Cycling heaven: The African capital with 'no traffic' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47709673 <comment><USER2> I'm Eritrean-American. Before clicking the link, I laughed in my head and thought what would the chances be that it's Asmara.

EriTV, the state sponsored new channel and only news station, tends to showcase individuals that exhibit "Eritrean excellence." This includes professional Eritrean cyclists that compete internationally, making most respect or appreciate the sport. Even the Eritrean community that I'm a part of in the US will come out and support an Eritrean cyclist if race through our city.

Last time I visited the country, cycling was normal for transport but still too expensive for a lot of people. Most relied on black market parts to afford maintenance. But like the article mentions, cheap and legitimate parts have been coming in since the open border with Ethiopia. There's still plenty of black market dealings, but business is hurting for them with this increased competition.

<comment><USER3> How do disabled people or elderly people travel around Asmara?

<comment><USER4> Buses are mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember visiting Hanoi, Vietnam in the mid-1990s. In those days, cycling was _by far_ the dominant mode of transport in the city. You'd see the occasional small motorcycle (scooter), but the streets were dominated by thousands upon thousands of cycles, everywhere you went. They must have been >95% of all traffic.

But now, over 20 years later, it's all changed. Most of the cycles are gone to be replaced by a few cars, and incredible numbers of noisy, polluting combustion scooters.

Air quality has declined dramatically and city streets have become much less pleasant places to be.

The Vietnamese government probably sees this as progress? I think it's a dystopian nightmare and a huge step backwards.

<comment><USER6> _The Vietnamese government probably sees this as progress_

I'd like to hear one way or another from a Vietnamese person rather than speculate on this.

<comment><USER7> Considering Hanoi is banning them all by 2030, I don't agree with OP.

<comment><USER5> That's great news if true! But is it a sales ban from 2030, or will they work to remove them all _by_ 2030?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've spent the last 3 years driving around Africa - 35 countries and over 50,000 miles. In more than a few cities the traffic (and pollution) have been absolutely horrific, and I've often wondered if there is a large city where biking is much more common.

Biking is very common in rural areas.

Unfortunately I've had to skip Eritrea, although I really wanted to get there. Because of the recent peace deal with Ethiopia the borders are wide open.. but that means for me nobody really knows how I can enter at a land border legally... there won't be anyone to stamp my passport, and so it's very likely I'll be arrested by the first Police that see me, even with a valid visa.

The ambassadors in Ethiopia and Djibouti were more than happy to give me a visa, but they had no idea what would happen if I tried to drive in. Maybe I'll have to go back!

<comment><USER9> What circumstances have you driving all around Africa?

<comment><USER8> I decided I didn't want to spend my life sitting at a desk writing code (Software Engineer), and I decided a life of adventure was for me.

After saving for years I quit my job and drove Alaska to Argentina, and it changed my life.

I went back to a desk to save again, and now I've been away for three years driving around. I've also worked really hard to be a freelance travel writer and photographer, so I can do this forever without ever going back to a desk.

I'll never own a big screen TV or new car, but I'm certainly going to see stunning places, meet interesting people and have grand adventures!

<comment><USER10> What was your initial budget before being sustainable, if I may? Because by a quick skim through your page it seems it would be in the order of hundreds of thousands (including gas). Are you able to sustain yourself now with your income while traveling? Any tips for people that might wish to do the same? Your story is inspiring, but what holds me back is the fear of not having enough money to do such thing. Thanks

<comment><USER8> > _in the order of hundreds of thousands (including gas)._

This is a really, really common misconception.

For the Alaska to Argentina trek, two years and 40,000 miles through 16 countries, I spent $27k, for _everything_.[1]

Africa won't really be much more per month than that.

By keeping my monthly expenses low, I'm now very close to sustaining myself while on the road. Some months I do, some I still take a tiny bit from my savings. I'm about to publish another few books, and if they go reasonably well like my current one, I should be good.

My major tip is simply don't be afraid. Give it a go, see what happens.

In five years if all of this doesn't work I'll be sitting back at a desk and I sure as hell won't be sitting around thinking "what if". If it does work, I will be living my dreams.

> _What holds me back is the fear of not having enough money_

It's funny now from where I sit, the vast majority of people in the developed world are terrified of money. It's really educational to spend time with people that have none, and have no prospects of ever earning any, but are still immensely happy and have tons of time and often find ways to live their own dreams.

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of- adventure](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure)

<comment><USER11> > For the Alaska to Argentina trek, two years and 40,000 miles through 16 > countries, I spent $27k, for everything.[1]

including vehicle? If not, it can be cheaper. We did Europe to SE Asia (southern route: India and up through Tibet / China). Then California down to South America for less over 2 years (wife daughter and I)

<comment><USER8> I bought the vehicle at the start for $5k, then sold it at the end for $5k, so I don't count it as an expense. I drove it 40k miles and the vehicle cost nothing :)

I've met plenty of backpackers that travel the world for $10-$12k per year. Backpacking is cheaper than going with a vehicle if you are a single person, though a vehicle is cheaper as soon as there are two or more people, especially when you go to parts of the world where it's easy to camp out in the wild for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure Pyongyang also has very little cycling. Eritrea and North Korea regularly vie for the bottom spot on human rights rankings.

That this article tries to pass it off as "diplomatic isolation" is a whitewash and a travesty.

<comment><USER13> This article is about highlighting that you can organize a city of 500,000 people without a car-dominated infrastructure (and all the problems that brings). Not every article needs to be about everything.

<comment><USER14> How has this article highlighted that though? Eritrea is clearly not functioning very well, and is quite poor, so I don't think it is something we should hold up as an example of how a city can be organized.

<comment><USER15> Cars: \- are energy hogs \- are loud \- are extremely dangerous \- require up to 50% of city land to operate.

<comment><USER16> > require up to 50% of city land to operate

Where is this number coming from and what does it apply to exactly? It sounds like something that might be realistic in the US but probably not in most other parts of the world.

<comment><USER15> Tried to be careful with "up to". LA's city center has been measured at 59%. I'll try to find the source again.

But just consider:

\- roads

\- highways / major ingress/egress

\- sidewalks (yup. Don't really need them without cars)

\- parking lots & garages

A nice source with color-coded maps \- [http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking- at...](http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street- area.html)

A nice survey/writeup from Vox: [https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy- future/cars-cities-technol...](https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/cars- cities-technologies)

<comment><USER16> Those are the links are found also before concluding it must be mostly a US thing. I was actually surprised about this. In Europe there far less space dedicated to cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> China used to be the bicycle kingdom before its economic opening. It wasn't even that long ago, 1999 when I first visited still had the sea of bicycle commute going on in Beijing.

</comment><comment><USER18> The hassle of dealing with traffic has always prevented me from cycling to more places. A city with little motor traffic would be an absolutely amazing place for cycling everywhere!

<comment><USER19> > The hassle of dealing with traffic has always prevented me from cycling

Reminds me of:

> Cars are the perfect late capitalist consumer product: an expensive, often > de facto mandatory, solution to a problem that the product itself has > largely caused.

[https://twitter.com/mtsw/status/1109082492147884034](https://twitter.com/mtsw/status/1109082492147884034)

<comment> saiya-jin this doesn't cover my use case at all - moving around city 90% with public transport (like everybody in europe), but 100% weekend trips of 50-200 km, often to neighboring countries with very limited to non-existent public transport.

So for us it allows us to travel to places that wouldn't be otherwise accessible at all. I mean remote mountain villages and valleys, hopping to Italy etc.

Of course cars have tons of issues, but sure as hell they add tons of life quality for many folks out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am constantly saddened when seeing people carrying lots of stuff on crappy mountain bikes. How come mountain bikes have become so popular that they are so much more ubiquitous than all other kinds of bicycles? A (crappy) suspension fork is nowadays cheaper than (any) rigid fork, yet heavier, less durable and harder to maintain. Why there are so few cargo bicycles? Why don't Chinese frame makers make them? Cars would be so much easier to replace if cargo bikes were more affordable.

<comment><USER21> Cargo bikes are a bitch to squeeze through or store tight spaces. I'd love to have a cargo bike but I don't see how I could store it without moving out to suburbs into a house with a big garage/shed. But then I wouldn't need cargo bike anymore...

And pseudo-mountain bikes handle crappy pavement and rubbish on the streets much better. MTB-like bikes with rigid forks is where it's at though.

<comment><USER22> In many places, apartment buildings have indoor (or at least fenced / roofed) bike storage.

<comment><USER21> Yes. And that bike storage would be full in no time if people started putting cargo bikes in there en masse. The beauty of bike parking is they're lightweight and easy to put in a very very compact manner. Cargo bikes take up space of several bikes and require much more space for manoeuvring.

<comment><USER22> You went from the personal to the general :) I suppose for the en masse case for an apartment building, communal trailers might be a solution?

<comment><USER21> A rack with panniers and/or a backpack works good enough in 9 out of 10 cases. For the rest, some sort of bigger motor vehicle is likely to be significantly better than cargo bike.

The only good use I could see is carrying 2 toddlers to school. But that's a very specific situation for a short span of time and in the end it's very rare. Looks damn cool in pics though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm slightly disturbed by the amount of comments that appear to suggest people in the west "can afford" to ruin the environment with car travel. That boat sailed a long time ago, no matter what your personal finances are like.

<comment><USER24> What do you mean?

<comment><USER25> No amount of money in the world can afford environmental destruction. A large number on a bank account won't help you much when you have no food to eat and nowhere safe left to live.

<comment><USER26> >A large number on a bank account won't help you much when you have no food to eat and nowhere safe left to live.

yeah but that is future mes problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In India, cycling continues to be the main mode of transport in rural as well as urban areas, for those people who cannot afford a bike.

But whats shocking is that dedicated cycle lanes are rare and cyclists have to ply on the same roads that carry cars, trucks etc. I can't recall the last time I saw a dedicated cycle track in an Indian city which is a disgrace since most of the people belonging to lower classes still use cycles as a daily mode of transportation.

I guess, among the explosion of cars and bikes on the roads, people on cycles have either become invisible or they have just been forgotten by those in authorities.

I used to cycle to work a long time ago. After a few Nearly Near-Death- Experiences, I gave up and bought a bike instead. My cycle languished in a corner of my room, until one day the maid that worked at my house asked if she could borrow it so that her husband could drop her children to school and then go work at a nearby textile factory.

I guess, they are still using that cycle while I have graduated from a bike to a car now.

<comment><USER28> I usually don't wanna be that guy, but this is super confusing to read. When you say bike, you mean a motorbike. Bicycle, cycle and bike are synonyms for the 2-wheeler without a motor. Bike is only used for motorbike, if the context is clear.

I also assume in India most people would use scooters and not motorbikes.

<comment><USER27> Hey, that's the common lexicon in India:-

Bike -> Motorbike

Cycle -> Bicycle

Edit: Also scooters are super rare these days. Motorbikes provide more mileage and are easier to maintain and have longer life. The number of scooters on Indian roads declined starting around 12-15 years ago I recall.

<comment><USER28> It's confusing for me, because bike is used for both depending on context. But when you are talking about cycling, most people (outside of India) would interpret bike as bicycle.

If bike is used without much context, I would also assume you mean bicycle, unless I know you own a motorbike.

<comment><USER29> As someone who spent a couple of months in India (a long time ago) I sympathise with your confusion. But what can we do, Indians say it one way and Americans the other (I have a lot of friends from the UK and they tend to have their own terms for transportation-purposes as well, like Lorrie and Motorway - not to mention more exotic slang like "leccy" for electric vehicles).

After you accept the OP is using Indian English it's not that hard to understand what they mean & I don't think we have to enforce everyone using American dialects on HN for these relatively minor inconveniences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> DC-3 I think it'd be awesome if Eritrea were to produce some pro cyclists. Right now, the pro peloton is, within a rounding error, entirely Caucasian - which I think is something of a shame. To take some examples - while the famously cycle-friendly nation of the Netherlands is extremely strongly represented, China is not - despite the latter state also being known for its embrace of bicycles. I imagine this is almost wholly down to lack of opportunity, with the majority of pro cycling teams being based in Western Europe or America. Would the Kazakh flag be as common a sight in pro cycling were it not for the influence of Team Astana? I doubt it. Hopefully one day we may see Eritreans compete alongside the best in the Grand Tours - if nothing else, it would hopefully stamp out some of the uglier attitudes in the peloton (see: Moscon).

<comment><USER30> There are Eritrean pro cyclists and some have competed in the grand tours. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_Eritrea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_Eritrea)

<comment> DC-3 Only domestiques so far, to my knowledge.

<comment><USER2> I think this is true for all Eritrean athletes too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The state of Eritrea is so bad people are running away from it to countries like Israel taking the risk of getting shot to death in all the countries they pass

<comment><USER32> Why Israel? Eritrea seems to be half and half Christian and Muslim.

<comment><USER12> Nothing to do with religion. It's only three land border crossings away, no need to cross the Mediterranean like you would if you went to Europe.

Not quite as nice as Germany or Sweden, but much safer to get to.

<comment><USER32> Perhaps. If you could get to Israel could you not get to southern Europe? If I were a Muslim, I know where I'd be avoiding.

<comment><USER12> Paying a smuggler to get you across the Mediterranean is expensive, the death rate is high, and many of the transit countries like Libya you'd end up waiting in are seriously dangerous for foreigners who don't have the protection of a great power.

Regarding the undesirability of ending up in Israel - Israeli discrimination is mostly based on ethnicity, not on religion. Christian Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, though economically well-off, are treated by the state as security threats in a way that Muslim Eritreans aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you look at photos of Vienna from around 1900 the traffic situation was similar relaxed. Something went wrong.

</comment><comment><USER34> Eritrea has a very high per capita pro cycling representation. Higher than the UK, France and Spain, and more far behind Italy. I always wondered why that was so.

</comment><comment><USER35> lucky them, they have not been kicked off the road to a segregated ghetto like in many parts of the "modern" world.

</comment><comment><USER36> Can anyone make out what the brand bikes are those 2 road bikes in the first picture?

<comment><USER22> Merida for the red one and Cervélo for the other.

<comment><USER25> How on earth did someone in a poor area get a Cervelo? For those who don't know, Cervelo bikes tend to be in the $4k-$9k USD range.

<comment><USER37> Probably they make replica of those bikes? Just like replicas of apparel brands.

<comment><USER38> Possible. Although you certainly wouldn't want to use a replica carbon fiber bike because they have a very high risk of shattering while in use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In my world vision 2075 AD, the surface will be reserved for cyclists and pedestrians, while all automobile traffic will disappear into Elon Musk style underground tunnels.

<comment><USER40> I guess in US, but for the majority of the third world, the picture may not be so rosy.

I foresee a dystopia where governments powered by internet and AI weapons will channel the world resources to a select few while the rest of humanity dies a slow death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Always look on the bright side of poverty and oppression"

I expect better from the BBC!

<comment><USER13> That is not an actual quote from the article; rather misleading.

Just because the situation in Asmara was caused by unfortunate circumstances doesn't mean the outcome isn't good, or that it can't serve as a model for other cities on how to better organise city planning.

<comment><USER41> The situation in Asmara is caused by oppression and poverty.

I don't think what you call "planning" is substantially different from "make everyone desperately poor so they can't afford to own cars". Not a model many cities want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> black-tea This title really grinds my gears. It has traffic, it just has no cars or no congestion. No traffic would indicate a place without roads at all.

</comment><comment><USER42> Cycling heaven is The Hague, Netherlands, not a city where people are unable to afford the purchase and operating cost of a 15 year old Toyota Corolla.

<comment><USER13> Cycling amidst toxic car fumes. Truly a cyclist heaven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> [https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/9/8003637/north-korea- satell...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/9/8003637/north-korea-satellite- photos-night)

Astronomy heaven: The Asian capital with 'no light pollution'

</comment><comment><USER44> There is a coordinated effort on HN to tear down and/or just shit on mainstream western amenities. Such as nice homes [1], abundant personal transportation, and even lawn care equipment [2]. It's pretty ridiculous to see in general, let alone on a site about technology and business.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19497422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19497422)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18523630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18523630)

<comment><USER45> Why would it need to be a co-coordinated effort? I think you will find it is just the prevailing opinion in regards to the future scale and efficiency of humanity. That is something people on HN love to think about so it is no surprise they have come to similar opinions. The facts are dire for the things you mentioned as "western ameneties".

Do I wish that weren't true and that we could all have affordable family homes to live on? Sure, but suburbia doesn't even make sense from a commuting point of view let alone environmental.

<comment><USER46> why would people need to commute at all?

if people worked from home they could have nice amenities, space, low noise, vehicles to travel elsewhere and useless offices could be converted to something that is more useful.. otherwise people pay a lot of money to rent a space that they don't use fully...</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ecosim – A cellular ecosystem simulator toy for Linux written in C - connor-brooks https://github.com/connor-brooks/ecosim <comment><AUTHOR> Reminds me of something I wrote years ago:

[https://github.com/adamierymenko/nanopond](https://github.com/adamierymenko/nanopond)

Ecosim has prettier graphics and seems more high level and concerned with ecology, while nanopond is more about just open ended program evolution (including the rise of self-replicators ex nihilo... it starts by just generating totally random programs).

<comment> connor-brooks Nice, this is so cool! I had a few line-type creatures wriggling around at first and then a huge population explosion occurred and a swarm started filling the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This seems very cool. I would recommend including an animated gif or link to a YouTube video showing the results of the simulation under a variety of settings/parameters. Also, this would probably get a lot more traction if it used web technologies WASM and webgl. Would be cool to combine this with an evolutionary algorithm similar to the Scriptbots project by Karpathy.

<comment> connor-brooks I'm planning to do this once I get my hands on a video capture card! Thanks for the advice :)

<comment><USER3> Video capture card? Doesn't it run on the desktop? Just use OBS (Open Broadcast Software) to capture the window, friend. Much simpler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For some reason it complained about GLFW_TRUE not being declared, but I just replaced it in the source code with a literal 1 and then it worked.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool! However, I don't see why this has to be so specific for Linux from when by judging from the libraries used it can be also compiled for MingW, macOS, Free/Open/NetBSD, QNX and even surprising Haiku.

But a very interesting project nevertheless.

<comment> connor-brooks Currently having difficulties getting it running on macOS, and gdb doesn't seem to play nice with Catalina

<comment><USER6> Doesn't work on ubuntu 19.10 either.

gcc -c main.c gcc -g3 logger.o quadtree.o graphics.o utils.o agents.o input.o main.o -o ecosim -lGL -lm -lglfw -lGLEW $ ./ecosim Segmentation fault (core dumped)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. I have dreamed of building something similar. I would be interested in these modifications:

1\. Change living/non-living distinction of food to two different dimensions, shared by living and non living food alike: * Composition - arbitrary bits to match against a consuming organism's diet * Defense - arbitrary bits to match against consuming organism's capabilities, might be a function of energy level for living food

2\. Organisms leave behind waste as part of eating and/or moving. Waste left behind is food for other organisms

This might allow for the rise of symbiosis and multicellular organisms

<comment> connor-brooks These are great ideas. I was looking for ways to facilitate symbiosis. Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone interested on this might also be interested in an mobile app called "Cell Lab: Evolution Sandbox" [1], which does a good take on a cell simulation "game".

[1] [https://www.cell-lab.net/](https://www.cell-lab.net/)

</comment><comment><USER9> It looks pretty interesting but unfortunately I'm unable to run the demo, getting a crash in glDrawElements which is sort of outside of my scope to address. As a side note the debug symbols flag doesn't get passed to individual C files so the binary ends up without debugging symbols (as a workaround I moved the -g3 flag to CC variable instead).

<comment><USER10> I am getting a Segmentation fault under Debian Stretch.

<comment> connor-brooks Uh oh, what graphics card / driver are you using?

<comment><USER6> Not the OP, but it crashed with ubuntu 19.10 with a GTX1070 with the default ubuntu nvidia binary blob: i nvidia-driver-390 - NVIDIA driver metapackage

Maybe the code is incompatible with libglew2.1?

When I run: $ ./ecosim Segmentation fault (core dumped)

I see a window map for an instant before the seg fault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a really cool project.

If you're at all concerned with keeping it reasonably easy to find, you may want to know that the name Ecosim is in use by software for simulation modeling of trophic energy flows in ecosystems.

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

<comment> connor-brooks Thanks! Oops, maybe not the best choice of name haha

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very cool! I wonder if anyone has done something similar but for people and companies in an economy... it's my dream pet project, but I've never even gotten around to researching where to begin.

</comment><comment><USER13> How would you like to license this code?

</comment><comment><USER14> Very decent, readable coding style.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's another ecology oriented cellular automata rule called ECOLIBRA, a cross between LIFE, BRAIN (and optionally ANNEAL on the bit plane that determines water/land), from John Walker's and Rudy Rucker's classic CelLab (which Autodesk originally published as a PC application, but John Walker has ported to JavaScript):

[https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#EcoLiBra](https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#EcoLiBra)

>ECOLIBRA

>This rule is a cross between Life and Brain. The basic idea is that the cells are divided between dark "sea" cells and light "land" cells. We run Brain in the sea, and on land we run not Life but AntiLife. All the land cells are normally firing cells, and the presence of an active AntiLife cell is signaled by having a land cell which is not firing. Full details on EcoLiBra are in the Cellular Automata Theory chapter.

>The name EcoLiBra suggests 1) an ecology of Life and Brain, 2) a balanced situation (equilibrium), and 3) the human intestinal bacteria Escherichia coli, known as E. coli for short. The third connection is perhaps a bit unsavory, but remember that E. coli cells are in fact the favorite "guinea pigs" for present day gene splicing experiments. As one of the goals of CelLab is to promote the development of artificial life, the designer gene connection is entirely appropriate. I've given EcoLiBra a nice, symmetric start pattern, but it also does fine if you use the Bit Plane Editor to randomize all bit planes.

[https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/chap4.html#EcoLiBra](https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/chap4.html#EcoLiBra)

>The EcoLiBra rule, consisting of Brain and AntiLife, each turned on by the red/black boundary.

>But when the sea runs Brain and the land runs Life, the situation is no longer symmetrical. The pervasive presence of Brain's refractory state makes it less likely for a sea cell to have seven firing neighbors and be turned into a land cell. Unless we change the transition rules, the land will always melt away. So to give land a fighting chance, I now say that a sea cell becomes land if it has seven or six firing neighbors. Also I use better colors: Black, blue, and green for Brain; red and yellow for AntiLife.

Here is a variant I call "ECO" that runs "ANNEAL" on the water/land plane, and (for giggles) a heat diffusion in the upper left-over planes.

[https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...](https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM6.js#L3331)

Here are the guts of the rule (omitting the heat diffusion layer calculation):

                                var cell = 0;

                                var sum9Anneal =
                                        ((nw & 0x04) + (n & 0x04) + (ne & 0x04) +
                                         (w  & 0x04) + (c & 0x04) + (e  & 0x04) +
                                         (sw & 0x04) + (s & 0x04) + (se & 0x04)) >> 2;
                                var anneal =
                                        ((sum9Anneal > 5) || (sum9Anneal == 4)) ? 4 : 0;

                                cell |= anneal;

                                var sum8 =
                                        (nw & 1) + (n & 1) + (ne & 1) +
                                        (w  & 1) +           (e  & 1) +
                                        (sw & 1) + (s & 1) + (se & 1);

                                if (anneal) {
                                    // Anti-Life
                                    cell |= ((c & 1) << 1);
                                    if (c & 1) {
                                        if (sum8 != 5) {
                                            cell |= 0x01;
                                        }
                                    } else {
                                        if ((sum8 != 5) && (sum8 != 6)) {
                                            cell |= 0x01;
                                        }
                                    }
                                } else {
                                    // Brain
                                    cell |= (c << 1) & 2;
                                    if ((c & 3) == 0) {
                                        if (sum8 == 2) {
                                            cell |= 1;
                                        }
                                    }
                                }

The CelLab user's guide and Rudy Rucker's recounting of the origins of CelLab and his experience with Margolus and Toffoli's CAM6 is especially delightful.

[https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/)

[https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/chap5.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/chap5.html)

Bennett shows me another pattern, one that looks like boiling red cottage cheese, and then he takes me across the Charles River to the MIT Laboratory of Computer Science. In the basement is an exuberant French scientist named Gérard Vichniac. He and an associate are watching a small rectangular dot- pattern in the center of their terminal's screen. The pattern is mostly white, with a small amount of red in it. The edges keep folding in on each other as the pattern evolves according to some simple rule which Vichniac made up. He calls it an "Ising Model," but it looks like an electronic kaleidoscope. "This pattern started as a red square," Vichniac tells me. "The rule is reversible, so we know that eventually the red square must come back. We've been watching it for eighty thousand steps now".

Upstairs from Vichniac are two equally cheerful cellular automata specialists, Norman Margolus and Tommaso Toffoli. There's another journalist there, a guy from Rolling Stone.[Footnote] Cellular automata are hot. I introduce myself and sit down to watch the demonstration. Right now there's a central cloud of dots, with square little patterns flying out of it. On the sides of each of the square patterns are individual pixels that pump up and down.

"Look at the critters, Tom," says Margolus. "They look like rowers, don't they?"[Footnote]

"Show him the square rock," says Toffoli.

Margolus clears the screen and keys a big red square into the center. The square expands out to the edges of the screen and bounces back. As the bouncing continues, the patterns interfere and form complex checkerboard patterns, enough patterns in thirty seconds to have made a respectable one-man Op-Art show in the 1960s.

Toffoli pries Margolus away from the controls and takes over. "Now we do the square rock in the toroidal pond again, but this time we add a heat-bath, a cloud of random gas in the background."

The background fills with darting dots, and Toffoli keys another big red square into the center. This time the waves are smooth and roughly circular, much like real waves in a real pond. We try it with two squares and get interference patterns. Toffoli is pleased. He says that this shows how simple physics really is.

[...]

After watching the CAM in operation at Margolus's office, I am sure the thing will be a hit. Just as the Moog synthesizer changed the sound of music, cellular automata will change the look of video.

I tell this to Toffoli and Margolus, and they look unconcerned. What they care most deeply about is science, about Edward Fredkin's vision of explaining the world in terms of cellular automata and information mechanics. Margolus talks about computer hackers, and how a successful program is called "a good hack." As the unbelievably bizarre cellular automata images flash by on his screen, Margolus leans back in his chair and smiles slyly. And then he tells me his conception of the world we live in.

"The universe is a good hack."

[...]

Margolus and Toffoli's CAM-6 board was finally coming into production around then, and I got the Department to order one. The company making the boards was Systems Concepts of San Francisco; I think they cost $1500. We put our order in, and I started phoning Systems Concepts up and asking them when I was going to get my board. By then I'd gotten a copy of Margolus and Toffoli's book, Cellular Automata Machines, and I was itching to start playing with the board. And still it didn't come. Finally I told System Concepts that SJSU was going to have to cancel the purchase order. The next week they sent the board. By now it was August, 1987.

The packaging of the board was kind of incredible. It came naked, all by itself, in a plastic bag in a small box of styrofoam peanuts. No cables, no software, no documentation. Just a three inch by twelve inch rectangle of plastic—actually two rectangles one on top of the other—completely covered with computer chips. There were two sockets at one end. I called Systems Concepts again, and they sent me a few pages of documentation. You were supposed to put a cable running your graphics card's output into the CAM-6 board, and then plug your monitor cable into the CAM-6's other socket. No, Systems Concepts didn't have any cables, they were waiting for a special kind of cable from Asia. So Steve Ware, one of the SJSU Math&CS Department techs, made me a cable. All I needed then was the software to drive the board, and as soon as I phoned Toffoli he sent me a copy.

Starting to write programs for the CAM-6 took a little bit of time because the language it uses is Forth. This is an offbeat computer language that uses reverse Polish notation. Once you get used to it, Forth is very clean and nice, but it makes you worry about things you shouldn't really have to worry about. But, hey, if I needed to know Forth to see cellular automata, then by God I'd know Forth. I picked it up fast and spent the next four or five months hacking the CAM-6.

</comment><comment><USER16> ultra sick project dude!

<comment> connor-brooks Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does it run under OpenGL 2.1? My laptop is a bit... obsolete.</comment>


Ask HN: Open sourcing our product? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, we are a startup developing a mobile hypervisor for ARM processors and Android/Linux. Our IP involves the hypervisor, the ARM-specific layer, and the linux virtualization interface.
Lately we are getting a lot of requests from educational institutions and mailing list subscriptions have reached more than 100 people. The interest is due to the earlier versions being open and the comprehensive documentation. However, the latest version, with business/competition reasons are closed.
How do you think we should proceed? If we allow people to use a smaller version as open, there will be much more people using and learning our solution. On the other hand I would prefer to avoid competition to reach our sources.
This also fits the release-early/release-often approach. By getting feedback from people we get a better direction.
I get the feeling that gaining popularity outweighs the disadvantage of competitors seeing our code. What do you think?
Edit:
* We already had up to v0.3 of the hypervisor released as GPLv3, this excluded the ARM-layer and virtualization interface.
* We intend to license it as a product and we don't plan to build an open source consultancy business. The open intention here is for gaining traction. <comment><USER2> If you open-source under the GNU General Public License (GPL) then competitors would be prohibited from re-using your code without applying the same license to their codebase.

Would looking at your code be sufficient to put you at a disadvantage or would preventing competitors from re-using your code be a sufficient defence?

edit: Sorry, it's actually the GNU General Public License (GPL).

<comment><USER3> Good point. Bear in mind that as long as all contributions come from you, you can both release a GPL branch and have another proprietary branch with custom code you don't want to make public.

This does create a problem though: if you are accepting outside contributions to the GPL version, you can't incorporate these into the proprietary version without having the contributors sign an agreement which allows you to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> * One practical question is whether you can do a _useful_ subset of your stuff as open source... if the open source part is worthless without the "proprietary icing" then nobody will care about it, so you get no value from open source.

* A related practical question of course is whether there are customers who will still want to buy the proprietary icing even though there's an open source useful subset.

* How hard is it for competitors to replicate your proprietary icing? Is the community likely to replicate it?

* One of the main competitive advantages of most open source companies is that the key upstream developers behind the project work for the company. Do you have these developers? If so others will be at a disadvantage when it comes to offering support and services.

* Do you want a business that is based on license fees or one based more on support and services?

* Do you have a good way to market the product and get a lot of people interested, other than through an open source project?

* Do you want to spend time on community building and ensuring outside contributors can be productive? Can you put development discussions in the open?

</comment><comment><USER5> Are your paying clients the same people clamouring for open-source?

<comment><USER6> The above question is very valid - with open-sourcing your code you will have to get into the 'community management' game, especially if you think you'll be taking contributions in the form of code sometime soon.

If you customers are already asking for it to be open-sourced, or if you have partners in mind who will support this endeavor, this is a good start. If, on the other hand, you open-source without a good PR push to partners/customers/developers it's like a tree falling in the forest; will anyone be around to listen?

We open-sourced from the beginning and then found clients; it was a long haul. We eventually found a toehold in developing countries, and were able to build up client credibility from there. If you already have a plan for using the OSS to sell right away, then maybe this plan is for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think no serious customer for this technology would require open source, they would be happy to have it in commercial terms.

However, non-customers can be a lot of people which would spread the name by word-of-mouth. Also those customers who intend to buy it will get a feeling of what they are getting, instead of you describing a black-box with significant marketing efforts.

<comment><USER5> Unless your product can really benefit from a strong network effect in the open-source community _without_ compromising your competitive edge, I wouldn't do it.

However, if you feel the potential to gain traction outweighs the threat of losing an edge (or a paying customer, since they can just use your code), open-source the engine, but hold back on the parts that are unique to your offering and/or make your engine easy to work with (like a GUI, simplified wrappers or builds for different platforms), though this depends on the nature of your product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since GNU and all the other open source licenses won't let you achieve your commerical goals, you have to bank on legal technicalities.

Not entirely sure, but I'd say Magento uses one of the following ways. They claim open-source, but I was never able to figure out how.

Summary

1\. Dual license. Add value through closed-source features, services, etc... on the commercial licensed.

2\. Have your commercial product piggyback on the open-source creation.

3.Software as a Service.

4.Offer support, consulting, some type of service to assist the (free)open source product.

For a larger introduction go to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open_source_applicat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open_source_applications)

Does anyone know how mSQL was structured before it got sold?

</comment><comment><USER8> Hasn't also VMWare announced some kind of Android hypervisor recently? In that case, I feel that a product by a small startup may have trouble getting enough attention if it is also closed-source.

(But beware of taking business advice from me, who am not running a company)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it's worth reminding the story of BricaBox, initially a startup led by Nate Westheimer, and when they closed down, they decided to open source the project : <http://code.google.com/p/bricabox/> <http://innonate.com/2008/06/19/bricabox-goodbye-world/> Maybe some benchmark to take out of it?

</comment><comment><USER10> You may want to have a closer look how Xen (acquired by Citrix) handled this, considering the similarities. Their kernel code and the core tools have always been open source (largely GPL, I think), with various closed-source value-add.</comment>


The Sound of Madness - <AUTHOR> https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/the-sound-of-madness/ <comment><USER2> I spent two years living with a man, then my lover, who refused to seek medical help but almost certainly had something like disassociative identity. He had learned to cope with it by giving his voices distinct names, and adopting their personas over times, often in response to external stimuli. As an outside observer with no such symptoms of my own, I found this completely fascinating.

He's very spiritual, one of his inner voices would often come out and sage the house, offer prayers, and perform personal rituals which he kept secret. Otherwise though, I found that his personas largely reflected his current emotional state. One persona would almost always be "out" when he was upset with a friend, or struggling with some stress. Another was more childlike and playful. He described them as always there, and even though he appeared to allow one of them to be "in charge" as he put it, he said the voices were always in the back of his mind, directing his thoughts.

The experience has opened my eyes, and allowed me to see these disorders in a more positive light. I never told him what I thought of his diagnosis and never felt the need; while his condition lent itself to occasional mood swings, he made a point of _respecting_ his voices, allowed them to become a part of him, and I feel had largely learned to cope. He could even switch his behaviors off for a while when needed, usually for work or when he felt the need to be professional.

I don't think medication would have helped, not that he would have taken it. He had figured himself out for better or worse, and I just learned to accept him as he was.

<comment><USER3> > Otherwise though, I found that his personas largely reflected his current > emotional state. One persona would almost always be "out" when he was upset > with a friend, or struggling with some stress. Another was more childlike > and playful. He described them as always there, and even though he appeared > to allow one of them to be "in charge" as he put it, he said the voices were > always in the back of his mind, directing his thoughts.

That doesn't sound like a disorder. The abnormal thing about your friend is that he is more aware than the average person.

The illusion of a single, unified self is just that. When you talk to people in your dreams, who are you talking to? Their responses are quite intelligent, if you listen. When you say embarrassing things under anesthesia with no memory of it, who said those things? When you get irrationally angry, who the hell is it that comes out? Same with the alcoholic who swears one day he'll quit and forgets about it the next day -- different people.

Moreover, there are huge areas of your brain that work quietly and subconsciously (from your perspective). Not only are they conscious, they're smarter than you. They prove it through intuition and gut feeling, if you listen.

> while his condition lent itself to occasional mood swings, he made a point > of _respecting_ his voices, allowed them to become a part of him, and I feel > had largely learned to cope.

I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I found your tone somewhat condescending. It's not his alternate selves that he needs to "cope" with, but society's notion that something is wrong with him. This might sound too new- age for people, but the more aware you are, the more you realize just how sick _everyone else_ is. We literally have conscious beings imprisoned within us.

> He had figured himself out for better or worse

Probably figured himself out better than the rest of us ever will.

<comment><USER4> Broca's area is certainly expert in language, but when it runs on its own you get "embarrassing things under anesthesia". The central control of all subsystems is essential for coherent functioning.

<comment><USER3> Is central control necessary? I know it's a tough pill to swallow, but I encourage you to think about it some more. And don't think in terms of subsystems but rather real entities.

<comment><USER5> Well considering that a large sub-set of people who hear voices commit suicide and/or kill their relatives in cold blood I would say that yes, central control is necessary.

<comment><USER6> We commit suicide because our parents, friends, and the community as a whole are trying to forcibly remove something that can never be wiped away, causing anxiety and fear which amplify every negative aspect of the voices/beings/visions. Suicide is never a risk for me when I have someone to talk to who will listen to me and take me seriously. It's a risk when I feel as though my existence is a mistake because almost everyone treats it as such. It's not a mistake. There's a reason why every sz person I know has a very spiritual aspect to their voices. I've accepted it and I listen, and I gain benefit, but most people with such experiences are told there is something inherently wrong with them and that their experiences are artificial. To that I say, it's no more artificial than your reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good article.

But it doesn't mention the self-talk aka "stream of consciousness" that virtually everyone hears. And a key insight is that it's not _our_ consciousness. It's basically just recordings that get played back on queue. A central aspect of meditation is becoming aware of that voice as something distinct from self.

So anyway, it's best to think "Thanks for sharing :)" and then to do something intentional.

<comment><USER8> As someone who normally doesn't have the self-talk module running, I was amazed to learn that most people have it running all the time. I only use the module when writing, otherwise my consciousness is normally non-verbal.

I suspect it is related, but when I read I don't hear the words unless I deliberately choose to read the text in my head, otherwise my process is written word -> concept.

<comment><USER9> It seems to be similar with mental pictures.

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing- from-one-example)

"The debate [over mental imagery] was resolved by Francis Galton (...). Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images."

Personally, I'm someone with small-talk module running almost constantly, verbalizing most of my thinking and reading. On the other hand, I have very low capability of forming mental images.

I wonder how many other things in brain are like that, widely differing between people.

<comment><USER8> I suspect that there is quite a large variation between people, but it has not really been studied because it is almost impossible to get funding to study differences that don't cause a problem to an individual. It is a shame because I find this topic fascinating.

I have a pet theory that more visual thinking is something that has come in from our Neanderthal ancestors. We know they had a brain more specialised around visual processing, but very little beyond this. It is almost certain that some people today think in a similar way to Neanderthals given how much of the Neanderthal genome is still present in the human population, but who they are and what they think like is unknown.

<comment><USER10> I wonder instead if it comes from early development, like having a preponderance of picture vs written books as a toddler and at what point of development getting read stories has an influence if any

<comment><USER8> It is possible, but I suspect that any difference is formed earlier than this. I know I thought the way I think long before I learned to read.

I remember very clearly learning about the concept of the written word. Once it clicked suddenly I noticed the whole world was filled with words (not that I knew what most of them meant). The world was now very different to how I saw it before and I became fascinated with knowing what they all were (I used to drive my mother crazy asking her what every sign said).

I am also not sure if this is also related, but I was apparently quite a late talker (around 24 months), but once I started talking I was far ahead of other children of my age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I kept waiting for this article to mention Julian Jaynes' hypothesis on the origin of consciousness but it never did. It's super fascinating though!

Essentially, ancient history all the way up to Greece had this feature that people heard voices all the time _and_ it never seemed unusual to anyone. His hypothesis is that maybe written history started _before_ the evolution of what we now call consciousness and we witnessed it in written history.

[http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory- overview.ph...](http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-overview.php) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)#The_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_\(psychology\)#The_Origin_of_Consciousness)

<comment><USER7> Right. Stephenson's _Snow Crash_ riffs on that.

<comment><USER12> As does _Westworld_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Heh. I had hoped this would turn into a sequel to this article:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2016/03/schizophrenia_and_subvocal_speech_why_schizophrenics_hear_the_voices_of.html)

Unfortunately, it didn't. Still a good read, tho.

<comment><USER7> That's what I was thinking.

But damn, I've never seen entities talking to me. Except on acid, and sometimes when very stoned. But only with my eyes closed.

<comment><USER14> LSD (a huge dose of liquid, straight up ego death for 6 hours) and DMT have both allowed me to experience entities and "converse" with them in a manner of speaking. An enjoyable couple of experiences, but I can understand why it'd be scary to experience outside of a psychedelic trip.

<comment><USER15> Please do not talk of huge dose of liquid when talking of very potent substances such as LSD. A very heavy dose of LSD is about 350µg or 350/1 000 000g. which is such a small quantity that you cannot see it.

One can put 50µg in 1 liter of water and drink a lot of liquid but ingest a light dose while a single drop can contain enough to heavy trip several people.

<comment><USER7> Due to a dilution error, I did 3000µg once.

The point of mentioning "liquid LSD" (typically in 80% ethanol) is that it was usually the purest available. And easiest to verify purity. It should be colorless. And a sample containing 500µg should leave no visible residue when dried on glass. Common adulterants would be present at much higher concentrations. Unless some jerk added fentanyl or Botulinum toxin :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Remember reading about avatar therapy, interesting to see it only be a recent thing. The article was on how software through constructing 3D faces (using a game engine I believe) was helping schizophrenics and that they were branching into VR research as well.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, they would build an avatar to represent the persona of a schizophrenic's head-voice and give it a synthesized voice that sounded like what the schizophrenic heard. Then they would puppet the avatar, engaging the patient in dialogue, slowly making it say less and less harmful things, and eventually ceding control to the patient. The patient would come away feeling more in control, and less threatened or coerced by the voices. Fascinating stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article repeat a few times that people hearing voices often hate them, that voices are harsh and say terrible things but it overlooked that this is only the case in the US and occident meanwhile in Africa the voices are kind and say nice things.

[https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture- luhrmann...](https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture- luhrmann-071614/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Surprised no one had mentioned John Nash and _A Beautiful Mind_. I won't spoil it for anyone that doesn't know the story but it is very reminiscent of the woman in the article.

</comment><comment><USER19> This was a great article that I'm glad I'm not reading in my early twenties. (For mild hypochondriac fears!)</comment>


Ask HN: To kill or not to kill an Adsense account - <AUTHOR>

I've got an Adsense account with a modest amount of money in it from when my site was using Adsense.  Now my site is part of the Yoggrt network, so I'm not using Adsense on any part of my site, and I don't have any plans to use it in the near future on any other sites.  Unfortunately, my Adsense account doesn't have enough to cash out (<$100), but I can get the money out if I close the account.<p>What would you do in this situation?  Would you close the account to get the money out, or just leave the account open in case I want to run Adsense again? If I close the account, does anyone know if you can get a new Adsense account in the future? <comment><USER2> I had this thought 2 years ago with a blog that had very little traffic. Over the course of a year I probably made $5, obviously far below the $100 payout limit.

I kept it open and now that I DO have a site that makes money, I eventually got that money from Google.

In other words: keep the account open if you care about what happens to the money advertisers pay google?

</comment><comment><USER3> I doubt an Adsense account has much value by it's age. I would close it. Another option would be to run it on some site, or rotate it on your current one, until it breaks $100, then cash it out and stop using it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's one idea: Does anyone know if you can directly fund an Adsense campaign from money in an Adsense account? If so, I could save it for an ad promotion for future products, and keep the account for now...

</comment><comment><USER4> Just let it sit there. There's no reason to close it that I can think of.</comment>


Show HN: Test Post/Get endpoints easily from your browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.httpposttool.com

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of <http://hurl.it> :)

\--

Also, I've made a service that does the opposite: <http://httpbin.org>

<comment><AUTHOR> httpbin looks awesome. You should give that its own thread!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> REST Console for Chrome does GET/POST/PUT params. <https://github.com/codeinchaos/rest-console>

This is nice, though - surprised it fills a gap in functionality with how simple it is, but it does. <http://hurl.it/> currently doesn't have a way of entering individual params. Apigee console doesn't either. It also takes a click or two to get to a generic API console. <https://apigee.com/console/>

BTW I like how if you remove the middle two letters and each letter at the end of httpposttool you get groups of two of the same letter: ttppttoo.

</comment><comment><USER4> Neat service. Anyone know of a browser plugin/extension though that will let me do this from the context of an existing loaded page? I've wanted that for a while for testing local web dev stuff.

<comment><USER5> Request maker works well on chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kajfghlhfkcocafkcj...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kajfghlhfkcocafkcjlajldicbikpgnp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm looking for the opposite -- something that will accept HTTP requests, record them and let me view the log on a page. My use case is debugging callbacks (notification pushes) from APIs.

<comment><USER2> <http://httpbin.org> doesn't log, but it responds with the request info.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, that makes it useless when the service I want to debug is not one written by me; let's say Github or Notifio.

I could write a service like that in 5 minutes, just wondering it one exists, so I don't have to. :-)

<comment><USER2> If the requests is a POST, <http://postbin.org> will suit you perfectly :)

<comment><USER6> Thanks, that looks useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice! I like the name (2lazy2curl) and background, but am not totally sold on the font choice. I suspect it will grow on me though.

Nit-picky thing: consistent capitalization (2lazy2curl or 2Lazy2Curl) in the title bar and on the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good nit-picky catch on the capitalization. I agree, the font is unconventional. I might switch it to something more conventional, but it definitely does fit the theme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice--how does this compare to hurl.it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its more streamlined that hurl.it (which is a great product), but also less powerful. The use case I'm going for is very basic: quick and dirty POST endpoint testing. URL, query params, then go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice but I would rather stay on your page and have it show me what I sent and what I got back

</comment><comment><USER10> Hilarious visual design!

</comment><comment><USER11> another slick alternative <https://apigee.com/console/> has oauth support and some popular api endpoints already setup

</comment><comment><USER12> Pretty cool - a nice plus would be the ability to post files.</comment>


How I "hacked" Kayak and booked a cheaper flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.josecasanova.com/blog/how-i-hacked-kayak-and-booked-a-cheaper-flight/ <comment><USER2> No. I work for an OTA (not Kayak). First of all airlines file their fare rules and OTAs don't change the prices, and generally airlines pay around $10 to us to book a RT fare so there is little room to discount. Kayak is a meta which means all they do is present prices they are given from their partners (either via a feed or scrape) and then send them to the partner who shares the fee. Southwest (as others have mentioned) is not available in the US as a business choice. Kayak also heavily caches the fares (everyone does to make performance better) and inventory changes a lot especially in close by dates. Seeing cached prices of a cached price means the actual price can change a lot from searching to booking. Note the final price is __only __determined when you hit a booking page, everything before that is cached and might be fairly stale. Of course they can be errors in pricing since the fare rules are crazy complicated and often the difference in fares might be all the taxing entities. Each country, county, city, airport and cow pasture might affect the final price so it 's possible that a country where you are booking might affect this (our customers are mostly in the US) but I doubt it.

tldr - lucky "hacker"

<comment><USER3> If I open an incognito window and hit it again, why does the price change?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps because time elapsed between when you searched and when you searched using the Incognito window? Perhaps because you hit a different load balancer with a different cache?

It's quite possible that nothing nefarious is going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like someone else said, it's because it's a Southwest flight… Southwest isn't shown on the results of the big airfare search engines (kayak, expedia, orbitz) when searching from the United States because it refuses to pay those websites' fees.

Looks like you've found out that they are shown on Canada based version of the Kayak site. Most likely because the fee arrangements are different or because Southwest is willing to pay them, probably to get exposure to markets that wouldn't otherwise know about them because they don't have a marketing presence there.

<comment><USER6> This is definitely the most likely scenario. Kayak and other aggregating sites have different arrangements with different partners in different regions. In turn those partners have different arrangements either with direct connect or the GDS themselves (who may also have different arrangements depending on the geographic market).

You can get the same effect with other GDS products also, try rental cars for one. The other crazy thing is that different geographic markets are generally responsible for their own revenues, so you can have different promotions, and yield management strategies depending on who is trying to hit their numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the cheap flights were on WN (Southwest) and the expensive flights were on DL (Delta).

I just did an example flight search to fly later this week (Jan 24-30 round trip) from SLC to OAK, a route that both DL and WN fly direct. Kayak shows me fares from $492 on US and B6 changing planes in Phoenix or Long Beach (doubling distance and quintupling flight time) and direct flights from $532 on DL.

Kayak doesn't show me any WN prices in the USA, but might have some sort of pilot program or contract to show them outside the USA. Iflyswa.com shows direct flights from $526.

Meanwhile ITA Matrix (matrix.itasoftware.com, made with secret alien technology [0]) shows flights on US for $318 which violate the rules for domestic connection times and cannot be booked. It's strange that those flights are shown since Matrix is usually very reliable.

Going directly to US's website reveals fares of $440 for flights with a connection in Phoenix.

So what's the lesson here? Check the WN site directly instead of depending on search sites. Check both ITA Matrix and Kayak if you're depending on search sites; they don't have the same flights listed. Sometimes you need to check individual airline websites even though it's a pain because they have better flights and prices than search sites have; there's no reliable way to know when that's the case.

[0] [http://www.lisperati.com/logo.html](http://www.lisperati.com/logo.html)

<comment><USER8> > So what's the lesson here? Check the WN site directly instead of depending > on search sites.

Kayak and TripAdvisor will give you unpriced WN flights in their search results. You still have to check WN directly for prices, but it's useful for seeing what's available.

<comment><USER9> Being from Dallas (Southwest HQ) I know that Southwest doesn't allow other websites to use their booking and online flight pricing. Most airlines can be checked through Google Flights or Kayak but I know that I have to check with Southwest directly to compare their prices. BUMP: I guess I should have read the other comments as this has been said a dozen times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been doing this for years. After I noticed most places are cheap to get to but flights are expensive back. I noticed the same business model was in place from the other direction. So just fake the country of origin and you get cheap to and back.

The other one is clear your cookies before booking. Places create fake demand by disappearing the cheap flights on you if you shopping around. If you clear your cookies the cheap flights will return.

<comment><USER11> So you book two one-way tickets? AFAICT, that's usually not cheaper.

<comment><USER12> No, he changes his country of origin to C then books a round trip from A to B. It is sometimes cheaper that way.

<comment><USER10> That actual works as well, don't book anything from South Africa I found out as I was booking my mates flights. You could knock several hundred off by going through an Australian or UK proxy. I believe from memory it was the same agency as well. Just changing the domain brought up vastly different prices on the same flights.

But no as I mentioned above lots of holiday destinations have cheap tickets inbound, but out bound are expensive. I first noticed it travelling from London to Croatia.

It was like $200 flight to Split, but the flight home was double or triple. I hopped on a proxy, and found I could get the reverse deal from Split to London. $200 to London, $600 back home to split. So I started gaming the system.

The agencies are hedging on the fact you have to take the return flight. So they coerce you into the cheap flight to location X, but claw the money back with the return flight which I guess the vast majority of people have to take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The price descrimination that the airlines do is so opaque and manipulative, this is exactly why one needs to be cognizant of the technicals. We are really only a single logical step removed from a pretty bad place (read: racist/sexist/elitist, etc) with this teqnique to dynamic pricing and (essentially) ... front-running.[1] For example, we can charge black people more (based on zip-code demographics) to discourage them from flying first class. We could, if we wanted to, require PII prior to bidding on tickets. Imagine if the NYSE priced publicly traded equities in this manner? The irony of cutting out the middle man to reduce costs, is that at some stage, we may be paying an intermediary (broker/marketmaker) to anonymize our order flow to get "fair" prices.

[1] This is what it really is, lets be honest.

<comment><USER14> How is there front running when there are only two parties in the transaction?

<comment><USER13> A market maker can front-run you with 3rd party inventory (just like Kayak).

<comment><USER14> Huh. I didn't know Kayak dealt with 3rd party inventory. Interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This has nothing to do with the VPN, unfortunately.

The price difference comes from Southwest's price being different than Delta's. Southwest flights wont show up when searching Kayak's USA site, but they do show up on international Kayak pages. It sounds like that's because they don't want to pay the brokerage fees for flights booked through the USA versions of Kayak/Expedia/Travelocity -- but I'm not sure of that.

Interesting experiment though!

<comment><USER16> I just tried BOS-DEN nonstop 31 Jan to 7 Feb through the UK† and Canada††. Southwest came in cheapest on both searches. As has been noted, Southwest did not appear in the same search using www.kayak.com.

I was coming from a US IP. I wonder, if I had been coming from a British or Canadian IP, if I would have been redirected to the corresponding site.

†[http://www.kayak.co.uk/flights/BOS- DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07](http://www.kayak.co.uk/flights/BOS- DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07)

††[http://www.ca.kayak.com/flights/BOS- DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-0...](http://www.ca.kayak.com/flights/BOS- DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does source IP address make a difference when searching fares on ITA Software's Matrix[1]? To my knowledge, ITA Software is where Kayak and many of the other booking sites get their data, so it's normally what I use when searching for flights. Since they don't actually sell tickets, I've always assumed I'm seeing "neutral" results, but now I'm curious.

[1] [http://matrix.itasoftware.com](http://matrix.itasoftware.com)

<comment><USER18> Google bought out itasoftware so I'm not going to assume that it's completely neutral, but I have consistently seen the best deals come through that. I don't even bother using Kayak anymore as the "calendar" function on itasoftware is so much more useful for someone like me with a relatively flexible schedule on most of my trips.

I can't confirm, but I assume from personal experience that kayak increases prices on flights as you search for the same flight multiple times.

<comment><USER19> I've had this anecdotal experience as well. How is this legal?

<comment><USER20> Of course it is legal. In the same way as it is legal to set the sale price for (most) things at any (arbitrarily high, or low) value - airline ticketing takes place in a free market.

This means sellers can offer tickets at any price they want, and it is up to the purchaser to signal whether they think the price is appropriate by buying the ticket (or not) at some price. The alternative is government interference or regulation of the airline ticket industry, setting fixed prices, which would not be good for the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've often hacked Kayak by booking flights to other destinations with a stopover at the place I want to go. It's bizarre, but yes, they're sometimes cheaper.

"opaque and manipulative" indeed.

<comment><USER22> I have a similarly bizarre little story that's sort of the opposite: I recently _added_ a leg to a trip and cut my fare.

Just before the holidays, I was trying to get a flight from LAX to SLC. I tend to fly Southwest, but was finding the fares higher than usual -- generally I can get something in the $250-$300 range, I was seeing $350ish.

I was offered a ride to Sacramento, so I checked SAC -> SLC and found I could purchase that flight for $200. I booked it.

There are no direct flights from SAC -> SLC on Southwest, though. Mine, as it turned out, stopped over in... LAX.

<comment><USER23> This is actually not "bizarre". It's not even unusual. And it has a perfectly rational explanation.

Suppose there are three cities: City A, City B and City C. And for simplicity's sake, suppose that City B is the hub for the airline.

Let's say B and C are major business destinations with a lot of business traffic between them. Business travelers are less price-sensitive since they're not personally paying the fare (they just have to stay within corporate travel rules), and more concerned with things like flight length and schedule.

But City A, on the other hand, isn't really a major business destination. People who want to go from City A to other cities are likely on personal/tourist travel, and those passengers do one and only one thing: punch the origin and destination cities into a travel-search engine, and pick the cheapest ticket. All other considerations are null.

Now, suppose that you are the airline employee in charge of maximizing revenue. Getting money out of the B -> C route is easy -- you just need to know a bit about corporate travel policies. If most companies auto-approve any ticket under $500, for example, you could set the fare at $499 and, so long as the flight is short and at a good time of day, you'll get business travelers paying it.

But what about pricing for trips out of City A? They need to connect at your hub in City B, but again you have to remember that price is the _only_ consideration that matters to those passengers. So you set the fares out of City A as low as you can manage while still being profitable (and it may even turn out that B -> C has to subsidize the routes out of A a bit).

The result is, often, that A -> B -> C is cheaper than B -> C.

Similarly, for some city pairs, A -> B -> C will be cheaper than A -> B, which creates an incentive to buy the A -> B -> C ticket, not check a bag, and then just walk out of the airport in City B. This is "hidden city" ticketing (because it's "hiding" the fact that your real destination is the connection point), and airlines will usually penalize (through revocation of frequent- flyer accounts, etc.) passengers who do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm from Australia. My wife and I regularly use Expedia and other US travel websites to book _Australian_ domestic flights - even after our exchange rate conversion it still works out cheaper (often we save one or two hundred dollars). Australian airfare taxes are insane. The only downside is when things go wrong it is expensive to spend ages on hold while making an international call...

<comment><USER25> >expensive to spend ages on hold while making an international call

Did you try using Skype? Or Google Voice? Or similar? They are much cheaper than actually placing an international call, at least in the US, it is only like 3 cents a minute (US)

When I lived abroad I called home with Skype (this was before Google Voice) and I could talk as much as a wanted for only a couple dollars here and there, actually cheaper than my phone bill now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Startup idea:

A site that uses a bunch of VPNs in different countries to look for flights on the big search sites. Whichever is cheaper is presented as the one to buy.

It could of course be extended beyond airline travel...

<comment><USER27> Be prepared to be blocked. Each search on a site like Kayak costs money, and if a bunch of searches are being done automatically it will lower the conversion rate, which meta-search sites and their partners watch closely and care deeply about.

<comment><USER28> I doubt a search a day would even show on the radar

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't be a very successful startup then anyway would it?

<comment><USER28> not if they use that to predict which routes are cheaper in that day and then use the client browser to request the real time data from the top contenders

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> While booking flights in Europe I frequently toggle through kayak.de, kayak.it, lastminute, and kayak.com. Doesn't require a VPN, it's just that Kayak works through partners and the partners are country specific. You can often get better deals on one site or another, depending on the partner selection.

I haven't used it that much in North America recently, but it seems to be the same dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER31> "BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA"

As if using a VPN made you NSA-proof. Every time I see phrases like this I force myself not to think the person is a fool but it's hard.

People need to realize that ensuring security and privacy isn't fixed by installing just some tool and be done with it. Worse, they will do this and trust they are immune (and then the damage will be worse).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware it is not NSA proof.

<comment><USER32> You may be aware, but some of your readers may not. So some may think you're a fool to say that and other's may think it's a good way to stay safe. Both not really desirable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I experimented with this a few months ago using free Amazon Windows EC2 instances. The thought being that with EC2 instances I can come from far more IP end points than a specific VPN offers. What I found is many ticket/event sites ban connections from EC2 IP ranges. Sites like Kayak, TicketMaster, even Healthcare.gov drop incoming EC2 connections during the TCP handshake. I imagine this is to stop third party scrappers or ticket scalpers. I have no idea why Healthcare.gov blocks it.

</comment><comment><USER34> The difference is southwest. I think Southwest is not offered as an option on the US side but apparently is if booking from outside the US.

I just checked Southwest's website and the same flight is offered for $255.00 round trip.

</comment><comment><USER35> I do not work for Kayak. However, I believe that this may be due to the sale's city of the ticket. This is typically to encourage discounts in specific cities. When tickets are issued one aspect of the ticket is that it has a "sales location"

</comment><comment><USER36> No need for VPN - same result can be achieved (at least on this flight) by toggling the country manually to Canada.

</comment><comment><USER37> Flight price quotes can take the currency and sales city as input. You get to play with both those options in ITA matrix.

What you saw is probably based on those inputs being changed.

</comment><comment><USER38> changing your user agent also works in some websites (not sure about kayak though)

protip: don't let them know you have a mac book pro

<comment><USER25> They don't give you higher prices with a Macbook Pro, they might just suggest higher priced things.

[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230445860...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> You don't need a VPN to do this. You can just go to Southwest.com. I always check their website after I check Kayak because they don't list Southwest's flights.

</comment><comment><USER40> This sounds quite familiar to the manipulation Orbitz did in 2012 based on the user's reported operating system: [http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/25/orbitz_displaying_...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/25/orbitz_displaying_higher_priced_hotels_to_macs_than_pcs)

<comment><USER41> That is incorrect and unfortunate that it left the wrong impression in user's minds. Orbitz did not price up hotels based on OS, they chose to change the list of options presented to users based on OS. This is no different than what we simply call "personalization". If a user found the Wynn on a Mac or a PC, they were the same exact price, all that was different was what position that hotel was in in the default sort order.

<comment><USER42> That's an awful fine distinction there.

<comment><USER41> It's simply a sort algorithm that takes into account any possible signal including OS, Browser, IP / Geo, past purchase behavior, etc. If you figure out that Mac users on average tend to click more on "boutique" hotels that have better design, why would it be wrong to feature those higher up in the results list? It just so happens that those hotels tend to be more pricey but they certainly did not "price" up the same hotel for Mac users. One is standard personalization, the other is price discrimination, and the headline made it sound like the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > (BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA)

Unfortunately, that's not true and will even draw attention.

This XKeyScore slide is crazy: [http://hothardware.com/newsimages/Item26839/Xkeyscore1.jpg](http://hothardware.com/newsimages/Item26839/Xkeyscore1.jpg)

<comment><USER44> XkeyScore can decrypt my tunneled connection with aes-256, sha256? I knew the nsa was good but not that good... where does it say it decrypts the vpn tunnels of any kind on the slide though I'm curious -_-

<comment><USER45> Is your goal to be anonymous on your web? Because the traffic isn't encrypted when it leaves the VPN and your browser cookies (or various apps phoning home) will make your identity obvious.

<comment><USER44> No my goal is simply to evade the NSA wiretaps as well as my ISP who has recently started messing up my internet connection whenever I torrent, so I vpn overseas and torrent. But yes you are correct, in order to browse privately you should really use tails or something along with vpn and avoid say logging into facebook or anything linked to your identity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The "TL;DR" at the top of the post is completely different than the actual content of the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Kayak is not the only one, in India I have seen MakeMyTrip did not show couple of direct flights which I found on Cleartrip .

I would like to know if using VPN has a impact on large sites like Amazon(I have seen the price change there too)

</comment><comment><USER8> Flight metasearch sites have contracts with airlines and OTAs for specific markets, so you're likely to see different inventory if you visit a Canadian site instead of a US site, for example. Seeing different prices on the same inventory is much less likely (disregarding taxes and exchange rates.)

Like others have said, Southwest inventory doesn't often appear on sites like Kayak because they want customers to book directly. That cuts out the commission to Kayak and conditions people to look for flights on southwest.com in the future.

</comment><comment><USER48> I just did this for a CheapoAirFlights.co.uk flight to Saigon from London. Booking from a US IP cost a few hundred more, but I fired up the VPN and it worked fine.

</comment><comment><USER49> OTAs have all kinds of weird tricks raising and lowering prices to get people to book sooner rather than later. Instead of realizing that providing good service with a nice clean interface is the way to go they use these cheap tricks. Agoda, Booking.com and many other OTAs all do this sort of thing. Sometimes it's as simple and clearing your cookies to get a lower rate.

</comment><comment><USER50> The word hack becomes cheaper and cheaper each day.

<comment><USER51> Right or wrong, I have no opinion, but at this point, that word is used in the general population and popular media to mean, "I thought about a problem or situation differently than I usually do."

I think the lifehack movement started that train of thought. I'm not really sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> How much do fare change by location? Is it only a US vs. Canada things or are prices dependent on the US location from which the search is being made? It would be interesting to create a price map of various fares searched from different states in the US...

</comment><comment><USER53> there is working a trick for long distance flights. I used it a few times to get cheaper tickets:

when you are buying long distance flight tickets, pick a city close to where you will depart (this will add an additional flight transferring from your departure city). When you get multiple transfers there is a possibility that the offered price will be cheaper (I confirmed this with an agency when I initially figured this out). If you get a cheaper price buy it and call the airlines to tell them you will miss the first flight, and have them correct the check in location to your departure city. I was able to save $100 travelling from europe to east coast last time I did this.

<comment><USER54> Do this often enough and the airline will ban you. This is hidden city ticketing and repeated abuses will lead the airline to simply drop you as a customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Ticket prices will also be different if you use an international credit card. I used to save 100+ bucks with paypal instead of my Chinese credit card.

</comment><comment><USER56> _BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA_

That's okay. I'm sure the minor inconvenience of not seeing the data flow directly to your local IP is more than made up for by the data collection at both sides of that VPN...

To be serious, I wonder if they apply extra scrutiny to VPN providers, and use traffic analysis to build correlations between TCP connections. The extra effort might be justified by a higher class of data going across the connections.

Then again, it's probably easier to just use some form of evercookie injected into TCP streams on the fly...

</comment><comment><USER57> To me, the moral of the story is rather: Use another search engine than Kayak. Others, like Skyscanner, include Southwest.

</comment><comment><USER58> @OP PSS == "post script script". I do not think that means what you think it means.

</comment><comment><USER59> >(BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA).

>BTGuard

>

>mfw

oh hackernews..

<comment><USER60> BTGuard is based in Canada and they have a strict policy of not keeping logs. What's your point?

<comment><USER45> Well, for one thing, you've taken your domestic internet traffic -- which has legal protections against _many_ types of NSA intrusion -- and traded it for foreign traffic which has virtually no protection.

<comment><USER44> ok so use a vpn located in america. Boom.

<comment><USER44> And what protections does the NSA even respect?!? Dont make me die of laughter man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Cool. So just booking one flight pays for almost a years worth of VPN service.

</comment><comment> a-b Check your user agent line; Apple owners might overpay as well...

</comment><comment><USER62> Wait! There's something cheaper from Canada???

</comment><comment><USER63> Someone going to Phish?

</comment><comment><USER64> Just tried this myself and it definitely makes a difference. Thanks for the tip.

<comment><USER65> Ditto. Tried the same thing, and a United flight went from $400 to $356 on Kayak.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Transcrypt Python to JavaScript compiler can now include JSX - <AUTHOR> http://www.transcrypt.org?jsx <comment><AUTHOR> The Transcrypt v3.6.56 Python to JavaScript compiler can now delegate translation of code fragments to any external tool. This enables embedding JSX in your Python sourcecode.</comment>


Extra extra How to use the press to promote open source - <AUTHOR> http://opensource.com/life/14/11/open-source-marketing-and-using-press

<comment><USER2> Love this part "Don't call the press, email them with the details"</comment>


Wordpress is going AMP by default - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/AMPhtml/status/963443140005957632 <comment><AUTHOR> Called it. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312536)

Previous discussion about Google dedicating a team to accelerating Wordpress development - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16311918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16311918)

<comment><USER2> And I bet Google's team will magically stop "accelerating" wordpress after this change is implemented... They are really pushing AMP hard</comment></comment>


Bjarne Stroustrup – The Essence of C++ (2014) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86xWVb4XIyE <comment><USER2> 1 hour 25 minutes in, he talks about long compile times, another interesting part if you're just dipping in.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've watched this a while ago, there is a nice part about his opinion on garbage collection about 40 minutes in.</comment>


Coverr – Free video backgrounds for your website - <AUTHOR> http://coverr.co/ <comment><USER2> Great to see the community posting about our product. We built Coverr about a year ago as a side project of Veed.me. Glad to see people find it useful!

<comment><AUTHOR> I love it.

You guys should create a plugin for WordPress to use video backgrounds. You will have tons of customers waiting for it. If you need help with building plugins, I can help you with that.

<comment><USER2> Since it's just a side project, we don't really have the bandwidth to do so.. but if you're willing to contribute something like that, it'd be awesome and we'll obviously attribute for that on the site.. let us know we're at firstname.lastname@example.com</comment></comment></comment>