I miss Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@technicat/i-miss-lisp-847bf040be84 <comment><USER2> "But a combination of curly braces, parentheses, brackets, periods and commas is simpler and more succinct?"

It's more readable. Brackets usually implies array offsets, parentheses implies function or priority inside literal expressions, curly braces define boundaries of functional or structural contexts. If you'll think about it you'll realize that in would actually have been possible in a language like C to make use only of parentheses, relying on their position for syntax. Get this:

        int get_prime (int a) /* vector-using function */
        (   /* the second pair of parentheses in a
             * function definition is for its actual
             * context (and likewise for the rest (of
             * the content (blocks)))
             */

            int vector(100);

            vector(0) = 2;
            for (int i = 1; i < a; i++)
            (
                for (unsigned int j = vector(i-1) + 1;
                    j != ~0;
                    j++)
                (
                    int k = 0;
                    for (; k < i; k++)
                    (
                        if (j % vector(k) == 0)
                        (
                            break;
                        )
                    )

                    if (k == i)
                    (
                        vector(i) = j;
                        break;
                    )
                )
            )

            return vector(a);
        )

Now it's almost as annoying to read as it would have been if written in Lisp, isn't it?

<comment><AUTHOR> We can compare it to the Lisp version:

        (defmethod get-prime ((a integer))
          (let ((vector (make-array 100)))
            (setf (aref vector 0) 2)
            (loop for i from 1 upto a do
                  (loop for j from (1+ (aref vector (1- i))) do
                        (when (= i (loop for k below i
                                         until (zerop (mod j (aref vector k)))
                                         finally (return k)))
                          (setf (aref vector i) j)
                          (return))))
            (aref vector a)))

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "forgetting to add brackets when expanding a single-line if clause (and Eclipse will nag me about unnecessary brackets if I try to play it safe)" \- I believe that putting every if clause's body (even one-liners) inside brackets in Java is a good practice and I have never seen Eclipse telling it's bad.

<comment><USER4> He can just set eclipse to require the brackets or make them optional.</comment></comment>


Narrowed range of potential warming from 3°C to 1.2°C - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-dizzying-science-of-climate-change-gets-a-bit-clearer/ <comment><AUTHOR> The original research paper is paywalled (hence link to article) here: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25450](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25450)</comment>


RTL URLs get flipped, making phishing easier - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/nickmalcolm/status/766068791516114944 <comment><USER2> One of the comments on that twitter thread: "Very glad it's fixed. Not so great for users of other browsers though. God knows how long they'll take to correct it."

Except none of the other browsers have that bug. Somehow Chrome is still better though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very clever, I love the example using the emoji lock icon to indicate SSL works well on Mac

</comment><comment><USER4> The bug exists on chrome for android here. Rather nasty, would fool me.</comment>


CTL-C: Re-imagined IaaS with Docker Containers - <AUTHOR> http://ctl-c.io/#hn

<comment><USER2> For some reason this is buried at the very bottom in low-contrast text:

        CTL-C is the brain-child from the makers
        of AppFog.

        AppFog is now part of a $19.8B company
        which means we have the resources to
        back this in a big way. :)

<comment><USER3> I'm still waiting to see when that Century Link acquisition is going to have any effect on Appfog. Hell, they still do not support node 0.10.x and 0.10 stable was released six months ago. I actually have the same issue with Azure websites, the newest version they support is 0.8.x, while Heroku has up to 0.10.15

<comment><USER4> Since this is Docker-based, it sounds like it will support any version of Node that you'd like. If you want to run on whatever's on master, it should be possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Totally nit-picking here, but not a fan of the name and especially domain name `ctl-c`.

Where are containers physically hosted on (Amazon)? How do you allocate resources to containers? I assume that containers can talk to other containers even though they may reside on different VMs.

<comment><AUTHOR> You will be able to pick where to host your containers and they can talk to each other even if they are on different VMs, there will be an API with SDKs that will make app level topology layouts available to all containers and VMs

<comment><USER6> So if we pick where to host the containers, where's the markup? How does Ctl-C make money?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So is this totally vaporware with a signup button to judge interest levels?

</comment><comment><USER8> OpenStack can run with LXC as the "IaaS" tier.

<comment><USER9> Last time i tried openstack exactly for this reason (2-3 months ago) it was a nightmare to get _something_ to work with openstack + lxc. Nearly undocumented :(

<comment><USER10> Have you looked at [https://github.com/dotcloud/openstack- docker](https://github.com/dotcloud/openstack-docker) it allows you to use Docker to make it easier to use LXC with openstack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Will this be open-source so that we can run it on our own hardware/private cloud/development machines?

<comment><USER12> I can't speak for this particular project, but Docker (on which this project is based) is already open-source, and you can absolutely deploy it on your own hardware. See [http://docker.io](http://docker.io) for details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hello,

I am probably as close as you will get to an early adopter for this product. Make absolutely certain that I show up on your "customer interview" list. E-mail in profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Email sent

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Be careful or LayerVault might sue you over that Present icon.

<comment><USER15> They're using Designmodo's Flat UI Kit [http://designmodo.github.io/Flat- UI/](http://designmodo.github.io/Flat-UI/)</comment></comment>


On Sept. 11, He Checked Hijackers onto Flight 77. It's Haunted Him Ever Since - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2016/09/09/493133084/on-sept-11-he-checked-hijackers-onto-flight-77-its-haunted-him-ever-since <comment><USER2> What does a 9/11 article from 2016 have to do with technology? Is it the linked article "How Did Hijackers Get Past Airport Security"?</comment>


Travels in the New Psychedelic Bazaar (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/news/features/synthetic-drugs-2013-4/

<comment><USER2> China's revenge for the opium wars...

I probably count as a pioneer in this sort of thing; I remember an outfit on usenet who was an early research chemical and plant salesman, and thought it was incredibly cool to be able to do this. While nothing bad happened, I regret those youthful indiscretions, and feel sad for the kids messing with far more potentially dangerous things these days. I remember a big population of junkies ended up with parkinsons because someone cut corners on a fentanyl synthesis and made an isomer which is now widely used in Parkinson's research. It's only a matter of time before something like this happens again. Perhaps it already has.

<comment><USER3> You're thinking of MPTP[1]. It shows up in fiction a decent amount. Not many have been harmed by it; maybe seven cases total.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP#Discovery_in_users_of_illi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP#Discovery_in_users_of_illicit_drugs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm absolutely for the legalization of all drugs, but haven't figured out how that marketplace should look like -- I don't think they should be "pushed" at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> _" When one takes a new and unstudied drug, one makes oneself a human guinea pig."_</comment>


'A Very Fair Statement of His Past Life': Convicts and Tattoos in the 1800s - <AUTHOR> https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.27/ <comment><USER2> Title change seems off. The original title is better.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it OK to submit your own blog posts on HN? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you're submitting your blog post because you think HN readers would enjoy the article, then absolutely.

If you're submitting your blog post because you want free advertising, then not really, no.

I appreciate there's a fine line between the two (after all, who doesn't want free advertising?), but if HN readers are not interested then the article will quickly drop away without much exposure anyway.

<comment><USER3> yup- that's what the voting system is for

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd say yes. If it's interesting, it's interesting. If it's not, it will float off into the "new queue" ether unread.

</comment><comment><USER5> Absolutely yes. I'd much prefer a well thought-out blog post to a "Tell HN" or a long rambling comment fired off the cuff.

There's plenty of comments that float by when I think to myself "they should have done a blog post about that, it would have been so much better".

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, if you think it is interesting. Even if you don't get many upvotes at least 10-20 users will read it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5152341>

</comment><comment><USER7> The Tech Block is actually a place where you can submit tech-related posts too. <http://thetechblock.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> I think so, but I also don't think HN likes to see them from the same source very often, like even daily. Maybe a good one once a week or so?

</comment><comment><USER9> I never submit my blog posts to HN (because of my bad english), but definitely yes, it's OK.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes.

If you really think you've there sth that you need/want to share with others. (Anything). But not just for the clicks. And please keep the title 'to the point', not some link-baits.

I see many awesome articles on HN after days and (sometimes) weeks. I guess if the authors would themselves share the articles then the quality content can reach us on time as well :-)</comment>


Google Code-in - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/opensource/gci/2010-11/index.html <comment><USER2> I'm continually amazed by the contributions Google makes to the open-source community. I wish I was born in ~1995 :(</comment>


Five tips for getting rid of crapware - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/five-tips/?p=345

<comment><USER2> When I worked for a large systems integration company, we would wipe the hard drives and re-install the OS from a gold master customized for a specific customer. As a result PCs ran faster and had more RAM available for applications.</comment>


Amazon indicates they'll accept Macmillan's terms - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdMsgNo=1&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx2MEGQWTNGIMHV&displayType=tagsDetail&cdMsgID=Mx5Z9849POTZ4P#Mx5Z9849POTZ4P

<comment><USER3> There's something very weird about this. I'm surprised that they would post this in the Kindle forums, and the tone is just odd:

 _We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books._

If that's true, then why wait? Just "capitulate" now and get it over with. If you're going to tell the other side that you're going to cave anyway, you've pretty much given up all bargaining power.

I see the move to this agency model as such a monumentally bad deal for Amazon that it seems like one of four things must be going on here:

       a) They've analyzed the situation and know they can't win (unlikely)
       b) There's a legal reason that they can't do what they're doing (unlikely)
       c) They're running a more elaborate play than we all realize
       d) This was posted in error or without authorization

<comment><USER4> e) 5-10 big name publishers threatened Amazon over Macmillan, and they had to choose between backing down or facing a publisher revolt.

<comment><USER5> f) Amazon believes the consumer will eventually force the prices down and this was their method of bringing public attention to the issue. Thus every author posting on their blog today ultimately helps Amazon.

<comment><USER6> If Amazon's goal was to make noise they'd hardly have picked the Kindle forum as the place to do so.

<comment><USER7> why not; that's probably their most vocal consumer market for ebooks after all

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Huge win for the publishers. If Amazon accepts, then the publishers (And I disagree with Amazon, once they conceed with Macmillan, the rest will want the same deal) will be able to leverage this agreement to get the same from Barnes and Nobles and other eBook sellers - I'm sure Apple will, likewise, agree - <USER2> they haven't already.

This will restrict (prevent?) Amazon, B&N, Apple from discounting eBook prices to get people into their eStore. It hurts the reader, in that they can't get cheap eBooks until a year after they are released. I wonder if the publishers will try to extend this to the "Physical" book market, or whether that's a different ballgame altogether. (If Walmart is the Amazon in the physical book market, who is the Apple? I'm sure B&N likes being able to flexibly price books to get traffic in the store. As does Target. For that matter, so does Amazon. Is there an odd man out there with enough volume to make a difference?)

From a competitive landscape perspective - Steve Jobs knew that providing an agency model as a negotiating tool to Macmillan was valuable - I'm wondering what he got back in return?

All in all, a very exciting weekend of developments in the eBook economy. All started with the iBook store negotiating between Apple and Macmillan, I'm sure.

<comment><USER9> _It hurts the reader, in that they can't get cheap eBooks until a year after they are released_

One of the lessons I have learned from this debacle is that I should be careful what I wish for. It turns out, according to my favorite authors, that time-sensitive pricing is a huge part of what makes the economics of their business work. After all, an author's hardcore fans are willing to pay more, and time-sensitive pricing -- with books costing more on the day of release, then gradually getting cheaper -- is the established mechanism for extracting that premium. The "hardcover" vs "softcover" vs "remaindered" thing is the industry's way of signalling the different price points.

I've suddenly started looking at hardcover buyers with more respect. These people aren't suckers, or at least they aren't _mere_ suckers. They are the patrons, the hardcore fans, that are keeping my favorite writers in business.

It would be the height of irony if I eventually got what I used to think was my wish -- flat-rate ebooks at, say, $5 per copy, no premium pricing -- only to see my favorite authors either go out of business or figure out some other way -- exclusive early releases by subscription, the street performer protocol, selling T-shirts, product placement -- to recover the equivalent of the cost of a hardcover book!

We're all going to save money in the e-book era, but I'm not really sure it's going to be _that_ much money: Writers and editors and marketers still need to be paid. We'll save on printing and shipping, but that may be about it. There just aren't tons of excess profits sitting around in book publishing: The audiences are too small. I might not even save money on bricks and mortar: I _like_ visiting bookstores or the equivalent, even if just to sit and drink tea while surrounded by media.

<comment><USER10> _I've suddenly started looking at hardcover buyers with more respect. These people aren't suckers, or at least they aren't mere suckers. They are the patrons, the hardcore fans, that are keeping my favorite writers in business._

For years I felt proud of that -- as I mentioned yesterday, I used to buy hardcovers pretty indiscriminately. I'll happily pay extra for quicker access. That's why I shelled out $350 for the machine which teleports books directly into my hand. When I hear publishers talking about windowing books on my Kindle to protect their no-longer-relevant-to-me hardcovers and physical distribution systems, I get a little upset. I mentioned so on my blog.

This morning, I woke up to an inbox full of mail from people who profess to be professional communicators telling me that I "stabbed them in the back" and was a "useless parasite" and "tightwad" for expressing my desire to continue paying them thousands of dollars in return for fastest possible access. I think of myself as a patron. They clearly think of me as a sucker. Did the Medicis ever have to put up with this? Of course not: in addition to hiring artists they also had assassins on the payroll. I'm strangely tempted.

It seems like six authors have a radically different understanding of the patronage relationship than I do. In a not totally unrelated turn of events, today my To Read list got shorter by two books.

<comment><USER11> > When I hear publishers talking about windowing books on my Kindle to protect > their no-longer-relevant-to-me hardcovers and physical distribution systems, > I get a little upset.

It's important to note that Macmillan was only considering windowing books on the Kindle because Amazon was forcing them to sell their books at a price below what they believed was profitable. Had Amazon been more flexible in allowing publishers to set prices for the content _they own_ , then this never would've happened.

<comment><USER10> Here's what I'm hearing from Macmillan: whine whine whine, blah blah blah, _windowing_. Whine whine whine, blah blah blah, _price increase_. Whine whine whine, blah blah blah, _most books will be released simultaneously_.

(When I hear that I start speculating on what books a hit-driven industry will make into the exceptions from simultaneous release. Oh, right: the ones they think I'm most likely to want to read.)

I understand on an intellectual level that Macmillan has business model problems, but their problems are not my problems. Attempting to make them my problems does not endear them to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. I'm surprised Amazon didn't leave the hurt on longer, find some way to ensure used stock of the most important Macmillan titles to block revenue to Macmillan, go all out tactical maneuvers on this one. Their not-even two week old impressively ambitious strategy is already cracking and I suspect once one publisher has stiff-armed them, their ability to reel-in the others will be nullified.

I don't really have a team I'm rooting for here, but this is as close as I get to watching sports and the quarterback for one team just got taken off the field in a stretcher 2 minutes into the game. Man, and I thought the final bit of this was going to be Bezos vs. Jobs slugging it out over the future of publishing, now it's looking like it'll underwhelm.

<comment><USER12> Going nuclear on Macmillan was a mistake. It made Amazon look like the bully, and I wouldn't be surprised if it scared the other major publishers into standing behind Macmillan.

<comment><USER6> That's believable. But Amazon basically declared war on book publishers two weeks ago anyway. It's disappointing that when the publishers (predictably) pushed back that Amazon didn't have something more nuanced than this worked out.

I figured going nuclear was part of a scorched earth strategy, "You can die now or later..." sort of thing. From the (admittedly, little) that I understand of the publishing industry, it's fragile enough that there was at least uncertainty in what the result of such would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amazon would have done a lot better out of this if they hadn't pulled the dick move of removing all of Macmillan's irrelevant-to-the-argument _print_ titles.

Now we've seen Amazon's true colors. They're not bothered about destroying their entire relationship with you if you want to negotiate on one element of it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm curious why people think e-books should be so cheap? $15 for a recent release really isn't a bad deal in my opinion. Books are a value compared to most other forms of entertainment. A new release movie costs you $15-$25 and it's only 2 or 3 hours of entertainment. A new release video game costs $50-$60 and is probably pretty close to the number of hours of entertainment a book offers. A CD is $10-$15 for up to 70 minutes of entertainment. That's simplifying it a bit since we should consider the re-consumption value of each medium but I think it's worth considering that a book has quite a bit of consumer value. I think it's also worth considering that the number of people who actually read books has been on the decline for some time. I'm not sure a lower e-book pricing model makes up the difference. Are people more likely to read if a book is $5 instead of $10? Doubtful since libraries have books for free and most people _still_ don't read that much.

<comment><USER15> _For me_ (and I don't claim this calculus works for anyone else) an ebook is overpriced if I can get a discounted or used copy of a print version for the same amount or less. The print copy has intrinsic value; I can resell it, lend it out, donate it to a "books for prisoners" program or leave it to my grandkids; it requires no additional hardware, and I'll be able to read it anywhere, anytime for the rest of my life. If I drop it down a sewer grate or forget it in a cab, I'm out no more than the replacement cost of the book (which is probably out in paperback now). If I throw it in a box in the attic and leave it there, barring the Rise of the Silverfish I'll be able to pull the box back down again in ten years and pick right back up reading it again.

But the electronic copy has _no_ intrinsic value; I can't resell it, lend it out, or donate it; it requires additional hardware to use, and I can only read it on the platform(s) the vendor allows me to read it on for as long as the vendor allows me to read it. If I'm reading on my PC, I can't change platforms or upgrade my OS unless the proprietary reader software is available for the platform/OS I'm moving to. If the vendor decides to adopt another format or leave the business entirely, my books suddenly have a drop-dead date: once my hardware breaks, I lose the titles I've bought forever.

A lot of these issues go away with non-DRMed titles, but in all but a few cases (bulky tech reference titles for example) a DRM-free eBook is still unlikely to be worth as much to me as the print version.

And you really don't want to get into the "dollars per hour" argument here. The iPhone game I just finished up cost me a dollar and I got a good 20+ hours of play time out of it. But I can get through an average-sized book in four or five hours, so if I went by price per enjoyment-hour, it'd make that book worth about twenty-five cents. (I'm cheap, but not _that_ cheap...)

<comment><USER16> I can't upvote you enough :)

The calculus works for me, as well, with a twist. I place very little _intrinsic_ value on the paper book, myself, other than as a delivery mechanism. As you point out, however, since I can resell it, the market places non-zero value on some instances of paper books[1].

Since the value, for me, is entirely in the convenience of delivery, hardback books, by their bulkier, heavier nature, have less value than mass market paperbacks. I even wrinkle my nose at "trade" paperbacks[2]. The size of the current crop of e-readers fail to be no larger than a mass market paperback, even the silly extra-tall ones.

An electronic copy, to me, does have _some_ intrinsic value in that it's searchable, but that's primarily interesting for the bulky tech reference titles you allude to.

Everything else is delivery. I'm only willing to pay the full $8 price when I'm desperate, having nothing with me to read, but a local bookstore having something I know I'd buy eventually anyway. It's something I try to avoid by thinking ahead. Otherwise, for a brand new book, the Costco $6ish is my limit, and that's typically only for the more popular releases. Otherwise, it's $2-$5 at the used bookstore or online.

In contrast, perhaps since I'm not an avid game-player, or, perhaps because I read for pleasure 2-3 slower than I could, I find the price per enjoyment-hour to be one that makes some sense. This leads to a desire for a subscription model, since, after all, I can only read one book at a time. It would allow me to try out a writer without forking over my time _and_ the cost of a whole book. Moreover, I'd be happy to pay several times as much for a 1k+ page Pynchon tome as for a pulpy novella or something in between[3].

If such a system were to pay royalties based on usage, I would expect it to encourage writing that's a balance between being so light as to be skimmable and so involved as to be inaccessible. I believe this to be a desirable consequence, though I recognize the danger in, if I may abuse the term, engineering regression toward the mean.

[1] This is on the order of $1 per item, in trade, at my local used bookstore. It's often $0.

[2] though some can mostly fit in a pant pocket, especially the Canadian Costco cargo pants I favor

[3] all of which I enjoy, but I can't fathom paying full price for 150 pages consumable in one sitting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Macmillan ... are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99

"We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self- published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

"Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!"

Wow. What a masterfully passive aggressive mash. They made us do it. But they'll see. They will. Will.

Also, even if Amazon's posts on that forum are normally signed by "the team," this was a decision by somebody or a small group of somebodies, and it should have been signed by a name. Especially something as masterful as this.

</comment><comment><USER18> I agree with Amazon's opinion on the prices, but disagree with their action.

If the publishers wish to have their items for a certain price, let them. However, I think it's clear they are in for a rude awakening when they see the sales figures.

My fear is that the publishers will find a way to blame not their prices, but another variable (Amazon, the devices, something else). Ultimately hindering the availability of books and adoption rate of what could have been an excellent format.

Your product is only worth what others are willing to pay and I do not believe I am in the minority when I think that $14.99 (or even $9.99) for many is too much for a non-tangible drm (or not) ebook.

</comment><comment><USER19> An author published by Macmillan did a write up about this on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's blog: [http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/why-my-books-are-no-longer- avail...](http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/why-my-books-are-no-longer-available-on- amazon-com/)

You can probably skip the commentary on free markets, but he has some interesting insight in the actual cost and mechanics of publishing. He explains that at the moment eBooks are the equivalent of selling limited editions of paper books because they just don't have the volume yet.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ironic that Apple is the one forcing Amazon's hand for not allowing publishers to use the agency model. Steve Jobs went to war with the record labels when they wanted the same thing as Macmillan. Even better is that Amazon went agency for their music sales which put a kink in Apple's plans and caused them to introduce flex pricing and DRM free content. This is all the result of two egos duking it out. Fun to watch.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's more than just an indication: "we [Amazon] will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms" ( [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01ama...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01amazonweb.html) )

</comment><comment><USER22> I never understood why an e-song can be sold for 99cts and an e-book can not.

Anybody care to explain the economics of both?

<comment><USER23> e-songs sell much higher volume. Therefore, e-books must cost more to cover the fixed costs (someone else posted a breakdown of book-costs in an earlier thread).

Edit: [http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01/31/why-my-books-are- no-...](http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01/31/why-my-books-are-no-longer- for-sale-via-amazon/)

<comment><USER24> Additionally, the effort required to produce a song is much less. I could write, record, mix, and master a song in a week. A book would take several months just to get a first draft.

An album of songs is much closer in terms of production costs, and requires a similarly large effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why are authors going to stick with publishers in 10 years or 20 years or however long it takes for there to be more eBook purchasers than physical book purchasers?

I mean, it only took cell phones what, 15 years before they were so common that people in third world nations had them, right?

</comment><comment><USER26> And...queue Amazon publishing house in 3...2...1...?

<comment><USER27> Which would be interesting to see them try, but I don't think they'd find many takers among popular authors right now. Most of the anti-Amazon press this weekend was generated by _authors_ angry over the stealth delisting of their physical books. It's a community response, too: many of the angry authors did not even publish through MacMillan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Apple is encouraging cartels.

<comment><USER29> Sure, but most cartels fall over time as the players find themselves having divergent priorities. And even now, I'm going to tie myself to Amazon's MP3 store. I just got a Pre Plus and I'm never, ever going to buy a song from iTunes again.

<comment><USER30> Why do you tie yourself to anything? There is no more DRM. No need for any tieing.

Buy wherever it's cheapest or where what you want is available. File formats are no problem, webOS plays both MP3 and AAC files.

<comment><USER29> I thought the cheaper iTunes downloads are still FairPlay protected AACs and only the $1.29 downloads are DRM free.

<comment><USER31> They dropped the price of DRM-free tracks to be the same as DRMed tracks way back, and during the first quarter of last year they removed DRM from all of the songs in their library.

Some music videos are still DRMed, but all songs are DRM-free 256 KBps AACs for 99 cents.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you protect your idea(s) from being stolen by your partners - <AUTHOR>

I ask this because I have just had a light come on in my head. I know its a brilliant idea and will work if implemented properly. I have some of the skills required and I can find people to help with the things I cannot do. However in-explaining to them what the idea is, they can go behind me and get it done faster. Heck, they can get it done without my help. The way I see it I have two options: 1. Keep it to myself and take the time I need to build up the skills I lack, then go it alone or
2. Tell them and hope that they turn out to be more decent human beings than I have ever met? What's your advice? <comment><USER2> I'd say there is little value in keeping _any_ idea to yourself. Ideas are incredibly cheap[1]. First mover advantage has also been shown not to be very important - just look at Facebook vs earlier social networks as an extreme example. Its all about execution - anyone can come up with good ideas (hell, YC is now even experimenting with accepting teams _without_ ideas). Besides, lots of people have ideas all the time and very few people go through with them. The going through with them is the valuable part, not the having ideas part.

[1] I was at Startup Weekend recently and our team (5 of us who had never met before the Friday night) turned a vague and impossible concept into a workable product prototype including business plan, market validation and pitch to investors in ~40 hours. We started out because we felt it would be a fun project to build crazy multiplayer game AI and ended up with an analytics solution that real game developers told us they would happily pay for to being approached by an investor asking us to continue working on it - all in the space of a weekend of focused brainstorming. If a focused weekend is all it takes to come up with a refined idea, basic prototype, business plan, market validation and pitch to investors, then I don't think its worth worrying about if someone will steal your idea. Most startups fail anyway and I bet very very few, if any at all, failures are because the company didn't keep quiet about their idea.

PS: the one time when it may make sense to keep your ideas secret is if you are told to, eg, by an investor who's about to give you a lot of money (but be careful! don't want the investor to back out after you've told everyone else that you can't talk about your business...). Outside of that special case, I think you _need_ to give your idea away at some stage, eg, at a minimum for market validation or to tell investors about it (they won't sign NDA's).

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't partner with people who you can't even trust with an idea.</comment>


The Case for Controlled Side Effects - <AUTHOR> http://two-wrongs.com/the-case-for-controlled-side-effects <comment><USER2> I totally agree with all of this, but I think the hard part of writing side effect free code is that it often involves more allocations. (Since you're constantly constructing new values and objects, and transferring them around on the stack). I think this is why you see a lot more mutation (and bugs) in C: managing allocations is annoying. Having a garbage collected language mitigates the burden on the programmer, but if you're writing performance sensitive code that means you're putting pressure on the garbage collector so you're going to get more pauses. Not to say you shouldn't write in this style, you should, but there's a pretty big opportunity for languages to get better in this regard.

<comment><USER3> > I think the hard part of writing side effect free code is that it often > involves more allocations

Are you saying this in spite of the existing implementation of decent persistent data structures, at least in some languages? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure)

I think the cost in more memory (and with persistent data structures, only the _difference_ in memory of the change) is more than made up for by fewer bugs, easier concurrency, and a host of other benefits.

In the light of "mutability always produces more bugs," mutation should be seen as an _optimization_ , _after_ tests are written which cover behavior and side effects.

<comment><USER4> > Are you saying this in spite of the existing implementation of decent > persistent data structures, at least in some languages?

No, s/he's saying that _because of_ the existing implementations of decent persistent data structures. Practically all of them allocate _way_ more than mutable data structures - e.g. trie-based vectors/arrays, trie-base hashmaps, tree-based ordered maps, etc. Essentially each new addition, modification or removal results in one or more allocations.

<comment><USER5> Also, those allocations imply linked, rather than contiguous, data structures, which (often? always?) imply poor cache interaction, which is a major source of inefficiency.

Would love some more perspectives on this, as I've just watched a couple cppcon talks ([0], [1]) and I'm feeling a bit drunk on the kool-aid.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHNmRkzxHWs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHNmRkzxHWs)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc)

<comment><USER6> There are data structures that are a combination of linked and contiguous, such as the classic rope data structure. For persistent collections, a common backing data structure is the hash array mapped trie, which is basically a quickly-navigated tree of arrays.

Somewhere in there is the obvious tradeoff you have to make between access time and copying time, with regards to the array length.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the info, I didn't realize the connection between hash array mapped tries and persistent collections. Are you aware of any open source (ie. linkable) implementations that work that way?

<comment><USER4> Clojure [1] - the crucial implementation is really in classes BitmapIndexedNode and ArrayNode.

Scala [2] - Scala's source is an incredibly convoluted spaghetti of abstract classes and traits, but it looks like the main bits of implementation is in methods get0 and updated0 of HashTrieMap.

There's also a C# implementation somewhere, but it's not a part of a language library, so it's likely less optimized (except for some boxing/reified generics, which make it theoretically more efficient). But all these implementations use the same basic algorithm, so it's irrelevant which one you study.

[1] [https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/master/src/jvm/cloju...](https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/master/src/jvm/clojure/lang/PersistentHashMap.java)

[2] [https://github.com/scala/scala/blob/2.11.x/src/library/scala...](https://github.com/scala/scala/blob/2.11.x/src/library/scala/collection/immutable/HashMap.scala)

<comment><USER5> Wow, thanks for doing the leg work for me. This is the type of thing that reminds me why the internet is so wonderful :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretending that modern type systems provide anything near an adequate control of effects is misleading at best. Controlled side effects are an excellent goal; the way Haskell (or the pure-FP approach) goes about achieving that goal not only falls short of the target (which is OK) but may be going off in the wrong direction altogether.

For example, one of the important things about side effects is not only their existence or lack thereof, but their ordering (e.g. you must write to a socket _after_ you open it and _before_ you close it). While enforcing ordering is possible with PFP type systems (to a certain extent), it gets very complicated very fast. On the other hand, other ways of reasoning about effects and their ordering -- e.g. by debugging and profiling -- are made harder, rather than easier, by the PFP approach.

Personally, I _believe_ a better approach is imperative-functional, namely inline (i.e. non-monadic) side-effects, but made explicit with good effect systems. Sadly, we're not yet at a point where this is possible and easy to do.

I strongly believe monads are not a good way of representing side effects, and to understand why you only need to look at how hard it is to compose monads and how difficult to follow are the ways of composing them (monad transformers).

<comment><USER8> > Pretending that modern type systems provide anything near an adequate > control of effects is misleading at best

Adequate for what exactly? Programmers all around the world are using Haskell every day and finding it saves them headaches because it offers them some benefits with regard to control over effects. It's perfectly adequate for us. I've been writing Haskell every working day for over two years and one of the things I most appreciate about it is its effect system.

You keep repeating these kinds of claims but you don't actually offer any alternative, nor have you offered any compelling explanation for why debugging and profiling should be _intrinsically_ harder in a pure functional language.

Maybe you can't write an air traffic control system in Haskell. So what? Who cares? Haskell is a phenomenally useful tool for a growing number of developers working on a wide range of different tasks (those tasks don't include air traffic control systems or missile defense systems, but we'll live with that).

And pray tell, what would an effect system look like that's not monadic? I'm genuinely interested as I benefit every working day from Haskell's effect typing and if there's something even better I'd like to know about it!

I'm keenly waiting for your talk to appear here so I can actually try to understand what you are on about:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC- WICcSW1k3HsScuXxDrp0w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC- WICcSW1k3HsScuXxDrp0w)

Hope it appears at some point!

<comment><USER7> > I've been writing Haskell every working day for over two years and one of > the things I most appreciate about it is its effect system.

Haskell's type system is not an effect system.

> And pray tell, what would an effect system look like that's not monadic?

Something like this -- [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/projects/koka/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/koka/) \-- but with notions of ordering and better composition.

> Hope it appears at some point!

It's up there now.

<comment><USER8> > Haskell's type system is not an effect system.

Haskell's type system models effects through things like monads, applicatives, categories. If you don't agree with this then you're going to have to tell me what your definition of "effect system" and "type system" are.

> Something like this -- [http://research.microsoft.com/en- > us/projects/koka/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/koka/) \-- > but with notions of ordering and better composition.

I'll give it a look, thanks,

> It's up there now.

Wow, that was good timing!

<comment><USER7> > Haskell's type system models effects through things like monads, > applicatives, categories. If you don't agree with this then you're going to > have to tell me what your definition of "effect system" and "type system" > are.

Haskell's type system, as you rightly note, _models_ effects through types on return values combined with monads. But Haskell code -- since the language is pure -- by definition has no effects. It triggers effects in the runtime by returning monadic values, but it doesn't actually have effects (if it did, it wouldn't have been pure). An effect system[1] describes the effect _impure_ functions have rather than the types of the values they return (i.e. they don't require effects to be modeled as values). An example of an effect system is Java's checked exceptions, or Koka's effects.

> Wow, that was good timing!

You'll be disappointed if you're expecting a discussion of effect systems...

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

<comment><USER8> > > Wow, that was good timing!

> You'll be disappointed if you're expecting a discussion of effect systems...

I'm expecting a discussion of why continuations are enough.

<comment><USER7> That's discussed but without a proof. I'm working on a blog post (to be published today or tomorrow) which links to the proof and provides a more in- depth discussion.

<comment><USER8> Great, I'm looking forward to it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The D programming language has compiler support for this. Unfortunately due to legacy concerns it's opt-in, which makes it much less useful, and the designers have said that they regret not adding it to the language earlier when it could have been mandated.

It has the `pure' keyword, which can be used to annotate functions that don't have any side-effects _other than mutating its arguments_. If you want to disallow mutating arguments, you can just const them up. In the article's example, you could probably eliminate a lot digging through code by only looking at the functions without a `pure' annotation and where `profile.verified_email' is accessible in a non-const argument.

The D designers call the property that the `pure' annotation enforces "weak purity" and I think it's a really useful notion for managing side effects in imperative languages. In C, for example, it just means that you can't mutate global (or local static) variables, or mutate anything through them (no mutating the value pointed at by a global).

Shame it didn't make it into Rust. I guess the rationale was that it made lambdas too complicated and didn't reall come with much benefit (there aren't many more ways to violate weak purity in Rust than in C, and Rust actually forbids mutable globals anyway).

</comment><comment><USER10> That is a symptom of mutable code. In that case, side-effects are nearly a red herring because if the object were immutable, then you would really only ever have to check once.

<comment><USER11> Mutation is one of many side-effects. Side-effect tracking is a solution to more than just mutation.

<comment><USER12> Could you give an example of a dangerous side-effect that is not a mutation?

<comment><USER13> Printing out stuff; playing a song; starting a script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > I don't like wasting my time on things my computer could do for me.

So don't. Let the interpreter check profile.verified_email twice (horror of horrors!) and get back to your day job.

Even if there are _no_ in-program side effects, removing a 2nd check for verified_email immediately before preparing and sending the email introduces a race condition: the user's email is verified, your first check runs, then you go talking to the DB and who knows what else for the last_interaction fetch/business logic, meanwhile, user changes their email address, and now profile.verified_email is false. By skipping your 2nd if check, you send your email to an address that is still pending verification. This assumes that .verified_email is a property that talks to the DB, and while it'd be better style in that case to make it an .is_verified_email() method to make that clear, doing so is a plausible and not-incorrect use of properties.

It's not worth your (employer's) time to even _check_ if that's the case. Leave the non-broken code as-is and return to your regular programming.

<comment><USER15> Add a comment so the next person reading the code can understand why it's built that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with the need/value of side-effect/pure annotations. From a debugging perspective though, there are 2 alternative solutions: Aspect Oriented Programming (i.e., mutation observations) and Immutable data types (e.g., Object freezing) to cause an exception on mutation.

Depending on the language, you can replace the value with a watcher or proxy and add a break point to know if it was mutated between those lines. Alternatively, you could freeze the object or property or make it immutable between those lines to cause an exception to be thrown. Both will require triggering the case in question live so annotations still superior, especially compared to manually reading code.

</comment><comment><USER17> I didn't see this addressed in the article:

Do these annotations have force? I've run into plenty of annotations that lie - how can I trust that code that's annotated as being side-effect-free actually _is_?

<comment><USER9> Maybe the author, presumably well versed in type systems, assumed that the use of _effect typing_ was implied. If you're not familiar go check it out, but I'll give a synopsis. If you're familiar with `unsafe' in Rust, it's a specific case of effect typing.

You can annotate a function with an effect (useful examples: unsafe, impure, throws exceptions) and then if another function calls that function, then it needs to also be annotated with that effect, or else the compiler emits and error. Usually there will also be an escape hatch where you can assert to the compiler that you know, in a way that it can't statically prove, that a certain call to, say, an impure function, still doesn't have side effects. Code that appears within these escape hatches needs to be heavily tested in order for effect typing to be useful.

For the above examples of effect types, the compiler will also consider certain non-function-call constructs to have an effect annotation. Dereferencing an arbitrary integer as a pointer, for example, would effectively have an "unsafe" annotation.

I believe Nim has a generalized implementation of effect typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was waiting for the paragraph that read "I'm not talking about pure functional languages because X, nor am I talking about Rust, because Y."

So, yeah, uncontrolled side-effect are a PITA. Solutions exist.

</comment><comment><USER19> He mentions Python, is there a solution to this in Python? Perhaps Python 3.5 with optional type checking annotations?

</comment><comment><USER20> Wonder how many klocs are underneath that `profile.email.interactions()` method?

</comment><comment><USER21> Welcome to Haskell.

No, seriously. We allow side effects. We have the STM monad, the ST (single- threaded) monad, and the IO monad if you really want to go wild. And almost no one seriously argues that the IO monad is "dirty" and should be avoided. In fact, the type signature of a top-level executable's main is IO () by mandate.

I want to make a proposal, which is that we ban the term "side effect". It doesn't mean what people think it does.

For example, the print function puts output on the console but that's not a "side effect"; that's _the main effect_. I would argue also that non- detectable stateful effects (e.g. building up a large dictionary mutably) shouldn't be called "side effects" (although they are _stateful_ effects) if they're purely implementation details that are hidden behind an interface.

"Side effect", I think, is a case of a term that used to resemble either a design flaw or a non-intuitive behavior (i.e. reading your command-line arguments deletes the strings, which is something that I encountered in one system) that is tolerated for performance's sake; but that has now been expanded to include stateful main (i.e. desired) effects as well.

<comment><USER8> "Side effect" means something that happens implicitly as a result of evaluation. There's no need to ban the term; we just need to keep in mind how it differs from the more general notion of "effect".</comment></comment>


Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2012/11/20/165513016/big-news-from-mars-rover-scientists-mum-for-now

<comment><USER3> Organic Chemist here engaging in some speculation.

My best guess: Curiosity's SAM module has discovered significant levels of small organic molecules in the Martian soil. Not just any organic molecules, but either byproducts of life - or more exciting, the actual building blocks of life.

This would be strong evidence for present or past life, but would be far from an observation of life itself.

Some commenters have made the point that 'something for the history books' (the quote from the missions's PI) means different things for scientists and the public.

I'm pretty sure the discovery falls into the category of exciting for scientists, not exciting for the general public.

The data in question are coming from SAM, Curiosity's sample analysis tool. It's equipped with six gas chromatography (GC) columns. The output of these columns can be fed into either a mass detector (QMS) or spectrometer (TLS). IMO, none of these tools can detect life itself:

<http://ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/sam/samiam.html>

SAM's purpose is specifically to find evidence for organic molecules - molecules based on carbon. The announcement will have something to do with discovery of organic molecules of some kind:

<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20110118.html>

So direct observation of microbes or any other life form will not be the announcement. I'm pretty sure that's the only discovery that would be 'earthshaking' for the public.

What would be earthshaking for me as an organic chemist?

One possibility would be that SAM has discovered known byproducts of life, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), as was found in the Martian Meteorite studied by the Zare group:

[http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/97/4.3.97/Mars_rock.ht...](http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/97/4.3.97/Mars_rock.html)

PAHs can be made through a variety of inanimate processes, so I'd view this discovery as more ho-hum.

Still, it should be remembered that Viking failed to detect the presence of any organic molecules at all. Finding any organic molecules would be a big change in how we view Mars - but not in my view 'one for the history books'.

However, if familiar building blocks of life such as amino acids or carbohydrates were detected, that would indeed fall into the earthshaking category.

Life on Earth uses a selection of about 20 different amino acids. I would consider observation of a similar assortment of amino acids as strong evidence pointing to past or present life on Mars.

Observation of five- and six-carbon carbohydrates, which are generally much more difficult to synthesize than amino acids, would be even stronger evidence for life. It's hard to overestimate how important that discovery would be.

Observation of peptides - amino acids strung together as is done by all known life would probably be the most mind-blowing thing I could imagine SAM discovering. Depending on what specifically was found, it could remove any doubt - Mars has or had life. Very long peptide chains can be synthesized without life, but it's not easy. The exact composition of amino acids in the peptide chain would be critical for the interpretation and would be more time consuming than just, for example, observing a PAH.

The fact that amino acids, peptides, or carbohydrates themselves were detectable today, given that they do degrade over time, could point in the direction of life having been present recently.

<comment><USER4> I feel like the detection of e.g. amino acids on mars is just wishful thinking. That either points to panspermia (either mars->earth or earth->mars or, uhh, alien-> both?) or concurrent development of extremely similar forms of life. Both scenarios strike me (irrationally) as extremely unlikely.

I'm guessing it will discover a biproduct of biological processes, e.g. high levels of methane.

<comment><USER5> It seems to me that the probability of life independently developing along similar routes is hard to really peg a probability on. We only have one example of abiogenesis to study right now, but evolution of earth-life could give us some basis to reason about independent instances of abiogenesis.

Certain "features" just make sense for life on Earth, and have evolved numerous times independently. Flight is a classic example, having evolved four completely separate times (bugs, (extinct) pterosaurs, birds, and bats). Complex eyes also seem to have independently developed many times.

Similarly, it seems fairly reasonable that certain "life chemistries" "make more sense" than others. The extent to which that may be the case could also be up in the air I think. Maybe 'carbon with a water solvent' is particularly common, but amino acid based is less so. Or maybe amino acid based life tends to naturally follow from an also likely carbon based chemistry.

It will be exciting to see what we uncover in the future. I think either two cases of abiogenesis or a solid case of panspermia would be pretty wild, for their own reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can I just for a moment question their PR strategy here?

Them saying they have found something big leads to speculation, speculation that might paint the image of an discovery much bigger than what was actually discovered. Scientists are understandably enthusiastic about this, but they also have to keep in mind that when they just use words to describe the importance of the discovery without naming the discovery itself, it's easy for them to get it very, very wrong. Something for the history books for them might well be something most people really couldn't care less about.

I think the adult thing of saying that it is possible you discovered x but you still need confirmation may well work, if you know how to frame it correctly. But whatever you do, don't say anything about history books, not before you are really sure.

Alternatively you shut up and say nothing to the public until you are sure.

This whole "We have discovered something huge but we can't tell you what until we are really sure!" seems very misguided to me.

I think this is just a case of bad PR, not bad science reporting or anything like that.

<comment><USER7> This kind of thing happens often, where you've got "news", but can't disclose until it's final.

In these situations it can be helpful to use some kind of scale or domain reference.

"We've got some pretty exciting news coming up, and we think it could change the world"

vs

"We've got some pretty exciting news coming up, that should really fire up geologists"

vs

"We've got some pretty exciting news coming up, that gets us closer to understanding the history of Mars"

Set a level of expectation.

<comment><USER8> From the article:

"This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good..."

<comment><USER6> The existence of any kind of life (past or present) would be something for the history books. Only Curiosity pretty much cannot find life, only hints that life exists or existed. Maybe this is about something else, but if this is only about hints that life exists or existed, then it isn't really something for the history books. Most people would be bored by news like that. (I personally would find it very exciting, but I'm far from typical.)

<comment><USER9> re: Only Curiosity pretty much cannot find life

What? A martian running in front of the camera would work. A rover not sent by earth. A little house on the... sand. Big ol skeleton of a unicorn... Seriously, you have no imagination.

<comment><USER6> It cannot find any kind of life we can realistically expect to find (given past data).

You hurt me. Don't be so mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <RANT>

I find this very frustrating. As someone steeped in engineering and the sciences, I am used to working with unusual, unexpected and/or exciting results and I am used to those results being confirmed, revised, denied, etc.

My frustration is not with the scientists; I'm sure I'd do the same thing given a possibly groundbreaking discovery and an inability to discuss much about it. My frustration is with us, the public, and with the fact that we can't be trusted as part of the broader team in this exploration. And I guess I'm frustrated with the media for feeding us with hyped-up-everything, since, even though we seem to demand it, it keeps us from being able to be involved in these conversations/discoveries.

</RANT>

edit: added tags...

<comment><USER11> I agree with your conclusion.

As an example of early disclosure of unconfirmed results, I am fairly confident many members of the public still think we have evidence that neutrinos travel faster than light..

<comment><USER12> I think in that case the scientists involved did everything they could think of to explain their data before going public. So I wouldn't call it an early disclosure of an unconfirmed result, more like "Hey everyone, this is really weird, and we we can't explain it"

Historically, this is where one of 2 things would happen, either it would have some mundane explanation that the original investigator missed, or it's one of those anomalies that leads to new scientific discoveries.

So I think they handled it correctly, and got the right kind o f attention.

<comment><USER13> Wait, didn't the principal scientist resign as a result of the media hype storm?

Yes... [http://news.discovery.com/space/opera-leaders-resign- after-n...](http://news.discovery.com/space/opera-leaders-resign-after-no- confidence-vote-120404.html)

<comment><USER12> Yes he was sacked, but here's the important quote from that article:

 _Even Ereditato never claimed that their work had overturned Einstein. "I would never say that," he told Science last September. "We are forced to say something. We could not sweep it under the carpet, because that would be dishonest."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something earthshaking. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he says._

Pretty exciting language from a lead investigator at NASA. Cross all those fingers..

<comment><USER15> It's either a lot of water or some sign of life or both. _crosses fingers_

<comment><USER16> We already know that Mars is lousy with water. For most of the surface all you have to do is dig down maybe a meter or so and you'll find permafrost everywhere.

I suspect it's some sort of sign of complex organics, which would be a strong sign of past life.

<comment><USER17> Maybe the Higgs Boson? (Ok; jokes belong to Reddit.)

Big news for scientists may end up being unnoticeable small developments to the general public. Earthshaking may be key here, like an organic compound unexpected there.

<comment><USER18> The question here is, is "earthshaking" something NPR is describing it as, or is it actually how the NASA scientist is describing it? The quote says it's something for the history books, the "earthshaking" remark is made outside of the quote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The audio version gives a bit more context. It sounded like the reporter was there already doing another story, and the NASA folks were very distracted by this but wouldn't yet say more than what's quoted in the story.

Could be that it wasn't much of a calculated PR stunt by either side, but rather just human nature at work. If you're the NASA people, and you're getting exciting data, you're going to be excited about it. If you're a reporter, and everyone's excited, you're going to write about it even if you have no good details.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is "scientist" exciting, and there is "general public" exciting. "General public" exciting is sign of life. "Scientist" exciting can be a bunch of other things. I'm hoping for "general public" exciting, but am afraid I'll be disappointed. _fingers crossed_

</comment><comment><USER21> Current thread on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/curiosityrover/comments/13i2z4/it_is...](http://www.reddit.com/r/curiosityrover/comments/13i2z4/it_is_possible_that_curiosity_found_something/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Wikipedia has two videos explaining what SAM is for <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_Analysis_at_Mars>

It seems that it is related to the question of is/was there life on Mars. It can detect organic products that are most likely produced by life, and if it has, it means we will be able to follow these products to something more conclusive.

</comment><comment><USER23> During the Viking program in the 70's, Levin's Labeled Release experiments seemed to show life in the martian soil. Two other experiments, also on Viking, failed to collaborate this finding, although there were issues with both of them which made their negative findings less meaningful.

Ever since Viking, there have been no biological experiments sent to Mars. The issue has been tabled for 30 years.

I'm hoping Dr. Levin finally gets his confirmation. If that's the case, it would explain why they're double and triple checking things.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Biological_exper...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Biological_experiments)

<comment><USER24> That would suck if they scooped up fried the last (or first!) living organism on Mars.

<comment><USER25> Very Douglas Adams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Heard this report on NPR this morning, and the impression I got was of a reporter managing to successfully salvage an interesting piece about the nature of scientific caution, the pressures on scientists to take care in announcing their results and even the restrictions placed on them by journals, from a visit to JPL where he learned about nothing specific, but did happen to be in the office with a scientist who got quite excited about an email he was reading, but then wasn't prepared to divulge any more details. I wouldn't read too much into it.

</comment><comment><USER27> To SUM it up I hope we found evidence of one of the following.

      - Evidence of Oceans on Mars
      - Nitrogen in the soil, needed for plants to grow on mars
      - Amino Acids
      - <USER2>

It could be something that is a play on words, 'Earth Shattering' could mean volcanic activity

I also wonder if they are finding rare minerals or metals.

It could also have to do with Isotope ratios, as much of our history currently depends on Carbon Dating and other Radioactive Isotope decay rates. Different Atmospheric conditions could have different isotope ratios, this would be a pretty big shake up and it does not necessarily require the rover to find a specific chemical or a complex thing like DNA or organism remnants.

My mind would be blown, if NASA found one of the following.

      - living plants
      - living microbes
      - manufactured materials not of human/ earth origin.
      - tons of precious metals.

<comment><USER27> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover#Goals_and_objec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover#Goals_and_objectives)

Curiosity has 8 core objectives, it's probably related to one or two of theses:

      Biological
        (1) Determine the nature and inventory of organic
            carbon compounds

        (2) Investigate the chemical building blocks of life
            (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen,
            phosphorus, and sulfur)

        (3) Identify features that may represent the effects
            of biological processes (biosignatures)

      Geological and geochemical
        (4) Investigate the chemical, isotopic, and
            mineralogical composition of the Martian surface
            and near-surface geological materials

        (5) Interpret the processes that have formed and
            modified rocks and soils

      Planetary process
        (6) Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year)
            Martian atmospheric evolution processes

        (7) Determine present state, distribution, and
            cycling of water and carbon dioxide

      Surface radiation
        (8) Characterize the broad spectrum of surface
            radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic
            radiation, solar proton events and
            secondary neutrons

We have heard some reports on (8), but other objectives seem like they might take a while. Plus the rover is not in the richest part of the ... theoretical river delta so I would suspect that NASA would hold their tongue on confirming (2) and or (3) until they are deeper into the mission, but (4) still seems likely, unless (2) and (3) are plentiful at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A few things that would get me excited:

A geological proof that earth and Mars was the same body x million years ago.

High concentration of oxygen or water in the soil.

Fertile soil?

I guess anything that would make human's visit to Mars less hostile would be a big story.

</comment><comment><USER29> NPR are probably just being sensationalist. Give a reporter a line like that about anything from earthquakes to organics in the soil and you'll find the reporter files about Martians.

I'll wait for an actual announcement before getting excited...

<comment><USER30> _NPR are probably just being sensationalist_

NPR is one of the least sensationalist news outlets out there. It's not like they're in a mad dash for ratings during sweeps week or something.

<comment><USER31> "Least sensationalist" can still be sensationalist. And they do need to keep the donations rolling in...

That said, I have no opinion on whether they're sensationalizing this story or not.

<comment><USER30> Absolutely, but they do tread a fine line. Many public radio fans (of which I am one) would be turned-off by the sort of rampant sensationalism and would stop listening and/or donating.

Humorous Example of the non-sensational image NPR has managed to cultivate: [http://www.npr.org/2012/10/01/162075221/jack-white- disappoin...](http://www.npr.org/2012/10/01/162075221/jack-white-disappointed- in-fans-energy-level)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> We're announcing that we can't announce what we've found.

Seriously, though, I hope the results of whatever are confirmed. Not just for science but for justification for more funding to flow into space exploration.

</comment><comment><USER33> How exciting! Can't wait to find out what it is.

On a side note, what are y'all's thoughts on the finding that radiation levels are livable? I'd love to live on Mars.

<comment><USER18> From what I understood, the radiation levels were survivable, not necessarily livable. I think I remember them saying a 6 month exposure would be pushing career limits for an astronaut, which is a two-fold improvement over unprotected space. Still bodes well for the chances of having a sealed base on Mars that allows people to travel outside occasionally.

<comment> mkr-hn This could make more frequent trips outside possible: [http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/stp/niac/2012_phaseII_fellow...](http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/stp/niac/2012_phaseII_fellows_westover.html)

And you could do it with a smaller system on a Mars buggy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm so tired of reading ambiguous news about mars and space in general. Not once have I been able to read a headline from a space-exploration article and say "Wow!". I always find myself scanning through the article, trying to see what progress they've made and why it's significant.

</comment><comment><USER35> Whatever it is I hope it's significant enough to initiate a human mission to Mars

</comment><comment><USER36> Since Congress is working on deals to avoid the January 1st "fiscal cliff", are the Rover guys just trying to prevent any cuts to their budget?

</comment><comment><USER37> As long as they didn't find oil.

</comment><comment><USER38> Probably worried the Italians will throw them in jail if not 100% accurate.

</comment><comment><USER39> what do sam instructments do?

</comment><comment><USER40> Found: one discarded fixed-gear warp drive. Damn. Hipster. Jedis.

</comment><comment><USER41> I am very very curious to see what they will announce. Maybe they found the birth certificate of Obama or the tax returns of Romney...Mars seems to be the perfect place to hide such things ;-)

<comment><USER33> I think you forgot to include "trolololo" in your comment.

<comment><USER33> Because he is clearly a troll?

EDIT: too much internet for the day, I've now started responding to myself.

<comment><USER42> The article is interesting, but how you managed to do this even more so.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you ever worry about running out of monetizable problem space? - <AUTHOR>

There's only so many transformations of bits people will pay money for. Do you ever worry we'll run out? <comment><USER2> _There's only so many transformations of bits people will pay money for._

Says who?

 _Do you ever worry we'll run out?_

No. I think people will always be willing to pay for something that saves them time, makes them more money, or fulfills some other need/want.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see it as a bits-specific question. It's more: will we ever run out of services people will pay for? Probably not. On the other hand, whole swathes of service classes can be obsoleted. It's quite possible that in 20 years making a website and letting it run mostly on autopilot will not be a way to make money (though I can't predict that confidently).

</comment><comment><USER4> When we run out, we've struck upon post-scarcity and you'll have no needs that won't be attended to.

Wants? I'm not so sure about that part.

Edit: You may however, be forced out of your comfort zone as more problem space gets explored. Don't expect to be able to use Rails and Django to solve everything.</comment>


Behind Silicon Valley's Self-Critical Tone on Diversity, a Lack of Progress - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/new-diversity-reports-show-the-same-old-results/

<comment><USER2> an industry built on the legends of the self-starters is now under near constant attack for not offering helping hands to people who demonstrate no actual interest in being a part of it aside from wanting a piece of the pie. I'm not even sure why I should care, frankly. it's not like a uniform distribution of skin tone and genital structure is going to improve things in any technical sense. this is all meant to soothe the emotions of hand-wringing observers.

<comment><USER3> It's not helping hands that's needed, it's the removal of factors that actively discourage participation in tech culture for arbitrary reasons of race, gender etc.

And it's not hand-wringing, it's anger at watching people who would otherwise be substantive contributors in a technical sense be subjected to abuse until they leave the field.

I see the lack of diversity at these companies as a sign of distortion in the overall tech community - the reason they're having a tough time getting the diversity they want is because so many people have been discouraged long before they develop the chops to apply at a place like Google.

<comment><USER2> You neatly listed every talking point we've all heard a thousand times, but framing the debate using your preferred rhetoric doesn't address any of my points.

The "removal of factors" is a helping hand. The expression of anger is the hand-wringing. And the lack of diversity is a lie - no engineering team I've seen lacks Asian and Indian men and women.

Being discouraged to achieve your dreams is not exclusive to people of "color" (suddenly I'm transparent?) or the "minority" of women. Perseverance is a character trait that successful software engineers need. Giving up because there are barriers to success is a signal that can't be ignored, frankly.

<comment><USER3> The way that women (for instance) are treated in tech forums is frequently outright abusive. My anger at that is not a talking point, it's real. And your last two sentences are the equivalent to "it's not a problem, tough it up", which is a big part of how things got this bad in the first place.

The number of women in technical roles today at Facebook is 15%, at Google it's 17%. A similar figure from, say, IBM in the 1980s would be 35-40%. The genetic predispositions of women have not changed in the last 30 years, the difference is cultural.

You feel that the way you'd like things to be is under "near constant attack". Good. Because the status quo in tech culture is far from meritocratic, and people who defend it clearly don't realize how much damage it's done, and how much talent we've wasted on its account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have always thought universities should have a mandatory get to know available majors day. Everyone knows Business and Social Science (the majors that fall under these) but there are majors such as construction management, soils management, and yes even computer science that a lot of people don't really know about. Along with this should be the employment rates and avg salary.

I say this as I randomly took a construction management course maybe my last year of college just to see what it was like. Nearly all the students (all male) had a family background in construction. They knew about the major before coming to college.

Will the gender ratios change dramatically? No but at least give students a chance to really understand their options. This is especially true of students who first generation college students, who would tend to be black/ recent immigrant hispanic.

</comment><comment><USER5> On a variety of fronts -- lack of diversity, broken management, work/life balance, etc -- the standard Valley tech startup communication strategy (both public and internal) seems to be acknowledging the problem while doing little to solve it.

It's a clever strategy, because it's quite different from what the Fortune 500s tend to do, which is pretend the problem doesn't exist. If you acknowledge that the problem does exist, you get points for being honest, and moreover, transparency about the existence of problems is often a strong heuristic for those problems being solved. In other words, a communications strategy of, "we know this is messed up and we're fixing it" inspires a lot more confidence than, "problem? what problem?".

Tech companies get away with being shitty places to work (long hours, politics, misogyny deeply embedded in culture, etc) for one main reason -- they are growing quickly. Growth is the mission, and meeting growth goals is a kind of perpetual emergency, much in the same way that in totalitarian countries the revolution is always still in progress.

Speaking firsthand from past experience at a privately held "unicorn", and secondhand from many friends' experiences at others, the tactic of using quarterly town halls in which the CEO gets up and says, "I know things are really messed up and you're all working too much and we don't have enough women or people of color and we need to refactor our management because most of you don't know how well we think you're doing or what your career options are if you stay here and .... " is pretty widespread. This strategy makes employees -- who are usually pretty smart people -- believe that everything is going to be better soon, because they want to believe it, just like they want to believe that their options are going to be really valuable one of these days. After all, their company just raised another private round at an 11 figure valuation.

Nietzsche observed that madness in individuals is rare but in parties, groups, and eras it is the rule. I think a lot of this stuff is going to look pretty ridiculous in a decade or two (to the extent that it doesn't already).

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems that the failure is in education for minorities in inner city neighborhoods. If minorities tend to live more to urban neighborhoods is it a surprise we continue to see this problem downstream? What is AppleGooFace doing to solve the underlying issues?

<comment><USER7> That's obviously not the problem with women. Women are more numerous and, on aggregate, do better as college undergraduates than men. There's no excuse for that not having a large impact on hiring.

It is therefore also possible that bias, if not exactly racism, factor in to the lack of progress on minority hires. There's a lot of room for the employers to try harder, before they can blame the education system.

<comment><USER8> My computer science classes had an average of 98 boys to 2 girls. It seems to me that the problem may be a lot more systemic than hiring bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the problem not in tech giants, it's much deeper: schools, colleges etc. If large groups of people don't have (or don't want) access to education that's the problem that must be solved.

</comment><comment><USER9> It looks like achievement in games, seriously.</comment>


Successful Tech Startups Don't Write Code? - <AUTHOR> https://iamtrask.squarespace.com/blog/2013/12/18/geniuses-give-it-away-to-simpletons-who-make-millions <comment><USER3> Running a business is about solving a problem. Some problems are things that need innovative development because they can't be broken down in to smaller units that people have solved before. More often though, people's problems are actually a configuration of smaller, very simple steps that _have_ been solved before. Recognising the problem, breaking it down in to it's constituent parts, knowing that those parts have been solved, and knowing how to get the solutions to work together - that's the clever bit. That's what people give you money for.

</comment><comment><USER4> We've all been doing this for ages. What's newer is that the pieces of the puzzles are getting smaller and smaller and we glue together more and more of them to create the end product.

At one time, somebody had to build databases, not a problem anymore, now we just use Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, etc. etc.

We used to write CSS from scratch, now we use Bootstrap.

Think of how many gems or packages your average Rails and Node.js (sorry, don't know much about Java, C#, etc. etc) apps use. That's all these pieces glued together. How much 'code' do any of us write anymore? I'd say very little, and it seems to be less and less every year.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Truth be told, the fact that they know what to glue to what makes them smart in some sense, but in others, they didn't really create the value."

They did create the value - of the new entity that is the glued together product, which did not previously exist. Most of the time creativity is combining two or more existing things to get a new whole. The unique creation is an extraordinarily rare event.

It's very likely those components that the company glued together, were previously individually glued together from prior ideas / inspirations and existing concepts or products.

You'll find that most of the businesses in this world are little more than glued together pieces, rearranged combinations of previously existing elements; often done better, or in a slightly novel way, or with better customer service, or more efficiently, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's a good thing. It's actually harder than you'd think to build something out of existing pieces, and if people like it and use it, then why not? As for the original piece makers, that's what licensing and other agreements are for...

</comment><comment><USER7> Aren't most 'new' things 'inspired' by already existing things anyway ? Piecing together a number of separate things to create a new - <USER2> better - thing still counts as a win in my opinion.</comment>


The lifelong studies that hold clues to what today's kids might have in store - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02604-x <comment><USER2> Not one mention of ergodicity? These findings do not seem they would be ergodic to me.</comment>


Any of the rejects looking for some working space in boston? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> we have 2-3 desks extra in davis square. We are a bit isolated and would liek to work with some of the rejects that are more motivated by rejection than acceptance.

you can check the space out here. www.dreamvex.com

<comment><USER2> I'm interested in the space, drop me an AIM: jevanf2000</comment></comment>


Amazon scientists author popular deep-learning book - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/amazon-scientists-author-popular-deep-learning-book <comment><USER2> I just did a ten minute sampling of the material: really good stuff.

Gluon seems like a good API that supports a lot of languages.

A little off topic, but I started using TensorFlow (and later Keras) when it was first released, and it ended up being my only tool for DL work (including managing a DL team) for four+ years. In hind site I really wish I had also learned PyTorch, Gluon, etc. It doesn't matter now, I am retired and have gone back to my roots: studying knowledge representation (including linked data/semantic web) and more 'classic' AI. Given my experience, I would encourage people to cast a wider net and experiment with more DL libraries.

</comment><comment><USER3> I sat in a d2l.ai workshop and learned more than really any other one i've taken.

</comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare to Karpathys Stanford material?

<comment><USER5> Do you mean the CS231n materials?

<comment><USER4> yes</comment></comment></comment>


Python: Why Operator "is" and "==" Are Sometimes Interchangeable For Strings?  - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/12705379/1577343

<comment><USER2> Summary: Don't ever use 'is' as a substitute for '==' with Python strings. They are never interchangeable except as an implementation detail which is subject to change.

As a suggestion to yiedyie, please don't link to a S.O. question marked as "duplicate", especially where the primary questions have answers which are more informative.

Also, I see that you post a lot of links to S.O. using a S.O. id of '1577343', rather than point to the generic URL for the question. This makes me think your main goal is to get karma points on S.O. rather than point to something which you really think is interesting. I generally ignore those links. When I see low-quality questions like this one I often flag them. While I don't know if that's a general trend of other HN readers, you may want to take that information into account when you decide which S.O. links to post.</comment>


Ask HN: As undergrad, would you write a research paper under these conditions? - <AUTHOR>

You are an undergraduate student. Your professor invites you to participate in a research project with the goal to publish a research paper. He does not offer you any compensation (neither money nor credit point for your studies). The only possible compensation you can get is some intellectual credit and another line on your CV. What would you do / answer him? <comment><USER2> TLDR: Does publishing a paper help position yourself for future opportunities you're interested in (grad school, academia)? If yes, definitely do it.

What is your role in the work, and how much has already been completed? Will you positioned for first-authorship, or will you mostly be grunting out somebody else's idea and you're looking at nth author? Is your goal to end up in academia? If you're thinking about grad school and academia, I would say go for the publication no question.

As an undergrad, you probably shouldn't expect monetary compensation unless 1) you're being asked to forgo significant paying opportunities (e.g. summer internship) to do this work, or 2) doing the work primarily serves the interests of somebody other than yourself. Criteria 2 encompasses opportunity cost, including time lost on non-academic sideprojects if you aren't that interested in academia since the loss of those personal projects might diminish your attractiveness to potential employers who don't care about academic papers.

Also, I'd be pretty pretty surprised if you couldn't arrange to get some kind of thesis credits or "advanced study" credits for extracurricular research work you do without pay; double check with your registrar's office on that one.</comment>


MGH launches phase II trial of [100yo] BCG vaccine to reverse type 1 diabetes - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/mgh-mgh060315.php

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen BCG described as cave man immuno-therapy for bladder cancer and other apps... it will be interesting to see how it works for diabetes and MS.

Presumably someone has looked at rates of those types of diseases in Eastern Europe, where BCG was used a a vaccine for TB for years.... but I have no idea if it worked preventitively.</comment>


Dice-O-Matic hopper and elevator (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamesbyemail.com/News/DiceOMatic <comment><USER2> When I play RISK with my kids, the time invested in each roll of the dice is proportional to what's at stake. During a critical close battle, they might shake, blow, and otherwise cajole the the dice for a minute before rolling. Playing on an iPad with its RNG loses all this, so it's very pleasing to think of playing online with real dice.

<comment><USER3> A few years ago, I found a WebGL physics-based dice roller.

[http://a.teall.info/dice/](http://a.teall.info/dice/)

<comment> King-Aaron I just made it throw a few hundred dice in one roll, and chrome promptly packed it's bags on me

<comment><USER4> It works pretty well on my side, but I get stuck dices that never land

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cute mechanism, but only running it part time and storing random numbers for later use is asking for a security breach. If you can find out what random numbers are coming up, you win.

Vibratory bowl feeders pretty solve the problem of getting simple objects lined up.[1] Any object that isn't lined up properly gets dropped off the ramps back into the bowl for another try.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mejn0n4IslY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mejn0n4IslY)

<comment><USER6> > _If you can find out what random numbers are coming up, you win._

So an adversary can breach the system and read the upcoming results but they can't mutate the results? That seems like an unlikely scenario.

Also the security implications of this are that some jerk cheats at a board game. Hardly something to lose sleep over.

<comment><USER7> > Hardly something to lose sleep over.

Easy to write that now, but let's see how you feel the next time your armies in Kamchatka are being invaded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great. Reminds me of the Lego brick identifier/sorter that was posted a while ago. Sure, there's no real reason that true-random bits from Random.org couldn't be used, but I think a project like this is neat precisely _because_ it takes such great strides to bring back a classic physical component of playing board games that the service is otherwise designed to eliminate.

</comment><comment><USER9> A wonderful machine, I can imagine the sound of it two rooms away.

So now as an engineer and semi-pro backgammon player, the ultimate dice were ones that had the divots drill out and replaced with a different colored plastic. This way the uneven weight of the dice was not a factor. Just wondering...

<comment><USER10> Can't be nearly as bad as any pachinko parlor that I've been near. It sounds like a machine shop full of circular saws.

I harbor the belief (likely unjustified) that the hearing loss resulting in hanging out there is as bad as gambling addiction issues. I don't know how people stand it, or why they'd want to.

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

<comment><USER11> The bright lights and noise levels in casinos are deliberate as they impair rational thought. Study after study on "cognitive load" show that if your brain is being stimulated or worked in one domain it impairs good decision making in other domains.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure the operators of these places are aware of that too.

What's funny is that with USA casinos, the noise level is loud, but not bothersome to me personally. AFAIK, this is intended to create a "lively" atmosphere.

Whereas the pachinko parlors are far beyond the "lively" level, and well into the "where is my OSHA-approved hearing protection?" level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _I have used Math.random, Random.org and other sources, but have always > received numerous complaints that the dice are not random enough. Some > players have put more effort into statistical analysis of the rolls than > they put into their doctoral dissertation._

I seriously doubt that high-quality electronic randomness is non-random enough to have a noticeable effect on the outcome of board games. It's nice that the guy is accommodating enough to go to all this effort, but it seems unnecessary. Cool project, though.

<comment><USER13> I think you can assume he's in on that joke. The goal of this was to build a fun machine, not to actually increase entropy.

<comment><USER14> The fact that he offers to melt and mail a die to any player who complains of non-randomness is a giveaway he's having fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Insufficient randomness from random.org?

Odd. Seems like the only way it wouldn't be random is if the code transforming the output into die rolls was wrong, or if the inherent unfairness of dice with pips carved out of them is truly desired (which, it seems, could still be modeled from a truly random source).

A cool machine though. I was expecting the captures to take place somewhere other than the lifting chain though, but it makes sense for the setup.

<comment><USER16> I think the insufficient "randomness" is explained here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14805265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14805265)

<comment><USER17> That's discussing a different dice project - what's the connection to this one?

<comment><USER18> The psychological effect of people not "believing" true randomness is the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been playing on gamesbyemail.com for over 12 years. It's amazing what Scott implemented early on in the AJAX era. I mainly play WW2 the Axis & Allies game. Amazing job. Great fun.

He had a lego dice roller before this.

Amazing site.

Thanks for all the hard work on this.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome. Seems you could make it a business and sell some random bits. Maybe compete with hotbits and random.org.

</comment><comment><USER21> How could rolling dice be "more random" by any meaningful definition of randomness than random.org? Rolling dice is a pretty trivial physics problem with really hard to observe parameters... parameters that the machine reduces the dimensionality of considerably.

</comment><comment><USER22> The Internet of Things is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you need a really random number, NIST can provide one free of charge:

[https://beacon.nist.gov/home](https://beacon.nist.gov/home)

</comment><comment><USER24> Discussed in 2009: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626092).

<comment><USER25> The 10fps potatocam footage made me wonder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What an impressive device! Does it retain statistics keyed to a particular die? So that you could possible identify a 'loaded' cube which sneaked in?

</comment><comment><USER27> It would be interesting to silently switch back to a PRNG for a few months and see if anyone notices.

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be cool if the online game showed you the actual photo of your dice roll.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's magnificent!</comment>