What the JVM needs - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/What_the_JVM_needs <comment><USER2> I tried at the conference to get people to agree that hotswap (i.e. reloading classes in a running system) was something that the JVM needed to add, so that the 99.9% of JVM users programming in Java can have a more dynamic programming experience. It really matters when it's there (especially for people that develop server software, which is a large part of the Java community), and there's a real, ingenious solution already implemented as part of the MLVM project that works well enough for me to use in development all-day every day.

When I brought it up during this discussion, I got nowhere, and people basically looked at me like I was an idiot. It was pretty disappointing to see that a room full of language guys just didn't care about anything that would improve Java itself; the discussion pretty much entirely focused around small- scale stuff that would make it easier to efficiently implement dynamic languages on the JVM.

<comment><USER3> Dynamically reloading classes is a nightmare in production systems. I'm not a .NET guy by any means, but one thing that it has that others could use it code signing. This is precisely the opposite of dynamic reloading and it's much more valuable.

The win-win is leveraging the power of a dynamic language at development time and the power of something like the JVM at production time.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I agree that it's a nightmare in production, but it's absolutely indispensable in development situations where you can tolerate the occasional weirdness or failure. If you're developing a server app (or a thick-client app), avoiding a sever restart every time you change anything is a huge, huge win. And again, it's not like it's not implementable: there's already an implementation, for the JVM, that works.

<comment><USER3> That's true. It would be helpful to have dynamic reloading as an option with the JVM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Full hotswap capability (which is available as a patch, today, due to the work of a true genius Thomas Würthinger and his team) should be the first entry, the second entry, every entry all the way down to the end. All the rest should be footnote nice-to-haves.

The JVM Language conference once again demonstrated how out of touch with day- to-day JVM development it is. The focus was nearly entirely on how to make dynamic languages fast (method handles, apparently) and how to deal with concurrency (functional programming, of course.) The first problem affects _maybe_ 1% of the JVM's users. The second problem isn't nearly the crisis it is made out to be (server side software keeps the CPUs full and, when it doesn't, there are plenty of fork-join-like libraries out there.)

Meanwhile, poor assholes doing java web app development are breaking concentration to bounce their server every time they change a method signature.

Unbelievable.

Cheers, Carson

</comment><comment><USER5> ... a custodian who actually cares to improve it, along with the insight and ability to say "no" to enough features that it has sharp unified direction and doesn't become a typical example of open source feature creep.

Unfortunately, I have a hard time seeing any reason to believe that this resembles Oracle, and any such beliefs seem to be indistinguishable from wishful thinking.

<comment><USER6> _a custodian who actually cares to improve it, along with the insight and ability to say "no" to enough features that it has sharp unified direction and doesn't become a typical example of open source feature creep._

Sun, in its ownership of Java, has always had the second part down pat - they've flat out rejected many of these features in the past, as well as many other popular requests for improvements both in the VM and in Java the language.

It's the first part, the "cares to improve it" bit, where they really fell down. Honestly, I think we could do with a little bit of "open source feature creep" to make up for the stagnation over the past several years...

I've also gotten the sense that most of the "no"s were borne of lack of resources to devote to these things rather than a desire to avoid feature creep, though, and I don't know if Oracle is in any better position to devote developers to any of this stuff...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I program in Java every day and I see nothing in that list that I really cannot do without.

Structs / value types? Nice to have but you can make do with java.nio.ByteBuffer.

Concurrent PermGen sweeping? I work on a big enterprise project like the article mentions but this has never been an issue in production, only development and then only when reloading lots and lots of classes.

Unsigned equality checks would be nice but you can work around that, too.

<comment><USER8> Since you're not a language implementer what you can do without is irrelevant here.

<comment><USER7> Okay, then let me tell you what I /can't/ do without. To name a few:

      hot-swappable classes
      design by contract
      re-ified  generics
      closures

These are all things that have been on developer wishlists for _years_. Design by contract is the #1 upvoted RFE in SUN's issue tracker, the others are all in the top 20.

But what happens? The guys that can make a difference come together and wank about performance hacks for dynamic languages. The 2% of the user base that actually uses Scala and Clojure will thank you for it, but the other 98% is left out in the cold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Closures and TCO, please.

<comment><USER10> I assume that you mean for the Java language, not the JVM? There are already languages that run on the JVM that have closures.

<comment><USER11> Both closures and TCO are things that you can implement in compiler, but would greatly benefit from direct support in VM.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Urban Loneliness a Myth? - <AUTHOR> http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Alone+Together&expire=&urlID=32648542&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Ffeatures%2F52450%2F&partnerID=73272 <comment><USER2> It's two things: population density and transience. If you live where there are maybe 20 people per acre and most people are born somewhere different ( _cough_ Miami, Atlanta, Phoenix _cough_ ) it can be very lonely because there are few institutions that gather people together, and also there are fewer opportunities to bump into your neighbors.

In low-density, low-transient places like rural towns the biggest problem isn't loneliness -- it's how to get people out of your hair.

If you live where everyone is from everywhere but they are packed so tightly you have to get along, it's much easier to make friends. People also tend to spend more time outside their homes because they are so small.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it hard to believe: "Studies show that loneliness is associated with morning surges in cortisol, the stress hormone, and increased vascular resistance, which results in higher blood pressure. They also show the lonely drink more, exercise less, get divorced more often, and have more family estrangements and run-ins with the neighbors. And they're fatter."

I'm alone for last few months, ie not in relationship and without too many friends, and my live is much more better.

I eat much healthier because there are no conflicts of interests, so I don't have to reward myself with junk food. Also, I have much more free time so I'm swimming every day and I don't feel bad I spent few hours just walking and thinking about my life. My blood pressure is now lower than ever.

<comment><USER4> Amen. That's a great feeling. Loneliness can give strength if taken calmly and properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a city it's hard to be alone (spatially), but it's easy to be lonely (spiritually).

</comment><comment><USER6> Loneliness means so many different things to different people, so I'm not going give a "yes" or "no" answer here. BUT If the cause of your loneliness is being a member of a minority group (ethnic or subcultural), urban environments function as a great way to "find the others." (Though as the end of the article suggests, the Internet may relieve cities of the burden of this.) I could see how being an elderly widow may be better in Boca Raton than NYC, and in this case, it's still a "find the others" situation.

</comment><comment><USER7> you call it loneliness, i call it peace and quiet.

</comment><comment><USER8> People are less likely to be lonely in cities, not because there are more people around, but because there are _more people you can connect with_. If you have some sort of specialised interest or hobby that say only 1 in 1000 of the population are interested in, then if you live in a city there will be people near you who share that interest.

And with the Internet, you can find them.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hope not. If it is then I need another name for whatever I have.

</comment><comment><USER10> No.

<comment><USER11> "No"? Why is this being upvoted? I'd like to hear his reasons. "No" is not enough to spark the kind of meaningful discussion I've come to expect from HN.</comment></comment>


Mining usage patterns for the Android API - <AUTHOR> https://peerj.com/articles/cs-12/

<comment><USER2> Wow this is cool. I'll have to add apiminer to my ide later.</comment>


Britain's Austerity Experiment Didn't Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/12/by-george-britains-austerity-experiment-didnt-work.html

<comment><USER2> Which austerity would that be? [http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/apr/25/uk- publ...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/apr/25/uk-public- spending-1963)

That slight dip in 2009? Gosh, cut to the bone there.

And all those other countries that didn't try this super-austere austerity, they all had hunky-dory 2009-present economic performance, right?

Honestly, I think those desperate to disprove "austerity" do protest too much. "Austerity" is not going up to 47.7% of the GDP in spending from 41%.

<comment><USER3> Austerity isn't about government spending, it's about shifting government spending away from the poor and disenfranchised. Politicians preaching austerity rarely mention defense budgets, corporate tax loopholes, or the cost of incarceration, but they often rant against entitlement and moochers.

<comment><USER4> Well, then call it 'inequitable distribution of cuts', or soemthing else. The idea behind reducing and reversing the growth in public spending is to allow private investment to grow more than the government. This UK policy doesn't seem to fit that description at all.

It seems to me there is a concerted effort to make austerity an unspeakable word, for reasons that have very little to do with macroeconomics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A slight cut in the growth of government spending is a pretty absurd definition of Austerity. The UK public debt continues to balloon as before.

If any recovery is in housing prices and speculation as opposed to business and invetstment, that is even worse for the long run. A nation cannot house- build its way to prosperity. Dwellings are primarily a consumable item, and mich harder to export than tractors or cars.

</comment><comment><USER5> Austerity is where you coerce a huge amount of money from the population, ostensibly in order to pay for services, but then because you ran up a huge debt, you instead use that tax revenue to cover the interest payments on that debt, instead of using the revenue to pay for the services you originally promised.

Of course then the people suffer as all their food and education are cut, and the New Yorker writes articles saying "Austerity Doesn't Work."

But in fact what they should be saying is, "Coercing Money From People Is Wrong." That money never should have been coerced in the first place. Then the people would have been able to spend it however they wanted, instead of having to get all upset that a bunch of politicians and bankers blew the money (surprise, surprise.)

The people should also be ashamed of themselves to whatever degree they voted for coercion in the first place. They were bribed into doing so by promises of services -- services they didn't get -- the promise of which was enough for them to justify in their minds the robbing of their fellow man.

Well when everybody is robbing everybody, only poverty can result. The moral of the story isn't that austerity failed -- it's that we shouldn't be violating people's property rights in the first place, and we certainly shouldn't be bribing others to vote for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Simple question for those of us not up to speed on the specifics: did spending get cut to less than revenue? or not? If not, does the debt continue with a concrete plan to pay it off toward greater revenue? If no to both, it's not "austerity".

<comment><USER7> No, only the rate of spending has been cut. Outgoings still exceed income. However our deficit is shrinking faster than any other developed nation:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10367430/IMF- Br...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10367430/IMF-Britains- deficit-to-shrink-at-fastest-rate-in-developed-world-in-2013.html)

The impact on social mobility and the rich/poor divide has been completely ignored. What's the point of growth if it doesn't benefit everybody?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Conservatives all over the globe have been using Greece and Portugal as reasons to slash public services. The public figures are well aware that public spending makes up a large percent of GDP expenditure, despite being a fraction of private wealth. So it's no wonder why austerity doesn't work.

Greece and Portugal simply have irresponsible taxation systems that were pushed too far, so their debt accumulated. Greece has people driving million dollar cars paying the same tax as common people.

</comment><comment><USER9> TLDR: rightists predicted austerity would improve the economy. The right got elected, pushed austerity, and the economy improved, but it wasn't really the austerity at all because of x,y,z.

(I'm NOT trying to take sides here, just trying to summarize the thesis of a long article)</comment>


Metrorail Crash May Exemplify Automation Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062802481.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not convinced that the ship that crashed was a good design. When GPS fails, it seems logical to switch to dead reckoning only if there is no human available to take over. If you've got a human crew available, it seems like a better choice to just stop the ship and let them handle it.

<comment><USER3> The design issue in this case is not making it blatantly and unavoidably obvious that the GPS had failed. The dead reckoning system should probably also give an error range instead of keeping any appearance of the same "pinpoint" accuracy.

<comment><USER4> The system was self steering (i.e. driving the ship) - there was no one to give an error range to. No one was watching it because it normally works so well that there is no reason to double check it.

An error indicator is no help if no one goes to look at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most of these just seem like standard bad design or human stupidity. I think there may be a "paradox" but I'm not sure it's well sketched out here.

<comment><USER4> The paradox is that the better the automation, the more humans rely on the machine.

But when it fails, humans trust it too much.

Or you can make it less reliable, and cause the human to trust it less, but that has issues too.

It's hard to find a balance point, neither direction is good.

A solution from outside the box is needed here - make the automation good, but in a way that the human input is encouraged.

<comment><USER6> Make failure immediately visible.

<comment><USER7> Make failure immediately visible _in a non-destructive way_. A nuclear reactor that fails and explodes immediately is not a good thing. A nuclear reactor that fails and notifies someone qualified to fix the problem immediately is a very good thing.

<comment><USER6> Well, the details are application-specific, yeah. The metrorail problem could have been "solved" by making the system refuse to allow a train to travel on track that didn't have a currently working train sensor, but such failures are so common in the system that the whole Metro would grind to a halt, from my reading this summer about this problem (mostly while on the Metro, fittingly).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Renee, the friendly rack-based framework - <AUTHOR> http://reneerb.com/

<comment><USER2> Its amazing how propaganda from one genocidal regime is accepted, even cool, but the other would get you banned anywhere.

<comment><USER3> Who said it was a "genocidal regime"?

Americans who can't even point Russia on a map and know their history from the History channel and New York Times bestseller books (if that)?

For hundreds of millions of people all around the world it was an inspiration, even if faulty, and hardly comparable to nazism.

So, there.

<comment><USER4> The Stalinist Soviet Union that website evokes was in fact a genocidal regime. I don't know what specifically you're talking about; maybe it's some other government.

It would probably be better not to hash this out on HN, though, so I've downmodded the root comment on this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone got a 'why not Sinatra' for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Essentially, it let's you take something like

      before '/blog/:id' do
        @blog = Blog.get(params[:id])
      end

      get '/blog/:id' do
        @blog
      end

      put '/blog/:id' do
        @blog.update_attributes(params)
      end

and turn it into

      path 'blog' do
        var do |id|
          @blog = Blog.get(id)
          get { halt @blog }
          put { @blog.update(request.params); halt :ok}
        end
      end

I feel this is DRY'er than the Sinatra representation. It also has nice integration with Rack itself. The implementation is very simple, easy to get into.

<comment><USER6> What I discovered recently when doing a new Rails 3 app was that the RESTful CRUD stuff is all boilerplate. This is true about Sinatra apps, too: Every GET, POST, PUT and DELETE are just wrappers around find, create update and destroy. I used Rabl for generating JSON, so it was possible to write a single serialization for all objects. So why not just boil everything down to the minimal code required?

Something like this:

        handle '/blog'

That's it. This makes some assumptions:

* That /blog maps to a class Blog which it can load and save. * That you either use "fat models" (with callbacks that munge data and perform actions when data changes) or external observers (like ActiveRecord's observers). * That the model supports all four CRUD actions.

When you want additional verbs:

        handle 'GET /blog/search' do
          MySearchEngine.search(params[:q])
        end

Or object-specific ones:

        handle 'GET /blog/:id/search' do |blog|
          MySearchEngine.search(params[:q], :blog_id => blog.id)
        end

In fact, aside from extra verbs, you could get away with no code at all, since you could introspect the database layer to discover which classes are mappable.

My app is a JavaScript-based single-page HTML5 web application using Backbone, so there is almost no server-side frontend code, meaning my app is basically a server-side database anyway.

<comment><USER7> I wrote something like this a while back: <https://github.com/nakajima/sinatras-hat> It's no longer maintained, but it was fun to see how many assumptions I could jam into one framework.

<comment><USER6> That's pretty cool!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm, another Ruby web framework that goes the DSL route. Is there anything available that generally tries to be a bit more explicit? Strangely enough, camping seems to be the only somewhat well-known and maintained contender here, and that has those global object and twee details…

<comment><USER9> It's really easy to put together systems like this in Ruby now thanks to Rack. What sort of API would you be interested in seeing?

<comment><USER8> Honestly, that's mostly why I'm asking. You're right, getting something to work with Rack isn't hard. But getting a proper API in the first place, is.

<comment><USER9> I totally agree. That's why I was interested to see if you had any ideas. I find this sort of thing interesting and while I've played with ideas in the past, I always come back to the standard patterns :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's somewhat similar to this other microframework: <https://github.com/soveran/cuba>

Not because of the name ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool project.

Anyone know what inspired the name, theme etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea how we got down the Russian path. Sort of started as a joke and somehow went from there.

Renee is my gf's name, and she's very patient with me when I wanna work on open source, so, it's a nod to her.

The inspiration for it came from Railsconf 2009 when one of the Sinatra guys said how get "/:id" do |id| was a smell because of the id repeat. I had been working on a new routing DSL for Goliath, when I got an itch to start making simple, useful rack apps.

<comment><USER12> Josh, I have not looked into the details of your framework, but why not simplify the DSL to:

        path 'blog' do |id|
          @blog = Blog.get(id)
          get { halt @blog }
          put { @blog.update(request.params); halt :ok}
        end

Why do you need the var call within the block? Also, you seem to break the ruby convention of using do end for blocks larger than one line, in many of your examples.

(Again, I spent three seconds on your site, so you may have a solid reason for this and have explained it already as well.)

<comment><USER13> Yeah this is an early release. I can think of several ways to enhance the DSL even more with ideas similar to this to cleanup common cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, exactly. I wanna get a better handle on what these common cases are, so, comments like this are wonderful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's with the use of curly brackets for multi-line blocks?

<comment><USER15> Most "rules" about {…} vs. do…end are nonsense. I tend to use {…} unless I can't be bothered to put parens around the arguments.

<comment><USER16> They're nonsense in that they are without ryhme or reason, but you should be following the community standard (curlies for one liners, do/end for everything else).

I'd honestly pass on an open source project not following the generally agreed upon ruby standard.

<comment><USER17> >"They're nonsense in that they are without ryhme or reason, but you should be following the community standard (curlies for one liners, do/end for everything else)."

That's my reasoning too. At first, I thought it was more readable (read: familiar) to use curly braces, but now I stick with do...end for blocks >1 line. Sometimes it's helpful for breaking up complex nested map() blocks as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Activity tracking – new feature UXtweak - <AUTHOR> https://www.uxtweak.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Track page visits, clicks, form changes and see how they evolved through time with our new feature Activity Tracking.

What feature would you like to see in online user testing and usability platform next?</comment>


Factor 0.88 released - <AUTHOR> http://factor-language.blogspot.com/2007/02/factor-088-released.html <comment><USER2> and what does this have to do with startups?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Changelog: http://factorcode.org/responder/help/show-help?topic=changes</comment>


It's time to talk about post-RMS Free Software - <AUTHOR> https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html <comment><USER2> > Remove everyone, if we must, and let something much better be built from the > ashes.

This is cancel culture taken to the extreme. Now that everything is built, the builders are expendable. They're "problematic."

We're facing down a new form of puritanism that is a greater threat to civil rights than the "problematic" individuals they seek to destroy.

No defense for RMS' statement, it's absurd, but if there's no moderation whatsoever in regards to a proportionate response (eg. he's either "clean" or "unclean"), then no one else is safe as the mob ratchets up its criteria for existing as a virtuous person.

<comment><USER3> The issue isn't one problematic statement. It's a history of behaviour that's documented to have driven multiple people away from the free software community and an absolute unwillingness on his part to do anything about it. If your movement's leadership acts in a way that hurts the movement, what's the appropriate response? Everything short of pushing RMS out has been tried already.

<comment><USER2> People who run away from something when their feelings get hurt are no great loss to whatever "movement" they're too weak to contribute to. Free Software has much bigger problems than these losers.

<comment><USER3> I personally know high quality developers who refuse to work on free software projects because of Stallman. It's not a matter of weakness, it's a matter of principle.

<comment><USER2> So they only work on commercial software projects because of Richard Stallman?

<comment><USER3> Yes. They concluded that working in communities that wouldn't tolerate people like RMS was more important than working on free software.

<comment><USER4> This is a disingenuous argument.

I work on some free software projects and most people don't even know who RMS is. There are multiple Free/Open Source software associations, projects and communities to choose, all with different people working on them, some of them don't tolerate such behavior.

If none of those fit, people can just create their own and choose who to associate with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I grow more and more tired of these discussions. Talks of banishing people because they're ignorant, rude, sexist. Conferences are getting shut down, people are having their world turned upside down for being ignorant. Every topic is a hot potato. I feel i can't even have a reasonable conversation about diversity, ignorance, or whatever the controversy of the day is. It's easier to just be quiet than express opinions.

<comment><USER6> Why can't you have a reasonable discussion?

Stallman emailed a big mailing list for a computer science department the following about a child sex trafficking victim:

"The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein's harem…Let's presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it). ...

We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing."

Is this acceptable to you?

<comment><USER7> If a person has sex with a minor without knowing they are a minor it is a crime. But should they lose their livelihood and reputation if they didn't know the parts that make it a crime or didn't commit the coercion themselves?

If I buy a car cheaply at auction that was seized as part of a drug-dealing crime and then get busted for having drugs still stashed in the doors, I am now a drug offender. I did not knowingly do it nor did I mean to hurt people with drug trafficking so should I lose my livelihood and reputation?

If buy a unknowingly stolen Gucci handbag on the street for a cheap price (thinking it could be a knockoff).... you get the picture.

I'm not defending drug traffickers, child rapists, or appropriating stolen goods, I am wondering if knowingly participating in the moral violation that defines the crime should make the reputational difference... or should you be persona non grata regardless? Is that Stallman's question?

<comment><USER8> Let's say you knowingly stash the drugs in your car doors and are then arrested, convicted, serve your sentence, and are released. Should you then have the rest of your life extrajudiciously ruined by a group of people who have dedicated their lives to harassing drug dealers because their own kids died of drug overdoses?

Because applying metered justice and preventing ongoing escalating feuds is the entire point of the _justice system_. We're in this clusterfuck because people don't feel it is working, and they are not wrong. Specifically here, we all expect Epstein's close associates to reliably quash deeper investigation - investigation into their guilt went cold with Epstein's body.

And I'm generally for grassroots direct action, but this frenzy doesn't seem directed towards making up for the failings of the system, but rather scoring points against easy targets for the thrill of it. RMS himself was nowhere near this island, rather he simply had the audacity to question the lynch mob's narrative! With a reaction like this, how can it be said that these pitchforks are in the service of justice?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jesus Christ, HN.

I read this article and my reaction was: damn, I knew RMS was weird and opinionated, but I didn't know he was evil.

I come here to see how others react to this revelation and what do I find? "By golly, what is the world coming to when you can't even defend child rape without someone calling for your removal from leadership?"

Y'all motherfuckers need Jesus.

</comment><comment><USER10> What am I even reading in this thread?

> The perpetrator is a victim, there's no doubt about that. Psychopaths aren't > born, they are created through trauma in a society that doesn't give a crap > about humans.

> This is cancel culture taken to the extreme.

> I grow more and more tired of these discussions. Talks of banishing people > because they're ignorant, rude, sexist.

Stallman is, and has, defending child sex trafficking and rape.

</comment><comment><USER11> The salient point is that free software is a movement consisting of many individuals with their own viewpoints. If you want to support free software without endorsing the behavior of this man then donate your time, money, attention, to a different free software organization. There are a lot of them [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open- source_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open- source_software_organizations)

</comment><comment><USER12> If you click through to the first to links of the post, it's really quite an eye opener.

</comment><comment><USER6> Oh. I didn't realise Stallman's rigid stance to freedom of software also extended to having sex with children and victims of sex trafficking.

It's amazing how much hanging out in the tech world you don't hear anything about this.

Of course, just like he argues that a perpetrators is the real victim. I'm sure I'll read some article about how admirable Stallman's views are.

<comment><USER13> I thought this much would be obvious by now, but here we go. The people who traffic and rape children are mainly found among the filthy rich so called elite. If you want to do something about that, punching RMS won't help.

The thing about RMS is that he prefers to use his own brain and is not afraid to stand up for his views, which is an increasingly rare phenomenon. So rare that its nearly considered a crime these days.

The perpetrator is a victim, there's no doubt about that. Psychopaths aren't born, they are created through trauma in a society that doesn't give a crap about humans.

<comment><USER6> So he uses his own brain to advocate for the "elite" and that's somehow admirable.

<comment><USER13> That sounds very unlikely to me, and would need to be backed up by solid proof.

I think you need to take a chill pill and figure out where all the hate is coming from.

<comment><USER6> Solid proof? The emails he sent to the mailing list is the proof.

What hate exactly? It seems there's plenty of people even on this site defending him.

Could explain what you're implying that I'm missing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think just because someone may be bad at one thing, does not necessarily mean they are bad at other stuff too.

Also, I think you should have the right to your opinion. But, people who have other opinion also must have right to their opinion, too, rather than only one.

These are just as true with Stallman as with Minsky, and also the other people who complain about it, I think.

I don't like it either that they did that sex, and I fail to see how "the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing", but I think it make sense that you should not "accusation inflation", even though other people might says differently. I do not defend rapists, but also do not accuse them of other stuff too automatically.

Whether or not you use GPL and Emacs and so on are entirely different decisions than those reports they mention, though. It is separate, even if done by the same person.

</comment><comment><USER15> it is all about rms being rms. When an act of illegal copying copyrighted material is called piracy, he pedantically says that it is a wrong term, because piracy is a penal crime that involves violence and forcible property theft.

when a pimp presents an underage woman to a customer, he pedantically says that it wasn't an assault.

I've read the whole email thread and didn't see him defending child rape and sex trafficking. Maybe ones who are quick to condemn him should read something but the medium post

</comment><comment><USER16> A useful self-test on this topic is to consider the following question:

If we really needed to talk about the inception of ReiserFS, should we bail Reiser out of prison for a bit and pay him a speaker's fee? Or can we content ourselves with considering his technology while excluding the man?

It turns out, opinions differ on this. And while I'm not implying that RMS's words are worse than Reiser's actions, I'm noting that the fact some people believe the answer is "Yes, we do bail him out of prison for a bit" is telling on where people in our industry set the bar on dividing a person's works and their other qualities.

</comment><comment><USER17> I didn't read this as RMS minimizing sex trafficking or defending rapists. I read it as him making an inappropriate argument about semantics in entirely the wrong place. These are very different things, and it seems like many people, including the author of that Medium article, really want it to be the first instead of the second.

<comment><USER6> How old is this man?

He's not stupid. He knows what he's doing.

What a cop out to say "no he was just really hung up about grammar. "

<comment><USER18> He's autistic and he probably has trouble with communication. He might not know that it's a terrible idea to quibble about why his preferred definition of assault is better than the commonly accepted and used definition.

<comment><USER9> Surely an autistic person is still capable of learning these things.

If he is not capable of that, then he's disastrously unqualified to be leading an advocacy organization.

<comment><USER18> I'm not defending him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Who remembers Jimi Hendrix?

</comment><comment><USER20> Open source software is driven by powerful economic forces, not by RMS or his politics. In contrast, "free" software is a sideshow. The FSF is mostly irrelevant these days.

It's interesting to note the history of the GNU project, which bootstrapped itself by ripping off pre-existing BSD licensed projects and publishing new implementations as GPL. Open source predates "free" software.</comment>


SVGeneration – Generate high-quality SVG background images - <AUTHOR> http://www.svgeneration.com

<comment><USER2> 1) I'd like to be able to go through more backgrounds at once using say, thumbnails and/or categories.

2) It would be cool if the app would compile Bootstrap (from SASS) to match the colour scheme of the background.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I have a tag search thats pretty much finished. I want to implement sorting as well (date, views, etc).

I hadn't thought about incorporating into bootstrap, but I'll definitely keep it in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my first web app, and there is still a lot of work to be done on it. I would love to get some feedback...</comment>


'We are poorer for the things you are looking at in these pictures' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/11/30/we-are-poorer-for-the-things-you-are-looking-at-in-these-pictures <comment><USER2> "By the mid '80s, the two superpowers possessed a combined sum of more than 70,000 nuclear warheads, a number sufficient to put 357 warheads, each with yields far exceeding that of the Hiroshima bomb, onto every capital city of every country on the entire globe."

That one line from the article scared me more than most things I've read in my life. The fact that humanity once wielded the weapons capacity to wipe everyone off the face of the earth hundreds of times over. Staggering.

<comment><USER3> Much of Hiroshima wasn't fully destroyed, and there were many survivors. Aside from the concerns about dud or destroyed missiles, you need a lot of missiles to destroy infrastructure that's more spread out.

You're also not just trying to destroy the 200 or so world capitals, but strategic assets in the US or the Soviet union. Between cities, military bases, power plants, factories and other infrastructure pertinent to waging war that 357 per capital number starts sounding a lot more reasonable.

This comparison is just another arbitrary irrelevant number journalists like to come up with that ultimately just serves to obscure the issue. It's like describing the amount of concrete in the Hoover dam in terms of the volume of VW beatles.

<comment><USER4> >> It's like describing the amount of concrete in the Hoover dam in terms of the volume of VW beatles.

Don't leave us hanging, what's the answer?

<comment><USER5> I'm using a concrete VW on the ocean floor as a reference. Its supposedly 8 tons.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/8589222/A...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/8589222/A-concrete- Volkswagen-Beetle-is-parked-underwater-amongst-the-sculptures-off-Cancun.html)

> How much concrete is in the Hoover Dam?

Three and one-quarter million cubic yards. (Normal weight concrete weighs about 4000 lb. per cubic yard, so 3,250,000 cubic yards weighs 6,500,000 US tons).

[http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/faqs/damfaqs.html](http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/faqs/damfaqs.html)

There are ~812,500 VW bugs worth of concrete in the Hoover Dam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > At the height of the Cold War, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev boasted

> that the Soviets were manufacturing nuclear missiles "like sausages."

> His bravado underscored early strategic posturing that turned on the

> assumption that more was better.

> The Kennedy administration responded in kind, referring to the perceived

> shortage of American nukes as a runner would imagine trying to pass the

> leader of a race.

Maybe it's just me. But maybe it would be nice if world leaders were more careful and thoughtful about what they say? Less bluster. Less inapproprate humor about starting bombing even if you think your mic is turned off.

Not to pick on certain political parties. Just a general observation that could apply to all politicians of any party. Most could probably agree that this would be a good thing.

<comment><USER7> > But maybe it would be nice if world leaders were more careful and thoughtful > about what they say?

Not as long as we keep electing such politicians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wonderful pictures if I may say so</comment>


New bioluminescent cockroach possibly already extinct by volcanic eruption - <AUTHOR> http://news.mongabay.com/2012/1114-rudolph-bioluminescent-roach.html

<comment><USER2> I for one am glad that it's not human-kind being blamed for this extinction ... and unless we somehow caused the volcano to erupt (drilling for oil?), I think you'd have a hard time proving causation.

The bigger issue I have with most extinction stories is that they totally ignore the fact that extinctions happened (and happen) regularly. As an ecologist, I would hate to be the cause of another species demise, but should I intervene in natural processes to save a species that is dying out naturally?

</comment><comment><USER3> OOTINI!!!</comment>


Ask HN: Python or Scala for spark jobs. Performance is end goal - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Question as stated is too vague to give you a good recommendation.

There are simply too many considerations and tradeoffs to account for to give you good advice!</comment>


You should follow me on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html

<comment><USER2> The original discussion - interesting that it's been 800 days, in which time Dustin's findings have become so ubiquitous that a HN Search for "Dustin Curtis Twitter" shows a number of comments about how annoying it to see this phrase at the bottom of every blog!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704738></comment>


AVM trying to spread FUD about the Cybits case  - <AUTHOR> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/06/24/#20110624-avm_cybits_gpl_fud

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the last paragraph is the most interesting. There is nothing that AVM can gain through this lawsuit. If they win, then it'll revoke the GPL and they no longer have a license to the Linux kernel and won't be able to ship their own product.</comment>


What if a real newspaper ran headlines that lied, Mr Dalrymple - <AUTHOR> http://theorangeview.net/2011/03/what-if-a-real-newspaper-ran-headlines-that-lied/ <comment><USER2> Dalrymple's article comes from a weird persecution complex Apple journalists cling to despite Apple's insane success. We are talking about a story that revolves around the complexities of the definition of open source, and got pretty good play in the sites that care about such things. Sorry CNN wasn't putting it on the front page.

It isn't the 90s anymore. Apple is doing fine. You don't need to stand up for them by taking petty attacks against their competitors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny that he mentions John Gruber:

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/03/29/dalrymple-open>

</comment><comment><USER4> It looks like Mr. Dalrymple makes a habit of this:

"Amazon Appstore disables Android security"

[http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/03/29/amazon-appstore- disabl...](http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/03/29/amazon-appstore-disables- android-security/)

<comment><USER5> "… this is arguably the equivalent of suggesting that users turn off their firewall to run their software …"

Windows application installers do this all the time, except they ask you to turn off or ignore your antivirus software, which is arguably worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> ... then it would be called a "blog" ...

Before downvoting the heck out of me, think about it... How often do you see misleading headlines/titles on blogs vs newspapers? Link baits, flamebaits, etc...

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately even real newspapers are having more and more misleading headlines. In some newspapers you can even read facts taken from Twitter.

Sometimes it seems we are going for the democratic truth.

<comment><USER6> Such as? I'm saying that trying to come up with a catchy headline is one of the main goals of blogging, but on newspapers you only see linkbaits and misleading headlines in the opinion/editorial pages, which are clearly labeled as such, or have the editors name on them. (ie, "Herbert: Amurkka is best country in the world")

I can imagine some cheap papers doing this, but I cannot remember seeing such a headline on a newspaper.

I could be wrong, though :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "What if it was Apple" in the headline clearly indicates that the article is speculative and not fact based. Would that all his headlines were so appropriate.</comment>


The worst enemy to my startup is depression - <AUTHOR> http://www.limedaring.com/the-worst-enemy-to-my-startup-is-depression/

<comment><USER2> I have found that the best way to combat depression which hinders progress on a startup or other project is to think: "well, no one said this was gonna be easy." Or "This isn't supposed to be easy you know?" Somehow it turns it into a challenge as opposed to "is it really worth it", "why am I doing this", "I don't feel like it", ect.</comment>


The Latest Bull Case for Electric Cars: The Cheapest Batteries - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/latest-bull-case-for-electric-cars-the-cheapest-batteries-ever <comment><USER2> I'm really grateful to Tesla/GM/Nissan and the people buying their cars. It seems like even with all the missed milestones (mostly Tesla) they're still dragging the industry forward by leaps. I wonder what it would look like without them. Remember, the original cellphone cost $4000-something, before inflation.

I don't even like cars, I like trains and walking and hate what cars have done to our cities and villages, but electric cars are the first tech in a long time that has given me a _sense of optimism_ for the future that I've only ever felt looking at old advertisements[1] from before I was born.

If there were Beatitudes for technology, maybe they'd go like:

 _" Blessed are the early adopters, for they allow the meek-pocketbook'd to inherit the earth."_

[1] [https://imgur.com/FRKdZ2o](https://imgur.com/FRKdZ2o) (Have you ever seen an advertisement this positive? Ads these days mostly seem to fall into categories like glib humor and narcissistic 'buy this because you deserve it/you're the best/you can't be the best unless you have it'.)

<comment><USER3> This is a very Silicon Valley / US bubble mindset. Telsa/GM/Nissan have made much contribution but your are missing the major factor driving the EV industry forward which is government industrial policy.

The real reason is EU and China have announced their intention of banning ICE vehicles around 2030 with China having very aggressive EV marketshare goals starting next year. Companies that do not meet EV sale goals will have to buy credits from others that do just like a carbon emission market. This is causing all major automakers to not be complacent and invest heavily in EVs.

<comment><USER4> This is misleading. These (quite recent) changes in governmental policy have come about as a result of things that Tesla managed to achieve, firstly, on its own, and secondly, through its effects on the behavior of other automakers. No major automaker was meaningfully working on EVs before Tesla; now they all are.

Indeed, to a rare degree, the shift we're seeing in a major sector of the world economy is the result of the unilateral actions of just one person: Elon Musk.

<comment><USER3> This is typical Silicon Valley hype taking credit for everything. There were many EV manufacturers around the same time as Tesla (ex. Nissan, BYD). Even earlier, the supply chain for lithium batteries got momentum due to electric buses and hybrid vehicle manufactures but no one gives them credit, only Tesla for some reason. Currently, Tesla is only a small chunk of the entire EV and battery market but still gets all the credit.

You can see this in the Tesla Semi or the Tesla battery pack announcement. Companies have been mass producing them 4 years before and are already being used in production today. However, being B2B, these products were largely low key. But somehow Tesla gets all the credit these and "moving the industry forward". Chinese and Korean battery manufactures have also been expanding production like crazy and account for the vast majority of production but only the GigaFactory gets any mention which cause some people think Tesla alone is responsible for the decreasing price of batteries.

Major auto manufactures are working on EV mainly due to government policy. I agree private companies seeing traction selling EVs is a large impetus for the new government policies, but to only credit Tesla is over-exagerating it's contributions. How much does Tesla influence Chinese policy when 95% of Chinese EVs are made by domestic brands?

<comment><USER5> Can you give us a list of companies producing semi trucks with large range starting 4 years ago? All of the ones I've seen have small ranges.

Likewise, can you tell us what BYD should be praised for? They keep on announcing that they're going to compete with Tesla head-to-head with long- range high-performance cars, but the only thing they've managed to get volume on are low-performance, lower-range Chinese compliance cars. Tesla is praised for making electric cars sexy; is BYD doing that?

Third, I'm sure you've noticed that at the lower end of the US market, the Leaf gets a lot of credit, as does the Bolt.

<comment><USER3> 1) New models will obviously have more range than ones 4 years ago... My point was the Tesla Semi should be treated as incremental rather than revolutionary, just like releasing a new smartphone model with more RAM than one 4 years ago. Also the Tesla Semi hasn't even launched yet so they can easily overpromise making comparisons with any existing offerings difficult.

2) As with Ford for ICE vehicles, affordable EVs selling higher volumes are much more important to than the premium EVs offered by Tesla in terms bringing the tech mainstream. In this way, BYD and Nissan should be credited much more than Tesla. In terms of contribution, I would put BYD much higher than Tesla: BYD manufacturers their own batteries, sell more vehicles, drive industry competition in the much more relevant CN market, and their success influnced the Chinese government to phase out ICE cars.

3) My post was specifically replying the the person above who was worshipping Musk on a pedestal and giving all the credit to Tesla.

<comment><USER5> 1) The first electric cars were from the early 1900s, everything since should be treated as incremental, just like the iPhone wasn't that much of an advance over other smartphones.

2) Halo products are a concept, but apparently not in cars. BYD's failed attempts to introduce premium cars, followed by eventual success in me-too compliance cars for the Chinese market deserves a participation award. Not praise.

3) Uh, OK. Never mind the facts, let's focus on opposing Musk worship.

<comment><USER3> Don't think I can ever convince people like you. In terms of scale, driving down costs and adoption, Tesla is a shrimp.

Keep being arrogant and think the world revolves around Silicon Valley tech companies. When EVs completely replaces ICE, people like you will think Musk did by himself against dumb incumbents while completely ignoring the much much greater contributions of everyone else.

I'll just leave with this statistic [1]:

> China's demand for electric bus batteries is almost equal to that of demand > for all electric vehicle batteries

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-08/china- goe...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-08/china-goes-all-in- on-the-transit-revolution)

<comment><USER5> Huh, you just made up a bunch of stuff and said I believe it. I'm not the strawman you were attempting to beat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the greatest things about owning electric car is the absolutely _minimal_ maintenance. It's actually a simple machine even though it's got a lot of technology in it. With less moving parts there's less things breaking.

This is great news for the battery. The $209 price puts a new Leaf's battery in the $5k range, which is slightly more than what Nissan currently charges to replace it. At $100 then a new battery costs just $2400, even less with a trade in. I can imagine pay that amount every 8 years.

<comment><USER7> What I don't understand about the Leaf though - it's about €13k more expensive than my car when it was new 2y ago (Kia Ceed SW), which even has more extras than the basic Leaf. If the 40kwh battery costs about 8k now, and the rest of the car is cheaper to build - where does the remaining 5k go? Nissan's pockets? Or is this owed to lower unit production?

<comment><USER8> Nissan could almost certainly sell the Leaf for much less. When they wanted to clear out 2017 inventory, they offered $10000 discounts on top of all the government incentives. People took a brand new "$32,000" car home for $11,500 or less.

But the market's currently willing to bear the price they're asking, so why not ask it? They sold over 20,000 units of the new 2018 Leaf in its first month on the market, and government incentives around the world make the actual buying price much lower than the sticker price for many buyers.

I also have to disagree about the Kia Ceed being nicer than a basic Leaf. There's many years of fuel savings to factor in as well.

<comment><USER9> They lowered the prices because they needed to sell a certain number for compliance reasons, so it was a better deal to sell them at a loss:

Nissan says that lands the Leaf in a sweet spot between so-called compliance EVs—low-cost electrics with relatively limited range that manufacturers produce to meet certain regulations—and Chevrolet's Bolt EV and Tesla's Model 3, both of which offer greater than 200 miles of range but at a higher cost.

[https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-nissan-leaf- first-...](https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-nissan-leaf-first-drive- review)

<comment><USER8> That'd be a plausible explanation if they didn't run the $10K discounts outside CARB states, which they did. There were no "compliance" benefits to offset any theoretical losses on those sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The new Nissan Leaf looks like an impressive step forward. Double the driving range and around a third more horsepower from last year's model for the same price.

[https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-nissan-leaf- first-...](https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-nissan-leaf-first-drive- review)

<comment><USER8> It's only 25-40% more range than last year's model, not double. The battery went from 30 kWh to 40 kWh.

<comment><USER11> The first generation battery was 24.0kWh, the 30.0 came a few years later as an option. The original range was 73 miles, then 105 miles, to now 150 miles.

The OP was apparently comparing 2011 figures to 2018 ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a 2013 Nissan Leaf which is down to about 70 miles of range which is annoying. And still, I'd _never_ buy another ICE again. My next car will be a Tesla or a Bolt. I don't think the 2018 Leaf is in the picture but maybe if Nissan gave me a good trade-in.

<comment><USER13> I never found out if the new leafs actually use proper thermal management with a coolant loop on the pack. It's a shame the never did it on the original and battery life suffers because of it.

<comment><USER8> > I never found out if the new leafs actually use proper thermal management > with a coolant loop on the pack.

It does not. It's just a 25% larger version of last year's battery.

A 60 kWh battery pack manufactured by LG Chem is slated for later in 2018. LG Chem's battery packs for other EVs are liquid cooled.

My uninformed theory is that Nissan contracted to buy far more batteries from AESC than they ended up needing for the Leaf's sales volume, and is still getting rid of them.

<comment><USER13> Damn, that's unfortunate. It has a bad side-effect of giving EVs a worse name then the deserve.

<comment><USER14> ? man what are you talking about? Its normal battery degradation and the car doesnt need any special thermal management or whatever you call it. Besides, if anyone believes in the leaps in battery capacity and charging speeds, you should throw away your old battery every 2 years because it's already old, too heavy and not environmentally friendly enough.

<comment><USER8> > Its normal battery degradation and the car doesnt need any special thermal > management or whatever you call it.

Sorry but you're wrong on this. The Nissan Leaf's battery degradation is not normal; it's so abnormal that Nissan was forced to _retroactively_ add a warranty for it, and redesign the battery pack twice within the first generation to try to slow it down. Cars driven in hot climates lost upwards of 30% of their battery capacity in 1-2 years because the battery has no real thermal management, which virtually every other EV on the road has.

Tesla's vehicles, for example, have been on the road as long as the Leaf. They lose about 5% battery capacity in the first 50,000 miles and less than 10% after 100,000 miles on average. Chevrolet has had zero warranty claims in the entire life of the Volt vehicle program for battery degradation.

Meanwhile, my Nissan Leaf has 23,000 miles on the odometer and has lost over 25% of its original battery capacity.

> Besides, if anyone believes in the leaps in battery capacity and charging > speeds, you should throw away your old battery every 2 years because it's > already old, too heavy and not environmentally friendly enough.

You're being disingenuous, right? The batteries don't change that much that quickly, and there's no environmental case for throwing away $5000+ in working batteries every other year. There's nobody selling upgraded replacement batteries for EVs anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's just assuming ordinary mass production economies, not improved battery technology. This is just a 50% price decrease on increased manufacturing volume, which is not unusual.

Battery cells are a good item for automated manufacturing. They're all the same, and they're made by the millions. (For some reason, Panasonic is having troubles at their battery cell plant in Nevada, but they should get past that. Panasonic makes the cells, Tesla assembles them into packs.)

That also holds for recycling. Taking apart packs and recycling them should be an efficient process. It already is for lead-acid batteries.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hey didn't I see an article on the same website claiming Musk made some claim about semi which can't be true because of battery costs? I'm on phone so I couldn't double check it easily. Apologies if my memories are failing me.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just can't bring myself to replace my aging 2003 Subaru when I know cars are going to improve so much in the next 5 years.

Between electric drivetrain technology and self-driving, it seems like things are going to improve rapidly in the next 5-10 years.

<comment><USER18> If you get a Model 3 with the option, you're prepared for autonomous driving. Stretching out an 03 another 10 years will be a trying affair. It'll be a 24 year old car. Just buy one when you feel it needs to be replaced, which I'd assume should be soon. Be glad that there is an option out there that covers you, at least on the autonomous driving front. Tesla will enable it as soon as the legal situation it is sorted out. We're past the days of worrying about getting the battery chemistry good-enough too.

I'd say you actually stretched that car out just the right amount of time to reap the benefits, perfect timing. I'm holding onto my '07 till I get my own Model 3, so I'm in a similar boat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't there a limited amount of easily minable lithium metal, though? I could have sworn I read that somewhere...

<comment><USER20> It does not matter. You need less than a dollar's worth of lithium to a kWh of battery thay costs 200 dollars. Once you increase a price of commodity by an order of magnitude - which we can here easily afford - all current reserve estimates are worthless due to massive new interest in research and development in mining technology and deposit discovery.

<comment><USER21> What you are saying leads me to the following thought: lithium will be the new oil. With all the same consequences that oil has now.

<comment><USER22> This is simply false. The amount of lithium in a battery is about 400 g/kWh

[http://www.meridian-int- res.com/Projects/How_Much_Lithium_Pe...](http://www.meridian-int- res.com/Projects/How_Much_Lithium_Per_Battery.pdf)

Putting a 100 kWh battery in a car would then require 40 kg of lithium, and with 2bn cars (projection for mid-21st century) you're looking at 80 million tonnes of lithium. The ocean contains about 240 _billion_ tonnes of lithium, 3000x requirements, and extracting lithium from seawater costs about $30/kg:

[http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no- shortage-...](http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for- electric-cars/)

so the total value of that lithium comes to _less than_ $2.4T. While not a small figure, this is miniscule compared to the global oil industry, which brings in more than that _per year_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_companies_by_revenue)

and that's using some of the most pessimistic numbers for lithium costs and requirements that I can find. The actual operation of the global lithium market will probably bring the total cost well below $1T, and seawater extraction will probably never be necessary:

[https://gigaom.com/2010/03/10/will-seawater-stave-off-a- lith...](https://gigaom.com/2010/03/10/will-seawater-stave-off-a-lithium- squeeze/)

Lithium absolutely will not, ever, be in any way comparable to oil in terms of price, environmental damage, or political impact. Lithium Chicken-Littling is not helpful to anyone.

<comment><USER21> I was explicitly referring to the topic of mining and discovering new reserves. But thanks for resources.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oyster, a Start-Up for E-Reading, Raises $14 Million - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/oyster-a-start-up-for-e-reading-raises-14-million/

<comment><USER2> When i was a nerdy little boy, had someone asked me what I'd do with 1 million dollar, I might have answered I would build a huge library, because nothing is as awesome as a great library.

Today, I have the biggest encyclopedia humankind ever made with me all the time, my university gives me access to the most recent research in my field from anywhere in the world, and for a tiny fraction of my income I get all the great music, all the movies (okay, some work needed there), and soon the almighty library I dreamed of as a child. These are wonderful times we life in.

<comment><USER3> What makes a great library great is the selection of which books to include and which to exclude. Amazon reviews aside, access to everything is only the first and a less significant step toward achieving your dream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > On Oyster, once a person reads more than 10 percent of the book, it is > officially considered "read." Oyster then has to pay the publisher a > standard wholesale fee.

via: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/25/technology/as-new- services...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/25/technology/as-new-services- track-habits-the-e-books-are-reading-you.html)

This article also talks about the "Sizzler Problem." Oyster costs $10/mo, so they basically have to hope that, on aggregate, people won't read more than that in cost of wholesale fees. It'd be really interesting to look at their actual numbers against Spotify and the other companies with a similar model. According to the article, only 2% of users read more than 10 books a month.

I'd imagine that the % of users that actually "cost" them money couldn't be more than ~5-10% of their entire subscriber-base. Anyone have any insight into this?

<comment><USER5> I don't have any insight, but I'm curious myself. How exactly do you compete with Amazon here? Considering Kindle, free wireless delivery, free classics, market power, etc, etc.. Competition also comes in the form of libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess a negative reaction on HN isn't always necessarily an indicator of potential failure: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335153](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335153)

Don't take a negative reaction as the be all and end all when you present something to people.

<comment><USER7> Two takeaways:

1) If anyone considers feedback on Hacker News to be an overall indicator of future success then I worry for them deeply

2) Getting funded is not 'success'. It is a step on the way to success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am Oyster subscriber. Their app is pleasant to use. I do miss a little more organization, but I am fine with it overall.

It is heavily curated ie. you get a lot of suggestions. And since they have rather limited selection, this is great. I managed to read through 3 books already and have a queue of several. I noticed that some were from Gutenberg project, so I guess they will not have to pay for those.

Overall I like experience and will continue to use, as well as Amazon and piratebay and other services to get myself books.

Only thing that might turn me off is, they have limited selection, but they can remedy that while I am going through books already available.

I really need them to come up with good Android app.

<comment><USER9> Do you find an incentive to read more as to ensure that you are getting your monthly money's worth?

<comment><USER8> More, I like to read and once I start to read a good story, it is hard to stop, so them curating helps a great deal.

It is not that great with SF, it is more my heroic efforts that found some SF to be read. I hope they will use money to get more.

Also, I would say, some social aspects where you can discuss books you want to read or just read, would be nice. I am member of goodreads and frankly, I am tempted by promise of them being integrated into newer kindles. I have rather old one (like a year or two :) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If only there were public institutions where you could get books (and eBooks!) for free...

<comment><USER11> I can't agree with this more, especially when it comes to ebooks. I've been mightily disappointed in the way public libraries have adopted Overdrive, which is - and this burns me - technology put in place to make consuming ebooks more difficult, and to charge libraries exorbitant fees at the same time.

I'd love to see homebrew projects like this one be successful: [http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24567880/douglas-county- mo...](http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24567880/douglas-county-model-gives- libraries-new-e-book)

[http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/sep13/Sendze_Van-Court-- Own-...](http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/sep13/Sendze_Van-Court--Own-Your-Own- Ebook-Lending-Service.shtml)

<comment><USER12> I'll second this.

I used to live in Arlington, Virginia, and while getting overdrive set up was a nightmare, actually checking books out was really easy.

I now live in New York, and frankly the New York Public Library's process for checking out e-books is so confusing that I can't figure out how to use it most of the time. It's just a better use of my time to just go ahead and buy the damn thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am concerned about a Spotify-style situation arising with these subscription reading services, in which platform operators and powerful middlemen reap the profits while content creators get the scraps (1). GigaOm found that both Scribd and Oyster have been vague about the payouts for authors (2), and this new article by the NY Times doesn't clear up the uncertainty.

1\. [http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/09/26/161758720/how-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/09/26/161758720/how- musicians-make-money-by-the-fraction-of-a-cent-on-spotify)

2\. [http://gigaom.com/2013/10/01/scribd-moves-beyond-document- sh...](http://gigaom.com/2013/10/01/scribd-moves-beyond-document-sharing- with-8-99month-ebook-subscription-service/)

<comment><USER14> This source is a year old, but it doesn't seem like Spotify is really raking in the profits either:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/31/4575506/spotify-doubled- re...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/31/4575506/spotify-doubled-revenue- in-2012-but-losses-grow)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like a great service, it would be a no-brainer for me to sign up if they had a bigger non-fiction selection. Not just business, but foreign language, tech, science, etc. Maybe they have this already, but I didn't even see a non- fiction category. Am I missing something, and if not are there any good reasons why non-fiction doesn't feature more prominently in the selection?

</comment><comment><USER16> Subscriber here. I think paying the $10 a month provides another incentive for me to read. I don't know if I am getting $10 worth of material to read each month, i.e. finishing about half a book every month, but it sure has increased the amount of reading I do since I started using the service.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oyster, a Start-Up name that was already a name for another startup… oyster.com

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm really having a hard time with this product. It's basically taking something that exists for free...a library...and repackaging it as an app.

Now don't get me wrong I admire a nicely designed product just as much as the next person but how is this worth $10 alone?

I can literally subscribe to an RSS feed that gives me free ebooks daily[1]. Granted they aren't always the best reads but they are free. Aside from that I can go to the local library and checkout any physical book I want for free.

I think a much better product would be monthly unlimited audio books. Like spotify combined with audible. Now that I would pay for.

1.) [http://www.freebooksifter.com/](http://www.freebooksifter.com/)

<comment><USER19> Libraries are not free - you pay for them whether you use them or not.

<comment><USER15> Moreover, a library doesn't offer an app that's this easy to use. Assuming it offers a decent selection of ebooks in the first place.

I used to defend paper books, until I started reading a 10 lb textbook and having to lug it all over the city in my backpack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am paying something similar per month for safari service from Oreilly ( mostly tech books). I would gladly switch to a service that offers a wider range of books .

<comment><USER8> You will not find books you can find on Safari here :) I need to check them as I was under impression they cost much more.</comment></comment>


The WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured and Killed People - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomwarren/wwf-world-wide-fund-nature-parks-torture-death <comment><USER2> This to me is a sign of a kind of twisted morality and twisted priorities that urban, well-off people have in regards to animal rights. In a nutshell, it is the humanisation of the animals and the dehumanisation of humans. I can't help but to feel profoundly annoyed and even horrified when I hear people proudly proclaiming how people that people who hunt rhinos ought to be shot on sight, waged war on, why even tortured and summarily executed. Meanwhile people starve in miserable conditions, conditions which in many cases serve to push them into risky jobs such as this. They don't really care that that person is desperate with little other way to feed his family, and that poaching groups pay him 2 years wages to kill an animal and bring the ivory to them, they are happy to decree capital punishment for that from their comfy chairs. But boy they do care about some misplaced sense of "wildlife protection" with regards to appealing species like pandas or African megafauna.

<comment><USER3> Poachers are mostly criminal gangs, not mothers feeding dying babies. This shows a profound lack of awareness of the area. It's not some massive group of half starving people.

Also when you are dealing with the extinction of a species, drastic measures are necessary. Are you saying you prefer the economic well being of every single person on Earth over the right of a species to exist?

That is indeed twisted morality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> newsflash- poaching is lucrative enough for people to not listen when you tell them to please stop killing the animals(they'll even shoot at you if you irritate them enough). it is essentially a war between economically and ethically motivated people.

buzzfeed: [surprised pikachu face] for clicks as usual

<comment><USER5> It's a war between economically and economically motivated people.

The majority of critically endangered species are amphibians. Around 30% of all amphibians are classified as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable by the IUCN. Why have you never heard this fact before? Because practically no-one actually gives a shit about conservation.

The major conservation charities are a boondoggle. Their work often has little or no basis in science, their priorities are completely disconnected with protecting biodiversity, they often work to "save" species that are under no real threat and their efforts to protect charismatic megafauna are often detrimental to broader conservation issues.

As highlighted by this article, the impact of their activities on native peoples ranges from "highly disruptive" to "grievous and persistent abuses of human rights". In many places, the activities of conservation charities resembles the British Raj; vast numbers of people are uprooted from their homes and displaced to make room for wildlife reserves, despite those people often playing a vital role in protecting the ecosystem they inhabit.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1502366541/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1502366541/)

<comment><USER6> The public does love its megafauna. I desperately want my son to be able to take his son to see cheetahs on a safari. As for frogs... I can't make myself care even 1% as much.

<comment><USER7> Much like the poachers then, the value of the animal is based solely on its utility to you personally.

<comment><USER6> Yep — so I'll support policies to shoot them on sight and perhaps they'll do the reverse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, serious question: is the libertarian position that trade in endangered- animal products should be unregulated, or that anti-poaching efforts should be so? Or, perhaps, both? To me that seems awfully close to "might makes right" but I'm still curious to hear the rationale.

<comment><USER9> I'm not a libertarian, but some have suggested large scale farming of endangered animals to meet demand for these products and put poachers out of business.

Honestly, I'm uncomfortable with the notion of a tiger farm or a rhino farm, but it's hard for me to say exactly why.

<comment><USER10> Why not have large scale farming of humans to meet demands for inexpensive labor and protect against the occasional genocide?

<comment><USER11> Pretty sure that's called "urbanization".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Download Windows 8.1 RTM, Visual Studio 2013 RC Today - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/stevengu/archive/2013/09/09/download-windows-8-1-rtm-visual-studio-2013-rc-and-windows-server-2012-r2-rtm-today.aspx

<comment><USER3> I'm really glad we're getting developers what they need, and I'm sorry it seems to have taken some flaming press to get it.

I work in the Azure/AD group and we are dependent on the Windows preview releases too. If the community knew just how fast the Windows team was iterating on this new release cycle, I think they might be a lot more sympathetic to this situation.

And I just downloaded VS 2013 Beta last Friday. At least I haven't have a chance to install it yet. :-)

<comment><USER4> The problem is that devdiv have been doing this for a few years so some of us (previously heavy investors in Microsoft's products) are now pissed off.

firstly the fuck up that is Microsoft Connect where critical defects which cripple teams for years are ignored (VS HRESULT errors, hanging, crashes) even if reproducible.

Secondly, partner support is a piece of shit. It took 6 months to get a damn registry workaround out for the fact that download prompting in IE9 basically fucked up ClickOnce for 2000 clients for us.

then you fuck us with two license audits which cost us a fortune as it's impossible to decipher your shit crock licensing.

then you pulled windows 8 on everyone, ignored the entire industry saying "no, you fucked up".

then you pulled free visual studio for desktop and did a 180.

then you pulled windows 8.1 (which didn't fix windows. 8) and told everyone that you're not getting it before GA then did another 180.

No, you're not delivering what people want. You're fucking us over again and again and we're fed up with it. The only reason we're still drinking the milk is that we're stuck with it until we do a major product cycle.

That time is right now.

<comment><USER5> I can feel your frustration and you've expressed more vocally than I would have but I definitely share some of the sentiments.

My biggest beef is tying Visual Studio releases to the .NET framework and other components. Why should I need Visual Studio 2013/2012 to use Entity Framework 6 or ASP.NET MVC 5, etc. I can't even figure out what's supported and what's not with older Studio releases (such as 2010) without spending time on Google.

I don't really see any reason why Visual Studio 2010 shouldn't support .NET framework 4.5.1, MVC5, Entity Framework 6.0 etc.. I used to believe there was some validity to tying a .NET framework version to Visual Studio but I've come to realize its just a money grab and a way to keep pushing out new Studio releases. I understand there is some point where you need to move forward.

Anyway, at some point you realize enough is enough. I'm not there yet but I am definitely tempted to start heavily investing in other development stacks.

<comment><USER6> What other kinds of dev stacks are you looking at? I use C# in VS with Add-In- Express for creating Office plugins. It's a total pain in the ass most of the time and I would love to try something else.

I'm a long time Java/Eclipse guy that's been doing C# for a few years now. Whilst Eclipse is FAR from perfect, it really does beat VS hands down. Like - Resharper is basically a must. And running unit tests in Eclipse feels pretty much instant compared to the VS "I'm going to rebuild everything really slowly before I run the tests" biz.

<comment><USER5> I still believe for enterprise development Microsoft is very viable so I don't see myself necessarily moving away from the platform.

At some level, you can't avoid having to upgrade to the latest and greatest Visual Studio but in some ways I am trying to move away from all Microsoft offerings. The biggest is on the database side. I think PostgreSQL running on a linux machine as a database is a very good solution. I would say at this point, this would be the biggest change. I also prefer to use [http://www.llblgen.com/](http://www.llblgen.com/) for an ORM instead of Entity Framework.

I will tend to pick an open source equivalent for certain functionality instead of relying on Microsoft's version. For example, nunit for unit testing, log4net for logging, Quartz.NET for job scheduling, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice. Microsoft heard complaints that developers had no early access to 8.1, so they reversed their stance and released it to MSDN subscribers.

<comment><USER8> It's not like they didn't release it because they were stubborn or whatever. They didn't release for a reason - it wasn't ready. But because of bad press so far they will release it anyway - not fully ready, and hope that not being fully really won't give them even more bad press.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the term RTM no longer means "final" like it used to. It's more like shipping a late release candidate, then hoping by GA Windows Update will install the actual finished parts.

<comment><USER10> This is the thing that has annoyed me the most about this whole thing. RTM has always meant "release to manufacturing and IT pros". If Microsoft wanted to change this fair enough but they shouldn't have called it an RTM if that isn't what they meant.

<comment><USER11> Yep, RTM is basically also known as a 'Gold' release or essentially the same thing end users will get - minus marketing materials and other assorted items that come along with a final consumer release.

They should not have called it RTM if it wasn't really RTM.

<comment><USER3> Feature Freeze, Feature Complete, Alpha, Beta, Release Candidate, Gold, Release To Manufacturing...

I've worked at a few software companies and none of them have used these terms quite the same way.

<comment><USER10> Other companies are not the point here though. Microsoft is and they have been consistent in their use for the past two decades or more so why the sudden change?

<comment><USER3> [http://allthingsd.com/20130626/ballmer-at-build-microsoft- mo...](http://allthingsd.com/20130626/ballmer-at-build-microsoft-moving- windows-to-rapid-release-cycle/)

<comment><USER10> Sorry but I don't really see the link between that article and Microsoft's inconsistent use of the term RTM.

They can still move to a rapid release cycle and have a solid RTM. Chrome and Firefox manage to do it every 6 weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I install this, can I just patch it so that it's on par with the GA version when it comes out? Or do I need to install a new image then? (running the consumer preview now)

<comment><USER4> Yes you can. GA is RTM+updates.

<comment><USER12> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" It can't get any worse", kmfrk murmured to himself, as he downloaded the update._

</comment><comment><USER4> More schizophrenia from Microsoft. Just what we need to build confidence...

</comment><comment><USER14> i'm trying to download it but it seems their servers are getting hammered.. 4-5kb/s.. i guess i'll wait for the heat to go away

</comment><comment><USER15> I've read that the same build has been available for weeks via side channels.

</comment><comment> chris-at This is silly.

We can download the RTM but they locked out the upgrade functionality - <USER2> installs only! Wtf?

<comment><USER16> It's for developers testing if their programs and apps still function properly. Not for consumers to get early access. Just run it in a VM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> No, thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Perfect budget PC for software developers - <AUTHOR>

Its that time of the year. I need to buy a new PC for my programming needs. And the same questions pop up again, what is the perfect setup.
Trying to push it all into 500$, what would you suggest ?
Quad CPU / Dual ? SSD for caching ?
SSD for system volume ? Amount of RAM ? etc' <comment><USER2> I guess that depends on what kind of programming you are planning to do on the machine -- coding some web apps has quite different requirements than coding some 3D games.

But in any case, GET AS MUCH SCREEN ASSETS AS YOU CAN AFFORD! :)

<comment><USER3> 24" is very affordable right now, E 199 a piece, not sure what they go for in the states, but I'd expect comparable or lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You need to be more specific. What OS, what programming, what other hobbies?

If you want to use virtualisation make sure to get a CPU that supports Intel VT-x or AMD-V.

I would suggest an Athlon II X2 240. It is very cheap and has a lot of power.

If you want to go into CUDA or OpenCL get an NVIDIA GTS or GTX.

SSD is overkill in my opinion. Rather get 4GB RAM and use a ramdisk when you need fast IO (is that IO, I have no idea).

<comment><AUTHOR> I am mainly developing in C for embedded platforms (i.e. use different compilers). So compilation speed is crucial.

And the PC is used for references, so lots of open PDFs/Webpages.

Virtualization is a good point, Ill keep that in mind. Thanks !

<comment><USER5> Essentially, you want a dev machine set up so you never break your flow/mindset/focus because you're waiting for the PC to respond.

Lots of RAM. Once you go 4GB++, you wont go back. The amount of time you spent waiting for a pc with 2gb of ram when developing is more significant that it seems. ON that note, grab two of the best gb per $ drives, raid mirror them, and enjoy similar speed enhancements.

Re. The CPU, a Quad core might be a good investment for the future, as it seems muti-core programming is going to become more and more important as time goes on. I don't know if your compiler can use multiple cores, so assess that benefit there. If not, dual core may be a better option, as they tend to have higher performance for each single core compared to the quad cores (IE. Core1 on a dual vs Core1 on the quad, the dual will tend to be faster given similar clock speeds).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Laptops: you can find plastic case Macbooks for $600 or so on craiglist. Generally, we're talking 2G RAM, no option to purchase additional 2 years of appleCare.

I would try to get one that's expandable to 4G RAM and was purchased new last year, or this year. If i were going to buy a used laptop, I would insist that the seller be the original buyer and give you a copy of their purchase receipt, so you know it's legit.

</comment><comment><USER7> we picked up Dell Poweredge 840 boxes earlier this year for around $600. we're running 2.4ghz quad core xeons, 4gb of ram, and two 150gb seagate drives. I think the only thing I would change is maybe drop in a SSD or a 15k drive to make the system a bit more snappy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Whatever you end up getting, make sure to maximize your RAM and your display real estate.</comment>