Facebook's Former Security Chief Now Works for the NSA - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/06/facebooks-former-security-chief-now-works-nsa/66432/ <comment><USER2> His security blog at Facebook: "Facebook Security: Fighting the Good Fight" [https://www.facebook.com/blog/blog.php?post=25844207130](https://www.facebook.com/blog/blog.php?post=25844207130)

edit: here's the obligatory "but this is blogspam" note...Kelly's employment with the NSA was first reported by the the Times here a few days ago ([http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon- valley-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and- spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html?_r=2&))...but yeah, here's a classic case of newspaperism vs. sexy-SEO-headlines...I didn't read "Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders" because it sounded no different than other recent stories...but a Facebook exec going to work for N.S.A. is definitely a headline-worthy fact.

However, Kelly isn't the stereotypical young Bay Area millionaire ex- Facebooker...he previously worked as an FBI analyst before joining Facebook ([https://twitter.com/wrox/status/1699420309](https://twitter.com/wrox/status/1699420309))...So going from FBI to Facebook to NSA isn't as strange as, well, going from college to Facebook to NSA, unless the catered lunch at NSA is classified and delicious. Not knowing why he left Facebook...but after doing so, it's not out of left field to go back into federal security, especially if he had a NDA with Facebook not to go to other competing services, such as Google.

<comment><USER3> I really appreciate your edits here and digging enough to put this story into proper context. It seemed like one of those stories meant to gin up outrage and get the conspiracy theories going and it pretty much ended up just like that.

There are people from all walks of life from all sorts of industries who end up at the NSA. It doesn't mean they're all setting up systems and bringing back intel for spying. This is just a coincidence.

So I'm glad you brought this up but still think everyone is still going to play right into this article's trap. After all, conspiracy theories are much more satisfying to our egos than mundane reality.

<comment><USER4> While I don't consider this a huge revelation or issue, dismissing the employment of the former cso of the greatest private intelligence source in history by the greatest intelligence consumer in history as coincidence without a second thought is hopelessly naive. If you dismiss anything vaguely conspiratorial as a "conspiracy theory" out of hand you'd dismiss pretty much every active intelligence program we have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a brilliant move on his part. He knows the FB architecture and security apparatus, and he is going to contributing immensely to NSA's endeavors on how to effectively data-mine social media aggregates. Not to mention the relationship he's already built with the FB alumni. He'll have enough clout to influence decisions over there.

<comment><USER6> Well, it will probably make him more money and power but working on something immoral and evil makes you immoral and evil. Fuck this guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Conversely, "current NSA employee no longer works for Facebook". But not as clickworthy.

<comment><USER2> Yes...just as "NATION MAKES PREPARATIONS TO TRANSITION FROM STATE OF PEACE" is less clickworthy than "WAR" :)

(yes, I know I just invoked Godwin's law by comparing the NSA controversy with WW2, but it was tongue-in-cheek)

His reasons for leaving Facebook and joining NSA may be completely orthogonal to each other...but in terms of likeliness, I think it's safe to argue that Kelly was wanted for his experience in security implementations in modern day networks, rather than him having a mid-life crisis and deciding to quit tech management work to try his hand at code cracking.

That said, this doesn't mean he joined out of nefarious motives. His work at the FBI could mean that he honestly believes he is doing God's work in helping government and private tech companies become partners for the good of all. His use at the NSA may be as someone who smooths out any hurdles that are encountered during perfectly legal processes between the two institutions...it doesn't have to be that he's Chief-Backdoor-Installer at the NSA.

On the other hand, just because you have great intentions doesn't mean the result is ideal...many government officials who become lobbyists may sincerely believe in their cause, but their access and power leads to unintended consequences.

In other words, the job transition could be entirely good natured, but it still could result in some people's worst fears being realized. So more transparency in this example would be nice...though I wonder how much Kelly can say without encroaching upon what the government thinks of as being top- secret-classified.

<comment><USER7> Touche. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When you start to look back, things like this start making a lot more sense in the present context: [http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest- news/index.ssf/2...](http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest- news/index.ssf/2011/02/obama_meets_with_facebook_founder_mark_zuckerberg_headed_to_oregon_next.html)

Maybe there isn't a plan to infiltrate existing big-data companies, but it seems like an awful coincidence that we see things like the above link and the headlines of today.

</comment><comment><USER9> Makes sense. Facebook's leadership publicized belief is that privacy is outdated. NSA's position is the same, only they have more tools to make it so.

</comment><comment><USER5> Given that the first $500 million of Facebook investment came from In-Q-Tel, a CIA company that invests in deep data mining systems, it isn't hard to wonder whether Facebook's security officer could have been an employee of the NSA all along.

<comment><USER10> In-Q-Tel never invested in Facebook.

<comment><USER5> Please ignore what I said, I was posting something I grabbed of somewhere without verifying first. In-Q-Tel never made any public investment in Facebook. The only connections that exist are the following:

Facebook received $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel, whose manager, James Breyer, now sits on the In-Q-Tel board. He was formerly the chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, whose board included Gilman Louie, then the CEO of In-Q-Tel.

One of the main managers of the facebook investors "Greylock partners", Howard Cox, sits also in the management board of In-Q-Tel. The offices of Greylock and In-Q-Tel are direclty next to each other at Sandhill Road in Menlo Park.

<comment><USER10> For context you should mention that total historical portfolio of Accel and Greylock includes hundreds of companies. So the conspiracy theory would have to map to Diapers.com or Rovio.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Depression, Fear and Anxiety: How to Be Your Own Therapist' - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc44T_rdeSI <comment><AUTHOR> Sharing this for its practicality for programmers like myself who have inner struggles.

Robina Courtin is a Buddhist nun.</comment>


Parsing Wikipedia Articles with Node.js and jQuery - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bcoe/wikifetch

<comment><USER2> There are lots of attempts to write new Wikipedia parsers that just do "the useful stuff", like getting the text. They all fail, for the simple reason that some of the text comes from MediaWiki templates.

E.g.

      about {{convert|55|km|0|abbr=on}} east of

will turn into

      about 55 km (34 mi) east of

and

      {{As of|2010|7|5}}

will turn into

      As of 5 July 2010

and so on (there are thousands of relevant templates). It's simply not possible to get the full plain text without processing the templates, and the only system that can correctly and completely parse the templates is MediaWiki itself.

Yes it's a huge system entirely written in PHP, but you can make a simple command line parser with it pretty easily (though it took me quite a while to figure out how). The key points are to put something like

      $IP = strval(getenv('MW_INSTALL_PATH')) !== ''
            ? getenv('MW_INSTALL_PATH')
            : '/usr/share/mediawiki';
      require_once("$IP/maintenance/commandLine.inc");

at the start of it, and then use the Parser class. You get HTML out, but it's simple and well-formed (to get text, start with the top level p tags).

To get it to process templates, get a Wikipedia dump, extract the templates, and use the mwdumper tool to import them into your local MediaWiki database.

I don't know if this is the best or "right" way to do it, but it's the only way I've found that actually works.

<comment> alok-g >> To get it to process templates, get a Wikipedia dump, extract the templates, and use the mwdumper tool to import them into your local MediaWiki database.

Could you please explain this more? Specifically, what is meant by "extract" the templates? From what I gather from your message, you are proposing using MediaWiki itself to process the templates and output more of a plain text (within the HTML output).

<comment><USER2> The dumps of Wikipedia come as big bzip2ed XML files containing all articles, templates, etc., each in a "page" tag. The templates have titles starting with "Template:", so they are easy to detect:

      <page>
        <title>Template:Convert</title>
        ...
      </page>

It's these page tags that need to be copied to a new XML file, along with the header and footer from the original.

 _From what I gather from your message, you are proposing using MediaWiki itself to process the templates and output more of a plain text (within the HTML output)._

Correct. The MediaWiki parser outputs HTML containing all the text to be displayed, including that generated by templates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting, but why not use their API?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php>

It's part of mediawiki and available for each and every wikipedia subsite – as far as I can tell. We are using this as well to autocomplete data. And it works really well.

I prefer this method over 'scraping' the content.

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia prefers and advises this method too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very interesting, although anyone aiming to crawl Wikipedia should make sure they read this section on the Database download page. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Why...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Why_not_just_retrieve_data_from_wikipedia.org_at_runtime.3F)

Everything should be fine as long as you respect their 1 request per second rule and their robots.txt

<comment><USER6> A quick skim of the source shows that rate-limiting is not implemented, and the code is non-compliant with Wikipedia's crawling rules.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up. I'll add rate-limiting directly into the API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone who might find it useful, I wrote this really simple spidering tool in Go, which is useful when you just want a small subgraph of Wikipedia.

<https://github.com/taliesinb/wikispider>

</comment><comment><USER8> That looks really good and neat! I am currently working on a project that uses information from Wikipedia articles and having a parser such as yours would make things a lot easier. I am currently on vacation for the next 2 weeks but I'd like to fork your project when I get back. Let me know if there is anything you need help with (bug fix or new features).

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love the help. I'll be hammering on the library next weekend, an I'm sure I'll have a laundry list of features I want to add.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's also the dbpedia interfaces, including SPARQL access. NLP meet SemWeb, SemWeb meet NLP or have you met already?</comment>


Only some people get blackout drunk - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180613-why-do-only-some-people-get-blackout-drunk?ocid <comment><USER2> Blackout drunk always sounded like a bullshit excuses to me, but I suppose for some people it happens. My memory can get a bit hazy but never have I ever gotten to the point where I can't remember anything at all from certain points in time. I wonder if having different drinking ability genetics effects the rate of being able to get blackout drunk.

<comment><USER3> You just didn't drink enough then.

<comment><USER4> Or strong enough drinks. The few times it has happened to me i've drank some stupidly strong beverages (rum or absinthe).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been blackout drunk once in my life, I was 27, I've not been drunk for 11 years now (38 a couple of weeks ago),I average maybe 10 pints a year.

It scared the shit out of me so I stopped drinking entirely for about 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article is tautological. It basically says that only some people get blackouts because they tolerate alcohol differently. It's like saying only some people blackout because only some drink.

I thought some people can't experience it. It seems they just didn't get drunk enough.

<comment><USER7> No it isn't. The article mentions alot of science to back this up. It starts with brain scans from mice studies, which suggest that blackouts are caused by cells in the hippocampus failing to make new memories correctly. It then mentions case studies of people who have brain damage in this area that also are unable to make new memories.

From there, it talks about twin studies which suggest there is a link between some genes and blackouts. What it's saying is that alcohol is processed slightly differently in some individuals so that it causes cells in the hippocampus to misfire and keep them from making new memories. This misfiring only seems to happen above certain blood alcohol levels. This is similar to how some individuals seem to be better (or worse) at processing alcohol, even controlling for other factors, which affects whether they pass out, or get poisoning, etc.

The bottom line is that alcohol causes different effects in the brain and turns off different parts of the higher functions at different blood alcohol levels. This can vary between individuals. In some people, they become more aggressive, or friendly, or lose their balance more easily than others. For certain individuals, they lose the ability to make new memories at high levels.</comment></comment>


Monads aren't as hard as you think - <AUTHOR> https://bytes.yingw787.com/posts/2019/12/06/monads/ <comment><USER2> I find these introductory articles ultimately misleading. Monad is never hard, just like group is never hard, vector space is never hard, lattice is never hard, manifold is never hard, and on and on. What's hard is to understand not just one single concept but layers of webs of abstract concepts, along with all the theorems and ingenious ways of applying them. What turns people away is not the difficulty of monad or functional programming in general, but lack of incentives. Why don't we just be upfront and tell people: XXX is hard, but you know what? If you master it, here is what you will get out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> @hintymad thanks for sharing! For me, monads seemed hugely difficult to learn, and so I never got started with them at all. Had I just known that they were not as hard as I thought they were (which I think is different from not hard) I might have started earlier. I'm hoping that by sharing some of my understandings I can help people avoid some of my own hesitation.

What I really like about the HN community is the notion of shipping even if you're embarrassed by it, because the future good or bad is built by the people who show up.

<comment><USER3> It only seems not-hard for people that already understand them. Here's where the post shows _just how simple_ monads can be.

> A monad is a data type (e.g. int) that encapsulates some control flow (e.g. > try/catch).

But... I'm already lost. How would an integer "encapsulate" control flow? Like different integer values would represent different errors that could occur? Or you could use integers as a representation for a language that has try/catch as a feature? Even in this simplest case, if you don't already grok monads, it's somehow not illuminating for me. YMMV

<comment><USER4> that's just poor wording -- the first example wasn't supposed to be linked to the second example;

A better sentence is probably

A monad is a datatype (e.g. Either<T,U>) that encapsulates some control flow (e.g. if T != null return T else U)

if I understand it correctly

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one of my favorite songs about Monads: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoJGIqyriCc&list=PLw0jj21rhf...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoJGIqyriCc&list=PLw0jj21rhfkM- etwRXGDIko0Ou-QLdeMq&index=6&t=0s)

<comment><AUTHOR> @rdegges thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > A monad is a data type (e.g. int) that encapsulates some control flow (e.g. > try/catch).

Ignoring the fact that `int` itself doesn't have much to do with monads (it's presumably just giving an example of a type), I've always disliked the notion of talking about monads being types or vice versa.

The way I think of it is that the monad itself consists of the monadic operations for some set of values. The "IO monad" consists of the `bind` and `unit` functions to do with values of types `IO<T>` for any `T` (eg, `IO<Int>`, `IO<String>`, `IO<IO<Int>>`). Similarly, the "Maybe monad" consists of the `bind` and `unit` functions to do with values of types `Maybe<T>` for any `T`.

Both of these monads can be said to implement a common interface, which might be expressed using the following Java-like code (using Java just to emphasise that there isn't really[0] anything magical here):

      interface Monad<M> {
        <T> M<T> unit(T v);
        <T, U> M<U> bind(M<T> a, Function<T, M<U>> f);
      }

If we were to define an "IO monad", we would expect it to implement `Monad<IO>`, therefore an "IO monad" is really just a value of type `Monad<IO>`:

      Monad<IO> ioMonad = new Monad<IO>() {
        <T> IO<T> unit(T v) { .. }
        <T, U> IO<U> bind(IO<T> a, Function<T, IO<U>> f) { .. }
      };

This is actually pretty much exactly how it works in Idris for example, where `Monad IO` is itself a type, and you can actually ask for the `Monad IO` implementation by writing, funnily enough, `the (Monad IO) %implementation`:

      Idris> 4 + 5 -- to demonstrate the REPL
      9 : Integer
      Idris> Monad IO
      Monad (IO' (MkFFI C_Types String String)) : Type
      Idris> the (Monad IO) %implementation
      constructor of Prelude.Monad.Monad (\meth, meth, meth, meth => io_bind meth meth) (\meth, meth => io_bind meth id) : Monad IO

[0] The only reason it doesn't actually work is because Java doesn't support higher-kinded polymorphism, so you can't pass type-level functions such as `IO` or `List` as type parameters, therefore you can't actually write `M<T>` as appears in the interface body.

</comment><comment><USER7> > The only way to really understand a complex concept is to see it from as > many different angles as possible.

\- Bartosz Milewski

</comment><comment><USER8> So a simple div function (x/y) turned into several classes and boilerplate. For what again? So that the program would not crash if it got into a bad state? JavaScript please give me back early errors! I hate that Promises just swallow errors. If there is an unexpected state, something that should _never_ happen,then GTFO immediately, print the stack, give me a friendly error with a line nr to make it simple to debug, create a memory dump. Don't continue the execution with a poisoned state! If you want a _safe_ program, it should exit at even the slightest smell of error. Not make my heart beat 300 bpm or put the airplane into a nose dive, or show the wrong altitude so that the plane flies into a mountain. So you are feeling anxious that your program can throw an error at any time? Don't be, that's much better then the alternative described with the airplane above. You solve the edge cases, and gracefully _handle_ errors that can be worked around, but for unexpected errors, like the altitude showing -2 million. (int overflow or something) you want it to crash (the program, not the airplane).

<comment><USER9> Promises don't swallow errors, they pass it up to whatever next promise gets chained or any .catch() handlers registered. Browsers have an event to listen to for unhandled promise rejections at the global level for all those places you fired off a promise but forgot to do anything with it. (All the major browsers now show error messages and stack traces in the dev console as a default action for all unhandled promise rejections. They don't stop page execution as browsers decided against that back in the early IE/Netscape era to be more graceful in a complex event-based world. Node also spits out unhandled promise rejections to the console and hard quits a process now.)

But the juicy benefit to Promises is the (monad-based) transformation to async/await notation. Async/await notation gives you back the try { } catch { } synchronous-looking error catching that you are wishing for, all it takes is a couple new magic keywords and your code looks very similar to what it would in a magic synchronous world without promises. (Most current browsers and current versions of Node even directly support async/await today [0] directly out of the box, no need for a compiler/transpiler tool to do the transformation for you.)

[0] [https://caniuse.com/#feat=async- functions](https://caniuse.com/#feat=async-functions)

<comment><USER8> In JavaScript there are two types of errors: First class errors that you can return, pass around and bubble up. And then there are exceptions that means the program did something unexpecting. Promises make no exception and does not treat them as first class citizens.

<comment><USER9> Promises make _future_ exceptions. If you aren't paying attention "in the future" to catch those exceptions, they bubble to an error handler (window.onUnhandledRejection [0]), so it acts as _both_ types of JS errors, depending on how you want to pay attention to it.

async/await syntax lets you catch promise rejection exactly like you would any other type of JS exception with a try {} catch {}.

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Window/unha...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Window/unhandledrejection_event)

<comment><USER9> To bring things back on topic: async/await syntax in JS inherits its magic almost directly from Haskell's do-notation and is exactly an example of why exploring Monads has been practically useful for languages far outside of the "academic ivory tower walls" of Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only monad anyone ever talks about in my hearing is the IO monad. I sometimes imagine all monads reduce to the IO monad and some specified side effect by intent.

Except of course the whole point of monadic thinking appears to be "no side effects" so .. I'm stuck

<comment><USER11> If you know any linear algebra here's an example that has nothing to do with side effects:

Let X be any set. Let mX be the set of formal linear combinations of elements of X (that is, expressions like 3x₁+2x₂ where x₁ and x₂ are elements of X). Then m is a monad.

fmap is variable substitution. Ex. fmap [x₁->y₁, x₂->y₂] (3x₁ + 2x₂) = (3y₁ + 2y₂).

join is simplification of nested expressions. Ex. join (3(2x₁) + 2(x₁ + 2x₂)) = (8x₁ + 4x₂).

>>= is substitution and simplification. Ex. (3x₁ + 2x₂) >>= [x₁->3y₂, x₁->-y₂] = (3(3y₂) + 2(-y₂)) = 7y₂.

A Kleisli arrow X->mY is a system of linear equations, ie. a matrix

        x₁ = 3y₁ + 6y₂
        x₂ =  y₁ - 2y₂

>=> is composition of linear systems, ie. matrix multiplication.

Whereas in IO you think of f >=> g as meaning "first f, then g", here f >=> g is the matrix product fg, ie. "first g, then f".

<comment><USER12> I was like if m in mX is a monad, how is m not a function? Or if it is a function, how is it different from functions in general?

Googling, I found the following helpful comment:

"...while addition and multiplication are both monoids over the positive natural numbers, a monad is a monoid object in a category of endofunctors: return is the unit, and join is the binary operation. It couldn't be more simple. If that confuses you, it might be helpful to see a Monad as a lax functor from a terminal bicategory"

<comment><USER12> Wait, I think I may have found a good explanation:

"A few months ago Brent Yorgey complained about a certain class of tutorials which present monads by explaining how monads are like burritos.

At first I thought the choice of burritos was only a facetious reference to the peculiar and sometimes strained analogies these tutorials make. But then I realized that monads _are_ like burritos."

[https://blog.plover.com/prog/burritos.html](https://blog.plover.com/prog/burritos.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Magic of optimistic vocabulary - <AUTHOR> http://svenduplic.com/post/11691829756/magic-of-positive-vocabulary

<comment><USER2> It's a bad example in the article, I think. Substituting challenge for problem may have shifted the sentiment of a sentence from negativity to possibility in the past, but that particular example has been used so much that when I hear people talking of their challenges I immediately have a feeling that not only is there a problem - but that the speaker is evading that fact.

<comment><AUTHOR> ofcourse, good point. but there is a difference in the way a sincere man says 'challenge' and the way that a phony says it.</comment></comment>


Which Web Design Company - independently rated and reviewed website design companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.whichwebdesigncompany.com

<comment><USER2> My favorite--Quantum Cloud--isn't covered by this site.

QC is based in Bangladesh, which isn't in the list of possible countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, India and Ireland).</comment>


Pure CSS Infinite Loop - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/livingstone/pen/gIiok

<comment><USER2> Pleasantly surprised (the title made me think this was going to crash my browser...)</comment>


Ted Nelson speaking at the TED2 Conference, 1990 [YouTube] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUTmmwbkN6Y <comment><USER2> At 5 minutes, already relevant criticism of Siri/Alexa devices 30 years before they existed.

That said, while I love Ted's enthusiasm and creative thinking, it's too bad that he didn't seem to roll with the times and learn from what people / the market had to teach. I spoke at a conference with him around 2011, and it seemed he was still fighting UI design battles that were settled in the 80s.

Also, had no idea the TED conference had been around so long. Ted's skewering of it as "smug" indicates it hasn't changed much over the years! :)</comment>


Kuala Lumpur airport seeks owner of 'abandoned' jets - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35043937 <comment><USER2> The scrap value of the jets is quite possibly less than the parking charges they've accumulated, unless there's a fair bit of life left on the engines _and_ they can track down the technical records for them. Which if they can't track down the owner...

(In the last couple of years I actually did have to deal with a different airport client considering repossessing some 747-200Fs)

<comment><USER3> Would a thorough safety check on the parts make up for the lack of history? Or does it become a regulatory obstacle?

<comment><USER4> It's regulatory. You could overhaul the parts but it's cost-prohibitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _He added that in the past decade a few other planes, mostly smaller > aircraft, have been abandoned, with one that was left in the 1990s > eventually being bought and turned into a restaurant in a Kuala Lumpur > suburb._

That sounds fun. I'd definitely visit.

<comment><USER6> My favorite was Bomber Gas in Oregon where a scrap B-17 was used as the canopy over the gas pumps. I'd go out of my way to refill at Bomber Gas :-) Last I heard the value of it had gone up so much it was taken down and is being restored.

Found it: [http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2968](http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2968)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Plane details:

[http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b747-22669.htm](http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b747-22669.htm)

[http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b747-22382.htm](http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b747-22382.htm)

[http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b747-22363.htm](http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b747-22363.htm)

All were owned at one time by Air Atlanta Icelandic. Air Atlanta Icelandic said they were returned to Boeing: [http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2015/12/08/air- atlanta...](http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2015/12/08/air-atlanta- returned-aircraft/)

<comment><USER5> > _Hemannsson did not say who the owner of the aircraft was in 2010._

That seems strange. Can't they ask for proof?

If I park my car on someone's lawn, I can't just say "Nope, not my car anymore, I returned it to the rightful owner right before it ended up on top of your mailbox, and no, I won't tell you who that is."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How long have they been there? Couldn't find this basic fact in any news source I read.

<comment><USER9> The initial CNN article I saw, said: "Malaysia Airports general manager Zainol Mohd Isa told CNN the aircraft have been parked at KLIA for more than a year, having been abandoned at different times."

Which isn't clear. have all three been there more than a year? How long has the longest one been there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Guess there's no DMV for airplanes?

<comment><USER2> There are aircraft registries and commercial databases, but the picture is complicated somewhat by these aircraft having been deregistered for some time and the last known operator having returned them off lease even before that.

<comment><USER11> Plus most of the time aircraft are worth actual money so people have an incentive not to let them rot. Of course, that's not _always_ true.</comment></comment></comment>


PgrMgr to start offering $150/month quarter rack Colo - <AUTHOR> http://prgmr.com/colocation.html

<comment><USER2> At one point I debated fabricating my own and had some constructed by a metalfab, but, for splitting racks, if you're using a standard cabinet:

<http://www.middleatlantic.com/rackac/security/security.htm>

Several manufacturers sell half-cab cabinets where you have 2 individual locks. Of course, you might need to negotiate with he.net to get them to put that in prior to your start.

Raritan makes a power strip that is a little costly, but, allows you to control power by outlet, set triggers, see what the power use is by outlet, interfaces nicely with several stonith profiles. Individual web access by port (if I recall, we don't use that feature)

The highest density/power efficient box we've been using is a Supermicro 512-L, X7DVL-3, dual quadcore xeon, 24gb RAM. At load, .9 amps.

<comment><USER3> yup, if I wanted to spend more money, I could do /much/ better than the proposed setup. But, then I'd have to charge more, and the set of people willing to pay more does not overlap much with the set of people willing to do business with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess the title can't be fixed. I read it and thought "Cool a new company called peggermegger is offering colo for $150/mo", then I saw the actual link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I was incautious and didn't double-check.

In my (slight) defense, I've been up a very long time, but I messed that one up, and I apologize.

PeggerMegger sounds like a neat company name, though.

<comment><USER3> worst name ever, I am told. We should switch to serv-o-mat, says my friend with taste.

I should keep a closer eye on the twitter; I only noticed this got posted here today, and I bet by now everyone is gone. Very sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Too many flaws for this idea to take off. I've been in the colo business for years and can certainly tell this is going no where.

Here's the killer flaw in the idea:

"he.net support and remote hands(I need to check on the details here, but I /believe/ it's _free and unlimited_.)"

There's no free lunch folks.

Regards

Joe

<comment><USER3> eh, most data centers in the SF bay area these days really do give you "free" remote hands. You really can ask them to go jack with your stuff, and they really don't charge you.

One quickly learns, though, that you aren't going to get anyone of much skill at that price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got quoted 200$/mo with 7U and 2Amps (100Mb bandwidth) directly from HE.net which I found strange since the next power jump goes up to 600$/mo. This seems like a pretty good deal.

<comment><USER3> As far as I know, the current he.net prices are $400/month for a full rack with 15a power... and another $100/month for 100Mbps bandwidth.

If you can buy in those quantities, we resellers can't beat the price. But from what I've seen, resellers quite often can beat he.net's partial rack prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two circuits per rack, with half of circuit per customer would be a lot better. The price would have to go up, but 3a in 10u isn't enough better than individual machine colo to be worth the price.

I have friends that are putting something similar together and might be very interested in this as a starting point.

<comment><USER3> I dono. I thought about that; 'round here, the cost per watt is about the same either way, and I thought It'd be nice to give people a little extra room, I mean, if it doesn't cost anything extra.

Excluding bandwidth, at he.net I get a full rack with 15a for $400/month. At SVTIX, I can get a full rack with 2x 20a circuits for around a grand a month. So, for the same margin I'd need to charge, what, $375 or so per 1/4 rack?

Considering that is within spitting distance of a full rack with more power at he.net where you won't have to share, I'd argue that the $150/month deal is probably going to appeal to more people than the $375 deal, even though the latter has a slightly better cost per watt, as the $400 full rack from he.net will have a better cost per watt.

(On the other hand, I've got a customer who had 1/2 rack and a full 20a at svtix vacating shortly, so if you do want some higher density power, lemme know and I'll see what I can do.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised there's a demand for this degree of power subdivision.

Other than regulatory issues[1], it wouldn't be terribly expensive or difficult to modify an existing low-end PDU with multiple small-amperage breakers. It may even be possible to get reasonably priced[2] self-resetting ones.

The main trick would be getting oddball values like 3.75A, though four 3A ones would allow the sub-tenants to run at full breakered capacity, while maintaining 80% overall.

Perhaps there's a hardware startup in this. How much would you pay for a power strip with individually breakered outlets?

[1] Could be as practical as Perfectly Spherical Cows, I realize.

[2] Under $20 even in small quantities

<comment><USER3> oh man, I spent a fair amount of time talking and researching this before hand... and yeah, it's probably possible, but you need a guy with significantly more knowledge and experience with power than I have to do it.

Oh, and, my understanding is that it probably wouldn't be as good as my hacked up perl script, either. Apparently, there is a lot of wiggle room in the power level at which breakers trip.

As for your "How much would you pay" question, probably not a lot. for the first cabinet I'm spending under $100 each for used metering PDUs (and giving every user their own.) After the first rack, I don't know what I'm going to do (that /is/ a reasonable used price, if you look around, but I would need to pay about twice that for a guaranteed supply)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> HP c7000's are 10U - but they suck a hell of a lot of power. It would be great to pay just 150 per month to physically host 16 physical servers with (N) VMs running on it - but getting the power to it kills this deal.

EDIT: actually - you should be able to negotiate free hosting of an HP chassis assuming you get serious BW and power at full price.

<comment><USER3> not at he.net. you are limited to 1 15a 120v circut per rack there... and that's not going to be nearly enough to run your blade server.

(One sales guy said I could buy two racks, use one for storage, and put both circuits in one rack... but you'd need, what, six of those puppies, at least for the blade monster, if it can even run at all on 120v power. I bet that the he.net cooling systems would have a difficult time dealing with such a hot- spot.)

I'd recommend talking to SVTIX if you are looking for local high-power co- location, that or some place in Santa Clara.

I live in the low-end here; if you need a lot of power, you are probably better of going direct with someone who owns a data center, and/or shipping it to Texas.</comment></comment>


TIME's 50 Best Websites of 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2012721,00.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I love that Etsy and Vimeo made it on this list</comment>


Python's Caduceus Syndrome - <AUTHOR> https://vicki.substack.com/p/pythons-caduceus-syndrome <comment><USER2> Python has always been sort of an odd language to me. Its syntax has always had a certain strong appeal to a large number of people, but there have always been these underlying performance issues that have been swept under the rug. I was surprised when it started being adopted so much in AI research because of the performance issues (I understand it's really C and other things doing the performing, but at some point you have to do something other than call C, otherwise you might as well just use C).

I do understand the appeal; I think its ergonomics are exemplary and worth being studied by language designers as a success case (if not a perfect or unique one).

Going forward, though, I'd like to see more adoption of languages like Nim, Kotlin, or Julia, that have similar levels of expressiveness but are more performant. The issues discussed in the article aren't really growing pains; they've been there from the beginning.

<comment><USER3> I think there's a lot of worth using a high level language and integrating with C. It depends on the interface of course, XS (Perl) isn't too user friendly, but actually just using the Python C APIs is straightforward, rather than say Cython for example. I think you get the best of both worlds, but really it depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you want more type safety, then OK maybe not but if you want to interface with some low level components, or want to write a faster algorithm. Basically you can be more focused and granular with the unsafe and more error prone C side and tame it with a higher level language. Anyway, this is just my opinion but I've enjoyed this area very much and it has worked well for me.

<comment><USER4> > I think there's a lot of worth using a high level language and integrating > with C.

I agree.

Python is an awesome high level interface to low level libraries and algorithms. As which it became even more appealing since you can write your low level code in Rust and call it from Python via PyO3 [0].

[0]: [https://github.com/PyO3/pyo3](https://github.com/PyO3/pyo3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > But the other problem, though, is that because Python is (was?) so simple > and so ergonomic to use, new developers have been flocking to it, and > adopting it for use in building large production systems that might have > been better off written in different languages that are much less suited to > exploring but more suited to long-term, stable systems.

That statement... first, there isn't any evidence this is true. For the Instagram example, if you're that big, you're going to have scaling issues, but it's an incredible position to be in. I've seen Java GC issues at large scale. That's the price you pay for GC.

That is to say this is a feature, not a bug. CPU is cheap. Productivity is hard. C code can be slow if written badly. Obviously Python isn't without it's trade-offs, but to imply it isn't suited for long-term, stable projects is incorrect.

It takes time for developers to learn a new language. Who's to say they wouldn't have made similar mistakes in other languages?

Again, course there's a trade-off, and Python isn't without it's flaws. But to pretend another language would have solved everything - development doesn't work that way. And scaling issues are a sign of success. You might not have made it that far with another language.

So pick wisely, and build stuff, and remember the choice isn't final.

<comment><USER6> The part you quoted is not about scalability.

<comment><USER7> Would you mind being so kind as to explain what it is about then? Saying something is wrong without saying why or how is just noise.

<comment><USER6> She's talking about Python being a dynamically-typed & interpreted language, making it "simple and so ergonomic to use [for] new developers" and "[suitable] to exploring", but "[less suitable] to long-term, stable systems".

It's not specific to Python. Big projects written in dynamically-typed languages are hard to reason about and maintain. And the lack of compiler makes it harder to catch typos, incorrect types, non-handled null/None values, etc… before runtime.

<comment><USER5> > And the lack of compiler makes it harder to catch typos, incorrect types, > non-handled null/None values, etc… before runtime.

linters exist for a reason. it isn't so clear-cut any more, either, with type hints in python that can now be enforced, although honestly i haven't experimented with that much, since i don't think it's necessary.

> Big projects written in dynamically-typed languages are hard to reason about > and maintain.

let's not pretend statically-typed languages are always easier to reason about. throw enough interfaces into a Java project or templates into a C++ project and they're also hard to reason with.

you may have had bad experiences with dynamically-typed stuff, or simply prefer static typing, but these seem more opinions than facts.

and again, i'm happy to argue that it's hard to predict the future. many projects benefit more from the increased velocity dynamically-typed languages offer at the start (the exploration if you will), than trying to build a system for millions of users from the start. that probably makes sense for FAANG projects, but for most it's overkill. so the suitability towards "long- term, stable systems" is half true. hindsight can be powerful, but can also be misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Python became the second-most beloved programming language (behind Rust, > which is the language people most love telling you they're learning > aspirationally.)

As an aspirational Rust-learner (well, I've read the first chapter of the book) this is spot on. :P</comment>


Fastest star ever seen is moving at 8% the speed of light - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fastest-star.html <comment><USER2> It's funny how every time I read an astronomy headline mention the word "visible", my brain immediately interprets it as a conventional photograph and is slightly disappointed when there isn't one.

<comment><USER3> Hah, thank you for summarizing this so well. I never really connected the dots on "visible" = "can be observed".

<comment><USER4> Virtually no distant astronomical image is a normal photo that corresponds to what the human eye would see.

They're multi-layer stacks of CCD observations filtered by frequency range, with false colors then assigned, not three RGB layers. IIRC, typically there's 7 - 11 ranges, depending on the instrument.

So one of the layers included in the depiction might be infrared, then false- colored into something the eye can handle.

Source: I worked in remote sensing.

<comment><USER5> Which file formats did you use?

One of my frustrations with ML is that almost no one seems to be training on HDR data. It's all 8-bit RGB. There is a big opportunity here to train GANs on raw sensor data.

But that raises the question of which file formats to focus on. Since you have lots of image processing experience, I'm very interested in what the data formats were like at your job. Was it proprietary formats? If so, were there any advantages over e.g. the RAW file format? Is RAW sufficient for standardizing "everything necessary to turn photon readings into a photograph that appeals to the human eye"? E.g. if I gather thousands of RAW photos, do I need any other information not present in the RAW file?

Mainly I am interested in any insights you gained on the job: you might know of some unique advantage that certain data formats have over others. I'm extremely interested in training ML models to synthesize _what comes into a camera_ (photon readings), as opposed to _what the world looks like to the human eye_ (RGB values).

(I apologize for not phrasing my questions more carefully. It's late. The essence is that right now, most ML training operate in terms of RGB, yet there seems to be many advantages to operating in "photon space". The trouble is, it's effortless to gather millions of RGB photos -- but it seems very difficult to gather a million RAW photos. I'm hoping someone knows of a massive trove of "some kind of raw data that can be turned into RGB values" – maybe that's RAW, maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, once I have it, I can feed it through an ML model.)

<comment><USER6> RAW from most cameras isn't "real RAW". Firstly it generally uses lossy compression secondly a lot of cameras apply some minor corrections to "RAW" data as well (e.g. noise reduction). Some would argue that most cameras can't give you "real" RAW since most sensors perform noise reduction one way or the other internally (e.g. most Sony sensors use correlated double sampling). Most sensors use analog PGAs to amplify the pixel signals before A/D conversion (that's the ISO setting)[2], which changes the characteristics of the sensor quite drastically (not just dynamic range and noise, a lot of older sensors had severe issues with tinting and banding at high gains). RAW formats are generally linear (those used for moving pictures are sometimes log-encoded, which makes more sense [1], but isn't "raw").

A library like libraw reads most RAW files and can give you an appropiately (for the sensor used) debayered RGB image. These images aren't in a defined color space; they're specific to every camera/sensor.

In the moving pictures space OpenEXR is a common format for "arbitrary" images, since it allows any number of channels each with different formats (e.g. you can have a file with 27 channels per pixel, some of which are float and some of which are integer).

[1] E.g. 12 bit log encoding gives even resolution across more of the dynamic range; a linear encoding gives half of each range to the brighter stop.

[2] Sensors that don't have PGAs simply have a fixed sensitivity. If the camera offers an ISO setting, it is emulated in the digital domain by pulling the image.

<comment><USER7> I'm assuming PGA is Programmable Gain Amplifier? It wasn't immediately obvious from a web search.

<comment><USER6> Yes. The basic structure of a CMOS sensor looks a lot like a DRAM array, but instead of a capacitor you have a photo diode and the "bit lines" / column lines go into a programmable gain amplifier and then into a 12 or 14 bit ADC with some DSP [1] and a parallel-to-serial interface. The exposure is determined by the readout (row for row), that's what gives you rolling shutter.

Some sensors have global shutter instead, which makes it even more like DRAM: Conceptually each pixel has a capacitor and a photodiode, and a transistor connecting the two, all of these transistors are connected in parallel and form the "global shutter signal".

Some sensors have faster ADCs and use one ADC for a bunch of columns, which has been claimed as the source of column-banding in some sensors (unclear if correct).

[1] Sensors that are intended for both photo and video typically support things like _pixel binning_ , where the sensor itself averages e.g. 2x2 blocks of pixels internally. A lower quality alternative is _line skipping_ , where the sensor is told to only read out every nth line, thus reducing resolution considerably. The higher quality alternative is " _full-sensor readout_ ", i.e. the camera reads all pixels and downsamples the image to the video resolution. I believe some (announced?) sensors can do this in the sensor itself now.

Note: A lot of this is "somewhat informed speculation" on my part, because image sensor manufacturers tend to be very secretive of their sensor's details.

<comment><USER8> Annnnd comments like this are why I'm on HN daily. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An observer near Sagittarius A* at the star S62 has just published a report about us moving at 8% of the speed of light.

<comment><USER10> Us and every other star they observe. Curious that.

<comment><USER9> Alpha Centauri Herald

Carbon based life at the third planet of our nearest G2V star still think they are the reference of the universe. They continue to measure starts without taking into account they are not alone.

And worst, they still jam the radio spectrum with nonsense TV commercials. We Alpha-Centaurians have have the worst neighbors in the known universe.

<comment><USER11> > _We Alpha-Centaurians have have the worst neighbors in the known universe._

Just wait until they see what we're like when we get there.

<comment><USER12> They won't let that happen, but they're probably not worried that we'll even make an attempt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The actual preprint on arxiv.org is here:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.02341](https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.02341)

</comment><comment> P-NP But what is the fastest known UNBOUND star that does NOT orbit a black hole? As of November 2019, it was S5-HVS1. Its speed is over 1,700 km/s or 1,056 mi/s. That's about 0.57% of light speed. S5-HVS1 will be flicked out of the Milky Way. The previous record-holder was US708, a white dwarf travelling at 1,200 km/s or 746 mi/s.

</comment><comment><USER14> I find it really fascinating to think that when 60 minutes pass on star S62, on Earth 100 minutes would have passed in the same duration. This is Sci-Fi territory in my mind. I am having all sorts of difficulty imagining some implications of this.

Does this roughly mean, things are "sped up" in S62 from our point of view, if we could observe some activity on that star?

<comment><USER15> Last week I watched the movie Interstellar and I still don't get why the main character could be younger than his daughter when he returns from space.

And I also don't get your comment. Probably because I don't get relativity.

If we send a clock into space it will just tick away seconds (a unit designed by people). When it will return back to earth years later in my mind it just ticked away the same amount of time as it would have on earth.

What am I missing about relativity?

<comment><USER16> Think about the starting positions on a track.

The track is divided into lanes and each player is set backwards based on their lane by a fixed distance, despite the fact the finish line is in the same position. This is because of the curvature of the track - if everyone started at the same "line" across all lanes, the runners at the outer lanes would be running a further distance than those on the inner lanes!

Gravity does the same thing to time itself. The curvature is not of a track but of spacetime.

In Gravity, the main character starts at an inner lane and his daughter at an outer one - but the starting line is the same across all lanes. Gravity bends spacetime, such that the inner lane is shorter than the outer lane (in terms of distance in time). So when they ultimately arrive at the finish line, the daughter has traversed a longer path in the time dimension than her father.

<comment><USER17> Awesome analogy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So if Copernicus and Einstein were drinking coffee with Galileo and Hawking on a little planet orbiting this star, trying to formulate an Alpha Sagittaricentric model of the galaxy, how much would Einstein and Hawking be contributing to the conversation? How important is relativity to explaining what they would be observing of the light from other stars?

<comment><USER19> Relativity only matters at very high relative speeds, which hardly exist inside the galaxy.

<comment><USER20> Is 8% of the speed of light not a very high relative speed?

<comment><USER21> [Layman here] The Lorentz factor is 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) = 1/sqrt(1-0.08^2) = 100.3%, so dilation effects would be obviously measurable but not particularly huge (0.3%).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Speaking of moving fast, is there anything in physics that limits how fast things are moving in space? I don't mean the limit of speed (that is already known) but realistically, how likely is there to exist, say, a tiny, fist- sized asteroid moving at a slightly sub-luminal speed? Say, 0.9997C in our frame of reference? And if such a thing were to exist, what would the consequences of it colliding with the Earth be? For the reference, an US quarter coin traveling at that speed has relativistic kinetic energy of 4.85MT TNT. We obviously wouldn't be able to detect an object moving this fast, but how likely is it to be out there?

<comment><USER23> There is always a reference frame where the rock isn't moving - and we all agree something can stay still, so there's nothing in physics preventing it from going as close to the speed of light as you want.

I don't know the details of what it would do if it was moving merely very fast, but curiously if it was fast enough, I'm talking unbelievably overwhelmingly fast, it would probably go right through without interacting. Why? Well, if you whiz through the electromagnetic fields of all the atoms in the earth fast enough, the forces won't have any time to transfer momentum one way or the other.

<comment><USER6> > Well, if you whiz through the electromagnetic fields of all the atoms in the > earth fast enough, the forces won't have any time to transfer momentum one > way or the other.

Yet sun sails work, despite being micrometers thick and interacting with particles going very close to c (from the sail's PoV).

<comment><USER23> Solar sails interact with light. It's matter-matter interactions that drop off in the high speed limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's interesting to imagine that there's possibly other life in the galaxy who are also interested in this star, and in SgrA* in general.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you were to look at this star in it's peak velocity relative to a stationary observer, you would see a pretty big shift in it's color!

Say the star was our sun, with a peak frequency at ~525nm. For reference, that's a good solid green, like that of fresh wet grass. If the star were moving away from you at 0.08c, then the color would redshift down to 569nm, a nice pale lime. If the star were moving toward you, then it would blueshift up to 481nm, an ultramarine blue. You can see the colors by wavelength here:

[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~yetkin/code/wavelength_to_rgb/wave...](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~yetkin/code/wavelength_to_rgb/wavelength.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> > _In 2018, S2 made its closest approach to the black hole, giving us a chance > to observe an effect of relativity known as gravitational redshift._

The reality seems more complicated because the star speeds up at the closest approach. When it speeds up, it is subject to time dilation. Time slows down more as it speeds up, and so any electromagnetic waves emitted by the body will have a lower frequency.

The effect of the speed up is not separable from the fact that it has dunked deeper into the gravitational field of the black hole, which also contributes time dilation.

> _If you shine a beam of light into the sky, the light doesn 't slow down, > but gravity does take away some of its energy._

The red shift that we see is purely a time dilation effect. So that is to say, if there were, say, a 101.5 Mhz radio station on that star, we would see that at a lower Mhz figure purely due to the oscillator of that station appearing to be slower due to time dilation. Someone riding that star, clapping their hands once per second might look like they are clapping once every 1.2 seconds.

The beam of light which is conveying to us the events from a source cannot alter the frequency of those events, even if it changes speed along the way. If we see 1000 events per second, then it means the source is generating 1000 events per second, according to our frame of reference. It cannot be that the source is generating 1200, but then the light somehow subtracts from that due to losing energy while escaping gravity.

</comment><comment><USER26> > _If you shine a beam of light into the sky, the light doesn 't slow down, > but gravity does take away some of its energy. As a result, a beam of light > becomes redshifted as it climbs out of a gravitational well._

This is not true; or at least not that simple.

Under general relativity, the speed of light is c only locally. A remote observer can see a slowed down light.

It doesn't make sense that light could be _bent_ by gravity, but not slowed down; and then there is the business of light not being able to escape from black holes.

[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/59502/does- gravi...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/59502/does-gravity-slow- the-speed-that-light-travels)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm curious - is this star likely to be "eaten" in the near future, and when something like that happens, could it potentially create a dangerous gamma ray burst or something?

I think I've read something about how the Milky Way's central black hole is unusually quiet, and speculation whether that was a prerequisite for life to develop.

<comment><USER13> _> is this star likely to be "eaten" in the near future_

It wouldn't seem so. The distance of closest approach to the hole is still 215 times the hole's horizon radius. The star's orbit will, over a very long period, decay due to emission of gravitational waves, so eventually it will fall into the hole, but not any time soon.

<comment><USER27> Well, sure, if you consider just the two objects, but I would think the neighborhood is dense enough that statistically something else might have a close encounter and change the orbit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article's title is somewhat misleading. The warping of spacetime that this star is making visible is not the warping due to the star itself; it is the warping due to the huge black hole at the center of our galaxy that the star is orbiting.

</comment><comment><USER28> There are surely red/yellow dwarf stars even closer to the black hole (beyond our observational capability). The skies on their planets would be fascinating (but hostile to life).

</comment><comment><USER29> At the end of the universe, will the remaining stars will be the ones that were traveling the fastest?

<comment><USER30> Do you mean at the time end, or at the distance end?

These stars are orbiting black holes, so they aren't traveling linearly to the distance end of the universe.

As for the time end of the universe, nobody knows for sure how the universe will come to an end. But if these objects are very hot due to their speed, then perhaps they will live a bit longer than others, unless they explode before then :)

<comment><USER29> >Do you mean at the time end, or at the distance end?

Time. After entropy has had it's way, might there be some age-deferred stars zooming around?

<comment><USER31> I think they're just speeding towards the end of time faster than the rest of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 8% speed of light relative to what?

<comment><USER33> Relative to the speed of Light. Because that is constant irrespective of the frame of reference

<comment><USER34> Your second sentence is true, but the first one doesn't make sense. A car travels at about 0.000001% of the speed of light, yet when we measure car speeds, they depend on the frame of reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder if we could do a slingshot maneuver around this planet.

</comment><comment><USER36> It probably emanates gravitational waves too.

</comment><comment><USER37> Relative to what?

<comment><USER38> Us, obviously. How else would we measure relative velocities?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Blogspam (but with worse editing) of [https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fastest- star.html](https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fastest-star.html)

<comment><USER40> Thanks - this is much better.

> it visibly warps spacetime

The explanation for this part of the title was completely missing from the original article. They _might_ have been talking about the red shift?

<comment><USER41> > For years, S2 was thought to be the closest star to SgrA, but then S62 was > discovered. As a team recently discovered, it's a star about twice as > massive as the sun that orbits the black hole every 10 years. By their > calculations, at the closest approach, its speed approaches 8% of the speed > of light. _That 's so fast that time dilation comes into play. An hour at > S62 would last about 100 Earth minutes._

<comment><USER42> But time dilation at 8% of light speed is less than half a percent. The so- called "blogspam" has that part much more right: "At eight percent lightspeed, the time dilation effect for S62 just barely becomes noticeable"

So where did they get '100 minutes'?

I'm not sure what affect the black hole itself would have, maybe that makes a difference?

<comment><USER41> A back of the napkin calculation says 60m should be about 62.5m at that velocity. I'm not sure where that came from either.

edit: 60.2, forgot to square the ratio.

<comment><USER42> If you got a 2.5 minute difference, did you forget to square the .08? My napkin says that 60 / sqrt(1 - .08^2) is 60.2

<comment><USER41> I sure did forget, thanks for the catch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> That's not a star... that's a starship! <grin>

</comment><comment><USER44> > spacetime

Abstract theoretical concepts do not exist outside sectarian consensus.

This phrase is equivalent of saying like 'numbers became longer' or similar nonsense.

<comment><USER44> Could any downvoters please provide information about any actual experiment which proves existence of space-time being of different kind than existence of a number.

Also it would be nice to see any non-interpreted physical processes which involves space-time.

Thank you.

<comment><USER45> > any non-interpreted physical processes which involves space-time.

Two examples in this thread? Depending on the meaning of "non-interpreted"

> satellites cause time dilation that's accounted for in GPS satellite clocks > and the receiver clocks

And

> its speed approaches 8% of the speed of light. That's so fast that time > dilation comes into play

<comment><USER44> > meaning of "non-interpreted"

Literally. Not being interpreted to support or confirm a current theory.

The abstract system of two clocks and an observer is just nonsense, since the first time it was introduced by Einstein. Abstractions put together to form another abstraction with supposed properties.

Any two clocks, bring man-made devices to support an abstraction of the mind, are _completely unrelated_ instead of measuring the same phenomena.

Time dilation is just an error of measurement and of confirmation bias.

I am still looking for an actual experiment and at least one real process.

<comment><USER46> If you don't like clocks then the nicest earth experiment are free electron lasers. They basically rely on length contraction to create coherent light waves (you accelerate electrons until magnetic undulators are spaced at target wavelength due length contraction). You can dial whatever electron speed you want and get corresponding wavelength (although no greater than the at-rest spacing for obvious reasons) and it all perfectly matches relativistic prediction and works well/incredibly reproducible.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free- electron_laser](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-electron_laser)

<comment><USER44> Where is time in this setting? Synchronization of wave length does not involve time. The device is made according the abstract, derived notion of time, same as it used the notion of a number. Nature does not posses any numbers, however. Mind of an intelligent observer does.

It is useless to argue on HN. I have literally 5 or 6 accounts banned for attacking a textbook ideas. It is easy to trace them all using HN backend.

Most of current HN crowd assume that I am some flat earth anti 5G lunatic, while I have background in philosophy, and down to earth physics way above that of downvoters.

<comment><USER47> > It is useless to argue on HN. I have literally 5 or 6 accounts banned for > attacking a textbook ideas.

Then don't.

> I have background in philosophy,

I have an A-Level in philosophy, but it's a terrible grade and I don't get to make up for that in philosophical discussions by waving around my Software Engineering degree.

> and down to earth physics way above that of downvoters.

That choice of phrase alone will make you look like a nut. Would you care to rephrase that, with _specifics_? Do you work professionally with aerodynamic simulations, for example? Or perhaps you want tell us about the video game engine whose physics model you coded?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The World's Top 20 Public Intellectuals (2008 edition) - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4349&print=1

<comment><USER2> This list has been completely skewed by Turkey; it should be "Turkey's Top 10 Public Intellectuals."

<comment><USER3> Yep, if you do some background it got a lot of coverage in the Turkish media, so the entire list vote wise got really skewed as far as ranking (the FP team chose who you could vote for, but then it was done the will of the people, or at least the will of the turkish people).

The 2005 list is a lot more balanced: <http://www.prospect- magazine.co.uk/intellectuals/results.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps this list should just be called "Top 20 public figures" Most of these people couldn't qualify as an intellectual in even the broadest sense of the term, they would be more concisely described as politicians.

AlGore is NOT an intellectual he goes around talking about the work of intellectuals. That makes in a public speaker, aka a politician.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hilarious. "The Hack of The Faithful". Muslims vote up their co-believers for "Best Intellectual" on the Foreign Policy list, until the The Top 10 is made up solely by - Muslims. Hey, they do care, while others don't! Noam Chomsky makes "Best Non-Muslim" at rank 11 (for old time's sake, perhaps). Al Gore, representing Christianity, follows on 12. Bernard Lewis - a historian and Islam specialist - is at 13. Ayaan Hirsi Ali - an Islam critic - is at 15. Fareed Zakaria - a journalist and Islam commentator - is at 17. And Richard Dawkins comes in at 19. Who woulda thunk it?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The full list of 100 is here: [http://www.prospect- magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10...](http://www.prospect- magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10261)

or here: <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/extras/intellectuals>

<comment><USER6> Yan Xuetong (#56) is awesome. I heard him lecture in China and asked him if there were any scenarios where a globalized utopia could arise. He said the only way that could happen is the Independence Day scenario (an alien invasion) but it would give us unity like nothing else.

This is the most recent publication I've seen by him (I have a Google alert for him). [http://meiguofeilong.blogspot.com/2008/06/who-will- maintain-...](http://meiguofeilong.blogspot.com/2008/06/who-will-maintain- peaceful-cross-strait.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article claims that "...a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites."

This is false about Noam Chomsky: there were no "voting drives" on chomsky.info or zcommunications.org, where Chomsky has a blog. Chomsky has never paid any attention to the Foreign Policy vote. I wonder what possible motive Foreign Policy has for making this false claim.

</comment><comment><USER8> I really doubt Aitzaz Ahsan's contribution. I've been following that judiciary debacle in Pakistan and I don't think he's that vocal even in Lawyer's community, especially after that Long March decision that he took on his own at the eleventh hour.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's tough to rate someone in the present time or even in the near future. I think the only way really to determine their relative ranking is to look at history/have the benefit of hindsight - e.g. DaVinci, Newtown, Shakespeare..

</comment><comment><USER10> I fail to understand how Kasparov made it to the list. He has no following in Russia whatsoever, and not many in the West like his neo-conservative connections.

His inclusion makes the rest of the list somewhat suspect.

</comment><comment><USER11> What, no Steven Hawking?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it's scandalous. Steven Pinker is in at 57, Craig Venter at 71, even Malcolm Gladwell made it to 77. But Steven Hawking is not intellectual enough, it would seem.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should newbie programmers invest there time in new Languages? - <AUTHOR>

Even after programming for about 4 years, and taking two years of CS in school and currently going through one year of Computer Programming class, I still consider myself a newbie. That may be because for a major project I have only one website and one High school final year project both written in RoR and C++ respectively. I started out with C++ took a step back and went through C to do some uController programming then took a leap forward and learned Ruby and RoR to do some web dev things. All this time I was experimenting with different technologies and I consider this as my personal roadblock to not being able to do much of big work.<p>But recently one question poped into my head. Should new programmers venture into new languages like Go or Clojure?(I know Clojure is a year or more old but its still relatively new)I personally believe if you venture into something early you tend to grow with that thing. But I dont think a newbie programmer can do such a thing. Whats you take? <comment><USER2> "their" time.

And as to "new" languages, I'd generally ( _generally_ ) say no. A lot of them are under heavy flux, and the people most involved in the community around them are likely going to be the CS-linguists, not the average learning- programmer.

That said, if you're looking at language / compiler design, it'd be _ideal_. And any programmer with competency in a language or two should branch out a bit into other languages.

</comment><comment><USER3> The main problem with learning a new language(new as in, recently made, immature, etc.) is that it's (usually) hard to get anything done in the new language because you will probably be the first person to try writing whatever kind of code you're writing. Tools and libraries will be missing, compiler bugs will surface, etc. So it's hard to be productive, and hard to find the motivation to use the language in the first place, when you could just use familiar Brand X and all its conveniences.

But you can learn a lot if you participate in the community, even if it's just to read the compiler mailing list. If it's active and there's strong interest in the language, some great discussions will appear.

</comment><comment><USER4> The advantage of learning new languages is that you can take what you learn from them and apply them to languages that you already know and use often. For instance, when I first learned Io, I was exposed to functions like map and select. I had never known that languages I used often also had them, like PHP and Javascript, but since becoming familiar with those functions, the number of times I use a for loop in my code is almost zero. Same thing with anonymous functions, once I figured them out I was using them all the time. The broader your knowledge is, the more opportunities you will be presented with to apply it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm also a fairly new programmer (I've only been programming seriously for about a year and a half), and I've been learning Clojure on the side. So far all I've done was a few Euler problems and played with some Java interop (Swing graphics and so on) but it's been a worthwhile experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think newbie should first learn multiple different languages. Say, C, a Lisp-dialect, one statically typed functional language like Haskell or ML, a scripting language like, a current mainstream language like Java or C#, a shell language, a pure object-oriented language like SmallTalk, a logic programming language, etc. I think it also helps that the language is well established, so that you don't run into implementation bugs, and there is good body of books, documentation and example programs available, so that would mostly leave newer languages out for a newbie.</comment>


Apple iPhone's alternate 'dial' interface - <AUTHOR> http://clintonforbes.blogspot.com/2007/03/apple-iphone-alternate-dial-interface.html <comment><USER2> Is this really suitable here?

Clintonforbes, I think this belongs more on Digg, rather than news.yc- I understand you're really excited about your leak or fake or whatnot, but for YC to remain useful, it really needs to be focused. Please don't post things like this here.

Apple is hardly a Early Stage Startup, no matter how much they might want that image for marketing purposes ;)

I say this as a happy Mac user, but please- No thank you.</comment>


EmTcl - <AUTHOR> https://aidanhs.github.io/emtcl/ <comment><USER2> Any chance of being able to use Tk?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well done!</comment>


Joseph Weber and the failed search for gravity waves - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2015/10/12/joseph-weber-and-the-failed-search-for-gravitational-waves/ <comment><USER2> Misleading title. Should be "his" failed search for gravity waves. The article only relates to his experiments and not failures in the field in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> A fantastic book on the history of the search for gravitational waves: "Gravity's Shadow" by Harry Collins.</comment>


MMS fix for original iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://timrosenblatt.com/att_mms_fix/ Here's a fix to make MMS receiving better for the original iPhone. <comment><USER2> MMS seems like last decades technology to me. Surely most iPhone users are emailing pics?

It's nice to have backward compatibility, but I don't think lack of MMS was really that big a deal.

<comment><USER3> This is kind of like saying text-messaging is being killed by emailing. The issue isn't just backwards compatibility, but cross-platform compatibility.

Emailing a picture vs. using MMS only works if the receiver a) has mobile access to email and b) has said email "pushed" to their phone (or is checking constantly).

<comment><USER4> No, text-messaging is actually being killed by twitter and tweet-deck on iPhone. ;-)

<comment><USER5> O rly?

Monthly text messages sent:

2000 - 14.4 million

2005 - 9.8 billion

2008 - 110.4 billion

Data: [http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/service/index.cfm/AID/1032...](http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/service/index.cfm/AID/10323)

2010 proj. - 192 billion

Data: <http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=12176>

I don't think text messages are going to be "killed" by anything in the very near future.

<comment><USER6> _I don't think text messages are going to be "killed" by anything in the very near future._

Except by constantly-increasing prices. (Some people pay 25 cents to receive a spam message. You can buy an entire newspaper for that amount of money!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't wait to try it. But whenever I followed the instructions in those text messages they never worked. I hope this does. Also do I get charged for those?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think AT&T charges for MMS text messages the same as any other message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hard not to feel a little schadenfreude over how Apple products don't always "just work"

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah! Yeah, I made this for myself to make things a little simpler, and then other people started loving it too. Figured I'd share.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, please offer feedback. Can it get any simpler? :D

<comment><USER9> I could see all of my friends with original iPhones paying for this on the app store... make it a native app with some polish and a one tap 'save to photo library' feature and charge $1.99</comment></comment></comment></comment>


EFF: Apple Should Stand Up and Defend Its Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/05/apple-should-stand-up

<comment><USER2> I'm having a complete inability to reconcile the reporting on this subject with the patent in question [1].

All the reporting mentions this as a problem for In-App Purchases, but the patent in question seems to only deal with soliciting user feedback. Is there some required rating component involved in In-App purchasing that runs afoul of this patent? [2]

Because I'm missing the part where developers necessarily infringe on this patent as a part of using the App Store or In-App Purchasing in general.

[1] 7,222,078

[2] I've admittedly only purchased in-app a few times, and I can't recall ever seeing it. And I get notably annoyed when apps throw the pop up asking me to rate their app as-is. So forcing me through a rating widget, I'd think, would stick out.

<comment><USER3> I'm as lost as you. From the patent text:

" _One of the core purposes of the invention is illustrated in FIG. 15. This is the ability to learn interactively and iteratively from the users of products and information systems anywhere in the world while they are in use—without having to travel to their sites (or without having to bring them to a testing laboratory). Since this is a two-way link, it also offers the ability to respond meaningfully to customers and users based on worldwide, local, organizational or individual needs regardless of where they are located._ "

...

" _As envisioned by this invention, as customers and vendor employees interact to produce continuous improvement, the marketplace may be e-engineered into an interactive development environment (i.e., research and development environment, or R &D environment) with a national or global scope._"

It seems that they've patented a survey. I don't get it. And, anyway, a "purchase" button sure isn't what they had in mind when they wrote the patent! (BTW, "e-engineered" is verbatim. Maybe it's a term I don't know, but I took it as a typo of "re-engineered.")

<comment><USER4> The thing that matters in a patent are the claims.

The descriptive text is in large part there only to satisfy the requirement of 'enablement', meaning, if you patent an idea, you have to disclose enough information so that someone reasonably skilled in the art could duplicate your invention. Trying to parse the descriptive text of a patent isn't particularly useful.

The claims in this patent are straightforward:

* Handheld devices with keypads

* Remote servers

* Interactions for setting up a sale of an item

* Interactions triggered by repeated use of the system

<comment><USER3> _The descriptive text is in large part there only to satisfy the requirement of 'enablement', meaning, if you patent an idea, you have to disclose enough information so that someone reasonably skilled in the art could duplicate your invention. Trying to parse the descriptive text of a patent isn't particularly useful._

Thanks for clarifying there.

Wow- so using any handheld device with a keypad that interacts with a server in such a way that allow a sale is patented.

I've been struggling to wrap my head around this issue, so I tried to recall if we've ever been in this situation before where it suddenly became possible for the "ordinary" person to make cool new technology applications. It occurred to me that perhaps there was. Several decades ago consumer electronic components became quite cheap and powerful (I could buy integrated circuits as a kid and build stuff, for example).

So, I wondered, are circuits patentable? Maybe that would be analogous to what's going on today. Turns out, they _are_ patentable.

So it seems that changing the law here would require singling out the software industry as being particularly "special" in some respects, and maybe in a way that it really isn't. This thought pulls back my knee-jerk "ban the software patents" reaction quite a bit.

However, the industry itself recognizes that software is somehow special. For the first time to my knowledge builders of stuff that isn't toxic or somehow else dangerous can declare it _illegal_ for you to take it apart and see how it works. So maybe software is somehow special and a special case can be made concerning software patents-- like having them expire sooner. (I have a knee- jerk reaction against the "no hacking" terms, also.)

Here's an article by Pamela Jones on reverse engineering software if anybody's interested: <http://lwn.net/Articles/134642/>

<comment><USER4> Careful; I deliberately oversimplified the claims, because there was some doubt that this patent directly applied to in-app purchasing. All I'm trying to demonstrate is that the applicability of the patent is straightforward. It takes time and expertise to parse and evaluate patent claims; it's probably more specific than "keypad plus purchasing".

<comment><USER3> Got it. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Putting aside all discussion on the validity of software patents, Apple really has an obligation to step in and muscle Lodsys to the ground. And I expect that is exactly what they will do.

I doubt anyone at Apple thought it would be a good idea to push tools onto people that would then get those people sued. So most likely, Steve is in the process of releasing the Kraken, telling it to head straight for Lodsys HQ.

By Monday, Lodsys should be a smoldering heap, sunk to the bottom of the ocean by the all-powerful leviathan.

And there shall be much rejoicing.

As an aside, I started to write a thoughtful comment but this stuff is so inane that it really just requires Apple to apply some ass-kicking-fu and make this crap go away.

</comment><comment><USER6> EFF aside, Apple genuinely has a strong interest in sort this out soon.

Putting FUD on the table for app development is a bad thing for their platform and profits.

I expect Apple to do something smart to aid their developers in this case... I only hope it doesn't amount to paying off the patent troll.

That would be a worst-case for other platforms and their developers, as this would competition blocker.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anybody know if Lodsys is targeting and Android, WebOS or Windows 7 developers?

Clickable link to the patent [http://www.google.com/patents?id=nA2AAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=nA2AAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER8> My guess (and I could be completely wrong) is that Apple is working behind the scenes in some way to take care of this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Apple? Doing _something_ for its developers?

Preposterous.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure I'm wrong (and will be summarily slapped down), but I can't help but think that it is more than just possible that Apple would expose small/indie developers like this just to cull the number of apps in their store.

<comment><USER11> That just doesn't make any sense. Apple doesn't need any third-party henchmen to do this job. They have their own app-store guidelines that give them unilateral decision making capacity as to what does, and does not, make it in to their App Store.</comment></comment>


Big ISPs aren't happy about Google's plans for encrypted DNS - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/isps-worry-a-new-chrome-feature-will-stop-them-from-spying-on-you/ <comment></comment>


Why did California vote down legal pot? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/11/03/miron.pot.vote/

<comment><AUTHOR> FTA: _"First and foremost, advocates must emphasize that in a free society, the burden of proof should be on prohibitionists to justify the interference with liberty that results from outlawing marijuana, a burden the prohibitionists have never met. Any calm assessment of marijuana versus alcohol, for example, shows that alcohol is the substance with the greater potential for harm."_

<comment><USER2> This is naive, if we knew then what we know now alcohol would never have been legalised.

We have to deal with the situation we have and criminalising alcohol would be very difficult, its too entrenched.

The fact that alcohol is worse and legal is not in itself an argument for legalising cannabis.

<comment><USER3> "if we knew then what we know now alcohol would never have been legalised"

So the St. Valentine's Day Massacre isn't enough to convince you Prohibition was a bad idea, eh?

<comment><USER2> Prohibition was about criminalising alcohol, which I said was a bad idea. The problem was legalising alcohol in the first place, which would not have happened had we known then what we know now.

Also the SVD massacre was IMHO only tangentially associated with alcohol. It was part of a war between armed gangs, had it not been alcohol it would have been gambling, prostitution or something else.

However my karma has taken enough hits for today.

<comment><USER3> _The problem was legalising alcohol in the first place_

I'm pretty sure alcohol (like everything else) was legal by default, and had to actually be prohibited at some point _before_ it could be legalized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've read that when it comes to votes on specific propositions (Initiatives) the average voter tends to be more cautious. Therefore we tend to give into the prohibitionists and fear of allowing something, even if most of us would consider themselves non-conservative.

Examples:

\- California says NO to prop-19

\- Switzerland [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_controversy_in_Switzerl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_controversy_in_Switzerland)

\- Hamburg says NO to modernize public school system

\- Netherlands + France say no to european constitution

\- Initiatives to combine administrative entities (e.g. federal states) mostly fail

\- If a referendum about the euro was hold in Germany in 1999, there wouldn't be no euro today

<comment><USER5> > Netherlands + France say no to european constitution

Why is that a bad thing? The constitution would be a major setback for democratic process in EU, where the actual governance is already too far removed from voter.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying that voting it down was wrong. The same would have happened if we germans hat a chance to vote on that. But it proves the point isn't it?

<comment><USER5> Well yes, it's just that it was on the list with other items supposedly illustrating a backwards/un-liberal voting pattern.

But sure, your point was clear.

<comment><USER4> Well that's actually true. But i guess that voting the pattern was not intended to be "people voting down good things" but "people voting to prohibit changes"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It actually looks like it added more complication than is already present. It touted the fact that it taxed use heavily, where it's not taxed today.

It also stood to undermine freedom of association, putting limits on an employer to fire you for using marijuana. It's already hard enough to fire people ('firing', otherwise known as 'get someone working in a job where they're actually creating value').

<comment><USER7> it's taxed ... just by drug dealers who get to charge a premium for something that could otherwise have been cheap and/or could be generating a revenue stream for the government. not saying that i'm pro-pot, i'm not. but i am anti-regulation of substances which create an incentivized underground market, to a large extent.

<comment><USER8> All so backward - why even have the middle man. How about a sensible use policy, illegal to sell pot, but make it legal to grow your own, still illegal to grow with intent to supply. Or even cap the amount of plants you are allowed to grow. In the UK you can make your own beer, or grow your own tobacco, but there is a cap on production.

Not everything has to be a business!

<comment><USER9> Making cannabis an exception to the law of comparative advantage doesn't seem like a sensible use policy to me.

<comment><USER8> I'd not come across the term 'comparative advantage' before. Not thought of it from that angle. You want the freedom to turn pot into a commodity?

Growing the plant, a weed is pretty trivial. Anyone could do it. Which means those barriers are not in place. However, I appreciate some people might not have the time and energy - how about additionally making it okay to give to your friends?

The recreational drug I do frequently is alcohol just because it's legally and sociably acceptable - given a free choice it certainly wouldn't be my first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There were some late commercials stating that prop 19 actually reduced some rights of patients to grow their own, let cities opt out of some things and imposed new penalties for some things. I don't know how true those statements were, but perhaps they created some doubt about the measure.

I voted yes, but I think many people simply vote no when the situation isn't clear.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pick a simple message, stay focused, and compromise (co-opt) your potential opponents. That is, find some people who would naturally take the other side and convince them that your plan is the best. Potential opponents will do much more for your argument than echo-chamber cheerleaders will. In fact, many times you want to shut up the cheerleaders because their enthusiasm and over- the-top rhetoric can easily polarize the undecided.

This has been the way of politics for thousands of years. On all kinds of issues.

It sounds like Prop 19 failed in all of these areas. I'm not a smoker, but I'm a libertarian, and I was rooting for it. It's a shame it didn't work out the way many folks wanted.

</comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one that gives some credence to the possibility these things are rigged?

I guess exit polls were in line so it's not likely at all; but I am surprised people don't give that serious consideration.

If things haven't changed since I voted there in 02, there isn't even a paper trail in California (at least in some districts). So I am not sure if a real audit is even possible considering they are allowed to keep their source closed.

Prop 19 didn't pass it seems because the kids just didn't get out and vote. It was a generational gap more than anything, and the less-voting generation didn't increase their voting, thus they lost.</comment>