In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors - <AUTHOR> http://www.navytimes.com/article/20140804/NEWS04/308040019 <comment><USER3> So I can off some first hand perspective here.

>Do the military "cyberwarriors" even have local admin rights on their machines?

We don't, hell I don't even have access to some of the basic tools I need (i.e. version control)

>Hackers don't sign up for active duty military.

They do, I've met the smartest people I know in the military . The hacker types never stay though they either get kicked out because they don't want to put up with the bullshit or separate after their first enlistment and quadruple their salary.

Basically the problem with the military is that they won't (or can't) pay enough to retain any of the talent they have and are unwilling to compensate for the low salary by changing the "culture" they've developed over the last century.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand how the military cannot afford to compete with the private sector. This is where wars will be won now (or soon). It's pretty important to defend ourselves. And we have trillions of dollars...

<comment><USER5> Part of it is that the government doesn't want to, the other part of it is that the American people would shit their pants if they found out that a low- ranking Soldier was making 6 figures a year off of taxpayer money. People resent it when government employees make more money than they do. Also, in the Army, you make the same amount of money no matter what your job is. The people they used to have that were only qualified to do laundry 40 hours a week as a full-time job get paid the same amount of money as intelligence analysts and information technology specialists.

<comment><USER6> The NSA has no problem paying for top talent, but they do it by going through consulting firms. It's true that most Americans would shit their pants at 6 figure soldiers, but few military skills are so valued by the open market. As we're constantly told by the tech media, you should prefer five $200,000 people to ten $100,000 people, or—god forbid—50+ people writing PowerShell scripts for minimum wage.

<comment><USER5> >It's true that most Americans would shit their pants at 6 figure soldiers, but few military skills are so valued by the open market.

Infantrymen won't have marketable skills, but we are talking about military security analysts. These guys often do have skills equivalent to their civilian counterparts. You seem to be making the same assumption that many others in this thread have: that all Soldiers are infantrymen of less than average intelligence.

<comment><USER6> The link upthread of us shows that annual pay for federal cybersecurity professionals is about on par with industry [1], especially when considering geography/cost of living.

My surprise had more to do with learning that cyberwarefare reservists exist, let alone enlisted soldiers. (I'm not familiar with the military.)

[1]: [http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/R...](http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR400/RR430/RAND_RR430.pdf) p.64

<comment><USER5> >My surprise had more to do with learning that cyberwarefare reservists exist..

I can see how you would be surprised. It seems counter-intuitive, but its actually normal for reservists in technical fields to be better at their jobs than the military. The best example I can think of is the field of aviation. Many reserve pilots are commercial pilots that get to fly 1000s of hours each year. Their full-time military counterparts don't get to fly their fancy fighter jets very often, because its really expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Civilian hackers have a solid intuitive understanding and can use that to select, build, and modify whatever tools they please according to their intentions, and use them however they want to.

Do the military "cyberwarriors" even have local admin rights on their machines? Do they have the education necessary to think about systems and vulnerabilities and the requisite leeway to use that knowledge, or are they (as I would guess) "highly trained," where "trained" means "good at following a set of procedures"?

I'm not knocking that as part of military culture. I want the people in control of weapons and aircraft, etc. to be great at following orders and the procedures they were trained to follow, and do little else. The ICMB fleet is not a place for improvisation.

But computer security is. It's a creativity-driven field that moves quickly, evolves hourly, and requires intellectual agility. I would imagine that from a locked-down, out-of-date OS with a years-long procurement cycle to buy third- rate software from huge, blundering contractors and no leeway to try new things on a whim, it would be impossible to beat a team of educated, unencumbered civilians in a field like this.

Of course, that's just a caricature of military culture that I'm imagining, but can anyone speak to this?

<comment><USER8> Special Operations forces are given considerable leeway to customize weapons and adjust uniform standards to the situation. I think the "cyberwarriors" would/should argue that their machines are their weapons and so should have similar latitude.

<comment><USER5> > I think the "cyberwarriors" would/should argue that their machines are their > weapons and so should have similar latitude.

They have argued and lost because the big picture military only cares about PT tests, marksmanship, and hair cuts. No one important enough to change policy understands how computers work.

<comment><USER9> Only the Marine Corps and maybe Army really care about PT performance - <USER2> what I understand, promotions in the Navy and Air Force are based off of exams.

<comment><USER10> USAF cares quite a bit about PT, as they're using it as a force-shaping tool (a way to get rid of people as they downsize).

For years there was debate between the weightlifters and the runners in Air Force leadership over the best way to ensure a fit force. The runners won, which is why a waist measurement is now included in the PT standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If we're trying to use uniformed military troops to hack servers remotely, we deserve to lose any 'cyber war.'

They should be used to gain physical access to hardware and people, for the purpose of applying the xkcd decryption heuristic[1]. Leave the hacking to the experts.

[1] [http://xkcd.com/538/](http://xkcd.com/538/)

<comment><USER5> >If we're trying to use uniformed military troops to hack servers remotely, we deserve to lose any 'cyber war.'

Not all Soldiers are incompetent. Some of the most brilliant people I've met are people that I met while I was in the Army. China has created numerous units that focus on offensive hacking, and they are wildly successful.

Now, to clarify, I'm not saying that we should have troops performing cyber attacks, I'm just saying that it isn't necessarily an endeavor that's doomed to failure. You seem to be making the assumption that people in the military can't be as good at something as a civilian. That's simply not true. There is a lot of talent in the Army, its just that the organization and its rules are making it hard to be effective.

<comment><USER11> I mean no disrespect to the soldiery, but why use soldiers for this, and not the DIA/NSA/CIA/various other TLAs? I guess that's what I'm confused about. Grunts wearing camouflage sitting in front of a laptop trying to outbrain someone seems humorously perverse. It's like some high-level bureaucrat has it in his mind that 'cyberattack' necessarily means that the military has to do it, because we obviously use the military for attacking things.

<comment><USER5> >I mean no disrespect to the soldiery, but why use soldiers for this, and not the DIA/NSA/CIA/various other TLAs?

I specifically said that I wasn't advocating this as a military mission. I was just stating that if it was a military mission, the Soldiers themselves wouldn't be the reason that it fails.

>Grunts wearing camouflage sitting in front of a laptop trying to outbrain someone seems humorously perverse.

A grunt is an infantryman. Not all Soldiers are grunts. The Soldiers that work as security analysts do it as a full time job. They still have to take a couple PT tests each year and qualify once or twice a year with an M16, but they spend most of their time doing their job.

I'm not sure how wearing camofluage affects a person's ability to use a computer? They are people like everyone else.

<comment><USER12> I guarantee you will not attract the best talent if your vision includes them wearing camouflage.

<comment><USER13> There are lots of downsides to the military as an employer. The dresscode is pretty far down that list.

The biggest downside, I think? As a civilian, it is my right to walk off a job at any time. Sure, there are expectations that I'll give you some notice (and I will) but worst comes to worst? I can always walk, and the worst my employer can do is call me bad names.

In the military, those contracts? they mean something. Yeah, you can ask to be transferred around; hell, I know someone who was able to actually quit the navy half way through basic, but it was a big fucking deal.

I mean, there are advantages to the military, too. I'm not saying it's a bad choice for everyone. I'm just saying that wearing dorky pants doesn't even make the list.

The military, like most government jobs, makes a lot of sense for someone who values stability. There are plenty of skilled people that value stability over the ability to leave; I'm just not one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to hear the term "cyber" when people didn't understand the internet. Now the only time I hear it is from the US military.

<comment><USER15> I used to hear the term "cyber" when it was the name of Control Data's mainframe series.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Cyber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Cyber)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "suits and ties — or tie dyes and blue jeans"

That says it all there, written by the navy times. Seems like there is a bit of a culture problem, and the perception of tech people by the regular army/navy/whatever.

Apparently, anyone with deep technical skills in hacking computer systems is either a corporate drone, or a hippie.

<comment><USER17> How about Polos and Kakis?

<comment><USER18> Those who wear suits and ties see them as tie dye and jeans.

Those who wear tie dye and jeans see them as suits and ties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The DOD cyber effort will be passed off department wide to a more function specific agency just as many other efforts before it. ie CDC NRC DARPA NASA

The specific culture or technical requirements of network technology efficacy will/has end/ed up in a more mixed agency such as the NSA or DIA(redux).

There are a lot of "hackers" in the DOD, as others have said they usually do not stay, but some do. The reason they seem like unicorns is because they usually end up working in the non cat video sector.

<comment><USER20> That first para is of the only comments here that gives me any hope for U.S. cyber capability and it really makes sense. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have the feeling that the only people using the word 'cyber' at all are governments. Weird.

</comment><comment><USER22> "cyberwarriors" makes me laugh every time

</comment><comment><USER23> The fact is that people with unconventional (by military standards) are going to look at joining the military with skepticism, so right there the military is limiting its pool of potential security service men.

<comment><USER24> and women.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Since when has investing in cyberwarfare skills become a substitute for writing correct code?

Instead of thinking long term, and learning to write open, correct code in sane languages, the continued emphasis is in continuing to ship bug-ridden, untested, source either open with Linux, or closed source with Windows, in an insane languages like C, then announcing that investments need to be made in cybersecurity because the planet needs to be saved from hackers.

Why not focus on getting things right in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER26> This doesn't seem quite right. It says reservists. They may also have roles in civilian life, but they are also part of the Military. That seems a bit deceptive in the title.

<comment><USER27> If American reservists are expected to become a more critical component/dependency for US full-time cyberwarfare defensive or offensive capabilities, would this lead in any way to more time asked of reserve forces at least until internal military specialists are considered to be on par with their civilian and reservist counterparts?

I'm curious if reservists deemed to have critical skills would be called upon to act beyond an amount comfortable for them, considering that they typically already have full-time day jobs as mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER28> > I'm curious if reservists deemed to have critical skills would be called > upon to act beyond an amount comfortable for them, considering that they > typically already have full-time day jobs as mentioned in the article.

Yes, that is certainly possible. The whole "1 weekend a month, 2 week a year" thing died with the World Trade Center. While Reserve units certainly try to maximize flexibility to try from interfering with their reservists work balance, getting called up unexpectedly (even for a period of months) is not that unusual if/when shit hits the fan somewhere.

<comment><USER29> yes I know quite senior (RSM) people in the UK TA (reserves) who got sent to the gulf for an extended period - though that company does sponsor a TA unit so was fairly cool with it.

<comment><USER5> >though that company does sponsor a TA unit so was fairly cool with it.

Do they have a choice in the matter? I'm just curious because here in the U.S. companies are obligated to hold your position for you until you get back.

<comment><USER29> I think there are sanctions (you are pissing of Liz II) and of course it might effect the senior mangers if their name came up for a gong or other honour.

They have discussed making it mandatory for employers to give paid leave to TA members for annual training.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Doclets.io Free Alpha – Simple and Fun CI for JavaScript API-Docs - <AUTHOR> https://doclets.io <comment><USER2> If I had a scrollbar this page would be very nice and wouldn't involuntarily develop hate towards a service that seems really really awesome.</comment>


Dealing with WikiLeaks: The right reaction - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/17677820?story_id=17677820 <comment><USER2> "The big danger is that America is provoked into bending or breaking its own rules, straining alliances, eroding credibility and—because it will not be able to muzzle WikiLeaks—ultimately seeming impotent. In recent years America has promoted the internet as a menace to foreign censorship. That sounds tinny now. So did its joy of hosting next year's World Press Freedom Day this week. Chinese and Russian glee at American discomfort are a sure sign of such missteps."</comment>


PHP Performance Tips from Stanislav Malyshev - <AUTHOR> http://php100.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/php-performance/

<comment><AUTHOR> Finally a list of tips that I would dare to give to a novice PHP programmer. Leaves out all the micro-optimization noise you find in most other articles.

Stas (who works for Zend) also did a quite nice post about those (in)famous PHP performance tips from Google: [http://php100.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/php- performance-googl...](http://php100.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/php-performance- google/)

<comment><USER2> These are good tips but I'm not sure they're novice accessible. Implementing memcached or bytecode cache are non-trivial.(PHP novice but an experienced coder maybe, but when I hear PHP novice I tend to think novice coder in general - my bad)

But this does make a great place to start if your little php site is starting to get more traffic then you dared hope and its time to start dealing with some scaling issues.

If I'm going to give a novice PHP'r tips it would be along the lines of thinking about using a good stable framework.

<comment><USER3> Adding an opcode cache speeds things up, but can expose segfaulting bugs in PHP modules that write to errant pointers and corrupt the cache. One of the features I like in xcache is readonly cache protection, which helps prevent these kind of problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That realpatch_cache tip is a new one to me. I had never heard of it before. Is there any way to see how full the cache is at the moment? (Or what it contains?)

<comment><USER5> There's no way to currently inspect the cache, without tapping into the internal PHP API as far as I know. I wonder how difficult it would be to create a PECL package to extend it or if it's necessary at all to care about what's inside of the cache. RAM is cheap, so boosting it up should be all you need to care about.

For setting the .ini setting though, check out <http://www.php.net/ini.core#ini.sect.performance>

<comment><USER4> That's a pity. RAM is not a problem, but it's more "by how much should I increase it?" :-)

Thanks for your response, though.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Google Map's navigation updated too slowly? - <AUTHOR> Last Saturday (19th of March) I was checking the yearly traffic nightmare that germans and swiss-germans go into when they want to have a long weekend in Italy. Every year, many cars queue up on the fastest way to traverse Switzerland to go into Italy. This way is through the Alps, precisely the St Gotthard tunnel. This is a "slow" tunnel, since it is a two way tunnel. During the holidays to avoid major issues, the body responsible for the tunnel prefers to filter cars by stopping them before the tunnel and letting go a certain amount of car per hour.
This year there was apparently 25 chilometers of queues from north to south. The reason there were amny more cars than the usual queues (~15km during big holidays) is that another slower tunnel was closed (St. Bernardino).
Now, the reason I post this is that I did check on Saturday afternoon, right into the nightmare time and notice two things: 1. passing through the main tunnel was around 1 hour slower than usual. Highly improbable, but it might be right. I seriously doubt it's right, but I don't have numbers to explain how traffic flows through the tunnel. 2. the second tunnel closed on friday. No one passed through it in the last 24 hours apart for firemen and police. Why google maps was still giving it as a possibility?
I think Google Maps used to have updated traffic data, but now I believe they just focus on places they believe are important and let the rest just update slower. This is of course a big deal, especially if you were a german last saturday and wanted to have a break in Italy.
Note that you can still force it to go through the St Bernardino tunnel even if still closed
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/traffic-problems_major-alpine-road-tunnel-remains-closed-after-coach-fire/44130240 <comment><USER2> Google maps have recently started failing with the update times for me too, I have reset the location permissions on my iPhone and that seem to have helped.

<comment><AUTHOR> It happens on a pc here.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: help me get admitted into a great university - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I am Ivo Georgiev, 17, from Bulgaria. I assembled my first electronics project (music amp) at 7, wrote my first program at 10 all by myself. Since then, I have built a game, helped start a quality Bulgarian media website, made couple of mobile apps, took some freelance projects and contributed to/built open-source software. My dream has always been to start a software company. I have always had a concise idea of what this company should do. But it is only until 2012 that I started working seriously on that.
Anyway - to the point. I am one year away from finishing high school, and I honesty don't know where I see myself in one year. I see that a lot of students on HN are considering directly starting a startup - but being in Bulgaria does not exactly help me. I am sure about two things - I want to live in another country ( any place with a nurturing startup infrastructure ), and I want to go to a prestigious university (because I want to be surrounded by brilliant people) and study computer science.However, I have two problems - 1) my academic record - the only thing I have are my high school grades ( 6 - the Bulgarian equivalent of an A - in every subject except geography ). In Bulgaria, we don't have accelerated programmes or any academic help for students like me. So my excellent high-school grades are all I have here. I am taking SAT and CAE in a few months. I have a nice programmer portfolio, but I don't know how important is that. And 2) - even if I do accepted into a prestigious university - my family (middle class in Bulgaria) cannot afford it. Of course, there are scholarships with which I can make it, but that requires an even more outstanding academic record.My question is - if there are people reading this who, at some point, were facing a similar situation, please share your story. Actually, any advice from anyone would help - which university should I choose, how can I get admitted, and how to support myself financially. Thank you. <comment><USER2> Dont trust 'great' universities too much, not all brilliant people feel obliged to get the best grades and go to the most shining university, some prefere having less demanding studies and use their free time to learn and build things by themselves. You dont really need a 6 to understand if you're good or not at something, it only boosts your ego. Exposure and competition are better suited for self evaluation.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can to some extent explain the college process in the US.

The first is that grades matter, but only to a point. Colleges have to work with all sorts of crazy grade point systems from all over the world. Not all school districts have the resources for premium programs (AP, IB, etc). They also have to deal with how those premium programs are reflected into your grade average. So I think as long as you make the cutoff grade average (say 3.15/4.0), it doesn't matter if you have a 4.0/4.0 or 3.9/4.0, they're going to move on and look at other parts of your application like your essays and letters of recommendation. HINT: They look for "well balanced" individuals, so you have a lot of academic achievements. You may want to try volunteering for this next year, or joining a club (preferably outside of your core skills) of some kind at school.

Secondly, in US there are typically 2 ways to get scholarships. The first is merit based (for grades). Since you're going to private organizations for this mostly, their requirements are all different. In some cases those organizations want to help a particular set of students (particular gender, race, or religion) so your competition is going to be less intense.

There is also "need based" scholarships available for students. If you can't afford college, there are scholarships or subsidized interest loans to help. With some private organizations again they may filter applicants depending on what their endowment is for.

Another option to support yourself during college is to work. It's possible to work and keep your grades up, even at top schools.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @kappaloris: I have never taken grades as something important, what I wanted to express is that this is my only official way to prove something to a "great" university. And I want to be in such a place in order to meet extraordinary people.

As for essays and recommendations - I can write great essays and I have already started the process of collecting recommendations.

@caw: Helpful information, thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Resources to learn JavaScript in 2014? - <AUTHOR> I have played around with Javascript for years. You know the basic stuff. Heck, I even wrote a Basketball scoreboard back in 2004 using plain javascript (the code will probably give you nightmares if I share it). But most of that was using google, w3schools etc. I really want to learn the fundamentals again. Fundamentals of Javascript, not a framework or library. So yes, I have access to Jquery and what not, but want to learn javascript and nothing else. What would you experts recommend in 2014 ? <comment><USER2> I second _JavaScript: The Good Parts_ [1]. It is very well-written and very dense, so you can read and reread it multiple times, each time gathering something new. Along with that I would recommend the Mozilla Developer Network JavaScript reference[2].

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas- Crockfor...](http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas- Crockford/dp/0596517742/)

[2] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference)

</comment><comment><USER3> To understand Crockford's language, you need to know javascript basics well. I'd suggest to grab a copy of " Object-Oriented JavaScript" by Stoyan Stefanov. [http://www.packtpub.com/object-oriented- javascript/book](http://www.packtpub.com/object-oriented-javascript/book)

and also follow MDN: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript)

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://javascriptissexy.com](http://javascriptissexy.com)

Object orientated Javascript and inheritance explained well:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMfcsYzj-9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMfcsYzj-9M)

</comment><comment><USER5> Among my favorites is [http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/), which is a bit dated but still worth going through. The second edition is a work in progress which current to 2014 and could use your feedback since you're the target audience [http://eloquentjavascript.net/2nd_edition/preview/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/2nd_edition/preview/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Eloquent JavaScript for new developers

Crockford's JavaScript The Good Parts for developers coming from another language.

Functional JavaScript by Fogus is excellent and can be read after either.

<comment><USER7> In addition to Functional Javascript, Javascript Allonge is a great text focusing on the functional aspects as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Crockford's "Javascript: the Good Parts" is what you want. It's short, well- written and introduces a lot of ideas that get you thinking about js on a higher level. It was actually a pretty influential book in getting people to start respecting javascript as a proper language in its own right.

I'd also recommend javascript weekly for articles and news to keep you on the cutting edge.

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://jsbooks.revolunet.com](http://jsbooks.revolunet.com) is a great resource for book lovers.

</comment><comment><USER10> This will be handy: [http://wtfjs.com](http://wtfjs.com).

</comment><comment><USER11> I think this post is really good for what you want to accomplish [http://javascriptissexy.com/how-to-learn-javascript- properly...](http://javascriptissexy.com/how-to-learn-javascript-properly/)

</comment><comment><USER12> www.codeacademy.com is a pretty good fundamentals. They also have a community of "advanced" developers with user generated problems to solve once you get past the fundamentals.

</comment><comment><USER13>
        http://superherojs.com/
        dailyjs.com

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://github.com/search?q=learn+*.js&type=Repositories&ref...](https://github.com/search?q=learn+*.js&type=Repositories&ref=searchresults)</comment>


Ask HN: know an industry well? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for startup ideas, and feel like there's a nice market to be had in many of the industries that aren't consumer facing or household names - and hence get less attention from the tech community. Does anyone on HN know a specific industry - and its technical/technically solvable bellyaches? I'd be interested to hear about it / collaborate. <comment><USER2> Insurance, Insurance, Insurance.

Specifically Health and P&C lines. Although Health Insurance is starting to see some innovation in the US.

Reasons:

1\. Perceived high barrier to entry, yet that isn't the case. 2\. Major players are tech dinosaurs at best. 3\. Small brokers (potential customers) dominate the landscape. 4\. Legislation keeps markets small because there is little in common from one area to the next - everything is niche. 5\. SV thinks it's boring, so you don't need to be the second coming of Steve Jobs to be very successful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you be up for an email/AIM chat about this?

<comment><USER2> Sure, my username at gmail.

Be warned I'm in Canada though, so my knowledge about the US market is limited, and the two countries are very different in the health insurance sector, as you can imagine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I asked a question recently in relation to an industry I know well:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396541>

I'm specifically looking at providing a video-based training service for a very-well-known vendor's product that many companies in this sector use. Not really a technical challenge, more a knowledge transfer challenge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think that tech training is a decent market in general, or just for this one industry?

<comment><USER3> I think you're most likely to succeed if you can provide a quality service in a constrained market.

In my specific case, the choices available are to either go to the vendor and pay more than 100k to get all the training for 10-15 people simultaneously, or to find someone who's been through it already and mind-meld. I've found one other group who is doing something similar to what I'm thinking, but their offering is laughable (machine voiceover!).

I believe I could easily charge 1k-2k per month for site licenses of well constructed materials. Maybe quite a bit more, especially if I offer custom materials for clients. The foundation would be shared across all though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Defense contracting (communications, deployed software systems).

Medical software (PACS/RIS in radiology primarily; some automated lab and pharmacy experience, medical paging. Limited EHR/EMR experience).

Firearms (retail, wholesale, and manufacturing of small arms)

(plus crypto/security and some datacenter/cloud/etc. stuff, but that's better covered by existing startups)

</comment><comment><USER5> Industry: IT side of stock exchanges. Quite a space to explore as it is one of the last parts of the sector that is not widely covered by conventional financial media (FT etc.) and has no commonly used resources on the web. Barriers: End users (traders) usually have no say in the choice of platform/software, extremely secretive industry, most solutions are tailored.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know a specific industry, and I have a deep understanding of the current technlology as well as better solutions: Petroleum controls and automation. Ripe for the picking.

Unfortunately, like most 'enterprisey' industries, the long sales cycle will eat you alive if you are not well funded.

<comment><USER7> Are you talking on the production side (refineries) or consumption (fuel dispensing)? I used to sell a product that was on fuel trucks and have always wondered what else I could do with it.

<comment><USER6> I am talking about the downstream side of production as far as mass metering and additizing. Specifically, where the fuel goes after it has been refined and traveled through the pipeline to the place where the tanker trucks take it to your local gas station. That also includes massive movements by rail and barge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Read Clayton Christensen</comment>


Yet another csv command line tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/komkom/csv <comment><AUTHOR> simple csv tool written in go. should be able to handle big files. hopefully it makes working with csv a bit more joyful. could definitely use some more work. but hey its a start.</comment>


The Hawkeye Initiative: Woman uses art to explain sexism to her boss - <AUTHOR> http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/post/50432219744/special-guest-edition-the-hawkeye-initiative-irl

<comment><USER2> I wonder if she understands the role of idealized forms in art, or idealized forms fit into everything.

We see them not only in comic books, but also on the covers of romance novels. We also see them in roman statues for both genders.

Edit: Personal anecdote: My asian friends are big fans of bishonen tropes or mangas, which seems to be the manga counterpoint to western comics beefcake/cheesecake tropes.

<comment><USER3> Why wouldn't she? Idealization in art is not a problem. Her boss didn't put the poster up because it was an idealization. If he had, there wouldn't have been any concern in switching it with another idealization; he would have simply appreciated the new poster.

But he did appreciate it: not for it's "sexy woman" idealization, but for the statement it made, and for being a reminder about what is important in a workplace.

There is more to art than pretty pictures. Focusing on sexy pictures in the name of "artistic appreciation of idealizations" is narrow-mindedness, no matter how you spin it.

<comment><USER2> I agree, it's not professional. Those don't belong in the workplace, and I admire the way the guest poster went about convincing her coworkers.

Sorry I wasn't clear, when I was referring to she, I meant the creator of the website, not the guest poster.

>Focusing on sexy pictures in the name of "artistic appreciation of idealizations" is narrow-mindedness, no matter how you spin it.

I think it would also be narrow-minded to not think that "sexy pictures" could be a component of art or art in themselves.

My main thoughts are that humans didn't evolve or create things in vacuum, why do we even value art ? and where in our biological wiring do they values come from ?

<comment><USER3> It is just very easy to appreciate a sexually-charged picture in a superficial way. It is so easy, in fact, that I would be hard-pressed to claim there were any actual value in doing it.

It's like talking to someone who wants to eat chocolate cake every day. Sure, chocolate cake is good, and we could talk for days about the nuances of cake making. But if you eat it every day saying "I just like it," you're not being nuanced. You're being crude and childish.

Now, if you 'went meta' and artfully maintained an appreciation for hedonism in a way that communicates it well, then that's different. But sticking a poster in your office is not that, either, because it doesn't really communicate that intent. Putting a complementary poster next to it as an act of social awareness or even irony might.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've seen this debate, that the other posters are having before.

1) Art is subjective. Some people consider soup cans art. Some other people consider pin up girls or even suicide girls art.Sexually charged pieces of art are fairly common. Some people only consider pieces of art to be artwork, if the creator intended it to be art.

Essentially "art" means a bunch of things to different people. One person doesn't get to dictate an individuals values. Also putting pretension aside, there is nothing wrong with just liking something. I think adults should be free to make that distinction for themselves, and I don't expect them to defend it to me. Grown-a __adults are free to believe what they want.

2) The borderline between art and products can be thin. Artists need to eat too. Sex sells period. Some things can be a product and a piece of art. This can lead to a lot of controversy as people are arguing different things.

3) Business doesn't care about art. They care about making money and not losing money. If someone finds something is offensive for what ever reason sexism,religion,explicit language,then take it down. You'll often see only very neutral business "art" for this reason. Business's don't want to be sued. There is a good parks and recreation episode about this.

I expect to be downvoted for this. But the hawkeye initiative is stupid. I think Marvel should be allowed to do whatever it wants. I also think the customers should be allowed to buy whatever they want. So women are in more suggestive poses . . , so what ? Why do we need social awareness for works of fiction ? And if we do why aren't there social awareness campaign against things like 50 shades of grey, twilight, or unrealistic romance novels.

The whole things screams of "Don't like what I don't like" If women like guys who are like a half naked Christopher Hemsworths, let them. If guys like women who are like half naked Scarlet Johanneson, let them.

Let people like whatever they want. I don't like the hawkeye initiative passive aggressive policing of a product thru "social awareness". It's shaming people for liking what boobs ?

It sounds an awful lot like religious behavior, and screw that. I didn't let the church shame me for thinking women and men are equal, and I won't let feminists shame me for being hetero and like boobs.

Finally I am sick of seeing this stuff on Hacker News, I come here for the tech discussions, not art or social awareness.

<comment><USER4> If you want art or social awareness, Go To Reddit</comment></comment>


Gödel's Theorem - <AUTHOR> http://bactra.org/notebooks/godels-theorem.html <comment><USER2> For some reason it's fashionable to bash philosophical implications of Gödel's Theorem(s). Not only is the internet filled with articles like this, there is at least one book dedicated to bashing on philosophical implications of the theorem, the one by Torkel Franzen (whose most notable work is that book).

I find this sort of allergic reaction to be interesting in its own right. Yes, there are pseudointellectuals who abuse the theorem, but they're just that, pseudointellectuals, and academics usually don't engage with pseudointellectuals. I suppose the situation is similar with Aaronson's despair at the layperson's misunderstanding of quantum computers, but so far as I can tell Godel's theorem is virtually unknown among the masses, in any case much, much less known than quantum mechanics. So it's interesting why academics feel the need to have this sort of allergic reaction - in the case of quantum mechanics it's more understandable.

So the more interesting because Godel, the man himself, was preoccupied with philosophical implications of his theorem. This is the man who "proved" God's existence with modal logic, the man who spent decades after publishing his most famous theorems in a dusty study writing philosophical (and extremely rigorous) implications of his theorems that hardly anyone read, the man who eventually starved to death because he thought - his philosophy led him to believe - he was being poisoned.

In fact, Godel's theorem ought to be used more, not less, in philosophy. Some, like me, believe it has profound implications to moral philosophy. See: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.08347](https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.08347)

But this is a frustrating position to be in for someone like me, because philosophers don't understand Godel's theorem, and mathematicians/computer scientists don't care for philosophy. Instead they spend their time writing pieces like this that justify them for _not_ caring about philosophy. It's pretty lame.

<comment><USER3> > In fact, Godel's theorem ought to be used more, not less, in philosophy. > Some, like me, believe it has profound implications to moral philosophy. > See: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.08347](https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.08347)

I've only skimmed it, and I'm not very familiar with moral philosophy, but this seems bizarre. If I understand it correctly, your claim is:

1\. Free will is uncomputability (undecidability)

2\. A good action is a free action (and therefore uncomputable)

3\. A bad action is an action that pretends an uncomputable system is computable, thereby denying agency and humanity

I think 1. is suspect because people are not proper Turing machines. They have limited storage and limited running time. They are not currently practically computable, but it seems physically possible to simulate them. I don't think Gödel's theorem applies, although practical uncomputability might be a working substitute.

If you predict that some person will take some action, that's almost always a prediction that they will take that action within the next ten seconds/hours/decades. Actually simulating them is impossible for various reasons, but Gödel's theorem isn't one of them. You can't prove whether an arbitrary program will halt, but you can prove whether an arbitrary program will halt within the next hundred thousand execution steps.

2\. seems like a really bizarre way to define goodness. I think morality is subjective enough that you could define it like that, but I don't know why you'd want to. I think the conventional view is that free will is the requirement for both good and bad actions, not that free actions are by definition good.

I think 3. might cover almost every thought we have about other people. Internal computable models of other people are how we operate, as far as I know. Again, you _could_ define badness like that, but I don't see the point.

> [page 8] Now the question paraphrases to: does there exist an algorithm for > me to love my child? Of course not. So the distinction between [shallow > benefits] and [deep] benefits is that: there is an algorithm to bring about > [shallow benefits], whereas there is no algorithm to bring about [deep] > benefits.

Doesn't that conflict with the idea that we are Turing machines? If we are Turing machines, then everything we do is the output of some (possibly uncomputable) algorithm, including loving people.

I don't think this engages with Gödel's theorem in a useful way, or even depends on it.

<comment><USER4> Does these include any arithmetic statement? Any recursive self referral statement involved?

If not, Godel theorem is irrelevant

<comment><USER3> It does:

> [page 5] Just as humans can have free will because we can look at our own > mental activities from a distance, so a program can be uncomputable because > it can take as input its own self in data form.

But I don't think it holds up, because we don't have full access to our own mental activities, only to a grossly simplified model of our own mental activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Godel's First Incompleteness Theorem isn't particularly interesting, can be proved fairly easily (to an average high-schooler)[1], and, therefore, doesn't really have much "meat" on its bones. The _Second_ Incompleteness Theorem, on the other hand, is another beast altogether[2]. It's much more interesting, much more beautiful, and much more difficult to grasp.

At the end of the day, I agree with the essay (too many people misuse Godel -- starting with GEB, and onward), but I don't like the justification behind the post. After all, the First Theorem is used to drive towards the Second. It's intellectually lazy to just cover the first without touching the second: "Any consistent formal system S within which a "certain amount of elementary arithmetic" can be carried out cannot prove its own consistency."

In other words, I think the essay falls prey to exactly what it's criticizing: a purposefully neutered explanation of Godel to arrive to some unrelated conclusion.

[1] [https://dvt.name/2018/03/12/godels-first-incompleteness- theo...](https://dvt.name/2018/03/12/godels-first-incompleteness-theorem- programmers/)

[2] [https://dvt.name/2018/04/11/godels-second-incompleteness- the...](https://dvt.name/2018/04/11/godels-second-incompleteness-theorem- programmers/)

<comment><USER6> "too many people misuse Godel -- starting with GEB, and onward."

Assuming this is Hofstader's Godel Escher Bach, I'd like to see support for this claim. GEB is just a popular exposition of Godel and a paean to self- reference. It's not a rigorous work but I don't know of any terrible violations it involves.

<comment><USER7> GEB not just a popular exposition of mathematical logic, the book is quite explicitly about philosophy of mind. In particular, he develops the self- reference stuff so he can draw an analogy to brains and tell us his theory of consciousness. As for support for that claim, he clarified the point of the book in an elaborate preface to the 20th anniversary edition, and that still wasn't enough to get the point across, so he wrote an entire second book ('I am a Strange Loop') to explain his theory of mind again.

<comment><USER8> How is that a "misuse" of Godel's Theorem? He doesn't draw conclusions from it about consciousness. He only points to it as an example of a strange loop. Godel's Theorem is an analogy, not an explanation.

<comment><USER7> That's not at all an accurate description of the book. Goedel is not just used as an example of a strange loop, he bases his entire model of mind on it. This is developed in chapter 20. Particularly noteworthy are the sections of that chapter titled "Undecidability is inseparable from a high-level viewpoint", immediately followed by "consciousness as an intrinsically high-level phenomenon".

It's true that he uses it as an analogy, but not a loose or vague one. For example, "But it is important to realize that if we are being guided by Goedel's proof in making such bold hypotheses, we must carry the analogy through thoroughly [...] If our analogy is to hold, then, 'emergent' phenomena would become explicable in terms of a relationship between different levels in mental systems." p708

He's literally taking the logic of Goedel's proof, transferring it to brains step by step, to argue for a particular theory of consciousness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to throw more shade on the problem for me. There is a profound sense that there is no mode of reasoning (nevermind just the mechanical deductivism) that can completely capture all expressible truths without reaching contradiction.

The nature of knowing what is true is to capture a slice of reality in a model, and a model by its essence must leave out details, considering only elements which are important to its function. It seems that all of language, including anything we create with it, is an incorrect but useful model of Truth. Different models describing different things are expected to produce contradictions, but this math thing was talking about itself and it couldn't even do THAT consistently, right?

If Godel's theorem seems to be blown out of proportion as a synecdoche for the hundreds of years of collective malaise about unattainable truth, it is at least appreciable (and relevant to this wider domain) that Godel devastated the world by showing how logic fails at proving the consistency of a simple mathematical system (correct me if I'm wrong—it's not just axiomatic systems, "there ain't no such animal" of a consistency proof).

Anyway, there is a popular distinction between lowercase-t truth and uppercase-T Truth. The uppercase form represents knowledge we can never understand (outside our Circumference), and the lowercase form represents what we understand now. Since our understanding constantly changes over time, I imagine truth being a function of time, t. As t approaches infinity, truth(t) approaches this limit of Truth.

I highly recommend this poem (analyzed by Nerdwriter) on the expressibility of truth as well: [https://youtu.be/55kqNg88JqI](https://youtu.be/55kqNg88JqI)

<comment><USER10> Like the sister comment by clairity, I agree that you are extrapolating beyond the meaning of the theorem. You can prove the truth value of the statement, but not in the axiomatic system, it requires having an extended system. So it would be more of a moral of the story that sometimes you just don't know enough, but with more information or context you could prove it is true (but even that moral is probably off). It states more about provability in the context of a single axiomatic system for constructed self-referential statements rather than truth in general.

<comment><USER11> > sometimes you just don't know enough, but with more information or context > you could prove it is true

Yes, but that larger system itself contains statements that are true but unprovable in itself, and so on in an infinite regression.

And before one hand-waves it away as a mere 'hole' that we can safely ignore, Chaitin extended Godel's work to show that there are in fact an infinitude of 'relevant' mathematical statements that are unprovable within any formal system S:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity#Chaitin'...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity#Chaitin's_incompleteness_theorem)

<comment><USER12> Then if you're discussing the topic in the context of "whether our current mathematics is useless in the context of Godel's theorem" \- then we can easily define progress in mathematics as "how many contradictions we had found today" and thus continue living with an objective till the heat death of the universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was actually discussing this today, especially the first fallacious conclusion. With a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford no less . . .

I don't think Gödel was demonstrating the "limitations" of logic. I think he was demonstrating the limitations of lower logics so that we could wield higher logic. Just as Cantor broke through into the transfinite.

"From the paradise, that Cantor created for us, no-one can expel us."

I don't see Gödel's theorems as expressing the failure of logic, I think the holes(incompleteness) it illuminates are doorways.

Gödel prompted people to explore things like plurivalent logic and fuzzy logic, at least in the "west".

[https://aeon.co/essays/the-logic-of-buddhist-philosophy- goes...](https://aeon.co/essays/the-logic-of-buddhist-philosophy-goes-beyond- simple-truth)

<comment><USER2> Once I had a similar conversation with Scott Aaronson about this. I said the theorem shows the limits of logic; he said it shows the POWER of logic. My reply was: what does it matter? It just depends on perspective. As in: "logic is so powerful, it can even demonstrate its own limitations!" or: "logic is limited, and we know this for eternity, because logic _proved_ it!"

<comment><USER14> It's not really a limitation of logic, because logic is not constrained to a particular set of axioms.

<comment><USER15> But logic is composed of a particular set of axioms and rules - so is not any thing composed of a set of such things itself constrained by the very nature of its parts?

<comment><USER14> Godels theorem has nothing to say about first order logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article tries to be far more controversial than it actually is. Godel's theorem's don't negate truth, obviously some thing are clearly true (1+1=2) and false (1+1=3). His point is that there are some things that are unknowable.

</comment><comment><USER17> Controversially is this: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel_machine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel_machine) \- Gödel machine who supposedly is a seed AI who is based on his theorems?

And for those who say that we need to use fuzzy logic (which is used in neural networks, Bayesian probability theory) still won't solve paradoxes and what Gödel showed us.

Here some food for thought, imagine perfectly crafted sentences with logical induction (list like- where the wrong one gets deleted and the right one goes one list up). Even if we manage to make all sentences consistent (the one who are true) there still be one comment who can not be denied or approved. So if someone wants to build a Gödel machine (philosopher machine) he can use reddit/hn like Turk Machine (pitch it as a seed AI Gödel machine, this idea is obviously absurd but interesting nonetheless)

Edit: mathematics , as Russell said, is the most precise tool at reaching clarity so imagine what language fails at attaining.

</comment><comment><USER18> On a related note, I have the impression many people don't really understand the implications of the halting problem. You often hear the famous sentence, "it's impossible to build a program which decides whether another program holds", and use this as an argument that any attempt at building such developer tooling is futile.

But in fact, the whole proof is based on the self-application problem, where it's roughly analogous to the liars paradox. But the proof doesn't say anything about other, non-"reflective" cases. Theoretically, it might be possible to build a program that makes correct decisions whenever that's possible, and otherwise ends up in an infinite loop (e.g. in the self- application case). I wonder if there are any efforts in this direction; so far I've never heard of it.

<comment><USER19> On the non-reflective cases we at least see that we can forge small but very hard problems too. The most simple ones are the infinite loops testing some whole number related property, like: Goldbach conjecture, Fermat's theorem.

Now we know the program of the second case never halts but it was not an easy proof, the first one is still open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article seems to say two contradictory things: A) Axioms are not truths, so G's theorem doesn't mean our ability to grasp truth is limited. B) G's theorem does not imply the human mind is outside of axiomatic systems.

Isn't it the case that if B is correct, then the mind is contained within some axiomatic system, therefore A is wrong (i.e. our ability to learn truth is indeed limited by G's theorem)? I do not see how both A and B can be correct at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't his second point incompatible with the first one? In the second, he implies that human minds might be Turing machines due to no one proving otherwise.

But if human minds _were_ Turing machines, then they are certainly axiomatic systems since Turing machines are axiomatic systems. This contradicts his initial point which concludes that not all of our sources of knowledge are axiomatic in nature.

</comment><comment><USER22> One could argue that Gödel's theroem proves that there is no objective truth at all, since the whole universe can be viewed as an axiomatic system.

</comment><comment><USER13> > The first is that Gödel's theorem imposes some some of profound limitation > on knowledge, science, mathematics.

?

<comment><USER23> What is your question?

<comment><USER13> "some some" Is a typo?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reading articles and books with the subtext of "what Gödel REALLY meant was..." reminds me a lot of literary criticism, in that it doesn't really matter what the original author REALLY meant any more - what's far more interesting is how the author's ideas affected the thinking of others and how much those people will argue about how _their_ interpretation is the only true one.

<comment><USER23> What? No, it's math. Theorems are not up to interpretation, emphatically and by design. That's the purpose of math.

Gödel's theorems are profoundly interesting in their own right. They also required significant creativity and ingenuity for their time. But if there are conflicting "interpretations" of what they "actually mean", then that means most must be incorrect (or more charitably, extremely incomplete).

Frankly I'm flabbergasted you would compare (mis)interpretations of mathematical theorems to the legitimate subjectivity inherent to literary criticism...

<comment><USER24> Note that I said "reading _articles_ " about what Godel really meant, not "reading agodel's papers" - the point was that once we become that far removed from the underlying work and start mostly talking about individual people's _interpretation_ of that work as the focal point of the article, it reminds me of literary criticism more than anything else.

Additionally, interpretations are always subjective because interpretation of something is unique to an individual subjective viewpoint.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will the future have several more programmers or a few excellent ones? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys.
Just curious about this. Currently there seems to be an increasing trend in the number of people who are becoming programmers. But there also seems to be an increasing trend in auto-programming software and apps coming out. Now as machine learning becomes more and more effective, these programmes may be heavily driven by AI.
That said, it's interesting to think which trend will evolve over the other. What do you guys think? Will there be more programmers in the future or will there be very few, excellent programmers and building things would not require any programming knowledge at all?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> There will be just as many or more people using technology to solve problems, having access to a large number of methods.

But programming for user interfaces, networking and databases might not be the bread and butter of the future computer engineer, just like coding in assembly is rarely used today, even though all programs are eventually compiled into it.

We'll move higher on the abstraction stack. That will make programming both simpler and more complex, as C++ made programming both easier than assembly, and much more complicated, when you consider OOP.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting take. It's also interesting to imagine what the higher abstraction layers would be like, say a hundred years from now..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You know, when humans find it hard to make sense of software requirements expressed by other humans in order to produce usable software, I am not sure if AI can. Also, all this AI thing as it stands now is mostly about data processing. So until NLP becomes a reality, in that Turing test is smashed to pieces, I am sure programmers won't become irrelevant.

However, I see programming becoming more of a DIY thing. In fact, one might argue that it started out as DIY, with scientists and engineers hacking software for their own use. Still, the task of building non trivial software, based on off the shelf tools or custom made, will need professional programmers (aka software engineers), much like how despite people increasingly DIYing many things there still are carpenters, electricians, automechanics, tailors etc. So I would say there will be more.

About excellent programmers, I don't think everyone can agree on what parameters constitute excellence, and it is quite arbitrary, so that part of the debate will rage on even in the future.

</comment><comment><USER4> How far in the future?

We're a long way from AI or building-block platforms being able to replace programmers in any meaningful sense. Or from demand for custom-built software tapering off. Over the next 2-3 decades we'll see more and more software engineers employed.

But in the long run, yes, AI will replace almost all of us (assuming we don't do something dumb like submerge the planet in nuclear winter before then). How long? Wish I knew. Probably less than two centuries.

Any time frame in between then? It's difficult to impossible to know how long the process of developing AI that powerful will take, how long it will be until it's cheap enough to handle most demand for software, or when the inflection point will be in terms of employment.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess coding will be more common over time; but people coding will not be calling themselves "programmers": their main job function will be something different (like marketing, sales, or customer service).

There is some work for developers integrating those "small" developments into something bigger enterprise-wide. This is happenning today, but I guess this trend will get more volume and speed.

Great developers will always be scarce, like any other professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER6> As artificial intelligence increases, the number of jobs will start to decrease. Once the job started decrease, the policy makers will step in and AI will be in handcuffed. This will result in many monotonous jobs without a learning curve for lots of overqualified programmers

<comment><USER7> This assumes that AI will be centralized. Far from it (brains are small, and in terms of pure computing power, artificial computers will reach and surpass brainpower very soon; the rest is software).

Once each programmer can have his own artificial intelligence doing his job, how will you prevent programmers to replace themselves by their personal AIs, and go to the beach instead of slaving behind their computer?

cf. [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21043693](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21043693) the best employee of the world!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We need both engineer and mechanic. A mechanic can never replace an engineer.

</comment><comment><USER9> When AI are everywhere, the ability to tinker with them, repurpose and reshape them to your specific needs and desires, will then be the point of difference. So coding will always be important.

If AI-in-everything becomes as ubiquitous as the written word, which it will, our lives will be vastly transformed. The ability to code will become like the ability to write is now: the absolute bottom rung of the ladder to enter society as a participant.

If AI and energy become essentially zero cost then the differentiator will be how clearly you can tell them what you want them to build, and how useful are the things you choose to build. Oh, wait, so no different to coding today. So coding will always be important, and increasing saturation of advanced technology will only make it more so.

If you are assuming, as counter to these points, AI where you can essentially say: make me a FB clone that will make me 1 trillion dollars per year, finish it in 2 hours. As in, you have a Magic Lamp, then, either everyone will have a Magic Lamp, and the differentiator will be your mind, or only those who can afford it will have a Magic Lamp, so the differentiator will be money, equivalently again, your mind. So coding, in the purest sense of giving instructions, will be important.

To put all this another way, when the number of things to which people can give instructions to produce results increases in number then will also increase the number of people who are capable of giving instructions to such things.</comment>


LIVE: samaltman - <AUTHOR> https://www.kamcord.com/live/samaltman <comment><USER2> I agree with others about the title being a little unclear.

Some of us HN regulars (or at least me) don't know much about YC or its members/founders/officers.

"Samuel H. 'Sam' Altman is an entrepreneur, programmer, venture capitalist and blogger. He is the President of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI."

EDIT: this comment ended up in the video, a bit of a debbie downer. Maybe I'm just cynical but it seemed like a commercial for Kamcord.

<comment><USER3> > Maybe I'm just cynical but it seemed like a commercial for Kamcord.

You aren't being cynical. As said below, the YC partners are making the rounds: [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=kamcord.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=kamcord.com)

Additionally, the stream appears to be over, which is why unscheduled streams are not always a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a terrible title. What's the context of this video stream chat thing?

<comment><USER3> Kamcord is a video streaming startup funded by Y Combinator. (they just raised $10M funding, which is why the YC partners are making the rounds)

The intent is for steaming apps/games, except that there are face cams which take up 1/3 of the screen real estate because that is the new hip thing for streaming.

<comment><USER4> This still doesn't provide context to the link or why any video is streaming in the first place. Is sam altman taking questions, or are we just watching him chill and scratch himself, or what?

This is eerily similar to the "BREAKING NEWS: Larry Wilmore" joke that's played the last few nights on his show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would it be possible to have a longer runway on the announcement next time so that people have time to prepare quality questions?

</comment><comment><USER6> Tell us the funny story behind your chat URL? :) `wss://suckit.kamcord.com/v2/[...]`

<comment><USER7> The first version of our socket service was called, unsurprisingly, "socket" service. We had to deprecate it for various reasons and build a new one. Our engineers have a sense of humor, so the product is what you see before you today :)</comment></comment>


Open CASCADE Technology 7.4.0 Screenshot Named in Russian Transliteration [img] - <AUTHOR> https://www.opencascade.com/sites/default/files/kartinki_dlya_reliza-02_0.png <comment><AUTHOR> On Open CASCADE Technology 7.4.0 release page[0] placed screenshot file[1] has name in Russian Transliteration:

rus. ` _картинки_для_релиза-02_0.png_ ` -> ` _kartinki_dlya_reliza-02_0.png_ `

[0] [https://www.opencascade.com/content/open-cascade- technology-...](https://www.opencascade.com/content/open-cascade- technology-740-available-download)

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20191003021516/https://www.openca...](http://web.archive.org/web/20191003021516/https://www.opencascade.com/sites/default/files/kartinki_dlya_reliza-02_0.png)

</comment><comment><USER2> So what?</comment>


DeluxePaint/DPaint original 1986 amiga source code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DutchmanDavid/DeluxePaint <comment><USER2> Aaaand it's gone.

<comment><USER3> It was unofficially redistributed from the Computer History Museum page: [https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/electronic-arts- deluxe...](https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/electronic-arts-deluxepaint- early-source-code/) It states the following:

> and does not give you the right to license it to third parties by posting > copies elsewhere on the web.</comment></comment>


11 Years of Cassini Saturn Photos [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c8eSr7x7AA <comment><USER2> This is incredible, and it appeals to me on so many levels.

The snippets that are smooth time-lapse clips are like a brief view of a lonely journey far out in space.

But on top of that it is a work of art. One of the best combinations of amazing space photography, glitchy artifacts, smooth time-lapse. It's like a fever dream of 90s music video perfection.

Put on your favorite albums and watch it. The glitches are bound to sync with some beat or another at some point.

<comment><USER2> Also, from OP's submission history, here is the original WSJ page for this with additional clips: [http://graphics.wsj.com/saturn/](http://graphics.wsj.com/saturn/)

Jon Keegan (WSJ) also provided a link to tools used to generate this and other videos from the source images: [https://github.com/jonkeegan/cassini- tools](https://github.com/jonkeegan/cassini-tools)

Overall, a very cool project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the part where the probe went through the Star Gate.

</comment><comment><USER4> who's the dude dancing at the end?</comment>


The iPhone 4S Costs $0.49 More to Build than the iPhone 4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone-4S-Carries-BOM-of-$188,-IHS-iSuppli-Teardown-Analysis-Reveals.aspx

<comment><USER2> When all the components and manufacturing costs are roughly estimated, it would be better to say they cost "about the same" instead of $0.49 (a 0.25% difference) because they really have no idea what Apple has negotiated. Their estimate is probably +/-$50.

Also, Apple already has all the tooling in place to manufacture the body and machine the steel band at very high volume, which a large cost not captured in their analysis.

<comment> a-priori Yes, I'm highly skeptical that they are selling the 16GB model with only a $3 (1.5%) profit margin...

<comment><USER3> Remember that the $199 price is subsidized by the 2 year contract. I believe their cut is closer to the unsubsidized price of $599.00.

<http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC603LL/A>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really, they call this Hacker News and yet a headline with a blatant disregard for as simple a concept as relative error and significant figures makes it to #7 on the front page? What are we coming to?

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not cost to build, it's cost of components only.

iSuppli reports are often sensationalized by comparing cost of components to retail price, as if everything in between was pure profit, without regard for cost of assembly, transport, taxes, not to mention Apple's incredible R&D and logistics to secure supply of those components and delivery millions of units in the first weekend.

<comment><USER6> And the cost of components is probably wrong too. Who knows what discounts they get by buying in bulk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was looking for a reference price for the iPhone 4. It's in a separate article: [http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone-4-Carries...](http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone-4-Carries- Bill-of-Materials-of-187-51-According-to-iSuppli.aspx)</comment>


Ask HN: Git users, how much would you pay for a data and database versioning tool? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
We are a bootstrapped startup which has not launched its Big Thing yet and we need cash.
We are considering to sell some of our internal tools to make some money. One such tool is a data versioning/migration tool for Git projects. It's somewhat like git-annex but with focus on databases, although we use it to version all of our projects' data.
Right now it supports MySQL, Postgres, PostGIS, and Django migrations. It's pretty flexible so support of other frameworks/database servers may be added per request.
Key features: -	check in/check out project data for a particular Git commit;
-	seamlessly use the data from the previous commits or add/remove data with new commits;
-	incremental data updates between commits;
-	migrate project database schemas AND DATA forward and backward (rollbacks);
-	merge data from different Git branches;
-	fast automatic backups on new commits;
-	fast syncing of the data directory structure before actually transmitting the files (saves a lot of time and bandwidth);
-	command line interface -- easy to script;
-	use any Linux server for storing the data ;
-	authentication with private keys from .ssh/ or pageant;
-	plink/ssh and rsync for transport;
How much would you pay for a pro/enterprise license of such a tool? <comment><USER2> Why not do a kickstarter to open source it, like

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema- mig...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migrations- for-django) ?</comment>


Inside Uber's Political War Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/30/inside-uber-s-political-war-machine.html

<comment><USER2> Hey guys,

Need a ride? Here's a $25 credit for you to try Lyft - it's like a cab, but costs less. To get the $25, just download the mobile app for iPhone/Android and type in "LOSANGELES" in the payments section of the app. If you're in a pioneer city, you'll get free rides on top of the $25!

To order a ride, tap "Request Lyft" and your driver will pick you up in minutes to get you where you need to go

Feel free to share it with friends & family!</comment>