ sceptical that it may simply be an error/anomaly rather than providing better evidence of it being UFOs.

If this is indeed positive evidence, then the big question not asked was how many of these sensors detected the object in real time? If it was just 2-3 from the same sources (ie, jets or circling surveillance planes in the same area) then it's no different than technology from 2004 or earlier. Radar is still radar. The fact they are all linked together helps with _real-time_ analysis. But in matters of UFO investigations their real-time interconnectivity doesn't really add any additional validation. When a post- incident analysis could simply reconstruct the moment by cross-checking multiple unconnected sensors present at the time - as any investigative team would have in prior eras.

The upgrades to the E-2C Hawkeye seem to be only related to the networking functionality adding real-time analysis on top of the system rather than providing better individual radar tracking. Unless I'm missing the part where each sensor became more accurate individually regardless of realtime networking or after-the-fact analysis?

Not to mention the whole uncertainty that first-deployment of new software brings to the whole equation.

<comment><USER4> Radar Contact + FLIR Contact+ Human Eyeball confirmation by two types aircraft != a technical anomaly.

Watch the recreation and the eyewitness testimony videos from multiple vantage points.

[https://youtu.be/PRgoisHRmUE](https://youtu.be/PRgoisHRmUE) (recreation of ONE of the west coast incident, starts at around 9:00 in)

[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell- is...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is..). (note the embedded videos of testimonies)

[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28231/multiple- f-a-18-...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28231/multiple-f-a-18-..). (new tech, east coast incident years later)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When the stealth bomber was top secret and still being tested, most of the army, air force, and navy was unaware of it. Something flying at such a high altitude was considered impossible. Naturally, Air Force fighter pilots were some of the first to observe it, and some of those pilots wondered out loud if it was an alien encounter. No one at Area 51 corrected them. So, this could be a similar scenario. It could even be the case that those working on this unidentified flying object did not know the new radar tech was being tested. The many branches of the DoD are not as coordinated as they may seem.

I still don't believe there was unassisted visual confirmation. And if they are using combined radar imagery, it seems that much more likely that a glitch in one radar system would cause a glitch in all systems. Then again, I'm heavily speculating.

<comment><USER6> Do you mean SR-71 instead of the B2?

<comment> le-mark Indeed, B-2 doesn't fly particularly high, this comment seems a bit inaccurate.

<comment><USER7> Probably meant the U-2.

<comment><USER8> Never underestimate a Cessna 150 filled to the load-bearing-safety brim with conspiratorial materials. #Area50995

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Skepticism means positing alternative theories that explain the evidence, not coming up with less-extraordinary theories that contradict the evidence, which is what most of the threads here do.

Super intelligent AI certainly seems plausible as a thing which could exist. Fusion powered sub-light speed autonomous drones certainly seems like a thing which could exist. Any super intelligent AI would take actions to ensure it's preservation, and extraterrestrial (to it) civilizations confer x-risk.

My pet theory is that these things are real, and are a autonomous surveillance and intervention system deployed by an extraterrestrial entity or civ (AI or organic is irrelevant) to prevent an external threat in the form of a galaxy- ending weapon. They are subluminal but such a system would have galaxy-wide coverage in at worst a few tens of centuries. We will likely never know since these things are so far beyond our ability to capture or analyze, but my theory at least doesn't break physics.

The reason I like my theory is that one could imagine humanity building and deploying such a system inductively, when we have the tech and determine the largest x-risk to our civilization are external emerging civilizations developing weapons or tech which could destroy the galaxy (perhaps inadvertently, like a misplanned AI takeoff)

<comment><USER10> > are a autonomous surveillance and intervention system

> they are subluminal

since we're talking crazy theories... how do they defeat the speed of causality to relay information back home?

<comment><USER11> "how do they defeat the speed of causality to relay information back home?"

Why must 'they' (assumption there) 'defeat the speed of causality', exactly?

Even at light speed, the information will beat any physical threat to the home region, permitting some kind of response.

Also, the idea that 'causality' is bound to the speed of light is, in my opinion, simply a result of our limited understanding. Just as relativity opened new vistas, it is likely a new theory explaining gravity, dark matter, and dark energy will provide entirely new, fundamental understanding - <USER2> possibly FTL communication/travel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At first I thought these were just glitches in complex military imaging and sensor software/hardware.

But then a more sane version of me took over and concluded that I'm looking at aliens in YouTube videos.

<comment><USER13> Pilots made visual contact in at least two cases, so not just a sensor glitch for those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I spent my childhood around New Mexico, my family also knew a handful of scientists out at the labs. We heard a lot of funny stories.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if some gov tech was testing against the Navy. But I also wouldn't be surprised if we just don't have a clue.

My uneducated, completely bonkers guesses would be plasma stealth drones or multibeam lasers.

I knew several scientists in the 90s that worked on lasers to create floating hotspots, weapons targeting, and to create artificial chaff.

Plasma stealth has also been in development by the Russians for a long time - perhaps someone was testing such systems also. The idea is to inject plasma around a craft - and also to possibly use it for propulsion in an magnétohydrodynamique drive. Glowing white ball would be an apt description.

Again - it's all purely speculative and sci-fi. I wouldn't rule out aliens - but it's really the last possibility simply because the probability is basically almost zero just due to distance, cost, and energy.

<comment><USER15> My bet is also that it is a hypersonic plasma stealth drone.

Plasma injection also reduces drag and aerodynamic heating if done right _, that would also explain the anomalous thermal signature.

_ especially at hypersonic velocities

Being a drone would explain accelerations that would kill humans.

<comment><USER11> "Being a drone would explain accelerations that would kill humans."

It doesn't explain:

      - Operations far from any support vehicles (no carrier like the F-18s had). Must be a nuclear/LENR/antimatter power source.

      - Going from hover to high supersonic/hypersonic. No current hypersonic platform has anything like that capability

      - The acceleration involved in the extremely rapid course change at the end of the one video has been estimated at "hundreds of Gs". That's far beyond the current highest performance missiles, which top out at a few tens of Gs. This is similar to several historical reports.

      - The lack of conventional wings, control surfaces or visible windows/sensors

      - The "field effect" visible around the object at times. There's no technology in the open literature like that.

I find these videos extremely convincing, and interesting!

request: Provide a way to do decent lists!

<comment><USER15> I can't explain 2 and 3, but the rest can all be explained by plasma cloaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, the US was testing unknown and presumably expensive drone technology on Carrier Air Groups? Why would they do that in a "live" situation with people who would report it? I would think (and perhaps I'm wrong) that keeping advanced craft secret would be in the US interest.

I don't buy the ET explanation and I don't buy this one either.

If it is real and it is a craft it's much more likely it was a state actor testing us.

<comment><USER15> To test whether or not the advanced craft can be shot down?

If the test was conducted on, say the Chinese military, then it would be very geopolitically dangerous it was shot down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For these encounters to coincide with the first tests of next gen tech, it's entertaining to imagine these "aliens" were caught unawares and subsequently improved their stealth posture as a result of us seeing things we're not supposed to.

Some hubris in that, but if they really are just automated probes, they may be reactionary in nature and adjust behaviour accordingly, and not, say, analyzing our comms and behaving "intelligently"... Of course it could be that they just want to be seen.

Or that we really are imagining things--the ghostly artifacts of a complex system with kinks not yet sorted out.

</comment><comment><USER18> Then probably it is a UAV from another U.S. DoD dept acting as a Red Team to test the 'New Air Defense Tech'.

<comment><USER19> With what kind of UAV, though? Some exotic one that can't easily be identified?

<comment><USER18> All we can say from the F-18 Pilot's accounts are they're 'out of this world' type of UAV!

Jokes apart, my rationale is if it is really an alien space craft then U.S. Govt has no reason to keep it quiet especially when its NASA is spending Billions to find some bacteria in neighbouring planet.

More over, 'Alien revelation' would come handy as an effective distraction for ongoing issues. Not that it hasn't been done earlier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well this level of sensor capability would be an ideal real world means of testing the latest stealth, aircraft, and detection, technologies all at once.

It also reveals just how blind even the best equipped ships are and that you need to be able to integrate so many resources at once to have real security.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you think this stuff is wild wait till more people hear about UAP's turning off Nukes, with military eyewitnesses verifying that it happened on multiple occasions...

<comment><USER22> What?

<comment><USER23> typeformer is referring to Robert Hastings' claim that military personnel witnessed UFOs disabling nuclear weapons, e.g. [https://www.livescience.com/10146-ufos-disarm-nuclear- weapon...](https://www.livescience.com/10146-ufos-disarm-nuclear- weapons.html).

<comment><USER3> > Hastings [who makes a living selling UFO books] claims that a global > conspiracy exists in which all major governments have been covering up > evidence of UFOs for decades.

mhm

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The heat signature is interesting. When seen in black mode, the hot center is surrounded by a white cooler-than-atmosphere halo. What could be the use of such a thermoelectric effect? Or if it's a by-product what else could be causing it?

<comment><USER25> Hm... Cryogenic hydrogen?

<comment><USER19> Tin foil hat time: What kind of exotic or near-future engine tech could produce a signature like that? (No I don't think it's Aliens ... if it's Aliens, they'd have the means to travel interstellar distances and if they can do that then surely they can keep themselves hidden).

<comment><USER24> Not suggesting either way but the logic is flawed. Presupposes desire to be hidden. Possible that the entire purpose is to gently assert presence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So, in at least a couple of cases, these events coincide with the deployment of new air defense tech with advanced information processing capabilities? One should at least consider the possibility that they are machine-generated artifacts, possibly responses to unusual conditions that have mundane explanations.

<comment><USER27> Wasn't there optical and IR footage? Seems unlikely that many discrete systems would all have ghosting artifacts at the same time and location.

Or maybe I am mixing reports. I've read about several recently.

<comment><USER28> The footage was IR only...

The pilots audio discussed 'seeing' the things, but it's not 100% assertained, except via post-hoc assertion by the rights owner of the video, that the pilots aren't referring to what they see on their MFDs.

<comment><USER29> There is no rights owner. It was made by government employees in the course of official duties hence uncopyrighted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Its kindof jarring how the article is written like a series of marketing bullet points. Where is the discussion of possible atmospheric effects or other explanations?

</comment><comment><USER31> 1) are owners of Earth returning to harvest the crop (of plastics?)?

2) are the authors of /r/outside beta-testing a new faction?

3) are humans from the future messing around, then looking up incidents in history books and competing with each other who made a bigger splash?

4) is there a group of humans with so much advanced technology and science that the rest of us are just neanderthals in comparison?

<comment><USER32> #2 I forgot that that was a thing. Makes sense.

#3 seems existentially _hard_ to prove- and it seems like half the competition would be getting cold, hard evidence that _they_ did it- recording themselves doing whatever at a much higher resolution than possible _might_ work.

#4 Makes sense. Maybe the earth is actually flat, and they got to the other side of it? [/s, obviously]

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We had foo-fighters in the second World War. Not much has changed.

<comment><USER23> Agreed. It would be neat if it were aliens, but it's probably some sort of uncommon atmospheric/environmental effect[1] that didn't show up on less- advanced radar. I'm no physicist, but I'm thinking something like a pocket of plasma trapped by air pressure or the Earth's magnetic field. The "flying away at high speed" effect is probably caused when whatever trapped the plasma destabilizes.

[1] e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_\(lightning\))

<comment><USER34> That makes no sense. Testimony from the pilots who intercepted the object indicates the object demonstrated awareness of their presence.

Watch this video of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 squadron commander (not an average military pilot) who intercepted one of the objects and engaged in aerial maneuvers with it. He describes intercepting the object, flying about one mile away from it, with the object demonstrating awareness of his presence by mirroring his maneuvers. Then he flew aggressively at it, and the object responded by rapidly flying away. It then showed up on radar at the position he was returning to, where he had been flying a combat air patrol before he was sent to intercept the object, indicating that the object had been aware of his aircraft all along.

The commander also said that the flying object appeared to be maneuvering about 20,000 feet over an unknown object which was submerged just beneath the ocean surface.

[https://youtu.be/jCaruUtiPHo](https://youtu.be/jCaruUtiPHo)

Other testimony recounted at [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war- zone/27666/what-the-hell-is...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war- zone/27666/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-ufos-and-department-of-defense) mentions that the ships had been tracking these objects on radar for a few days already, with them appearing suddenly on radar at 80,000 feet, rapidly descending vertically to 20,000 feet, and then flying straight up again, disappearing past 80,000 feet. The ships went to non-drill battle stations while the aircraft intercepted the object.

<comment><USER23> > the object demonstrated awareness of their presence

That's certainly one interpretation.

> with the object demonstrating awareness of his presence by mirroring his > maneuvers. Then he flew aggressively at it, and the object responded by > rapidly flying away.

Sounds exactly like the historical reports of "foo fighters" to me.[1]

Look, I love the idea of aliens, but try to apply Occam's Razor here. What's less complicated?

a) An uncommon, but natural phenomenon in which a ball of plasma (or similar) is temporarily attracted to fast-moving, metallic aircraft.

b) An advanced, spacefaring race (or races) travel to Earth and spend over 70 years pulling pranks on military pilots.

Again, I'm no physicist, but consider something like walking through a cloud of flying dandelion seeds. The air currents created by the person walking through the cloud create little vortices that tend to pull the seeds in their "wake" toward them. That doesn't mean the dandelion seeds are "aware" of the person they're being pulled toward.

Consider also something like flux pinning, where two objects can be made to behave as if joined, even though they're separated by several centimeters or more.

"Red sprites" and similar are absolutely unreal-looking. If I saw one without knowing what it was, I'd be sure it was some kind of advanced technology too.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter), specifically "Pilots and aircrew reported that the objects flew formation with their aircraft and behaved as if they were under intelligent control, but never displayed hostile behavior."

<comment><USER34> > Look, I love the idea of aliens, but try to apply Occam's Razor here. What's > less complicated?

I said nothing about aliens--you did. In fact, the only interpretation I offered was that the object appeared to demonstrate awareness of the aircraft sent to intercept it. Everything else I wrote was simply reporting the observations of the pilots and naval radar.

> An uncommon, but natural phenomenon in which a ball of plasma (or similar) > is temporarily attracted to fast-moving, metallic aircraft.

Did you watch the video I linked? Your explanation bears no resemblance to the phenomenon observed by the Navy: Radar contacts were observed over several days demonstrating bizarre yet consistent behavior. When an aircraft was sent to intercept, the pilot made visual contact with two objects, one beneath the ocean surface and one maneuvering erratically 20,000 feet in the air. The airborne object began mirroring the pilot's movements and then retreated when the pilot flew at it. Radar contact with the object was then established 60 miles away at the position the pilot was returning to, as if the object was anticipating the pilot's intended movement.

In no way does the reported phenomenon bear any resemblance to "a ball of plasma attracted to fast-moving, metallic aircraft."

> An advanced, spacefaring race (or races) travel to Earth and spend over 70 > years pulling pranks on military pilots.

I have not speculated on the provenance of the phenomenon--you have.

> Again, I'm no physicist, but consider something like walking through a cloud > of flying dandelion seeds. The air currents created by the person walking > through the cloud create little vortices that tend to pull the seeds in > their "wake" toward them. That doesn't mean the dandelion seeds are "aware" > of the person they're being pulled toward.

The charitable interpretation of your comments is that you haven't watched the video and listened to the commander's testimony--and why not? Alternatively, you have, but you're still posting these interpretations that bear no relation to the reported observations--and why would you do that?

<comment><USER23> I've watched all of the raw footage and either listened to or watched the testimony. I'm sure the pilots saw something. It's very easy to see awareness and intent where there is none.

As I said, it sounds exactly like WWII pilots describing "foo fighters". There were many, many reports of those in WWII, and they're completely indistinguishable from these accounts. It would be extremely difficult at best to build such a thing using today's technology. Probably essentially impossible with 1940s technology.

The most likely explanation, therefore, is that it's some sort of natural phenomenon. Something that looks unearthly, and that seems to be more likely to be encountered by military aircraft than civilian aircraft. Maybe that's due to altitude, speed, composition of the aircraft, area of operation, etc.

There are really only two main classes of alternative beyond that:

\- Someone active in the 1940s had the ability to make supersonic glowing drone aircraft, and has managed to keep that technology completely secret ever since. \- Aliens (or equivalent).

Neither of these seem particularly likely versus "atmospheric phenomenon".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> My theory is that these UFOs aren't physical but are projections from elsewhere, literally like a TV projector. If two sources direct waves at the same location correctly, perhaps the interference can make the air molecules emit light like ships? Some audio advertising is starting to do this with sound waves ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound)). These projected ships would look like they could defy physics with how they fly.

Are these UFO sightings always over water? Maybe there's some submarine source?

<comment><USER15> We can already do that with multibeam lasers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "And by intention or chance, this is exactly what happened."

Funny how the author is hinting that they believe the exercise might have been intentionally setup to see how the systems could handle the UFO.

<comment><USER37> Right, it's kind of reasonable to think the government might want to test their advanced radar capabilities against their advanced surveillance / stealth craft.

<comment><USER36> I have mixed feelings on this one.

The craft reported by pilots seems to be far beyond anything we're currently aware of as civilians. Of course we've had skunkworks programs before like the SR-71 and the Stealth Fighter that were amazing craft in their own right and unknown to the public for years, but this isn't making a rocket ship or a plane fly that has some weird edges. The tic-tac object (as I understand the interviews) implies significant strides in materials science, propulsion, and probably many other things as well. Is it really possible for all of that to happen entirely underwraps? Or do the other major military powers have similar capabilities?

If the pilots had just reported something like a really fast plane with an unusual design, then the US testing our new monitoring systems against the plane makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So my best bet explanation for a non-UFO explanation is a hypersonic plasma cloaked, MHD controlled drone.

Control despite visible wings or aerodynamic surfaces, at will invisibility to radar, anomalous thermal signatures, hypervelocity at relatively low altitudes, accelerations that will kill humans, can all be explained by this.

However, I will admit that the extremely high reported acceleration afaik is not something we know of. Perhaps solid rocket boosters?

</comment><comment><USER38> UFOs are real. But that doesn't mean aliens are. More than likely a foreign country has invented advanced technology and is keeping it secret. The sightings all happened near the coast, right where you'd expect advanced recconissance aircraft to be.

<comment><USER37> The thing that really freaks me out about these stories are that they sound similar to what my grandfather (who I always thought was a bit crazy) told me he saw when he was in the Air Force. He told me he saw a red tic tac shaped object flying in the sky off the coast somewhere in Asia that caused the water underneath it to bubble, and it eventually flew off faster than any aircraft he had seen previously.

It seems more likely these are some advanced man-made aircraft it's just eerily similar to my GF's story that would have happened decades ago (maybe in the 60's? I'm not really sure exactly when he was in the Air Force).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Second Foundation

<comment><USER40> For more information about Second Foundation, see [1].

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think it is a system malfunction when everything comes together.

</comment><comment><USER21> I hope this puts it to rest for all the doubters here. Hell, you think the HN crowd would start to get excited about the possibility of seeing ET code soon...

<comment><USER42> No disrespect intended, but none of this proves anything. A few super-low-res videos that could be faked by anyone with an installation of Blender on a computer made sometime in the past decade? Scratchy mumbly pilot voiceovers that could be performed by anyone with audio recording technology made sometime within the past half-century? An article co-written by a frequent Coast-to-Coast guest? Alien visitation would indeed by exciting, but I'm going to need more tangible evidence. Preferably from more objective and dispassionate authors.

On a related note, we live in an era where billions of people are within arms' reach of internet-connected HD-or-better video cameras, 24/7\. If ET is indeed visiting, it'd be front-page on Youtube within minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Any interesting anecdotes on HN? I haven't seen anything like this unfortunately, but I've heard enough stories from people I consider reliable to believe that some of these UFO sightings are ET ships/drones monitoring us. All the stories seem to have incredible accelerations involved and chaotic movements as a common theme.</comment>


Cleaning $Home on macOS - <AUTHOR> http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/posts/cleaning_home_on_macos/ <comment><USER2> Out of curiously, outside of being able to do it because one can, what is the real value? Is this just so you can full access to naming convention and therefore feel like this is more of your system? Kind of like if you are living in your home, you want to have full access, and not always have to bump into the square table in the kitchen because Apple put it there, is that the case?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question. For me it is mainly to tidy things up. I feel more at ease when I know where everything is and when everything is simple. It's a similar feeling to working on a messy desk vs a clean one. Disorder places a tiny amount of additional mental burden.</comment></comment>


If performance wasn't an issue would react apps render completely top-down? - <AUTHOR> There's a movement in react to have "container" components which do not directly render UI, instead working as a data translation layer so that smaller parts of state affect recalculation of less UI. In essence this trades architectural purity for performance. Is this accurate, or are there other reasons/advantages to breaking an app like that? <comment> markus-ipse Another reason for having container components inject data "mid-tree", so to speak, is to avoid having to pass your props through all the ancestor components between your data-needing component and the root component. Passing props from root to leaf components works great on small/simple applications like a Todo app, but if you have a deeply nested component hierarchy it quickly gets messy if you have to pass a bunch of props trough several components who has no interest in these props other than that a child of child of child wants the data.</comment>


Huge Collection of Nazi Artifacts Discovered Inside Secret Room in Argentina - <AUTHOR> http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/huge-collection-of-nazi-artifacts-discovered-inside-sec-1796250871 <comment><USER2> Why would they raid the apartment to begin with? What crime was committed? Historical artifacts aren't evil and ascribing such a quality to pieces like these is just fearmongering.

Head measuring was a wacky method of its day, only by modern standards. But let's not report that because that would not be sensational. [http://blog.modernmechanix.com/head-measurements-help-to- ide...](http://blog.modernmechanix.com/head-measurements-help-to-identify- criminals/)</comment>


Interpersonal traits of aspies placed in context (many also relevant to nerds) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/stared/00ce50e95f9bcecc8965feb04650c19d <comment><USER2> Comprehensive explanation of how fucked up this is, from an autistic person instead of a mental health professional making money off stigmatizing us:

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/talking-back-about-my- def...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/talking-back-about-my-deficits- part-1/)

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/talking-back-about-my- def...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/talking-back-about-my-deficits- part-2/)

The cost of having to go through life with people believing all of that shit is indescribable. Like, this stuff makes people die alone for real. This stuff makes people unemployable and untouchable.

And it's a lot to do with the fact that "normal" people in our society have to be emotionally avoidant or they couldn't deal with how fucked up they're making everything on purpose. This is why emotional retardation is the definition of masculinity here. How can you dominate your slaves and have feelings at the same time?

In olden times, autistic people were probably the clergy everyone else turned to for moral guidance because we can actually think consistently without making every last thing about ego. It's not autistic people denying climate change over not knowing how to be a person if business ever did something bad.

I wish autism awareness would go the fuck away so I can explain myself to people instead of explaining why the authority on who I am is completely full of shit and needs their own therapy more than I do.

True fact: I'm an autistic psychologist and I encounter people with godawful theory of mind all the time, every day. Probably half the mentalization problems in autism come from the trauma of what the normal people do to us, but it doesn't occur to anybody that autistic people have feelings to be traumatized about.

Do people realize that the overwhelming majority of information on autism is highly pejorative, even stuff by autism experts claiming to be our friends?

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/tony-attwood-and-the- neol...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/tony-attwood-and-the-neoliberal- subject/)

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/darold-treffert-and- the-a...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/darold-treffert-and-the- archaeology-of-hyperlexia-iii/)

Asperger's isn't a real problem. It only looks that way because the normal people have decided to base nearly all social interactions on avoidance and dishonesty because they're lacking in emotional resilience because they're raised by TV, which makes them feel bad on purpose. Our culture is based on being a sleazy businessperson and making a religion out of that.

Autistic people watched the "good people" stand there and do nothing while they got bullied. We're not naive.

This is a society where being a wife beater is actually less of an obstacle to finding relationships than having an autism diagnosis.

The normal people want it to be middle school forever because they liked it there, at our expense.

Try to spend a week and make note of how many things you see shit-talking either black people or autistic people. Now imagine all of those things are directed at you and that's what daily life is.

Fuck you, too, normal people.</comment>


How Violent Are You? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00kk4bz/Horizon_How_Violent_Are_You/

<comment><USER2> "Currently BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only".

<comment><USER3> <http://www.mininova.org/tor/2588357>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you don't have time, just watch from the 42 min mark.</comment>


Have you heard about SAP HANA revolution? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sapyard.com/sap-hana-from-space-level/ <comment> ju-st > Initially I thought it was just a new database

It isn't? Apparently it has some new cool features but that's exactly what a new DB is about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Even I thought the same. But seems it is much more than just a Database..</comment></comment>


AppleTV fitness app Using Siri remote to Track your Reps - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ethanyfan/trackmyfitness-the-only-apple-tv-fitness-app-that-track-your-reps-a0cbb341ac7e#.1saxap93o <comment><AUTHOR> Currently feature in AppleTV app store under "Get In Shape" section</comment>


5 Olympic Sized Opportunities - <AUTHOR> http://www.onesock.net/2010/05/25/5-olympic-sized-opportunities/ <comment><USER2> Olympic-sized opportunities require olympic-sized proposals. We've been signed up to competefor for some time, and having submitted proposals for some contracts I can say quite confidently that there are huge hoops to jump through. It can take weeks to complete the proposal forms and process (just for small jobs), and as a startup, if you don't have much a track record (e.g been in business for 3+ years, have decent revenue) or don't have industry certifications, you stand no chance - whatever they might promote otherwise. Plus most government buyers have existing relationships and almost always award contracts to people they've done business with before. As a newbie it's extremely hard to get a foot in the door.</comment>


Amazon is cracking down on internal communication after surge in worker activism - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/29/21240049/amazon-internal-corporate-employee-backlash-email-listservs-worker-activism-coronavirus <comment><AUTHOR> 'Last Friday, AECJ members used dozens of Amazon internal listservs to invite thousands of their colleagues to skip work in a mass sickout and instead attend a virtual panel discussion about Amazon warehouse working conditions and environmental policies. Although the invites to this event mysteriously disappeared from workers' calendars and two organizers were fired for organizing a similar event the week prior, it went on as planned with more than 300 people attending virtually.

'With the new enforcement about these rules on email communications, employees say it will be impossible for workers to use listservs to mobilize their colleagues in a similar fashion.

'"Everyone seems to acknowledge (subtly or overtly) that this was in response to the employees getting fired and the sickout," another Amazon employee told Recode. "I think part of what Amazon is trying to do is make average employees upset at AECJ because of this new inconvenience."'

Original title too long; removed the word 'a': Amazon is cracking down on internal communication after a surge in worker activism

</comment><comment><USER2> This is the same strategy of course that Google used to shut down a lot of it's activism. The solution, of course, is for tech workers to formally unionize and enjoy the legal protections and bargaining power than come with that.

Tech companies are basically now going through the exact same processes previous generations of corporations went through decades ago. It'll be interesting to see if they remain as wildly profitable and competitive once they're subject to the same amounts of regulation and scrutiny as their predecessors.</comment>


Please review my startup (again) - <AUTHOR>

A while back I asked for a site review and I got some very constructive feedback.  I honestly was not happy about it all at first but I'm glad I pushed my ego aside and listened... because my new landing page is a thousand times better than the first.
It took me a while to come up with something [relatively] concise... I probably spent a week just trying to come up with a way to explain all of the things my app does in as little time/words as possible (went through 5+ revisions)... while matching the current look/feel... and not being too cheesy.
As for a little background info on myself... I'm 23 and this is my first startup with no funding or guidance.  I've basically spent the past 7 months by myself glued to my computer with only my dog by my side and occasional contact with family.  I make a little money here and there doing some freelance odd jobs.  I'm just taking it as it goes and quite frankly I'm ready to move forwards because my current situation has grown incredibly stale and depressing.  I'd bet I'm far from alone in this kind of situation here on HN.  But I think it's time for me to really move forwards... live life and have fun again.
I came up with the idea behind this startup when I was a professional touring musician.  It takes care of all the boring, tedious number-crunching aspects to being a professional in the industry.  (In advance, the term "soundscans" is widely known among all serious touring bands in case anyone asks.)
With that said, please check out my startup and I would be so very grateful for any advice and guidance in moving forwards with this.  My main concerns are whether or not there are any security holes and/or crippling bugs.  (Edit: Small question... how many of you have to download a plugin to hear the music when clicking play? I'm trying to minimize the number of required plugins while supporting older browsers.)
I'm also wondering about a "terms of service" agreement.  Does anyone have any advice as to how to properly approach this?
And one last thing if anyone would be so kind... My laptop resolution only goes up to 1280x800 so if anyone with higher resolutions could let me know if it does okay I would very much appreciate it. I've also only tested the mobile version on my phone (Samsung Instinct) and my father's phone (first gen Droid)... so any input there is also greatly appreciated.
I'll include working links in a comment. (Side question: Why are working links not allowed in text submissions?)
Fullscreen: http://www.rela.cc
Mobile: http://m.rela.cc <comment><USER2> I really like the bottom toolbar as a design element. It drives home the point that this is a full-featured web application. I also like that you have a narrated video.

Suggestions: -Decrease(or remove) the outer blur/glow on the Rela Logo. It's very distracting in my peripheral vision when trying to read the rest page.

-Instead of having each box title be "Rela...", make them more descriptive so that a band manager/artist would want to read.For example, instead of "Relay" put "Track Merchandise", instead of 'Relate" put "Manage Tours", instead of "Rely" put "Track Soundscans".

-Get rid of "Relational",and "Relax".

-The video is very complicated to me. Maybe have 1 overview video where you gloss over most of the features and focus only on the critical ones... maybe using a fictional band as an example? Then have your more detailed video as a tutorial.

-Consider a beta test group(with non-techie musicians/managers) to help refine the software workflow.

Overall, I think the front-page has information overload and over-relies on the "Rela..." concept. You obviously know the market(serious musicians). If you can make the landing page less cluttered and streamline the software workflow a little, you have a good chance of having a winner.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added the glow to kind of simulate stage lights or whatever... something bands can relate to. I may end up removing it or decreasing it as you've suggested. Thanks! :)

As for the "REL-etc." stuff... in the first review, a couple of people asked what "RELA" stands for... (I had nothing explaining it)... and I actually came up with the name from all of those words so that's why I included them. I feel they each explain all of the different aspects of the app pretty well. Does that make sense or do you think I should still change it?

 _Maybe have 1 overview video where you gloss over most of the features and focus only on the critical ones_

Those play buttons run through all of the critical features... did you click one of those?

And as for the information overload, the app does a ton of stuff. How can I properly explain what all it does concisely? I feel like I'd be leaving out a ton of important features (that would reel in most people) in a super-concise description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a 2560x1600 screenshot for you to review since you only see 1280x800: <http://d.pr/WxxM>

There's a lot of things wrong with this landing page so take what I have to say as best as you can without getting offended. Just want to be objective.

I can't stand the design. It's horrible. There are so many things wrong with it that listing things that are okay would probably be a shorter list.

There is no strong objective on this page. I have to spend time scanning around to try and figure out what it is you do and even then, the message isn't concise. I hate that I have to click "more" to read the rest. Perhaps this works well on a 1280x800 but it shouldn't be so on my screen. I also don't like that all the info is so spread out.

I also dislike the fact that when I click on one of the play buttons, it SLOWLY loads up what looks like powerpoint version web 0.5 and that I have to wait for stuff to crawl across the screen to be able to read it. I read extremely fast. Not having all the text there ready to go is annoying.

I'm sure I could continue to list a few more things but I hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> OH WOW LOL thanks for the screenshot that looks hilarious! Nothing at all like the lower resolutions. I wonder how many people browse at super high resolutions though. Either way I'll definitely figure out a way to satisfy all resolutions. I was just trying to go for something atypical... not a big fan of the cookie cutter startup landing pages I see all over the place... but I guess there's a good reason they all look similar.

As for the objective, this app does quite a bit and it's all fairly specific so it's hard to narrow it down to a single concise tagline. I've tried to highlight the main idea though in a number of places... which is basically to make the lives of touring bands/management easier. How would you suggest I let people know what all the app can do (it does a lot!!!) as concisely as possible?

As for the presentation, it all goes by pretty fast on my resolution. I'd guess the reason it seems like such a crawl is because your resolution is so high. I'll figure out a fix for this as well.

This is how it looks on my resolution: <http://i.imgur.com/XmpRl.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fullscreen: <http://www.rela.cc>

Mobile: <http://m.rela.cc></comment>


MemSQL 7.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.memsql.com/blog/7-0-release/ <comment><USER2> I see they haven't updated their sales process - you have to fill out a form (to be tossed into their funnel) to download.

<comment><AUTHOR> Licensed on memory capacity of the leaf nodes. Roughly $8k/year each which is inline with most other commercial databases.

4-node (up to 32gb RAM each) cluster is free to use though with all features.</comment></comment>


Use BERT to get sentence and tokens embedding in an easier way - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/imgarylai/bert-embedding <comment><AUTHOR> BERT was one of the most exciting NLP papers published in 2018. Instead of using BERT to build an end-to-end model, using word representations from BERT can help you improve your model performance a lot, but save a lot of computing resources.

My idea has been implemented as a bert-embedding and published on Github. check: [https://github.com/imgarylai/bert- embedding](https://github.com/imgarylai/bert-embedding)</comment>


Strange Google Hangout Phenomenon - <AUTHOR> Why does my laptop's camera light briefly turn on after making a phone call using Google voice? It's a simple phone call that doesn't use my camera, so why does the light flicker on briefly afterward?<p>Does anyone else experience this? <comment><USER2> My guess is that when the plugin initializes, it connects to the camera to confirm that the previous settings are still valid and then disconnects once it sees that video isn't needed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is your camera lighting up when it polls for its resolution, many cameras lie about their resolution so the most reliable way to know is to grab one frame. Mine does the same with that and other software.

</comment><comment><USER4> This confirms the good sense of covering the camera lens when not in use. For example, I've long stuck a narrow strip of paper, torn from the adhesive part of a Post-It note, to my MBA's camera lens, removing it when making a video call.

<comment><USER5> I use a band-aid. Prevents adhesive from getting on the lens.

<comment><USER6> EFF has a laptop camera sticker cover set. [https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover- set](https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Why does my laptop's camera light briefly turn on after making a phone call > using Google voice?

It turns out that the current Hangouts defaults to the video call mode, even if the user intends to use voice only. So the camera gets activated even though it's not going to be used.

One workaround is to disable Hangouts and revert to the old setup, the one where you placed voice-only calls from within Google Mail. I do it this way simply because I don't have any contacts who do video calling.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can't replicate calling from either the Chrome extension or from within gmail.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting. I'll make a video and upload it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> takes a picture of you to store along with the metadata it sends to the NSA?

<comment><USER10> Shame you are being down voted after the prism program has been made public. This is not as unlikely as it may sound.

<comment><USER9> agreed -- i wrote it to sound tin foil hatty, but to come off as funny. mission not accomplished</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Just Palmed the Mobile Market - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2015/05/04/microsoft-just-palmed-mobile-market/

<comment><USER2> Microsoft were already struggling in the mobile market before they announced the transpiling feature. They even attempted to pay developers at one stage to develop Windows mobile applications and it still did not work. While the author paints Microsoft's latest announcement of allowing Android and iOS applications to easily be transpiled to Windows 10 capable mobile applications a fast tracked death of Windows mobile, I think it is genius.

When you have very minuscule market share like Microsoft in the mobile space, you have to take some drastic measures. Without apps people will not buy your phones, without phone sales you end up losing money. If Microsoft can make it effortless for developers to port over their applications, it is a win for them (even if it only means a minor percentage gain).

The new Microsoft is the kind of Microsoft that we all wanted to see in the nineties. Embracing open source technology, moving away from this closed- source ecosystem where only Windows apps can run on Windows. I would not be surprised if we see some kind of attempt to win over Linux users by offering some kind of Unix type environment for developers and non-developers alike.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I think they'd be better off doing an 'Apple'. They could use an open-source OS as a foundation instead of spending lots of resources going- alone with something idiosyncratic that's not used by anyone else. The resources freed up could be concentrated on improving the GUI environment (as Apple did) which is what 99.9% of your clients will be interfacing with.

But MSFT will never do this, they have the NIH mentality so deeply ingrained that they would rather die than look outside the MSFT World.

<comment><USER2> You never know. I feel as though we are going to see Microsoft one day implement a strategy that could go two different ways:

1) They end up giving away Windows for free (which they kind of announced with Windows 10). Windows 10 will be a free upgrade to everyone, including pirated users of Windows 8.

2) Windows moves to a subscription based model like Adobe's Creative Cloud. Instead of paying for a copy that you own forever, Microsoft allow you to create an account and sign up for a Windows account for X amount of time. Similar again to Adobe the cost depends on whether you commit to a full year or not.

There are definitely some interesting things happening at Microsoft, some that 10 years ago people would have laughed at you if you predicted them. Who would have thought that we would see an ability to work with Visual Studio on a Mac? Not me.</comment></comment></comment>


Rules to Live By - <AUTHOR> http://tahabs.im/rules <comment><USER2> Semi-arbitrary, and feels to me to be laden with value judgements, even if not meant that way.

What if one is a night owl for example (largely physiological, not a choice)? Does getting up late and working late (the same number of hours) make you a bad person?

And why are some psychoactive drinks OK and not others?

Not everyone has to be exactly the same to be equally 'good'.

You didn't mention religion, colour, sexuality or even dietary preferences.</comment>


Stop saying that diversity means lowering the bar - <AUTHOR> https://work.qz.com/1175679/software-engineer-tracy-chous-mission-to-diversify-silicon-valley <comment><USER2> Well because the selection pool of women tend to be much smaller than men, you either have to work harder to recruit and retain female talent or quality will suffer.

Howeve when many firms go the extra mile to obtain the top tier female talent from a small pool, we'll be back to the problem that it becomes impossibly hard to atttact the right talent from the female pool.

Unless the pool fundamentally changes, this probably will result in a futile exercise. People of course hope that the pool will expand as a result of more aggressive hiring, but if this doesn't materialize, either we were unlucky and the right stars didn't line up, or James Damore was right, there are gender differences at work here.</comment>


Entity Component Systems and Data Oriented Design [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://aras-p.info/texts/files/2018Academy%20-%20ECS-DoD.pdf <comment><USER2> A response to the OOP part of this: [https://www.gamedev.net/blogs/entry/2265481-oop-is-dead- long...](https://www.gamedev.net/blogs/entry/2265481-oop-is-dead-long-live- oop/)

I have no preference here, just posting it as an interesting further reading.

<comment><USER3> I agree that ECS is at its most fundamental a relational scheme. Not sure why that is controversial though..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are some parallels here with data engineering/science I think, at least on the surface of "array of structs" => "struct of arrays" is another view on "row oriented" vs "column oriented" data. Killing the object hierarchy and moving to a more relational style (indexed dataframes). OO -> Systems, Systems seem like seperated functional programming.

<comment><USER5> I wonder why ECS is completely absent in non-game systems. It seems like a natural way for non-invasive extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In ECS I don't understand where you put the collections (scene graphs, quad trees, etc) or what manages them. Does anyone have insight in this?

<comment><USER7> Like kvark said, they don't really fit the ECS model well. The standard answer would be to encapsulate them into a system (i.e. go outside the ECS).

The way I see ECSs is that they are in-memory relational databases that only support equijoins (look up component matching entity ID) and optimize for table scans. The typical choice of an index structure is a contiguous ordered array, making for very fast lookups and scans. If insertion/deletion performance becomes an issue you can add one level of indirection and only keep a list of pointers to components ordered. However, like you indicated, games also need other kinds of queries, so scene graphs and quad trees should be supported as indices on the same level as the arrays and hash tables that are traditional for ECSs.

I would love to see an in-memory database with all the features required by games. There are some very different tradeoffs to be made than in typical in- memory databases:

\- The most important queries are known up-front, since the simulation/rendering loop is fairly defined.

\- Transactions don't need to be durable. Just need to be able to checkpoint once in a while.

\- Lots of bulk updates from the simulation.

\- Query language needs to be well integrated into the application language to avoid overheads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really wish there was a video of this talk, I like this deck but I'm missing the color commentary.

<comment><USER9> There was a video, but since I talked in Lithuanian, I doubt if it would be useful to many people :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> jonathan blow is not a big fan of ECS

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk)

<comment><USER10> Jonathan Blow's commentary isn't anti-ECS. It's more skeptical of Rust's borrow checker, more specifically he's pointing out how the original talk ends with bypassing the borrow checker and copying a pattern that would have equal safety in C or C++.

<comment><USER3> That is true + there is an offhand quote he makes about ECS in general, but 99% is about the issue you mention

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An ECS for Go, with a TypeScript port: [https://github.com/ByteArena/ecs](https://github.com/ByteArena/ecs)

<comment><USER12> For the past few days I've been messing with an ECS module for Elixir! My fork is here: [https://github.com/lytedev/ecs](https://github.com/lytedev/ecs)

Really simple with Elixir, but the naive implementation has some potential performance issues methinks.</comment></comment>