The independent researcher - <AUTHOR> https://nadiaeghbal.com/independent-research <comment><USER2> I am an independent researcher, entirely self-funded. And not rich.

The real barrier to independent research is the huge paywall to get at published papers. I paid $40 for a 4 page paper. That kind of expense really adds up. If you're doing "research" and not looking at published papers, you're likely to be covering ground other people already know, in which case, you're just self-educating. At least, according to my definition of research.

Research is doing something nobody in the world knows how to do.

In my opinion, paywalling research papers is the biggest drag on science ever invented.</comment>


iMapping (infinite zoom knowledge base that supports cloning) - <AUTHOR> https://www.imapping.info/beispiel-maps/ <comment><AUTHOR> Note: I've linked to a subpage of that website as I think the video on the page gives the best idea of what the application is about</comment>


Ask HN: Have you received a response for YC Winter 2018 application? - <AUTHOR> - Or will all invites/rejects be send out on October 24th itself ?<p>- Do the late applications start getting looked at after October 24th - or only after first round interviews are complete ? <comment><USER2> I'm curious too, any updates if anyone has gotten an acceptance/rejection email yet? Good luck to everyone with their ideas regardless!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope haven't got anything yet, also patiently waiting!

Last batch the emails went out pretty late on the day. However, the one before that came out a day earlier if I recall correctly.

</comment><comment><USER4> We had a video interview on Oct 19, and we haven't got any news afterwards (outside of the US, FYI). A little bit anxious to be honest.

<comment><USER5> Are you guys international?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> AFAIK they send "yes" and "video interview" before the flat "maybe next time".

</comment><comment><USER7> last time we've got an invitation from YC. Now I've checked once again to mail and around 1 pm (PST) they send it. I suppose we have to wait few more hours to get invitations. :) good luck all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Congratulations, you must be one of the first ones :) Makes sense to give re- applicants preference if they have developed well since last time.

<comment><USER7> 3x time or so growth. we'll see. more excited than anyone else actually :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Your company is interesting, found it from your submissions history

<comment><USER7> thanks man. will see. fingers crossed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> so far i dont see any views on youtube so more curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Read somewhere that having more views is not necessarily a good thing :) It might imply that they could not take decision right away

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> anyone gotten their decisions yet?

</comment><comment><USER6> so :) Any update? News?

</comment><comment><USER10> no news here yet

</comment><comment><USER11> I just asked in [https://yc.metachat.com/](https://yc.metachat.com/) about the timeline for invites / rejections and learned that they should be sent out around 8pm PST

</comment><comment><USER12> please join to t.me/ycombinator_winter2018 and lets make live discussion like it was previous batch

<comment><USER13> fyi: there's already a discussion happening on [https://yc.metachat.com/](https://yc.metachat.com/) (re-posting because it was flagged below but I don't understand why)</comment></comment>


Game of War: Fire Age Translates Players' Chat - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/arts/video-games/game-of-war-fire-age-translates-players-chat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

<comment><AUTHOR> This game is launching on the 24th.</comment>


Records and Tuples for React - <AUTHOR> https://sebastienlorber.com/records-and-tuples-for-react <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, hope you'll like my article about this awesome JS / TC39 proposal, currently at stage 2

I think it will impact the React ecosystem in a good way, and tried to illustrate how.

I'm not familiar with HN, so i guess nobody will read this comment anyway xD

<comment><USER2> Very cool, thank you for sharing

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the great article

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank-you</comment></comment>


Riak 0.12 Released - <AUTHOR> http://downloads.basho.com/riak/riak-0.12/riak-0.12.0.txt

<comment><USER2> Since I didn't know:

"Riak is a Dynamo-inspired key/value store that scales predictably and easily. Riak also simplifies development by giving developers the ability to quickly prototype, test, and deploy their applications

A truly fault-tolerant system, Riak has no single point of failure. No machines are special or central in Riak, so developers and operations professionals can decide exactly how fault-tolerant they want and need their applications to be."

<comment><USER3> Is there a concise document somewhere that explains why one would choose Riak -- i.e., what unique features or characteristics -- over, say, Cassandra or another DHT-style key/value store?

<comment><USER4> Mozilla's "Test Pilot" user testing system uses Riak. The Mozilla Metrics blog explains why they chose Riak, with comparisons to Cassandra and HBase:

[http://blog.mozilla.com/data/2010/05/18/riak-and- cassandra-a...](http://blog.mozilla.com/data/2010/05/18/riak-and-cassandra- and-hbase-oh-my/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder about Riak's storage efficiency. It seems like it would be ideal private S3 replacement for user upload storage. Just put a varnish in front that only allows GET requests and perhaps add/remove some headers and it should be fine exposed to the web.

</comment><comment><USER6> According to the IRC chan, they're also going to release the lucene based search interface to Riak. In that case, you'd have a fault-tolerant, easily scalable datastore that allows fulltext search (among other things). Can't wait :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Riak search is coming. But in the meantime, there is elasticsearch, <http://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch>, which is also very nice.

<comment><USER7> AFAIK, Riak search is suppose to be drop-in replacement for Solr <http://lucene.apache.org/solr/>. So anything that wraps that API would be easy to migrate to Riak Search later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone have any experience with Riak they could share? Riak seems like one of the less talked about DB's in the NoSQL arena, and I'm not sure if that is because it is bad or poor marketing or what.

<comment><AUTHOR> it seems cassandra, mongodb and couch have gotten the lions share of the attention. of the three I would say couch is the closest to riak. Both are native erlang apps, speak http natively and use map/reduce as a primary mechanism of retrieving data.

riak is just about 1 years old from an open source perspective but is in use in a few production environments and had been in development a few yrs before going open source, afaik. What I like most about riak is the 'no special node' feature and the very close adherence to amazon's dynamo lineage. easy scale up - and easy scale down. adherence to dynamo also means you can fine tune your r/w/n values at a granular level. beyond that, the fact that you can do virtually everything there is to do in riak over http is fantastic. other access pathways are erlang client and protobuffs. another major feature of riak is that you can link keys together with link headers. admin wise, riak is very simple to get up and running either in a dev environment or production.

the drawbacks against riak are that there is no ordering of keys, no select * keys, no select range. listing all keys is expensive. you almost have to keep your own internal index of keys if you want to maintain performance over m/r jobs in any sort of realtime fashion.

im glossing over lots of finer points but if you have specific questions the irc is well manned and so is the mailing list.

<comment><USER9> Riak is also much easier to administer unlike cassandra. No need for rolling reboots for any changes.</comment></comment></comment>


Hannibal's route across the Alps (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/03/where-muck-hannibals-elephants-alps-italy-bill-mahaney-york-university-toronto <comment><USER2> The article is sorely in need of a map. It would be much easier for readers to visualize the different possible routes if they were marked on a map with various geological and/or man-made features highlighted along the way.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. For what it's worth there is an image on Wikipedia in the associated article [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal%27s_crossing_of_the_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal%27s_crossing_of_the_Alps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's perhaps worth noting that the subspecies of elephants used, the North African Elephant, was driven to extinction during Roman times...

<comment><USER5> There would have been wild lions in southern Europe at the time too. Now they're all gone. Though, at least they live on in Africa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This answer is a good write-up to why Hannibal couldn't take Rome despite his massive wins in Italy:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-Hannibal-take-Rome-after- vir...](https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-Hannibal-take-Rome-after-virtually- annihilating-the-Roman-army-at-Cannae)

The odds were against him from the beginning, with one of the most important factors being that Rome had a large conscriptable population while Carthage relied mostly on mercenaries.

<comment><USER7> Obligatory shout out to hardcore history:

[https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-punic- nig...](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-punic-nightmares- series/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> PBS's Secrets of the Dead has a nice episode about finding his actual route through the alps. Looks like this article and episode is about the same research.

[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/hannibal-alps-full- episode/3...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/hannibal-alps-full- episode/3810/)

</comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR:

Nothing permanent, but yet another interesting possible route.

"Patrick Hunt, an archaeologist who leads the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project, which has been investigating Hannibal's route since 1994, says that the answer to the puzzle "remains hauntingly elusive". It's all too easy, he says, for fellow experts to adduce evidence for their favoured route – his team argues for a more northerly path – but until the same methods and rigour are brought to bear on all the alternatives, none can be ruled out. All the same, he adds, Mahaney is one of the best geo-archaeologists working on the question."

</comment><comment><USER10> Why wouldn't there be horse or elephant bones to find?

</comment><comment><USER11> Strange never heard about him before. Any book, documentary, movie recommendations about him or the era in general?

<comment><USER12> Guessing you've not read about / learned much about ancient Rome have you? Fighting Carthage is what gave Rome its navy, and Carthage had the best ships in the world:

It is pretty interesting to see what happened there: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GH1c50zcYc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GH1c50zcYc)

Look up Battle of Lake Trasimene or the Battle of Cannae. Hannibal was one of the best strategic generals the world has ever seen!

<comment><USER11> Yes I really dont know much about Roman history. Thanks for the suggestion.

<comment><USER12> Randomly, one of the most brazen and successful ambushes was actually from the Germanic tribes. Lookup the battle of Teutoberg Forest.

Romans had a habit of taking the sons of the kings/chiefs of conquered people, shipping them back to rome, and raising them as Roman Aristocracy. This Germanic prince, Arminius, was one of those children. He decided to join the Roman military and learned their ways and entirely immersed himself in all things Roman. He became quite established himself and gained the trust of Quintillius Varus, the local Roman governor / general. Arminius brought a fake report of a Germanic tribe rebellion on the opposite side of the Teutoberg Forest, to which Varus decided three Roman Legions could put down. Little did he know that Arminius had been plotting with the Germanic tribes to setup a massive ambush in the forest, where Roman military tactics would prove little advantage. Arminius left early to "convince the germanic tribes to support the Romans" but secretly lead them into setting up several ambushes. The Roman line was almost 15-20km long per recovered artifacts from the actual scene as the passage was narrow and hard to move through. So the Germanic tribes (3 of them if memory serves) trapped the Romans in from the front and rear while raining javelins down from both sides and then moving in for the close kill. It was an utter bloodbath and virtually all of three entire Roman Legions were obliterated (estimated 15-20k casualties).

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

<comment><USER11> Wow fascinating story. Gotta read more on Roman history.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Capitalize Internet brand name or not? - <AUTHOR>

This may be somewhat trivial, but I'm wondering whether to go with a capitalized or lowercase brand name. Examples of lowercase brands: facebook, msn, amazon, twitter, craigslist, hulu. Capitalized brands: Google, YouTube, WordPress, PayPal. <comment><USER2> Most of the lowercase brand names you mentioned are only lowercase in their logo. Facebook, MSN, Amazon, Twitter, and Hulu all use a capitalized name on their own site when written in non-graphical text.

It's all about what image you want to present. Lowercase can seem more friendly and casual. If you have a two-word brand name, capitalizing (and using CamelCase) can help highlight both components.

<comment><USER3> Twitter as well. Craigslist is the only one that I can find that styles itself in lowercase text outside of the logo, and even this is ignored by the press.

My advice: don't get cute with styling. Yahoo! may look clever the first time you write it, but most people outside of the company are still going to write it as Yahoo anyway.

If you want some funky styling in the logo, go for it. But when it comes to written text, stick to the basics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe that if you spend more than 5 seconds thinking about something like this then you are starting off on the wrong foot. Flip a coin and then move on to more important stuff.</comment>


I made LAUNCHED Weekly, a weekly newsletter announcing most interesting projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.launchedweekly.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, so I finally decided to launch my own weekend project. I currently gather information from HackerNews and several Reddit communities (r/Startups and r/Entrepreneur) during the week and compile it into a newsletter format on the weekend. I just prepared the first issue, see it here: [http://us6.campaign- archive1.com/?u=c90d6ea589&id=317a09...](http://us6.campaign- archive1.com/?u=c90d6ea589&id=317a09dd7e)

If you like it, feel free to subscribe and I will send you a bonus issue too!

</comment><comment><USER2> Upvoted as this doesn't appear to be a yet another rehash of BetaList content. Hopefully it will stay that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! And yes, I don't use (and never will) BetaList to build content.</comment></comment>


A Website that recommends Excel formulas based on user input - <AUTHOR> Formulas And Me (www.formulasandme.com)is a website that recommends formulas based on the questions the user asks in the search box. The website will review the question and suggest the best possible Microsoft Excel formula. We are currently Beta testing our website and we have four simply formulas in the database so far. If you could please poke around the website and take the survey on Surveymonkey. <comment><USER2> I like the web design but I feel that the layout doesn't exactly fit a search engine design? Usually the query bar is usually the most prominent feature, for a second there, I thought I was almost searching for it.

also- _> How do I take the average between two numbers?_ The return function should probably be keyword based instead of select a pre-created entry.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried:

> _How do I calculate the average of two numbers?_

and I got:

> _Sorry, but nothing matched your search terms. Please try again with some > different keywords._</comment>


The Best Hackers in the World all come from one Country - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/hackers-the-best-all-come-from-one-country-2012-4#ixzz1rkl1LN9B

<comment><USER2> I have a feeling #8 is from China.</comment>


Where Starbucks Went Wrong in Its Coffee Pricing - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/01/04/starbucks_raising_coffee_prices.html

<comment><USER2> This article is completely wrong. If Starbucks has hedged, they aren't "losing" money on the price of coffee going up or down; their hedge pays out inversely with the change in operating costs due to coffee price fluctuations.

Another way to illustrate this is to note that the cost part of the equation is the same regardless of what happened to coffee prices in the last year: assuming they hedged, they'd probably raise prices by the same amount had coffee been up or flat for the year, too.

Another important flaw is that costs do not determine prices in this way. See this legendary Quora thread for details: [http://www.quora.com/Why-is-iced- coffee-more-expensive-than-...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-iced-coffee-more- expensive-than-hot-coffee?q=iced+coffee)

Yet another problem is that even if costs did determine their pricing, Starbucks' big costs are real estate and labor. The markup on beans and hot water alone is staggeringly high.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. There's so _many_ issues with the article, it's kind of weird.

As you point out, they were hedging (and so did not see their bean prices go up), and even if they had, bean prices aren't even a major cost driver. But imagine, for a moment, that coffee beans _were_ a major cost driver for Starbucks: The article suggests Starbucks' management should _not_ be expected to manage these costs. That's ridiculous to the point of outright laughter.

In other news, Southwest execs say "damn, but there's just nothing we can be expected to do about fluctuating fuel prices" and analysts admit that Facebook "can't be expected to understand how to run large data centres; after all that's unrelated to their core business". </sarcasm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Commodity Trading agreements are _for_ businesses who use items as the input for their production.

Starbucks is one of the few types of companies that SHOULD be buying commodities contracts to control unpredictability

</comment><comment><USER5> _But it doesn't really make sense for the Starbucks management team to be speculating on coffee prices. To run Starbucks successfully you need a lot of management skills related to operating and marketing a large chain of coffee houses._

I dunno I'd assume that an organization the size of Starbucks can probably afford to have a few folks dedicated to their supply chain economics separate from the coffee house operations and marketing folks.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure they can afford it. But do you really expect Starbuck's coffee speculators to beat the speculators at Renaissance and GS?

<comment><USER7> Speculation at places like Goldman Sachs isn't just about having better future-predicting power, though. It's also about sitting on buckets of money such that you have a lot of risk tolerance. Then people pay you to take their risk, and you win on the average (in terms of profit) and they also win on the average (in terms of reduced risk).

Starbucks, being as big as they are, may simply have felt that they were big and well-informed enough that the risk of self-insurance made more sense for them... a decision which is easy enough to snipe at ex post facto, but may still have made more sense.

<comment><USER2> In value-at-risk terms, Starbucks' hedging requires a _negative_ amount of capital: they need more cash on hand if they refuse to hedge. With a given capital structure and no coffee hedging, there's a possible coffee price X that would wipe them out. With hedging, they can place an offestting bet that coffee will rise; then they're indifferent to that price fluctuation. That's one less way for them to unexpectedly lose money, so their results in the aggregate would be less aggregate.

Plus, the buckets of money thing is a canard; Goldman has to earn a percentage on their capital, just like anyone else. If they have 10X as much equity as Starbucks, they need to earn 10X as much net profit to get the same return. And ceteris paribus, that means taking 10X as much risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _A reasonable alternative strategy would be to just run the business as if > the price of coffee was destined to be flat, and then place counterveiling > speculative bets. The point of those bets, however, isn't to speculate it's > precisely to try to eliminate the need to speculate._

The point of speculating is to eliminate the need to speculate? What the hell? This doesn't make a bit of sense.

What Starbucks did was place a bet that coffee prices would go up. Unfortunately for them, they bet wrong. That's the risk no matter how they bet, though. If they'd bet on flat prices (no lock-in) or declining prices (the other side of the bet they actually made), the price could have gone up and they could have lost money. That's why it's called speculation. Someone speculates that the price will go one direction, and they make a bet to that effect with someone else.

<comment><USER9> > If they'd bet on flat prices (no lock-in) [...]

You can buy contracts to bet specifically on flat prices. And of course you can also bet on moving prices, without committing on up or down. No bet isn't an implicit bet on flat prices.

<comment><USER8> Sure. You can bet many ways. No matter what you do, though, it's a bet and you take the risk of losing money vs any other bet you could have made.

And no bet is an implicit bet. You're betting that you can get as good (flat) or better (declining) a price in the future as you can get right now by locking in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used to go to Starbucks every morning. But they got too expensive. Their product always has had a ridiculously high profit margin, with the cost of preparing a cup being under 10 cents and selling for $1.49, then $1.59, then $1.79, now it is $2.19. Starbucks price should not have been raised in this economy just because raw inputs went from 10 cents to 13 cents. Finally the customers, well myself at least, said this is absurd I am being ripped off here, and I bought a good espresso machine for home. Come to think of it though, this is all pretty irrelevant since it seems they are still packed with enthusiastic customers most of whom are renting wifi for the price of coffee. Hey, if the market can bear it, jacking up your prices continually is not the worst plan.

<comment><USER11> Little known fact about Starbucks cup sizing: the menu goes 'tall', 'grande', 'venti', but you can still order a 'small', it's not on the menu, and costs like $1.12 or something.

<comment><USER12> I think you mean "short." If you ask for a "small," they will probably offer you a tall (for the same reason that somebody requesting a Big Mac at Burger King will be offered a Whopper instead).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Um, isn't this the definition of sunk cost? They already lost money on their bet. Trying to raise prices in the future to pay for the past is a blunder.

If they can get away with raising prices and not losing customers, it is irrelevant that they overpaid for coffee they already bought. They just earn more per cup. If they can't get away with it, then this is a foolish thing to do, as they can't make their previous payments vanish.

Didn't their executives go to business school?

<comment><USER14> It is a prime example of sunk cost (and the sunk cost fallacy), but it doesn't explain why they're only raising prices now, rather than back in October when they locked in the agreement. The linked-to WSJ article explains that Starbucks will be paying 'more than their competitors' for coffee, but they're still not paying 'more for coffee' than they expected to. That's the nature of a forward purchase agreement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Planet Money did a story that talks about fuel speculation in the airline industry: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/30/140954343/the- frid...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/30/140954343/the-friday- podcast-how-money-got-weird) (The fuel speculation part is 8 minutes in.)

</comment><comment><USER16> > _Unfortunately for them, the coffee market fell soon after that leaving > Starbucks locked in to paying higher prices than what you can get on the > spot market._

Just spin it as FairTrade supreme version?

<comment><USER9> Depends on the nature of the counter part. Could be Goldman Sax, could be some coffee producer, could be a fund that's run for the benefit of little old widows but with no other connection to coffee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find it really surprising that the article doesn't once use the words 'hedging' or 'liquidity', since an understanding of those very basic concepts would have made the second paragraph either useful or redundant.

</comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately I think the author is just speculating.

</comment><comment><USER18> They should have less bitter coffee while they're at it so people aren't so bitter.

<comment><USER18> It's a well known fact that Starbucks buy cheaper coffee than say a Tim Hortons.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is 34 too old to start grad school? - <AUTHOR> I'm 34 y/o and considering going back to school for masters and ideally phD. I've been wanting to do this forever but didn't have the money. Now I'm financially healthy enough to take the hit of becoming a full time student again.<p>Field would be Math/Economics <comment><USER2> Jim Kent famously wrote GigAssembler, the breakthrough program that allowed the publicly funded Human Genome Project to successfully assemble the full human genome just 1 day ahead of their corporate competitor Celera, in 2000 while pursuing his PhD in Biology at USC Santa Cruz. He was 40 years old at the time. Without his incredible programming effort, it is very likely that Celera would have attempted to make the human genome data proprietary, and we would be looking at a dramatically different landscape in genetics and medicine today.

I am putting off grad school indefinitely, and this story always inspires me that I should go back one day when I'm ready.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Kent> [2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/13/science/reading-the- book-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/13/science/reading-the-book-of-life- grad-student-becomes-gene-effort-s-unlikely-hero.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> 2 questions:

1) Why wouldn't you go to grad school now?

2) In 30 years, would you regret taking a break in your career for a few years, or would you regret not going?

IMHO, it all depends on your goals really. It doesn't matter if you are unemployed, working at a restaurant, an engineer, or a millionaire CEO, the sun still rises each day and it is up to you to build the experiences, relationships, and, ultimately, memories that will make you the happiest you can be.

<comment><USER4> #2. This. Would you regret not going? If so, go. Now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to warn you ... be very very careful about your expectations when it comes to getting a PhD. It defies logic when one considers the simultaneous push to graduate more PhD students when there are very very few faculty jobs available. Are you okay if you get a PhD but then never get a chance to use it in your work? Think hard about this ...

Doing it when you are older doesn't stack the deck against you in my opinion. I've known a few older PhD students in CS and I think they have some advantages over the under-30 bunch. Specifically, I've heard of some under 30 PhDs sometimes being said to "look" non-professorial. I guess some people expect professors and researchers to look a certain way (I think those people are idiots btw).

</comment><comment><USER6> The only criterion is if you want this. Age does not matter. You will be in classes/labs with much younger people. If you don't care about that (or if you like that) then go for it.

What field are you considering?

</comment><comment><USER7> No, it's never too late. If you are motivated and hungry for knowledge, that is. I started my undergrad comp-sci degree at 26 and it changed my life completely. If you don't do it, assuming you wanted it forever, you will be regretting it forever.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not too late. My only advice would be to have a very clear (and realistic) vision of what you want to do with it while, at the same time, being open to opportunities that you're not presently aware of.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you want to do something where such a degree is an entrance criterion, then sure.

If you want to hang out at the uni and the topic interests you, then why not?

Otherwise, I'd suggest self-study.

</comment><comment><USER10> No, age doesn't matter. We have a few guys in their late 40's doing their PHD's and teaching some engineering classes at our Uni.

</comment><comment><USER11> Geez, I hope not: If my current plans work out, I'll be 50 when I start.

</comment><comment><USER12> No.</comment>


Oklo launches Aurora advanced fission clean energy plant in US - <AUTHOR> https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/news/oklo-launches-aurora-plant/ <comment><USER2> Very much an aside, but I love the name "Oklo" for a nuclear power company. Oklo is a location in Gabon where they found proof of a "natural" nuclear reaction.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reac...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor)

You smarty pants may have already known about Oklo, but as a kid, and even today, this information absolutely delights me.

<comment><USER3> They were originally called UPower and changed the name. I really like the name Oklo too. When they first changed it, I thought for sure it was a reference to "little tiny reactors in Africa." So far their target market seems to be rural Alaska. Also, one of the co-founders is from Oklahoma, so I think that factored in as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not able to find much on this reactor.

It's quite small (which is a good thing for expediency and cost of getting a new design running).

It looks like they just recently got a site permit: [https://morningconsult.com/2019/12/10/advanced-reactor- devel...](https://morningconsult.com/2019/12/10/advanced-reactor-developer- oklo-receives-site-use-permit-from-energy-department/)

The OP's press release indicates their use of metal fuel (as opposed to oxide) and heat pipes.

The 1.5MW design, if it uses heat pipes, likely won't scale to a larger, higher output design without changes in the heat transfer system (at the least). But, since they're testing out new fuel, that may just be part of their long term plans...

<comment><USER5> Instead, it can scale out, by mass-producing small modules and running batteries of them.

1.5 MW is not a lot, of course, you need two orders of magnitude more to feed a large city. Still could work great for small cities, especially remote and cold, if cost of production, construction, and service would be reasonably low. That's where the economy of scale could kick in.

<comment><USER6> 1.5 MW is the output of a medium sized wind turbine. Of course, the "battery" has controllable, rather than variable, output.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The Aurora advanced fission power plant, also known as fission battery, > produces approximately 1.5MW of electric power, as well as possesses an > ability to generate usable heat.

> The plant utilises metal fuel to generate heat, a superior fuel type which > is established with decades of experimental data.

Understandable PR move, but still bizarre that the word "nuclear" appears nowhere in the article.

<comment><USER4> They specifically mention metal fuel which is an industry term for a type of nuclear fuel.

<comment><USER8> Also fission. But there's no way to get a quote that will go nookular from this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Oklo wanted "to channel a little bit of Apple-type vibe" and build up excitement for the plant concept, said DeWitte, Oklo's chief executive, in an interview ahead of the permit announcement."

What are they thinking? Something like a radioisotope thermoelectric generator? Those are possible, but there's a Pu-238 shortage.

A similar announcement from General Electric in the 1950s.[1] Except that actually worked.

[1] [https://youtu.be/nn1zESA0V8k](https://youtu.be/nn1zESA0V8k)

<comment><USER10> That movie is amazing, makes you want to build your own reactor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not seeing the stories on this mention the risk of widely distributing radioactive materials in these mini plants. How hard will it be for black hats to extract it for a dirty bomb? How vulnerable is it to being bombed directly? Is it cost effective to surround them with enough concrete and rebar to keep the nasty stuff inside?

<comment><USER4> Another article mentions their site permit is for INL: [https://morningconsult.com/2019/12/10/advanced-reactor- devel...](https://morningconsult.com/2019/12/10/advanced-reactor-developer- oklo-receives-site-use-permit-from-energy-department/)

They'll be using all the existing (and likely expanded) security and other infrastructure at that site.

If you've ever been to a running plant you would notice the high security, including heavily armed guards. You can't just walk into these places and take stuff.

<comment><USER3> The problem for a 1.5 MW commercial reactor is that paying security guards and building physical barriers very quickly becomes cost prohibitive. If you have a 1000 MW plant, it's doable. But at 1.5 MW it's really hard to run 3 shifts of guards and operators cheaply. Some have considered significantly undergrounding nuclear plants to help deal with this, but then cost of excavation gets way up there.

<comment><USER12> > The problem for a 1.5 MW commercial reactor is that paying security guards > and building physical barriers very quickly becomes cost prohibitive.

It's not clear that we won't have to do this _anyhow_ as shooting transformers with rifles is a problem, too:

[https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2016/09/26/jla- tho...](https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2016/09/26/jla-thousands- lose-power-after-vandal-shoots-main-transformer/)

[https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-grid- attack-20140211-st...](https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-grid- attack-20140211-story.html)

<comment><USER13> there is a substantial difference in severity between a transformer being compromised and a fission reactor being compromised

<comment><USER12> Probably less than you think.

A lot of transformers used polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the insulating oil. Those tend to contaminate groundwater and degrade on the same timescales as radioactivity.

We have, fortunately, banned the usage of such things for quite a while. But, if a transformer hasn't been replaced in the last 20 years, it's probably hazardous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good branding taking the nuclear out of fission

<comment><USER15> And adding battery haha. This is how you know wind and solar are scaring them.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Rather limited information in the article. Not really useful.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems to me the biggest hurdle in nuclear energy is the (lack of) speed with which you can build a new plant (and therefore cost). It seems to me that any new type of reactor must be built much more efficiently in order to gain traction. I bet a new plant with "old" design which can be built in 2yrs would be much more popular than a new plant with state of the art reactors which can be built in 5 years.

<comment><USER18> That's why so many companies, like Oklo, are building small reactors that can be mass-produced in factories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I couldn't find anything I'm the article about cost. Typically nuclear is a bit more expensive than natural gas. Is that the case here?

<comment><USER20> They probably haven't worked out all the kinks yet, so I'd expect the first few reactors to be more expensive than typical nuclear plants. They wouldn't want to advertise that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> No word "nuclear" in the article ?

There is no verified fission reaction that is used to produce energy on this planet yet, is this a scam ?

Oklo said the Aurora plant can produce power for decades without any need to refuel. It can also recycle fuel and ultimately convert nuclear waste to clean energy.

Oklo has been engaged in pre-application activities with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2016 for the Aurora design, and says it is preparing to submit its first licence application. The company has previously received federal cost-shared funding for technology development through the US Department of Energy's cost-shared Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative.

[https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsoklo-reveals-design- for...](https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsoklo-reveals-design-for-small- fission-renewables-hybrid-reactor-7541051)

Oklo faces significant hurdles on its road to regulatory approval, though. For one thing, Aurora is a liquid metal-cooled fast reactor, a design that has been used almost exclusively on submarines. "Frankly, the regulatory paradigm is built for large reactors," DeWitte says. [https://www.wired.com/story/the- next-nuclear-plants-will-be-...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-nuclear- plants-will-be-small-svelte-and-safer/)

<comment><USER22> >There is no verified fission reaction that is used to produce energy on this planet yet, is this a scam ?

Fission, not fusion.</comment></comment>


How Paying for College Is Changing Middle-Class Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/opinion/sunday/college-tuition.html <comment><USER2> "Create your account to keep reading"</comment>


Ask HN: Canadian VPS hosting? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HNers,
Could anyone please recommend a Canadian equivalent of Linode or DigitalOcean? I've done my googling, but the providers I've found seem amateurish and/or outdated, not to mention expensive.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Try Gossamer Threads ([https://gt.net/](https://gt.net/)). What are your reasons for not using Linode or DIgitalOcean anyway -- do you work for a university library or other public institution?

<comment><USER3> Starting at $250 a month for a VPS? I don't even want to know why...

<comment><USER2> Because its fully managed. Can't say for sure if its worth it, but I have heard good things about them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've used [http://www.netelligent.ca/](http://www.netelligent.ca/) VPS in the past. They have a cloud version now but I've never tried it.

</comment><comment><USER5> This company was a client where I used to work and seemed very knowledgable and friendly: [http://www.cartika.com](http://www.cartika.com) Not really the same as DigitalOcean but they offer VPS hosting with data centers in Canada(and US) and they are based in Toronto(or where 2 years ago, they grew quite big since then)

</comment><comment><USER6> OVH has a big datacenter outside Montreal.

[http://www.ovh.com/ca/en/vps/](http://www.ovh.com/ca/en/vps/)

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://cloudatcost.com](http://cloudatcost.com) have vps starting at 35$ one time (yes, one time really)

</comment><comment><USER8> There's CloudA ([https://www.clouda.ca/](https://www.clouda.ca/)) that is similar to DigitalOcean.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, but CloudA is what I mean by "amateurish". Their website is extremely confusing (compare to [https://www.digitalocean.com/](https://www.digitalocean.com/) or [https://www.linode.com/](https://www.linode.com/)). They even use StackOverflow logo as an icon for their "Fast Spin Up Time" feature. All this does not inspire confidence.

<comment><USER8> Ok. Digital Ocean itself is supposed to come to Canada sometime this year if you can wait.</comment></comment></comment>


CommonMark - <AUTHOR> http://commonmark.org/

<comment><USER2> Do notice how the answer to "Are the Yankees the best team in baseball?" has changed from "Yes." to "We used to think so."

</comment><comment> vhost- Does this mean it's being called Common Mark now? Seems like an odd choice for the domain if it's still called Common Markdown.

<comment><USER3> > Does this mean it's being called Common Mark now?

Seems to be CommonMark (one word), not Common Mark.

> Seems like an odd choice for the domain if it's still called Common > Markdown.

"CommonMark" is used pretty much everywhere, "Common Markdown" doesn't appear anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The spec is still titled the "Standard Markdown spec".</comment>


Is your personality fixed, or can you change who you are? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/24/481859662/invisibilia-is-your-personality-fixed-or-can-you-change-who-you-are <comment><USER2> For most of my life, I was the classic "shy until you get to know him" kind of guy. I thought that's just how I was. But then ten years ago, I started LARPing, and I decided to play an extrovert - someone who could walk up to a stranger and strike up a conversation.

So I did. And even though I was nervous as hell, I did it during the game, in the guise of my character. For a couple years, I was really into the game. It was my life every weekend. I probably spent more social time pretending to be someone else than I did being myself.

And a funny thing happened... I became that guy for real. It's not just that I'm no longer nervous, I genuinely enjoy talking to new people. I barely recognize my old introverted self.

So I believe this. Who we are is just a snapshot in time.

<comment><USER3> How you talk changes how you think. That's why propaganda works. In fact, most people don't even realize they've changed.

I've purposefully changed my personality (behavior?) twice, about to start my thrice effort.

The first time, nor longer wanting to be angry, and having run out of ideas, I decided to pretend to be happy. I had read that you can't unlearn a habit, only replace it. So I played chipper all the time. When asked how I was, I'd say something like "Phenomenal!" Initially, it was sarcastic.

Then one day I woke up and I felt phenomenal. I was gobsmacked. I didn't even know the change was taking place. The transition took about three years.

The second time, I ran for office. Deluding oneself is part of the job. A bit like how sales people can convince themselves the next customer will say "Yes!"

This book came out after my first change. It jives with my experience.

      How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work
      https://amzn.com/078796378X

<comment><USER4> I did something similar. I was going through a hard time personally and I found myself being negative about everything. I decided to start a "negativity jar" into which I put 20c everytime I said something negative. I promised my suffering work colleagues I would spend the proceeds taking out to dinner at the end of the year. It really work well and a few hundred dollars later I was out of my reflexive negativity rut. The only downside was the resident junkie at work stole all the money - at least everyone was understanding on why they missed out on dinner.

<comment><USER5> Whoah hold on, are you saying you had an actual known heroin addict at your place of work long enough for you to deposit hundreds of dollars in quarter increments? The casual delivery of this left turn is comedy gold.

<comment><USER4> Yes. When I started he was on methadone, but I guess like a lot of addicts he relapsed. The temptation of all that easy money must have been too great.

I have in my mind him paying his dealer in 20c pieces (I live in Australia so we don't have quarters). 20c pieces are actually quite large (11.2g) so a couple hundred dollars in 20c pieces is 11.2 x 5 x 200 = ~11kg (25 lbs). This was not some easy theft!

<comment><USER5> Ah, Australia, that explains it, I've live in both the US / UK, so I'm used to 25c or 20p, but not 20c.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some military training is designed to change personalities. The USMC does this deliberately.[1] They use sleep and food deprivation. This is _not_ done to "toughen up" recruits; it's done to change their value system. Gen. Krulak, when Commandant, devised this in the 1990s.[2]

Krulak himself says it best:

 _" We cannot anticipate and train Marines for each situation they may face. All Marines must, therefore, possess a moral consistency to serve as their compass. Making the right ethical decisions must be a thing of habit. This is why we created the Transformation process where we recruit bold, capable, and intelligent young men and women of character and recast them in the white hot crucible of recruit training. We immerse them in the highest ideals of American society -- the time honored values of our Corps -- honor, courage, and commitment. We place these values on them in a framework of high institutional standards to which they are held strictly accountable. We further foster the acceptance of these values through the unit cohesion and sustainment phases."_

 _" Just as we expect a Marine to employ his weapon under combat duress, we must likewise demand that he employ his mind. Marines need to be comfortable with using their intuition under highly stressful circumstances. In short, we must make intuitive decisionmaking an instinct, and this can only be accomplished through repetition. Training programs and curricula should routinely make our Marines decide a course of action under cold, wet, noisy conditions while they are tired and hungry and as an instructor continually asks them "what are you going to do now, Marine?!!"_

[1] [http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?46546-%91Tu...](http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?46546-%91Turning- the-heat-up%92-on-the-Crucible) [2] [http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/cultivating_intuiti...](http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/cultivating_intuitive_d-m.htm)

<comment><USER7> I can see that. Myself and a number of my friends would probably have been considered to be quite shy and introverted when joining the military. But it really brings out the social aspect in you, you spend so much time just alone talking and joking with your friends (far more than you ever would in civilian life - e.g on guard duty or something, it's often your only source of moral). Often the old sweats called it the art of conversation, we call it the art of "shite talking". It's strange because every military persons friendships with each other that are completely different to civilians and I don't just mean because of the nature of the role. In civilian life, if you don't see a friend for 5 years, the dynamic of meeting them again is often quite distant. In the military it's like they never left and you just pick up from where you left off. I can say that I feel closer to some people who I went through basic training to than people I've known since school - you learn so much more about each other.

Similarly extreme extroverts tend to be toned down a bit in military training, til they reach about the same level.

Myself and any one of those introverts would now probably be regarded as fairly confident extroverts compared to civilians, and so much of that is thanks to military training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kind of weaksauce. One review 50 years ago doesn't override all the work done since, particularly on OCEAN, showing high longitudinal stability of personality traits when measurement error is considered. (What's more interesting is the behavioral genetics of that; it seems that this stability is at least in part due to the stability of genetic influences on personality.) It's also kind of silly to point to prisoners as an example: violent crime always declines with age.

<comment><USER9> Just because personality doesn't frequently change doesn't mean it is impossible, it is just really hard. If it happens with one in a few hundred individuals, most researchers are going to view it as an anomalous outlier and discard or ignore it. I can assure you with complete confidence that your personality is incredibly malleable.

I could go on at length about my personal experience (which is quite dramatic) but since I enjoy my privacy I'll just pass along a funny story about massive personality change induced by brain injury: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2130900/Chris- Birc...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2130900/Chris-Birch-Rugby- player-woke-gay-stroke-says-hes-happiest-hes-been.html)

<comment><USER10> > Just because personality doesn't frequently change doesn't mean it is > impossible, it is just really hard. If it happens with one in a few hundred > individuals, most researchers are going to view it as an anomalous outlier > and discard or ignore it.

I view this as a failure of modern statistically driven social sciences. Just because it happens to only a few in a hundred people, doesn't mean it's an anomalous behaviour. People are messy. When put in differing circumstances, people show amazing plasticity in their behaviour. And controlling for all those social and biological pressures is very hard to do.

<comment><USER11> I think researchers have a clear distinction that populations are an altogether different phenomena than individuals. This is something that the public often confuses, as demonstrated when somebody rebuts a statement about population attributes with a personal refutation. This is a failure to argue on the same phenomena.

Researchers are also aware that personality changes population-wise with age, and also that individuals also experience personality changes -- but generally not in a medically interesting way in the sense of a reliable and precise intervention to effect positive changes.

I'm also reminded of studies on the transferability of personality traits with adopted children (no significant correlation! amazing! same correlation with biological parents compared to those children raised by their biological parents), or reared-apart monozygotic twin studies, or reared-apart dizygotic twin studies, and so on. The collective portrait of many data points suggests a set of stable biological factors to personality, as opposed to personal experience.

<comment><USER9> Think of your personality a barren landscape, which starts out with very, very minor depressions and irregularities. These depressions and irregularities might so so small they're not even be perceptible to the average person walking across it. Over many years, rain will erode these minor features into gullies, and if conditions are right, you can even end up with canyons. The course of a mighty river can be entirely determined by minor irregularities in the starting landscape.

Of course, if you took a decent sized plow and cut a channel through the landscape early enough, you could direct the development of the river to exactly where you wanted it. If you wait too long, redirecting the river becomes a major engineering task; involved, but still entirely doable.

<comment><USER11> I mentioned a few studies, but worded them poorly, but I wonder what you think about the fact that there's no significant correlation in personality traits between foster parents and their adopted children (fascinating, no?), and that these children have the same correlation with their biological parents regardless if they are raised in the same household or with foster parents.

Shouldn't the unique experience of an entirely different household have some effect on personality?

<comment><USER9> Our genes do influence the development of brain structures that strongly influence general happiness level, sociability, and a variety of other traits. Under normal circumstances, the wiring of those neural structures tends to be reinforced. For example, friends and family members might observe a loved one who is not by nature sociable and say "you are an introvert" or "you are shy" which is a reinforcing stimuli. When that person has heard this enough times, whenever they behave in an unsocial manner, they will tend to explain it by thinking "I'm shy/an introvert" thus perpetuating the neural structure. If instead, sociability is treated as a skill, and correct behavior is reinforced while incorrect behavior is punished, over time those neural structures will be re-wired.

This pattern is observed all the time for tastes. We have genetically predetermined preferences, but overwhelmingly what we end up liking is the result of social conditioning.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't really seem to address the issue of adopted children though. If I understand you correctly, the social environment (and conditioning) of the children should override the biological aspects of their personality. Or at the very least it should have a very significant effect.

It seems to me that certain aspects of a person are very malleable, taste being one of them. But many other things apparently are not (IQ, or various other measures of 'intelligence', if I recall correctly).

From my experience in the social sciences, we tend to underestimate the role of genetics more often than not.

<comment><USER9> It does address the issue of adopted children - we as a culture have a fixed mindset for things like introversion and intelligence, and genetics do strongly influence our default level of both of those. Thus, adoptive parents observe the child and say "you're an introvert" or "you're not clever" and the default pattern is reinforced.

On the other hand, when a child displays an initial dislike for like Taylor Swift, her friends might say "you're crazy, Taylor Swift is awesome."

It's all just neural networks being reinforced or inhibited, the primary contribution of genetics is the default state of the network. In the case "fixed" personality characteristics, our culture is to reinforce the default networks, while for things we view as mutable, we have no qualms about training away default behavior.

<comment><USER13> Why should "introversion" be changed or punished, necessarily? Developing intellect is something to be encouraged, but I don't understand the anti- introversion bias in your post.

And I suspect that the genetics does also set a limit as to how far one can bend, too. This too, will vary between persons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder where this comes from? A lot of our culture is based on stories about people changing personality. [1]

Those stories have so much appeal and longevity _exactly_ because the spectator can see someone like himself changing. The underlying motif is that anyone can go from weakling to hero, under the right circumstances.

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

<comment><USER12> I think what complicates this discussion is the meaning of 'personality'. Someone here mentions 'taste', and you talk about weakling/hero. I'd never have considered these part of personality.

I'd consider taste to be a cultural thing and rather changeable. And 'heroism' strikes me as something that I'd call 'character' rather than 'personality'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Personality is deeply ingrained and hard to change but not impossible. Off the top of my head things that can change personality include going to jail, military service and long term unemployment.

<comment><USER16> I noticed a shift in my personality pre-military vs post-military. Before the military I was excessively patient, but now I find that I'm more irritable and slightly less forgiving of others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Supposedly people who speak multiple languages can have dramatically different personalities in each.

<comment><USER18> Hah, I've found this in myself. It feels like I'm a bit more of a jerk in Russian than in English—at least I'm more likely to let irritation show. I'm less visibly irritable in English.

But it might also be a difference in contexts: I mostly speak Russian with my immediate family and English with other people.

<comment><USER19> I am definitely more outgoing, sociable and assertive in English but not so much so in Turkish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> change is inevitable. I like to think of the different stages in my life as other people, because those people were so different.

I maintain the same kind of drive I've always had, consuming every piece of data I can get my hands on, but that consumption has changed me.

I remember clearly the first major change to another person I ever experienced. it was after reading the giver when I was a child. I can't even recall who I was before I read that book, but I know he was a lesser mortal than I.

the next major change was after my parents split and I got a new abusive step mother. before that I would cry at a whim, every time I watched fern gully I cried, but after that woman I rarely showed emotion. I was hard and thought hard thoughts, I was a total gangsta, a white suburban gangsta but after a long time trying I finally got street cred. spent time in the kiddie can and all that.

my next major change was actually in military school after gaining too much street cred. something changed in me on the long drive through the desert of Nevada to a large training camp called rite of passage. I kicked ass there, no idea why, but I changed, and became a leader. moved up the ranks and got posted to the cross country cycling team.

and that's where we come to the change that stuck for so many years. In ROP I became captain of my cycling team and we got the opportunity to ride across America. that ride changed me in so many ways. I used to think I couldn't attain my dreams, now I was in a dream.

the next time I changed fundamentally was when I became a father. not in your usual lets get married and have a family way, no, it was as unplanned and crazy as you can get, but I still changed, stepped up to the plate and reflected on my past lives and Knew I could do it.

now I'm an older man, and I am changing at a more observable pace, I can see my views solidifying and it's a little scary, I don't want to be stuck in my ways. but I am comforted by the fact that any day, I can change, at least for now.

</comment><comment><USER21> Personality is influenced by hormone levels, and hormone levels are an aspect of health. Here's a specific example [1] which may be of particular interest to those of a nervous disposition.

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520819/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520819/)

<comment><USER22> What should one do if they have long suspected their hormone levels are quite low due to heredity and it adversely limits their energy levels and outlook?

<comment><USER21> I'm no expert but I'd suggest:

1) make a list of _all_ your chronic symptoms over time

2) speak to a doctor about your particular concerns re: hormone levels, and get blood tests taken

3) if your doctor reckons, based on the results, that treatment is justified, I guess you're on your way; if not:

4) study the literature - if you disagree with your doctor about your results, you should be able to find literature that quantitatively supports your position based on your test results and symptoms

5) if you can find supporting literature, ask your doctor for treatment (don't be confrontational when dealing with your doctor, treat them as a resource and a partner, and respect their opinion even if you disagree with them based on what you've learned)

6) find another doctor if your doctor won't agree with a reasoned opinion

If you need help with this stuff, there may be practitioners out there more in tune with chronic illness than your bog-standard GP. I'm partial to the ancestral health movement and paleo diet therefore I'd look here: [1].

Finally, I'd recommend the work of Paul Jaminet - I found his book [2] and his Retreat (which includes personalised health coaching based on blood test results) [3] both to be incredibly helpful in dealing with my own long-term health issues.

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

[2] [http://perfecthealthdiet.com/buy-our- book/](http://perfecthealthdiet.com/buy-our-book/)

[3] [http://perfecthealthdiet.com/perfect-health- retreat/](http://perfecthealthdiet.com/perfect-health-retreat/)

<comment><USER22> Thank you for taking the time to write this response, I appreciate it. I don't want to write too much publicly for privacy reasons, but I did have a blood/hormone test today, and I do have prior experience w/ this issue. I think my issue is more with low neurotransmitter levels making me susceptible to depression, although, there's a lot of psuedoscience on this topic.

<comment><USER21> You're welcome. Feel free to get in touch (I added an email address to my profile). I am happy to share my experience and (rather limited) knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does it go the other way? Are there people who spend their life as good (a more or less model citizen) becoming bad? Perhaps not, because it seems more natural for humans to want to contribute, so even criminals may have a voice in them urging them to do better. But humans do have thoughts of envy, lust, self-righteousness and unfairness that can whittle away the self control and cause them to cross over and, let's say, murder someone in the first degree.

I'd propose that a complete set of research would learn that there are some personality traits that are malleable and there are some that are not. Moreover, those two sets would not be the same for everyone, and there is likely a great deal of diversity.

<comment><USER24> > _Are there people who spend their life as good (a more or less model > citizen) becoming bad?_

Of course. You think all of the Nazi officials were rotten from their childhood, teenage years, early career, etc?

Some were -- most not. They were "model citizens" as you say. It was the circumstances and belief in Fuhrer etc. that led them to become bad, but after some threshold we can say they were bad.

<comment><USER25> In this case, I'll argue that they didn't change. They continued being 'model citizens', but the model became bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How do you define "personality"? Does the fact that you're capable of changing not get included in that? Is the "new" personality the _true_ you? Or the old one?

<comment><USER27> This is similar to the alternate reality counter proof: If alternate realities exist, and we can get to them from this reality, then they are no longer an alternate reality. If we cannot get to them, then they cannot "exist" as our reality is a prerequisite for existence.

You can say the same for a changed personality :p

<comment><USER28> That argument is getting hung up on semantics. It's like saying north and south America are the same continent because they are connected. It is implicitly choosing a very specific definition of reality amongst many possible definitions.

<comment><USER26> Getting hung up on semantics is all anyone can manage when a concept is so poorly defined as this one.

<comment><USER29> So screw that concept and talk about ones that are useful - ones that can allow us to make predictions. Can a person who is now bigoted and prone to violence become a Gandhi? I'd say yes, I've seen similar thing happen. Call it "personality change" or call it something else, but the phenomenon seems to be real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have always liked this quote:

"Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity and movement and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds." - Louis L'Amour

</comment><comment><USER31> For the most part we are all unabstractable, and if anything, we should strive to be.

What I means is, we can give ourselves names, but who we are is mostly a black box. Any black swan event can change our definition, and the shock doctrine also applies here, in that we are affected by spikes of greatest impressions, not ongoing consistency.

For the most part, we are remembered for our best or worst, but are judged by our last. So in the case of this article, if you commit a horrific crime, that will be what people remember and define you by. And we can do everything in our power to be judged with forgiveness based on our latest actions. But for the most part, it's not until we do something more extreme (shocking) than what has defined us so far that most of us will feel naturally inclined to update our definitions.

But the key takeaway is that even if this is how we define one another, none of it truly predicts what anyone will do next, good or evil, brilliant or lame. Ultimately, we are all much like computer programs that must run their course to know precisely if any of us will halt or not, which leaves personality a mere impossible analysis, much in the spirit of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. We are incomputable, and our inconsistency is what is consistent. The only option is execution -- to let life run its course.

</comment><comment><USER32> Of course, until you know about the brain plasticity and how it decreases with age. So it becomes more "fixed" with the years.

It's true, there is no such thing as personality. But then, why do recruiters want to know about the "profile" of a candidate? What do they talk about when they want someone who is "at harmony with the group"?

If we could really change as we liked, we would not talk about personality. People will always carry a baggage of learned behaviors with them. The sum of this is called personality. It can change of course, but in the "brave new world" that we live in, the incentives to do so never appear.

</comment><comment><USER33> The question isn't "can you change who you are?", it is "How young do you have to be who you are?"

I haven't thrown a temper tantrum in the middle of a grocery store in 22 years.

</comment><comment><USER34> I used to be really bad about time/punctuality. Since doing a startup where the tides were relevant, and missing a rendezvous by 10 minutes could mean a 12h wait (not just for me, but for a lot of other people), I made a serious effort to be punctual -- the big change being focusing in advance on "we must leave no later than X to be there on time" vs. "we need to be there at X+Y" is 90% of it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Carol Dweck's work on the growth mindset says that you can change who you are.

Her ideas have had a tremendous impact on various aspects of business, to the point where she's covered in the Harvard Business Review:

[https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset- actuall...](https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually- means)

</comment><comment><USER36> I have a scholar/hermit/coder persona and a leader/teacher/social persona. I feel like I can switch pretty easily from one into the other depending on the situation.

If I spend too many months pretty exclusively within one of those personas I will start to feel the need to express the other.

</comment><comment><USER37> Fixed at what point in life? Age 12, 18, 21, 30, 50?

</comment><comment><USER38> Im not native english, but:

"It has to do with Mischel's most famous experiment, called the marshmallow test, which he first conducted in 1960. You can still find videos of it on YouTube".

Doesn't it sound like they were put on YouTube in the 60s? :)

<comment><USER39> No, it does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love the quote from _Fight Club_ , "If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"

</comment><comment><USER41> You are a product of your environment. [http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm](http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm)

</comment><comment><USER42> Looks like people here haven't examined MBTI. Your personality may not be fixed but it takes up to 2 years to change it. 16personalities.com is a good way to test your personality as being one of the 16 types. It takes 10 mins.

<comment><USER43> Myers Brigs tests are fun, but they're not much more scientifically valid than your astrological sign.

See [http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs- personalit...](http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality- test-meaningless)

<comment><USER44> The tests are wildly inaccurate, and MBTI itself is not the full story of cognition and personality, but I think there is enough evidence suggesting that the cognitive functions as described by Jung[0] are very real.

The article you linked to uses lack of MBTI in psychology journals as an argument against its validity, but its applications in the field are very limited. You're more likely to find MBTI references in neuroscience journals as there are appears to be clear correlations between type preferences and brain activity patterns[1].

Even so, knowledge of a persons cognitive preferences just isn't very useful. So the main application of MBTI is indeed "just for fun".

0: [http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm](http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm)

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

<comment><USER45> it's pretty useful for those who have a difficult time understanding and getting along with people otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Who am I?" \- Zen koan.

</comment><comment><USER47> TLDR; Prisoners become less violent over time.

This has less to do with personality and more with testosterone.

<comment><USER48> I agree. This is exactly the interpretation one would have if they didn't read the article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Short answer: no. Long answer: no.

The supposition that the personality is completely fixed or completely mutable is simply false. There are fundamental constraints to how the personality can be manifested. Histrionic personalities are perhaps those most inclined to believe that their personality is truly self-determined, but they'd also be mistaken.

<comment><USER9> Let me guess, you probably also believe that IQ is static, and people's ability is chiefly dictated by their natural talent?

How are those beliefs working out for you?

<comment><USER13> It seems you are interpreting what is said in black and white terms. He (she?) said that personality is _neither_ completely _fixed_ _nor_ completely _mutable_. Things are not either/XOR.

The same goes with IQ. I don't think any average person could ever train their intelligence to be, say, John von Neumann. Thus it is not _completely_ mutable. He was a genetically superior specimen by every account and evidenced such from a very young age. But a good 15-20 point boost, especially if we did not train ourselves to our fullest before? Maybe. I used to process more slowly, now I process faster, because I pushed to think quicker. Thus it is not completely _fixed_, either. Definitely we can eradicate racial IQ gaps, I believe (average Black-White IQ gap in the US is 15 points favoring Whites, by the way.), Rushton et. al. be damned. If I remember right, in some places it was actually done, thus proving its possibility. (Interesting tidbit the racists seem not to address: Bhutan's and China's people are both "Mongoloid Asian" race by racist theory – but Bhutan has IQ 85, China at 105, at least using racists' own data sets. I wonder also what the IQ for rural China vs. urban wealthy China looks like. I suspect the 105 number comes from having a large proportion of the latter in the sample.)</comment></comment></comment>


CERN wants to build a particle collider that's four times bigger than the LHC - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612766/cern-wants-to-build-a-particle-collider-thats-four-times-bigger-than-the-lhc/ <comment><USER2> My only question is: how safe is this? If they create a mini black hole then that would obviously be disastrous. Sorry but I remain skeptical of all their research. If they don't understand exotic matter, then why muck around with it so haphazardly?

<comment><USER3> "Understanding exotic matter" is not a boolean ("understand vs not understand"). We know _enough_ about the world to be sure nothing disastrous can happen. See Standard Model on Wikipedia for more details.</comment></comment>


SaaS for US customers but located offshore - <AUTHOR> What are the options for a SaaS firm thats offshore based but targeting US customers in terms of engaging with merchant gateways?
a. Can an international firm signup with the likes of Paypal Merchant, Authorize.net etc and charge recurring US dollars on CC's? b. If US registration is mandatory, is there an EASY and straightforward way to register a firm in the US to offer SaaS with no US presence?
c. Is there a third country (avoiding the term tax haven!) with lax Tax laws and registration ability that can achieve direct selling with US customers and be completely ligit?
Thanks Ali http://www.7vals.com <comment><USER2> There are many varieties of "offshore" for this question. I am not routinely inconvenienced by being an American living in Japan with regards to charging for things. If you're a Nigerian living in Nigeria... things are going to be a wee bit more difficult.

One does not practically or legally _need_ a physical or corporate presence in the US to charge cards. Of the available options, I use Paypal to charge credit cards -- they had the least involved process to get a Paypal account (Paypal Website Payments standard + Paypal premier account) years ago, and I bootstrapped that into their I-can't-believe-its-not-a-merchant-account (Paypal website payments pro + business account) after a few years of doing (relatively) significant volumes through Paypal proper. That has been impressively painless.

Privilege escalation is, by and large, the easiest way to get into the US banking system. As soon as you're in a bank's systems and they have their Know Your Customer checkbox ticked next to your application, your odds of not getting held up by fraud review for the next product you add go up _greatly_. (This is why the tech incubator I used to work at would set up anyone going to the US with personal checking/investment accounts at US multinational financial firms. As soon as you have a foot in the door, everything else gets easier.)

Understand that businesses do not refuse to do business with foreigners because they enjoy screwing with you -- it is strictly risk-mitigation. There are a variety of things you can do to reduce perceived risk. In general, things which tend to indicate you're a "real" business tend to work. (Tax forms are practically magic spells -- they look official, it is virtually impossible to second-guess their contents, and the IRS will virtually _never_ tell you "Piss off, we don't want your money.")

</comment><comment><USER3> Our company is based in Denmark, which means we can't use Authorize.net or the real PayPal services, or any of the commonly recommended services.

However, we're using a local bank, a local payment processor, and a local payment gateway, and it works just fine. We can do recurring charges on the major credit cards in whatever currency we want.

The one thing that doesn't work is AMEX, for some incredibly stupid reason we were only allowed to charge those cards in DKK which didn't make any sense to us, so we promptly cancelled that contract.

So my advice is to investigate your local options as well. Ask your bank what processors there are, and ask your processors what gateways there are.

</comment><comment><USER4> PayPal can be used internationally, but it has some caveats.

Simple recurring billing works quite well, except that you have no control over the subscription. Only thing you can do is to cancel it via PayPal interface. Multiple plans become quickly painful.

There's also Adaptive Payments API, which is available for non-US companies. PayPal doesn't really trust you: subscriptions are limited to one year in length, but you have the control of when and how much is billed (within limits of the "preapproval"). Adaptive Payments API is quite painful to use and is challenging from UX point of view. It's probably cheaper to incorporate in the US and use some other merchant gateway than to implement PayPal Adaptive Payments in your software.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is a wonderful post that details exactly this for you:

[http://blog.freshdesk.com/how-to-incorporate-a-us- corporatio...](http://blog.freshdesk.com/how-to-incorporate-a-us-corporation- from-outs)

</comment><comment><USER6> Paypal is very expensive in terms of fees! We opted for a local card processor. They all offered us less than 2% for every transaction and a fixed monthly fee for the service. C

Compare that with Paypal! Paypal is great for quick and easy implementation - but at the end you pay a lot more..

</comment><comment><USER7> PayPal and 2Checkout seem to be the two popular options.

Depending on your country you can probably find a local merchant account that will let you bill in USD, Chargify have a list of non-US merchant account providers which they've worked with in the past.</comment>


Practical File System Design: with the BeOS File System (by Dominic Giampaolo) - <AUTHOR> http://www.letterp.com/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> HT: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2705185></comment>


Design Guidelines: Why doesn't every site/company have this? - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/group/identity/ug_color.html

<comment><USER2> I'm the lead web developer for a small design company with some _big_ clients.

Not only are guidelines like this common, but this isn't half as detailed as some of the stuff we get handed.

Working in a company of designers is kind of funny sometimes. They'll think of technological problems in those fuzzy, vague terms of non-techies, but once the conversation becomes about "branding", out comes a razor-sharp eye for detail.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the Skype Brand Book, which a complex version of the linked style guide. All big companies have something similar to this, but Skype's is particularly well done.

<http://blog.dustincurtis.com/the-skype-brand-book>

<comment><USER4> Not only is it their style guide, it's got useful tips for non-designers who have to play the role sometimes too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The big ones all do. It's just not necessarily public information.

<comment><USER6> ...or followed as closely as it should be.

<comment><USER7> …or it could be in transition.

I'm still waiting to see the new branding book for the company I work at. I thought the old branding sucked, but I was very pleased with the quality of the branding book, and I'm "just" a dev (a back-end one at that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yale has this, and it's wonderful:

<http://www.yale.edu/printer/identity/index.html>

We also are working on a web style guide, designed by the same guy who wrote the Web Style Guide:

<http://www.yale.edu/web/styleguide/index.html>

Both come in handy for removing a lot of the little decisions when working on an affiliated design.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have worked for a university and several organizations that have had basic guidelines like this. It's much more important in large organizations when many small departments or individuals are creating branded things.

One sees this basic type of thing in press kits and even (er, kinda) "link to us" or "powered by" graphical widgets, but the focus on consistent color and typography are things I think could stand to get some more attention. This type of reference is especially helpful for non-designers who aren't immediately inclined to think about consistency and branding.

<comment><USER10> I have worked for a university as well, and multiple logos I designed for the small grant that I worked for were shot down for misusing the official logo somehow. The review process seemed very politicized, subjective, and opaque. It would have been nice to have detailed guidelines (See dcurtis' link) that spelled everything out. I came away with, "your logo is round and so is our official logo - this can't work, sorry."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most major companies have these sort of guidelines.

When I used to work at Ericsson, there was a huge manual with all the design guidelines that specified everything from the exact shade of blue for the Ericsson logo, the font, and to how far the 'three sausages' logo should be spaced from the word 'Ericsson' (for the record, turn the 'E' horizontally and place it between the 'n' and the logo, that's the correct spacing).

</comment><comment><USER12> I love reading design guides, but even more so the style guides that various newspapers use. For example, here's the Guardian's style guide for words that begin with the letter H:

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/h>

</comment><comment><USER13> Every company should have this. My day-to-day job is helping companies role out their brand guidelines and we have seen the benefits of having guidelines available. Putting aside the value of having a consistent brand, we have seen big increases in productivity and employee satisfaction just because a). they aren't starting from scratch each time and b). there are templates or assets available to help them out. Add the ability for employees to share their work and experience with each other and you can really get some work done.

Even if you are using vendors to help out with your design, it's a great way to lower their time spent (and your bill) by more rapidly getting them up to speed.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'll echo everyone else here that has said a lot of websites and companies do have this.

But the reason not every one of them does is that it is extremely time consuming, takes a lot of thought, and you have to spend time enforcing the guidelines once they're created. If you're not committed to following them, it's a waste of time and money to define them.

Most start ups are worried about things other than logos and colors matching across multiple mediums (print, web, broadcast, etc.) because most web sites and web start ups only have one medium: the browser.

</comment><comment><USER15> Because they got they branding done at 99designs

People who always ask why you should pay hundreds or thousands for a corporate identity should take a look of the amount of work behind those guidelines...

</comment><comment><USER16> My school, Texas A&M, also has this:

<http://brandguide.tamu.edu/>

They even have a page where you can download branded powerpoint slides, logos, etc.

<http://brandguide.tamu.edu/bigPicture/downloads.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> The Book of Redgate has some nice details about styling and logo usage.

<http://www.red-gate.com/careers/book_of_red_gate.htm> \-- Style guide is at the end.

</comment><comment><USER18> Surprised at the order of their web font fallbacks: _"Arial, Helvetica" or "Verdana, Arial, Helvetica"_

Verdana has much less in common with Helvetica than Arial does. It's also rare to see a designer spec Arial before Helv.

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's UF's:

<http://identity.ufl.edu/identityPlatform.pdf>

It even includes how logos on school trucks should appear, and letterhead margin requirements

</comment><comment><USER20> UI style guides are also helpful. Here's an example of Readernaut's: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/sketch22/4044799031/sizes/o/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_identity>

lots of schools have a VIS (visual identity system)

</comment><comment><USER22> BGSU does -> <http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/mc/gsm/>

I have to use it all the time.

</comment><comment><USER23> Could be that they have it internally. That was the case for my university.

But I agree, very useful for press/users/internal.

</comment><comment><USER24> seriously good advice. And if you are not a huge company, just making a single page with a list of colors and logos is a huge help and doesn't take more than an hour to put together.

I am barely more than a hobbyist and I have a little one-page guide for my own reference, mostly to sample colors easily.

</comment><comment><USER25> The colors listed aren't that great, but I get the point.

</comment><comment><USER26> Who cares about color on a website unless it CONVERTS better? Style guides only limit your ability to do that. Just my 2 cents.

<comment><USER27> Using a consistent color and style create a consistent look and feel for a brand. That consistently becomes something people recognize, and that's a good thing.

You can't measure everything with an A/B test.

<comment><USER28> Well, you can, but organizations tend to not have the unlimited amounts of money required to do that :)</comment></comment></comment>


Matthew Garrett is not forking Linux (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/matthew-garrett-is-not-forking-linux/ <comment><USER2> Can someone explain how him forking the code is _not_ forking beyond his insistence that it isn't. It seems like a pretty cut and dry fork. He intends it to some day be merged, but fork and merge is a common pattern. I think he's trying to avoid the stigma of a "fork" vs a fork but the difference is a gray area, and his dance over terminology is silly.</comment>


Facebook To Open Engineering Office In NYC - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/02/facebook-to-open-engineering-office-in-nyc/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a long-term vote of confidence in the NYC tech ecosystem, but I also think they're counting in the short term on the at least partial unraveling of the startup craze freeing up lots and lots of talent that is currently tied up in lackluster startups here.

<comment><USER3> Wha? That's ridiculous.

Mostly, Facebook just copies Google's playbook, usually because so many of their managers came from Google. And a part of Google's playbook is that not every good developer wants to live and work in Silicon Valley, so you simply can't hire enough good developers if you only have one location. By the time a company has hired as many people as Facebook, they've failed to hire hundred of others who, for one reason or another, don't want to leave New York. Maybe their wife is in medical school or their husband is a quant on Wall Street. Maybe they like the arts, or nightlife, or walkability. Whatever it is, Silicon Valley is not for everyone and at the rate that Facebook (and ebay, and Google, and Twitter, and Microsoft) need to hire programmers, they have to consider a few out-of-town campuses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I welcome the hiring competition. With a new applied science school(s) right around the corner, it is a win for the overall area regardless of whether there will be short-term pressure on hiring good talent in the city.

<comment><USER3> right around the corner? It's going to be 15 years before that thing is generating graduates. But yes it will be a good thing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> doesn't really make sense, the NYC area is starving for talent + I dunno where they got it, but most techies in this area aren't that entrepreneurial.

chances are this will end up driving salaries up by 10-15%, and will end up hurting most of the startups here by making it infinitely harder to hire/retain talent

A smarter move for them would be to open an office in Boston, since then you'd be able to tap into all those grads from MIT

<comment><USER6> > most techies in this area aren't that entrepreneurial.

I'm not sure where you get that idea? I've had the exact opposite experience in NYC. I think the tech scene is very entrepreneurial... IMO, it's why you see lots of people gravitating towards places like GA.

<comment><USER7> General Assembly, or Georgia?

<comment><USER6> Ha, General Assembly :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to apply... but I can't.

You need to be a Facebook user to apply. I find it discriminatory: you discriminate against privacy concious people. I'll _never_ get a Facebook account the way Facebook is right now. And I would like to fix this, but I can't; you won't let me.

<comment><USER9> If you aren't willing to use the product, you shouldn't be applying there in the first place. Seriously, throwing terms like "discrimination" around for this is just... sad.

<comment><USER10> Why? A company can expand its user base by reaching out to non-users who can help fix mistakes.</comment></comment></comment>


Chinese University Students Make A Java Version Of Core LLVM - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIxMDM

<comment><USER2> "China" did not make this... A description and a download were posted [1] on the Shanghai Jiao Tong University wiki by Hao Liu(刘浩) [2]

      [1] http://tcloud.sjtu.edu.cn/wiki/index.php/User:Liuhaots:JLLVM
      [2] http://tcloud.sjtu.edu.cn/wiki/index.php/User:Liuhaots

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks to be more like just an IR parser. I was imaging that it actually ran LLVM IR.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's great. People trying different things. Hope that makes languages targeting JVM easier.

</comment><comment><USER5> One can always execute (interpret) after parsing, by any strategy from lame to excellent. Meanwhile if I were involved with LLVM I'd be proud to see 'my' IR being exploited like this.

Didn't "America" invent LLVM?

</comment><comment><USER6> How hard is it for the reporter to find out which university did this? By not knowing the school or the people involved, this article seems less trust worthy.

<comment><USER7> Just more blogspam. Calling the person who wrote this a "reporter" is a definitely not right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> the whole of china, you say...

<comment><USER9> If every inhabitant wrote a single line of code, they could rewrite the linux kernel in mere seconds!</comment></comment>


Tesla employee explains why production hell is actually a good thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employee-explains-why-production-hell-is-good-2018-2 <comment><AUTHOR> This article talks about an engineer that builds & repairs robots. It's exactly the kind of job that the next generation will be doing. Don't bemoan the lack of jobs due to automation! Revel in the jobs that will allow us to work with our minds and hands to build something useful.</comment>


Ask HN: Twitter Account Ownership Issue? - <AUTHOR>

A coworker just set up a Twitter account and, apparently, inadvertently took over another person's active account. I haven't been able to recreate the problem using my own account. Twitter dev support has "encountered an unexpected error" both times I attempted to post this issue. Has anyone else out there seen this? <comment><USER2> >inadvertently took over another person's active account

Care to elaborate? Did the other person and your coworker have access to the email address used when registering the twitter account? Had the previous user validated his email address?

<comment><AUTHOR> My coworker insists the email address was never validated and no one else ever logged in from this email address. After registering, the account came up with nearly 100 following and followers, none known by my coworker. The standard new user demo never happened. My coworker then changed the user name, and user profile information as a precaution. The actual owner of the account would likely now be able to login or re-register with their user name, but their followers would be gone.

<comment><USER2> It is the other guy's fault for not verifying their email address. If I register with email@example.com email address, I would assume someone with that email handle can claim my twitter account.

<comment><AUTHOR> How strange.</comment></comment></comment></comment>