New autoplay policy in Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/products/chrome/improving-autoplay-chrome/ <comment><USER2> > As you browse the web, that list changes as Chrome learns and enables > autoplay on sites where you play media with sound during most of your > visits, and disables it on sites where you don't. This way, Chrome gives you > a personalized, predictable browsing experience.

Predictable in a user application is the same result from the same action every time. UX changing based on opaque logic and heuristics is anything but predictable.

<comment><USER3> yeah, this seems like such an intense thing to do

My bet is that they did this to not break Youtube. I mean it makes sense (you don't want video sites to not work) but it's also such a hacky sort of thing

I don't get why they couldn't make this a permission thing like a mic. Ask the website to allow autoplay.

<comment><USER4> > My bet is that they did this to not break Youtube.

Which is fine to me. If I go to a website specifically for videos, I want it to autoplay, having to press play is a pointless action.

If I go to a website to read articles, I do _not_ want autoplay, and I _definitely_ don't want the video to even follow me around as a tiny minimized window when I scroll down and yes I _will_ close the tab or press back pretty quick if that happens (as I come to the realization the effort to read this article is not worth the gain and realize that I probably was procrastinating anyway to end up on that article in the first place so should do something more productive). If it's interesting enough I will play the video myself, preferably with full control of its time slider myself and preferably without it auto-starting an unrelated different video after this one was done.

<comment><USER5> I may go there to view a video, but that does not mean i want it to start playing the moment the page starts loading.

<comment><USER6> that's why it's learning from your actions

<comment><USER7> Not the same thing, if going by the article. If I eventually play all the videos, at my own leasure, it will still learn that I play the videos and start playing immediately when the page loads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Chrome does this by learning your preferences... This way, Chrome gives you > a personalized, predictable browsing experience.

In my experience, "learning" and "predictable" do not go together.

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of fuzzy matching systems like Alfred that will try to learn which key combos you use to launch each app instead of trying to offer you predictability.

But "fi<enter>" never launches Firefox anymore because of that one time you accidentally launched Finder instead. And since you keep accidentally launching Finder that way, it never learns that you want Firefox.

So you try "f<enter>" but you accidentally launch Flux. And because you keep forgetting it thinks "f" = Flux, it always launches Flux.

So you have to use "fir<enter>" to launch Firefox. But "fire<enter>" somehow launches Firewatch, a game you forgot you had installed on your laptop.

It's the most obnoxious system ever where each additional keystroke reorders the entire fuzzy result list in the name of "learning." It really is the opposite of predictable.

<comment><USER10> And then there's Chrome, where you can start typing something in the URL bar, and it comes up with some results immediately, but in the milliseconds before you select a result it changes to something "better" so you go to the page instead. Infuriating.

<comment><USER11> I have pretty much the opposite anecdote: to me the Chrome URL bar is a magic component that finds any of the tickets I've lately worked on (from three different ticketing systems) with typing a few words/characters, knows that "n" is HN etc, "g" takes me to gmail.com etc. And all without any effort to manually teach it.

Google Spreadsheets is where it often fails to work perfectly - hard to get it to take me to the spreadsheets homepage if I don't remember exactly which sheet I want to open.

<comment><USER12> Honestly, this has been the most annoying part of agency work for me. Every three months I work in a different github repo, so I constantly need to forcefully make it relearn what gi+down-arrow means

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it would be better to just disable autoplay on all websites, and then let me manually enable it.

I pretty much continue to install Adblock so I can kill the auto-play elements on websites that just should not autoplay.

<comment><USER14> 100% agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > This way, Chrome gives you a personalized, predictable browsing experience.

> predictable

What could possibly be more predictable than disabling autoplay altogether?

Google says it enabled autoplay for 'over 1000 sites', but we all know Google only cares about one thing and that is playing more ads on YouTube.

<comment><USER16> Cynicism aside, YouTube is a typical example of a good use for autoplay. A user clicking a link to YT almost always wants to watch the video. "Predictable" probably wasn't the right word for them to use, but I think this is a reasonable move by Google.

<comment><USER17> I don't want YouTube to autoplay, most of the time, I'm opening a lot of YT tabs at once and sometimes I need to seek out a specific one I am interested in most.

It would be much nicer if the various plugins I use to control that behaviour wouldn't stop working every 4 months due to another youtube redesign (whether in UI or Backend on the Client).

<comment><USER18> Firefox does this by default. Background tabs do not autoplay, but the foreground tab does.

<comment><USER19> Huh, I thought this was a behaviour YouTube/twitch did manually as it doesn't seem 100% reliable on news sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This broke my accessibility extension for Chrome that lets users control the browser with their voice instead of hands.

Since voice isn't counted as a "gesture" the user can't say "play" to start a a video.

It's not just autoplay it's any sort of dynamic (js initiated) playing of media.

<comment><USER21> Hey, would you mind sharing the extension you are using? This should not happen and I would like to help fixing it.

<comment><USER20> Curious why you say it should not happen? Do you mean technically -- if so, how?

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lipsurf/lnnmjmalak...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lipsurf/lnnmjmalakahagblkkcnjkoaihlfglon)

I added an ugly workaround, a slide to the tutorial that asks users to go into their flags and allow autoplay without any gestures. Chrome extensions should have better privileges for playing videos, fullscreening etc. IMO but it all needs to be hacked around limiting extensions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the real rub here is that the developer of the website doesn't know if Autoplay is going to work or not. From what i read on this the site doesn't not get access to any information on if Autoplay did work or is going to work. For many business type of applications this is critical as being as low friction as possible is very important. Autoplay for a web conference, for example, makes perfect sense. But the JavaScript developer doesn't know if this event failed or worked. Plus what if you aren't in active development on your product that relies on this? You have to go modify functionality that has been perfectly fine for years.

I also don't like how quick google is to make such unilateral changes and just boom there they are in production on the web. Good luck Keeping your site browser agnostic. The but ticket for this feature even advised that site developers check to see if the browser is chrome first and then do different logic. What a mess.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can we find this auto-generated list of enabled/disabled sites anywhere? Can it be edited manually? Will Chrome notify why a particular site did/didn't auto-play a video?

I like Inbox's recent behaviour that explains why it deems a particular email important - it would be good if this sort of explanation was more prevalent with publicly-available ML systems.

<comment><USER24> Seems to be this blob: [https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/b67034891a23389825...](https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/b67034891a2338982544a9c524ef1394803f985d/chrome/browser/resources/media/mei_preload/preloaded_data.pb)

<comment><USER23> Gah. A blob with no info about it.

Looking a little further, it appears to be a ProtocolBuffer file, but would a bit of documentation hurt?

<comment><USER25> An early version of the proto I found is:

[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/5d90890...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/5d9089080ea5fb0e348bb28f7a396d1181476f0f/chrome/browser/media/media_engagement_preload.proto)

So the proto is a red herring, it's basically just a container for a blob in some other format.

[https://chromium- review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/80...](https://chromium- review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/803994) contains a lot of related files, including [https://chromium- review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/80...](https://chromium- review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/803994/9/tools/media_engagement_preload/make_dafsa.py) which explains the format.

I'm surprised that there isn't a plain text version of the list checked in somewhere, but maybe I just missed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Preroll (IMA3) integration with an HTML5 video player is a really tricky dance when you're trying to support mobile/desktop browsers with a resilient and consistent video player experience. Autoplay has been one of the most difficult differences to manage across browsers.

There's no browser api that tells you if autoplay is supported, and you won't get meaningful errors when you try to autoplay when you can't.

Ultimately the right solution is to just-don't-autoplay-ever, but it's a hard sell when you see a 20-40% drop in VOD begins when you remove autoplay.

I'm not sure how to even approach Chrome deciding to autoplay "sometimes". You have to tell the video player to autoplay a video a.m3u8, but swap that out for preroll.m3u8 before you know if any of it is going to work at all. If it fails, you're gonna see weird errors in IMA3, or at the video player level, none of which really help you decide how to gracefully handle the situation.

So yeah, if you have client-side preroll, just don't autoplay I guess.

<comment><USER27> > Ultimately the right solution is to just-don't-autoplay-ever, but it's a > hard sell when you see a 20-40% drop in VOD begins when you remove autoplay.

Which tells me that with autoplay enabled, 20-40% of people are probably clicking 'stop' just after the video starts playing, so aren't watching your content anyway.

<comment><USER26> You'd need to track your minutes watched per video to see if there's a drop. I threw an in-exact percentage out as an example, but from what I recall on my last project with video, minutes watched per video went up, not down. Autopilot features work better than you would think...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >s you browse the web, that list changes as Chrome learns and enables autoplay on sites where you play media with sound during most of your visits, and disables it on sites where you don't.

What about disabling autoplay even without sound? Unwanted autoplay videos burn through battery even while muted.

<comment><USER29> They're just modernizing the idea of a GIF. The GIF format was used long after it should have been obsolete, because despite its limitations, it had the key advantage of providing simple, silent animations that autoplay.

Now a lot of "GIFs" aren't in GIF format, they're videos with no sound, and that makes a lot of sense because it's 2018 and we've learned some things about compression and video since 1987.

If silent videos didn't autoplay consistently, people would keep using actual GIFs, using way more bandwidth for the same purpose.

<comment><USER30> you could also block GIFs from animating by default

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The best way to improve autoplay is to disable it.

chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy

<comment><USER31> Interesting. Setting this to "Document user activation required" eliminated all autoplay for me.

<comment><USER32> It seems to work intermittently for me at best. Bloomberg is a notable (notably annoying) example that not only autoplays (though at least without sound) but highjacks your first click on the video (usually trying to pause it) and enables sound instead.

<comment><USER31> Hmm. Actually it seems to be less effective this week than in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In other words: "If you browse in incognito, you will be punished with annoying videos" It is in the same line with FB's "your experience will be worse if you choose to delete your data"

</comment><comment><USER34> Why does this system 'learn'. I wouldn't mind a prompt much like desktop- notifications are now. Ask me if a site can auto-play.

If google want this on-by-default on youtube, I wouldn't mind. As an upside, this would make it obvious they favor their own product.

<comment><USER35> A site-wide setting isn't good enough, every media element needs to require user action. It is ridiculous that isn't a working option, Chrome can't be taken seriously as a user agent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> On a 1366x768 screen, that blog was painful to read. The header and top menu stuff take up about the top 1/4 of the window (and only folds away near the bottom of the page), and the "related articles" takes the bottom 1/4\. Clicking the button to hide related helped some.

My autoplay desires are pretty simple. If the site's Youtube, Vimeo, or another site that exists purely for video, I expect videos to autoplay. It'll annoy me anywhere else. I'd be fine with a whitelist. What I like the least about their new implementation is that the behavior of the browser will change on its own. I don't like my software trying to predict me or changing its behavior without an explicit command to do so.

<comment><USER37> Reader mode (in Safari or Firefox) removes all the cruft

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > 1,000 sites where we see that the highest percentage of visitors play media > with sound

I hate this shit just like I hate their ads program. Where're all the net neutrality proponents when the popular browser vendor is the offender?

</comment><comment><USER39> Bret Victor's response: [https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/993167096992288771](https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/993167096992288771)

<comment><USER40> I genuinely do not understand the artist in the replies who says this has destroyed their work. Can't the website require you to click/tap once to start its thing, without negative impact? I feel like I must be missing something. (There's a mention about not updating code for existing work, which might be it?)

<comment><USER41> The artist in question has hundreds of pieces of work, many of which he may not have easy (if any) access to anymore. It would take a non-trivial amount of work to fix.

But I think he's also expressing doubt about creating art/work on the web in the future because of things like this.

<comment><USER35> It only because of user hostile choices made by browser vendors that it was ever a viable option to begin with and it was a bad bet to think it would last, although Google seems to be doing anything they can to keep things the way they are without directly saying "we'd rather you not be able to stop all media because our business model is to get in your face". No one deserves the unrestrained ability to enter your home and interrupt you in the name of commerce, entertainment, art, or anything else, except maybe emergency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Chrome does this by learning your preferences. If you don't have browsing > history, Chrome allows autoplay for over 1,000 sites where we see that the > highest percentage of visitors play media with sound. As you browse the web, > that list changes as Chrome learns and enables autoplay on sites where you > play media with sound during most of your visits, and disables it on sites > where you don't.

Not good enough. I can't even disable autoplay using Chrome's configuration. It doesn't work... but it works on FireFox.

</comment><comment><USER43> accurate summary: If you don't have browsing history, Chrome allows autoplay for over 1,000 sites where we see that the highest percentage of visitors play media with sound. As you browse the web, that list changes as Chrome learns.

<comment><USER44> Not that this would be surprising, but does that mean chrome is collecting user data?

<comment><USER45> When you use Chrome Sync, Google gathers and evaluates your entire browsing history.

You can forego it by enabling end-to-end-encryption, but since they require a second password for that, the percentage of Chrome Sync users who use this, is probably close to 0%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I just gave up and basically always have the sound off. I occasionally turn up the volume manually for something specific.

Unfortunately this does nothing for moving images (moving ads).

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm curious if I go to 1000 youtube pages and close in 6 seconds if Chrome will stop autoplay on youtube

</comment><comment><USER48> summary: google allow 800 of the international youtube domains to autoplay, plus some 200 other publishers to pretend they are neutral.

<comment><USER49> My interpretation of the article was that chrome ships with a blocklist of websites that have annoying autoplay features, but will automatically remove websites from that blocklist that you usually start by playing their videos, and automatically adds websites to the blocklist if the first thing you do is pause the video.

Youtube probably is not on the blocklist, but it will add youtube to your personal blocklist if you always pause the videos.

<comment><USER50> Other way around, as I understand it - they have a whitelist of sites that are allowed to play audio without interaction, everything else is blocked by default. (This is implemented in a way that completely breaks audio in a bunch of older web-based games and interactive audio experiences, too.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> If this had been communicated as "Improving Autoplay Blocking in Chrome" I think it would have been better received. Because that's just what it is.

Instead I had a sort of loss aversion based reaction where I think now some things will autoplay that didn't before, but in fact fewer things will autoplay full stop.

</comment><comment><USER52> Why is there no way to whitelist an arbitrary website in my browser with this new scheme? [http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901](http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901) is broken with the latest Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER53> ...Or you can just use Safari, which refuses to auto play any video with an audio track.

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder how much I need to know to predict the outcome for a certain website and how they _see_ what the highest percentage of visitors does.

Do they see through Google Analytics or do they send my behavior to their servers when I am using Chrome?

</comment><comment><USER55> [https://imgur.com/a/QDbVHwH](https://imgur.com/a/QDbVHwH)

I'm surprised Google's documentation is not designed with readability in mind.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm happy to see that many people here already suggested that this behaviour is NOT PREDICTABLE. In my view thats a must for any device or tool, including software/computers.

</comment><comment><USER57> I couldn't find a way to detect autoplay failure when using the YouTube iframe API. We can catch promise failure when using a normal video element. [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay- policy-changes#best-practices)

</comment><comment><USER58> Until autoplay can accurately detect whether I am in a setting where battery drain and sound is acceptable, I will still keep it off.

</comment><comment><USER59> With FF as my browser and a bookmark toolbar. About only 40% is allotted to showing the actual content.

</comment><comment><USER60> "In fact, in Chrome a significant number of autoplays are paused, muted, or have their tab closed within six seconds by people who don't want them."

How would they know that without tracking and centrally recording your autoplay actions in Chrome?

<comment><USER61> From Google Analytics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The only thing I want is to turn off sound from the start, in my browser at work.

(Unfortunately, the PulseAudio volume control doesn't show Chrome in its "applications" tab before it has played a sound.)

<comment><USER63> I don't know if that is possible, but you can mute individual web pages (seemingly based on domain name) and they will stay muted until you say otherwise. Works for me pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'd rather just see an explicit white list based on user input.

</comment><comment> m-p-3 If the heuristics are a good as the Android direct-share menu (which suggest contacts I've never talked to..), I'm not very confident it will be a success.

</comment><comment><USER65> This site is quite broken in Safari, with the "related articles" bar drifting up as you scroll down.

</comment><comment><USER66> Maybe I am not the target group but I can not think of a single website with autoplay video w sound.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER67> More news websites autoplay videos than I'd like to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I wish we could just code up a permission prompt like you have for microphone and geo access.

</comment><comment><USER69> Autoplay is so annoying. Ive stopped using certain sites that enable it by default

</comment><comment><USER70> Updated "being eaten" preferences for sheeps from wolf.

Wolf only does this by learning sheep' preferences.

Of course keeping sheeps happy is wolf's first priority.

</comment><comment><USER71> With that huge `position:fixed` header and footer, only 1/3 of my chromebook's screen height is actually displaying text from that page.

</comment><comment><USER40> The title looks editorialized - can the scare quotes be removed? They don't seem to be in the original.

<comment><USER72> The original title is also editorialized, just in the other direction. "New autoplay policy in Chrome" sounds reasonably neutral to me.

<comment><USER73> Ok, we've switched to that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> How about an option to just turn the damn things off all the time? Video should never play until I tell it to.

</comment><comment><USER75> How are HTML5 games supposed to deal with this? They don't really have media that you click on.

<comment><USER47> you add a "click to start" button

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> This is yet another attempt by Google to leverage their browser market hegemony against other publishers. Who wants to bet that Youtube will have autoplay enabled by default in all cases, while other ad providers will have theirs disabled?

</comment><comment><USER77> This reminds me so much of "Gryzzl" on Parks and Rec.

"We just want to learn everything about you, collect all your data and watch everything you do"

</comment><comment><USER78> Most of the word I'd like to use doesn't fly here.

But what part of "No, never" does Google not understand?

Nuke Chrome, Android, Youtube, and Web search.

</comment><comment><USER79> Way to defend Net Neutrality there, by picking which sites are allowed to have certain capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER80> It catches half of unintended auto plays? So basically Google is rolling with a system that will still annoy you sometimes because that's what's best for their advertisement driven bottom line. The faster and more seamlessly ads can get played, the more money google makes.</comment>


Ask HN: What frustrates you most about online learning? - <AUTHOR>

Hello all,
I've been exploring an idea lately and wanted to get your opinion on this. I think it's clear that online learning will transform education as we know it. There are many benefits to the coming education model (notably, cost of learning approaching nil) however it is not without it's shortcomings.
So without any prompting or conditioning, I'm curious to know what frustrates you most about learning online today. Are there aspects of traditional learning that have been left behind? <comment><USER2> Maybe I am old style but I am not driven by badges and the whole gamification. If I am given deadlines and pressure I push myself to learn. I don't think current online solutions give this. I also need someone to keep pushing me. Not a computer but a real person. I opened an account for Treehouse with a student discount about 5 months ago. Guess how many times I logged in. It is too laid back. Maybe it needs a small support group that you can join so everybody keeps tabs on each other and make sure you are doing your homework.

<comment><AUTHOR> So how does that "accountability" feature look to you. Is that like a community that's completing the course at the same time? Or maybe a simulated coach that shoots encouragement at you?

<comment><USER2> someone that nags me every so often. It might be a small group completing the course at the same time. You could join a group and it keeps track of individual progress. The group should have a leader with superior skills that mentors the group and nags everybody to do the homework on time, reply to questions, etc. The group could have an IRC channel or a Campfire open all the time and schedule official meeting times. Get a weekly notification of my current progress and everybody's progress so I can help somebody else if they are behind. The class should be based on mentoring, team work and deadlines.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure a guilt-based approach is going to work best for the majority. I'm no psych major, but I'm certain positive reinforcement has better influence overall then otherwise.

The other thing you point out which seems unrelated to the motivation end of things seems to be communication with fixed times to meet. While I think the encouragement of other people going through the same steps you have to perform builds motivation to continue, are there other reasons why this is important to you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've followed tutorials online, used Treehouse, and other services to learn online. They are useful, but for me, there is one aspect missing: help. I'm currently in university and If I have a question in class or during a study session, there is ALWAYS someone to help. I get frustrated and discouraged when I'm following a class and don't understand anything, I search the web for help and can't find much to do with the exact topic I need help with. This in turn, makes me stop enjoying that class and can eventually lead to giving up. It would be great for these online education providers to use an IM client, IRC room or something to facilitate student discussion for classmates to discuss lectures, ideas, and help each other.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most online learning courses aren't particularly challenging. There are exceptions (Coursera's Probabilistic Graphical Models, MitX's circuits etc) but most courses seem watered down for online consumption.

One big flaw I can see is that there is no way to do proofs or otherwise handle theory in the problems sets and assignments. This limits exploration in depth, particularly for math/science/CS.

<comment><AUTHOR> More often than not, I find being able to share visual information gets thrown at a side-tool that the community adopts for this specific purpose. Something like Google Docs (drawing doc) or some whiteboard app.

What, if any, efforts are made to find a solution like this (or related)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a start I found being part of a class with limitless number of students very chaotic and at times a waste of time. Having to go through the various projects, knowing it would be physically impossible to be reviewed as expected in a traditional course..</comment>


Users + Hard Work = Success, Interview of LessEverything Founder - <AUTHOR> http://thenetsetter.com/blog/strategy/startup-stories-allan-branch-of-lessaccounting/

<comment><USER2> Why's the gentlemen in the picture lacking a shirt?

<comment><USER3> He's from North Florida. (before you start downmodding me - I am from Florida as well)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you left Revenue out of that equation...

<comment><USER5> Let's play with a little bit of symbolic logic. Near the end of the article the founders talk say, if your life falls apart then you can't count that as success. Well, you need a little bit of revenue for your life to not fall apart. We can distill that down to:

      If no revenue, then no success

The contrapositive of which is:

      If success, then revenue

Then given our previous theorem:

      If (Users and Hard Work) then Success.

Causality is commutative, so we can just substitute our earlier result:

      If (Users and Hard Work) then Revenue.

Thus we get Revenue in to that equation. This ought to work, at least in theory :)

<comment><USER6> I agree, if by "causality" you mean "implication" and by "commutative" you mean "transitive".

<comment><USER5> Yes I do. I'd say causality, while not a term of art, still is valid. "Commutative" on the hand is plain wrong, thanks for the correction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How has the current economic situation affected your startup? - <AUTHOR>

Has the economic downturn had significant effects on your startup?  If so, what kind and how are you dealing with them?
I wasn't sure what effects we would feel at the startup where I work (a "high tech" startup with physical products), as we already had a number of long-term contracts.  Our company is self-funded/bootstrapping and apparently has been getting loans to cover payroll.  This is where we've been hit, as we can no longer secure those same loans, according to the founder.  Needless to say, that's led to major work hours reductions for some and some layoffs (the chief engineer was the most expensive employee...).  They've put a lot of employees in a difficult position,which is that they don't think they can pay them (non-core employees) until the next product ships.  The problem is, of course, do you work now, hoping to be reimbursed (assuming the company will still be around), or go looking elsewhere...
Edit: What struck me was that this wasn't really a primary problem of our business (or at least our core technologies), but that we ended up getting hit by the wider credit problems anyway.
Any other stories? <comment><USER2> So far the only effect the recent market turmoil has has on tarsnap is that one customer lost most of his savings due to icesave, and decided as a result that he couldn't afford to use tarsnap.

As far as I know, at least; there may be lots of potential customers I don't know about who are potential rather than actual due to the market conditions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had to downgrade my hosting service from Mosso ($100/mo) because my dad is out of a job.</comment>


AuthButtons: Free and Open-Source Web Logo Icons - <AUTHOR> http://intridea.com/2010/6/1/authbuttons-free-and-open-source-web-logo-icons

<comment><USER2> Buttons look great. Some HNers may want to github-watch the project for future reference: <http://github.com/intridea/authbuttons></comment>


How much revenue top companies earn per second - <AUTHOR> http://www.happier.co.uk/infogram/amount-top-companies-earn-per-second.html <comment><USER2> Summary (note: revenue, not profit) Blackberry: 205 Facebook: 230 Nokia: 941 Oracle: 1068 Cisco: 1594 Intel: 1628 Dell: 1865 Google: 1873 Amazon: 1996 Microsoft: 2331 IBM: 3166 HP: 3459 Foxconn: 3815 Apple: 4540 Samsung: 6486

<comment><USER3> Just for fun, here are the profit numbers.

Gazprom 1410

Exxon Mobil 1302

I&C Bank of China 1021

Shell 980

Chevron 852

China Constr. Bank 830

Apple 822

BP 814

BHP Billiton 749

Microsoft 734

Two banks, two high tech, the rest oil/gas/mining. Kind of depressing. List and figures from

[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/perfor...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/performers/companies/profits/)

<comment><USER4> > Two banks, two high tech, the rest oil/gas/mining. Kind of depressing.

Why is this depressing?

It looks like the people manufacturing things for the economy are being rewarded. To me this seems like the economy is working properly.

<comment><USER5> Oil/gas/mining don't exactly leave the world a better place. Banks one could argue for both sides, though I tend to lean on bad too.

<comment><USER6> Ehhh. Those companies and others like them (Aramco, etc) represent the heart of the modern industrial economy, for better or for worse. Are consumer companies like Apple even imaginable in their absence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a bit too bad they compare revenue of resellers like Amazon with editors like Microsoft, the gross margin is really different. Resellers have to punch over their weight to get some money home where Microsoft brings almost everything to the bank.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I agree but it's really very difficult to compare companies these days. On the surface, Microsoft, Apple and Google all seem like competitors to each other but they have different businesses underneath and as you said, different gross margins. However, I don't think you can truly find businesses that are almost identical when it comes to giant conglomerates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The interesting thing about this chart is how unprofitable manufacturing is. Foxconn's profits are less than $3 billion on $115 billion in revenues (and $50-$60 billion in assets). Google has 3x the profit but less than half the revenue. When people ask why manufacturing has left the U.S., this is the reason why: it doesn't offer very good return on capital.

On the other hand, Foxconn provides jobs for over 1.2 million people, while Google employs less than 50,000. Also relevant to the debate about manufacturing.

<comment><USER10> Profits relative to revenues isn't a useful figure. An investor who sees a business as a black box where you put initial capital in and get money out, doesn't care what the revenue of the company is at all.

Jobs are a more complex issue - offshoring manufacturing may be efficient, but it does have an impact on the distribution of wealth, and unemployment. It's not clear what the right policy trade off is. I think cutting back on illegal immigration would be a better way to boost job growth in the low end of the job market.

<comment><USER11> > Profits relative to revenues isn't a useful figure. An investor who sees a > business as a black box where you put initial capital in and get money out, > doesn't care what the revenue of the company is at all.

I can't see how an investor would not care. It seems that given a more profitable business, for a desired ROI amount, the capital input is smaller.

<comment><USER12> Many manufacturing companies can run on much higher debt levels, because much of the debt is collateralized by resellable equipment (good for the bankers) and because their revenues tend to have lower variance (good for the shareholders).

This magnifies returns on equity, which makes them more competitive with non- manufacturing companies, which typically cannot run on as high of debt levels because they don't have the same kind of collateral.

So typically you probably do have lower returns on invested capital (the entire capital base, debt plus equity) but returns on equity might be comparable. And if the manufacturing business is more stable -- which it often is, compared to most more ephemeral businesses with few assets -- lower returns are acceptable because there is lower risk.

Of course not all manufacturing companies are lower risk than all non- manufacturing companies.

<comment><USER11> That's interesting. Do businesses which can run on higher debt levels consequentially provide fewer opportunities for investment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting to see, and well presented. I'd be more interested in profit rather than revenue.

<comment><USER14> Interesting, but I didn't care much for the visualizations shown - they took up way too much space on the page for the bigger companies.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. I know it's trendy to show data in this method, but it's impossible to compare like-for-like. One ends up just looking at the numerical value.

A simple bar graph would have been much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Displaying profit instead of revenue would have been more interesting, "Waooo!!! This company makes more money per second than what I make working a whole month!"

<comment><USER17> The problem is profit is too closely tied to accounting, and doesn't correspond to success or size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well the order was somewhat unexpected. Surprised about IBM, HP and Dell.

<comment><USER19> IBM and HP are absolutely huge B2B service providers. HP has over 300,000 employees; IBM has over 400,000. By comparison, Google is an order of magnitude less, at about 35,000 excluding Motorola.

<comment><USER7> to add a precision to your post: and most IBM and HP's employees are billed by the time. Headcount is proportional to market size.

Google employee's time brings no revenue per se. Headcount is independent of market size (the only limiting thing is customer support whose max is O(log(customer)), and we are talking about google ...)

<comment><USER20> Why is customer supporter log(n)? Seems it would be nlog(n) (because of management overhead)

<comment><USER7> community support + services companies when you're big enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was a bit surprised to see FoxConn there with such a big revenue.

<comment><USER22> everything is from foxconn these days...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Revenue is not really interesting. Take Amazon as an example, they make a lot of revenue... but that's because they pretty much give away as much money as they can sustain.

</comment><comment><USER24> Would be cool if this had an at-a-glance view with incrementing counters for each company on a single screen, updating proportionally to their revenue.

</comment><comment><USER25> Too bad they only presented tech companies. It would be interested to compare Apple vs Shell or BP, just to get an idea of the differences.

<comment><USER26> I would add compare it with energy-related industries _private or public_. Each of Shell, Exxon, Sinopec and China national petroleum earn 3 times as much as Apple. 6/10 biggest companies by income are in oil/gas, and privately owned companies are a fraction of the industry size...

<comment><USER25> I wouldn't say _private_ since these are corporations usually based on shares systems. This is different from a company such as Valve, for example, which is purely private and where the revenue information is not publicly available.

Apart from this detail, your point is very interesting. I wonder, all industries considered, how much % of worldwide's revenue is earned by nationally owned companies versus the corporations counterparts.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the correction, my wording was a bad translation from my native language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The title is missing an important keyword. There are, of course, a lot of companies making much (much) more than this per seconds.

Also, how is Foxconn a technology company in the sense the others are? Don't they only (as oppsoed to Samsung for example which does that _also_ ) manufacture for others, what is designed by others? I really don't think they fit the description.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, for comparison purposes Walmart is about $14871 and Exxon around $14364.

Using the numbers from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Maybe at some point in the future you can actually see real time what companies sell and buy and with whom the transactions are made.

<comment><USER30> You can see it today if they make the data available.. nothing much in terms of technology here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Love this! It'd be neat if you could enter a stock ticker for any company and see it displayed here.

</comment><comment><USER32> Make means income or revenue?

<comment><USER18> Revenue, it says so at the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was expecting to see the big GOOGLE on this list but could not see it?

<comment><USER34> It's there: [http://www.happier.co.uk/infogram/amount-top-companies- earn-...](http://www.happier.co.uk/infogram/amount-top-companies-earn-per- second.html#google)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I propose these companies should adopt/donate/fund ObamaCare

</comment><comment><USER36> would have liked to visualize with Bar graph rather long page...

</comment><comment><USER37> Somehow this page misses twitter...

<comment><USER38> They run out of space for all those 0s</comment></comment>


Satifer is hiring. Stealth mode. Academic Publications - <AUTHOR> http://satifer.com <comment><AUTHOR> We are the future of reading and writing academic publications.

HN attracts a talented audience. Let us know at email@example.com if you're interested in our work. ("HN" in the subject line)

We welcome any questions or suggestions - we're looking for discussion, not just employees!

Particularly: Scientists who feel strongly about peer review services and commentary. Scientific journalists.

*We are looking for experienced data scientists and software developers.</comment>


PageRank has revolutionized web search but maybe also delayed social apps for years (due to fear of out of control spam in such apps). Do you agree? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I don't quite understand the connection. Care to elaborate?

<comment><AUTHOR> After seeing what PageRank can do in terms of controlling spam, VCs would be reluctant to fund a startup that is much more prone to spamming (e.g., something like wikipedia, social bookmarking, etc.). So one might argue that PageRank has in fact discouraged people from even thinking about social apps for a long time.

<comment><USER2> If it's on the web, spam will always be a possibility. I don't see people getting discouraged from creating networks due to spam. Any quarter-decent social application will have some measures for dealing with it.

Most social applications aren't aiming for the PageRank either. Their use is grown through word of mouth approaches, not organic search. What aspect of PageRank is doing this discouraging of social apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that PageRank puts you in a mindset of creating sophisticated algorithms that are much more resistant to spam than naive approaches. In that sense, it discourages people from even trying out social apps.

<comment><USER3> I don't see many people being discouraged to make social apps. A lot of the internet is based on social interaction (forums, comments, reviews, chats..) and wherever there is spam there are anti spam-measure in place that work reasonably well since these apps are all pretty usable. Maybe I just don't get what you mean

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> in any ecosystem there are the parasites. on the web your parasite is spam.</comment>


Ben Feringa's Missing Nobel Prize - <AUTHOR> https://atzerothorder.wordpress.com/2018/03/31/ben-feringas-missing-nobel-prize/ <comment><USER2> This is a great blog post, with lots of wonderful links, but I do think the author is reading into things.

Here's an interview in dutch with Ben years before he received the nobel prize. You can see that he has a love for discovery, but you can also see that he cares about the prize.

Interviewer: So in the future, maybe the nobel prize will go to nanotechnology? Ben: There's definitely a chance that the nobel prize will go to nanotechnology in the future. Interview: Maybe it'll go to you! Ben: ::big grin::

Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBNrqsJAFWU&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBNrqsJAFWU&feature=youtu.be&t=125)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for the kind words and especially for translating from the Dutch! I did anticipate that I was perhaps looking into it a little to much, so it's always nice to clear up some speculation with a bit of evidence.

Of course, 12 years is a long time, perhaps his outlook on science has changed somewhat, I was almost tempted to email him and ask about it but I thought "A man too busy to update his professional website is certainly too bust to respond to an insignificant inquiry regarding the /state/ of his website".

<comment><USER2> You're welcome. If you were on the fence about emailing him, you can use this thread as an excuse :-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to guess that he doesn't know anything about web sites, that his website was created by some student long ago, and nobody knows where that student is or what the account password is any more.</comment>


Ask HN: Is this an employee confidentiality breach? - <AUTHOR>

This is from a friend:<p>"Unbeknownst to me, I was granted stock options back in January by my company but the VP gave the RSU letter to my coworker (not clear on why) and she's had it for 3 months. I don't go in the office much (work remotely) but that doesn't seem like a valid excuse for her to hold onto it and I've seen her multiple times since January. No one told me about the stock options...not my boss, the coworker, HR, etc. and I was unaware of the letter until my coworker randomly mentioned it, also that she read it. Not everyone in the company gets stock so it's not as if this is some generic form letter. I am really pissed off but not sure if this is a breach of confidentiality or just plain unprofessional." <comment><USER2> They should not have done this and it is a breach, but your recourse is likely limited to (depending on size of company) complaining to HR and having them verbally reprimand the VP / complain to the VP yourself and explain why it's inappropriate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I won't be too upset at the VP. But that co worker of yours? Take it up, she should not be trusted not for confidentiality or reliability. Take it up to HR.

<comment><USER4> The co-worker is certainly at fault but that doesn't mean the VP isn't responsible either. There isn't really much of a good reason for handing over personal documents to another employee in the company.</comment></comment>


Winklevii Suing Facebook Yet Again With A Different Argument - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110623/15581414833/winklevii-trying-again-suing-facebook-yet-again-with-different-argument.shtml

<comment><USER2> The Winklevii have made a joke of the American legal system. They're going to keep suing over and over again until they get their way. It's pathetic that they can't take their massive settlement and move on with their lives.

<comment><USER3> They'll be remembered as the creepy frat twins who whined under the table, begging for food scraps.</comment></comment>


Amazon rainforest was home to millions of people before European arrival - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27945-myth-of-pristine-amazon-rainforest-busted-as-old-cities-reappear/ <comment><USER2> I recall reading about this some in the book 1491, which is quite interesting, and talks about how the Americas were prior to Columbus.

[http://amzn.to/1HQYgSY](http://amzn.to/1HQYgSY)

<comment><USER3> Seconding this recommendation - I'm planning on assigning this book in a college course on the Columbian Exchange next year. It's got the readability of a longform New Yorker article and the scholarly credibility of an academic book. Totally fascinating material that will up end much of what you learned in high school textbooks.

<comment><USER4> Thirded. It took me years to become interested in history, and books like this are what finally broke through.

<comment><USER5> I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I too wasn't interested in history at all until I read this book: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power ( [http://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money- Power/dp/143911...](http://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money- Power/dp/1439110123)) Which was a fascinating history from the rise of oil in modern times uptil the first Gulf War. I would love recommendations on other history books that got people turned onto history?

<comment><USER3> I actually got into history through visual sources and maps, like Colin McEvedy's "Penguin Atlas of Medieval History." But the history books that I remember really changing my life include Simon Schama's "The Embarrassment of Riches" (a fantastic history of the rise and fall of the Dutch empire), Alfred Crosby's "Ecological Imperialism" (similar to 1491, but more wide-ranging), and Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism series (the best history books of the 20th century, in my view).

I also remember loving John Brewer's "The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the 18th Century" and Mario Biagioli's "Galileo Courtier." Also "Mad Blood Stirring" by Edward Muir, which tackles the question of why 16th century Italian street life was so incredibly violent.

Edit: seems apropos to mention that a couple friends of mine are about to launch a site for historians to curate lists of their favorite books on key topics, called Backlist: [http://backlist.cc](http://backlist.cc)

<comment><USER6> > I actually got into history through visual sources and maps

I've noticed that fantasy novels often include maps of the fictional geography of the world, and fantasy authors sometimes write introductions basically on the theme "I've always loved maps and thought they were special". Personally, I've never really looked at those omnipresent maps, because they never matter in the story.

On the other hand, maps are incredibly useful when reading history. Or they would be... but history books almost never include them!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Following _1491_: home to millions of people, the jungle mostly consisting of fruit-bearing trees (the modern Amazonian tribes are living in overgrown orchards), and in possession of miraculous sanitation/fertilizer technology.

Everyone should know about terra preta. It turns out it wasn't a soil- enrichment technique, it was sanitation with a side effect of soil enrichment -- and could be very applicable in the developing world (and the developed world!) today. An experiment in Germany -- look up the paper "Terra Preta Sanitation" \-- showed that a slightly modified method of terra-preta production can sanitize human waste to well within First World standards.

<comment><USER8> Terra preta is formed naturally by falling fruits, leaves and branches that get composted on the soil. There's a agriculture method called agroforestry that make use of this concept, it's very promising for organic farms: [https://vimeo.com/146953911](https://vimeo.com/146953911)

I know a couple of people here who have "dry bathrooms" (or banheiro seco) that is just a bucket to collect the poo, when you poo you cover it with dry leaves or grinded wood (they are the source of carbon, and stop the bad smell), when the bucket fills up they take it to an area outside far from the house where it will compost, naturally kill the pathogens (because of the heat it produces) and became terra-preta, much better solution than to send it down stream, easier to decentralize and the end result is the best product you could have.

<comment><USER9> _The Humanure Handbook_ ([http://humanurehandbook.com/](http://humanurehandbook.com/)) goes into the specifics of how to build sawdust toilets and manage waste and compost safely. For those even remotely interested, the e-book is only USD$10, and earlier editions are free for the downloading.

If you know someone who lives in the country and is interested in off-the-grid living, or is merely serious about gardening, a copy would make for an unusual gift.

<comment><USER10> I've read this book and strongly recommend it. The subject matter is not the easiest to write about but the author really does a great job, approaching it in an educative and interesting way. He also clearly demonstrates that this is something important to our civilization as a whole and that ignoring it because it is uncomfortable is a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is also good evidence that there were extensive agricultural urban civilizations around and along the Mississippi. But they were so thoroughly destroyed (by the Little Ice Age, drought, and disease) that by the time European settlers got to those territories, even the descendant peoples had no memory of them. Only a handful of early explorers recorded them, and the principal archaeological traces are earth mounds (some rather large) built in their cities. For quite some time the "Mound Builders" were thought to be a different people entirely from the present native peoples.

</comment><comment><USER12> Original paper here : [http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1812/2015...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1812/20150813)

"Here, we review the evidence of an anthropogenic Amazonia"

</comment><comment><USER12> side note on Amazon Indians: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- nature/dna-search-firs...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dna- search-first-americans-links-amazon-indigenous-australians-180955976/?no-ist)

DNA Search for the First Americans Links Amazon Groups to Indigenous Australians. a researcher in Reich's lab, noticed that the Suruí and Karitiana people of the Amazon had stronger ties to indigenous groups in Australasia—Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders—than to Eurasians."

I wonder how much was lost by the Amazon peoples by the invasions of the Clovis peoples from Siberia.

</comment><comment><USER13> While it's probably in the millions, all projected numbers are extremely rough and work by calculating the percentage likely to have die died in the disease that swept the continent. DO NOT VIEW THEM AS PRECISE OR ACCURATE.

However, the evidence seems pretty convincing that the vast majority of the indigenous people died in the centuries following spanish contact.

</comment><comment><USER14> Supposedly when Europeans (the later arrivals not Vikings) showed up and disease spread killing many First Nations/Native Americans it caused a dramatic environmental shift.

As forests took over the former areas where the first peoples of the Americas lived trees sucked up a lot of CO2 causing the mini ice age in Europe.

Interesting if true, yet of course very sad as well but if true that pretty incredible to think of such a connection.

<comment><USER15> That must be a joke?

<comment><USER16> No it's not. The little ice-age is a well documented period of time of below average temperatures at the end/after the medival ages [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age)

There's still a lot of speculation going on, what caused it, because the explanation for the "Big" ice ages (the periodic tilting of the Earth's axis reaching a position that gives to a colder climate) doesn't fit. So there are a lot of possible explanations.

From archeological evidence we know that in the timeframe before the little ice-age begain large parts of the North American population fell victim to disease and/or famine, so one proposed model is, that the regrowth of forrests on (fertile) ground left unmanaged by the decreasing population sucked out a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I think about the Amazon rainforest and those who have called it home in the past 500 years - especially as we learn that they were more advanced than we had supposed - I think back to Terence McKenna's dying hope to save the plant medicines that are being forgotten and eradicated with deforestation.

We have no idea what manner of spiritually relevant plants are falling into obscurity cum annihilation, and given the resurgent interest in (and power of) ayahuasca, it's worth taking action to document and remember them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Similar levels of density were reported around the Mississippi river delta

</comment><comment><USER19> With a little digging you can trace back the development of the consenus surrounding this issue over the past 25 years or so, which would probably be worth an article on its own.

</comment><comment><USER20> Url changed from [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon- rain...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-rainforest- was-home-to-millions-of-people-before-european-arrival-says- study-10412030.html).

</comment><comment><USER21> When I first saw this post I thought (Amazon.com) came out with a new product called "rainforest."

Anyway, so did the natives breed with the Europeans when they "wiped them out" or did the native people migrate to another part of the continent?

<comment><USER22> Basically malaria was unknown in the Americas before western explorers brought it over. From there it became very prevalent in some places such as the Amazon and essentially made mass agriculture impossible there. Then pretty much everyone starved. There were also things like smallpox that devastated people everywhere in the Americas but those were more a one time thing, people were able to rebuild after they passed.

<comment><USER23> Isn't a devastating, long-term drought a recent and popular theory as well, decimating many Central and South American tribes such as the Mayans and the Aztec?

[1][http://science.time.com/2012/11/09/mayans/](http://science.time.com/2012/11/09/mayans/)

<comment><USER13> I believe the drought predated contact by ~7-800 years. Definitely explains the decline of the Mayans, but not really relevant to discussing the effects of Columbian contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why is it this article has the vague overtone of "so we can go ahead and chop it all down, right?" on it?

I think it's the "pristine myth" language. Just reeks of let-us-clear-cut-it mentality.

<comment><USER25> I don't get that at all. I got the "how presumptuous of Europeans to think that they brought civilization to the area, it was already there and if anything they may have set back the pace of progress."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow, Amazon has so many products.

</comment><comment><USER27> I do wish the historians/reporters for this article were more accurate in their use of "decimation". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)#Curren...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_\(Roman_army\)#Current_usage_of_the_word)

The 1491 book put the death rates at around 1 in 20 surviving - ie 19 out of every 20 people dying from disease etc.

<comment><USER28> The definition "destroy a large number of" has been around for centuries. You're contradicting long established usage, while pretending to appeal to it.

<comment><USER27> I am not contradicting it. From their context it was not possible to tell if they meant the deaths of 1 in 10, a number similar to that, about half of all people, 9 in 10, 99 in 100 etc. I gave the proportions as remembered from the book as that gives a far clearer picture.

<comment><USER28> Here's the dictionary definition of decimate. The primary definition is "destroy a large number of". This isn't recent - I looked it up in the full OED and it's been around for centuries.

[http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/decimat...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/decimate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great content!

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if any of this can be used to answer the objections to Biblical stories like Noah's flood: "how did the rainforest come about in a mere 4000 years?" And here we read that the forests were domesticated in the last 3000.

<comment><USER31> Many ancient cultures have myths about a great flood or series of floods. It was probably not a single global event, but plausibly to have been based in some shift in climate patterns during protohistoric times.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Spreadsheet_server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robsco-git/spreadsheet_server <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone interested, I went through a few iterations before settling on LibreOffce Calc and Python:

Initially I was using: PHPExcel ([https://phpexcel.codeplex.com/](https://phpexcel.codeplex.com/)) which loaded a given spreadsheet on demand - this was before I though of changing it into a client server model. In a web application context, the response time for anything other than relatively small spreadsheets was simply unacceptable.

I then moved to using Apache POI ([https://poi.apache.org/](https://poi.apache.org/)) and used the client server model. This worked quite well but I ran into some problems as some functions had not been implemented yet.

My current thinking is that LibreOffice will continue to improve both in terms of function feature completeness with Microsoft Excel. It may also improve in terms of performance and memory usage.

Any solution that re-implements excel/calc functions, other than LO, most probably has a smaller user/developer base. In my mind, the smaller the projects user/developer base, the more likely active development could slow to a crawl or stop entirely. Not such a great solution for years down the line.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't LibreOffice Calc have a simple, standalone implementation of its formula functions, so that they can be copied instead of re-implemented by other projects?

<comment><USER2> What a shame. I can't even find the source code for Calc anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you may find what you are looking for here: [http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/](http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A friend of mine built something in the same vein.

" The Problem:

You have complex computations that you want to generatively test, and you can't test for correctness.

The Solution:

Use an LibreOffice Calc Spreadsheet as your 'obviously correct' calculation engine, and test your computations in a format that even your clients will be familiar with. Sounds crazy, but think more on it. A Spreadsheet is one of the most powerful ways to visualise number crunching, and pretty much everyone knows how to use it. If you have a reliable spreadsheet that accepts input data, and outputs data, you have yourself a testable computation that the client can understand.

"

[https://bitbucket.org/MalucoMarinero/cellacceptance](https://bitbucket.org/MalucoMarinero/cellacceptance)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, I'll have to take a look into their solution to see if I can learn or improve anything. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not free but works very well so I thought I should mention it: spreadsheetgear does something similar except that they have their own calculation engine, so you can run multiple instances, it does not rely on Excel or OpenOffice. You also go around the locking problem when two threads need to use the same spreadsheet (it just opens two instances of the calculation engine). But it doesn't support VBA or any non Excel function.

Now none of these solutions will be super fast, the overhead of doing the calc in Excel is pretty heavy. I have seen suggested here and suggested it myself that it would be useful to have a tool that reads a spreadsheet and converts the logic between selected input and output cells in code. Then the business could own the logic (in Excel) but it would run with zero overhead on a server.

That's not a trivial thing to do. Excel allows some pretty messy things and users aren't shy about using them. For instance the INDIRECT function allows you to arbitrary refer to any cell, which defeats a statically compiled dependency tree between cells.

[Edit] I think Aspose cells also works in a similar way and has its own calculation engine. Haven't tried it though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting project! It's nice to see some better examples for this sort of thing. At work I've helped build something similar using javascript. We needed something that works in-browser, and have since made sure it also works within web-workers as well as node.

It's not as nice as directly running calculations from a magically scalable and performant spreadsheet black box, but importing data and formulae from various spreadsheets has gotten quite easy.

Closed source, but imagine using the core and expressions support from mathjs [0] and crossfilter [1] together to display both raw and calculated data in various contexts, and you wouldn't be too far off the mark.

[0] [http://mathjs.org/](http://mathjs.org/)

[1] [http://square.github.io/crossfilter/](http://square.github.io/crossfilter/)

[edit for grammar]

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I love this for letting business-oriented folks maintain their business logic in the spreadsheet. If they want to change a calculation, they just edit the spreadsheet.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly the use case the tool arose from.

The main con is the RAM overhead introduced by running LibreOffice instead of splitting the application up into a database and code. For me con this is nullified by the amount of time saved not having to re implement the logic and now, like you mention, the onus is on the team who created the spreadsheet to fix any bugs in their logic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of [https://open365.io/](https://open365.io/)

<comment><USER8> I think open365.io sounds quite interesting - in particular the self-hosting option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. I'd be futher amused if someone wrote a Django backend using spreadsheets.

</comment><comment><USER2> "A given spreadsheet is locked when it is accessed"

"By default, the './spreadsheets' directory is polled every 60 seconds for file changes."

What does that mean? Can I edit the spreadsheet manually and the changes will be detected by the server or not?

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably need to be more descriptive. The locking is just within Python to prevent simultaneous reads and writes to the spreadsheet messing with expected results. This makes sense for my use case but probably not all use cases.

Currently it simply check for any new spreadsheet(s) in the ./spreadsheets directory and opens them in LO Calc. Any spreadsheet that has been removed will be closed in LO Calc. There currently is not support for what you described. There is potential for that sort of thing to be implemented though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry but I really don't understand what this is for. Can someone explain?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using it for a fairly specific use case: Creating web applications from business logic that has already implemented in a spreadsheet. So instead of trying to figure out what the spreadsheet is doing (they can get fairly complex and the flow of calculation can be difficult to follow) I just treat it as a black box. Input some values here and read the resultant values from somewhere else. Integration with flask/django and you have a prototype within a day.

<comment><USER11> Basically, I could almost replicate Google Docs/Excel 365?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you built the front end for it then sure. In its current state this tool just deals with reading and writing cell values.

<comment><USER11> Sorry but I'm still slightly confused.

Would you mind sharing the user flow starting from business folks with their calculations in a spreadsheet?

I'm guessing if I write a front-end spreadsheet like interface, grab their input, have LibreOffice process it, then spit it back out into the interface, it would essentially be my very own spreadsheet program on top of LibreOffice?

I'd really love to learn what's the benefit of making that abstraction because I've been on both sides (business and tech).

<comment><AUTHOR> The example_client may help answer your question: [https://github.com/robsco- git/spreadsheet_server/blob/master...](https://github.com/robsco- git/spreadsheet_server/blob/master/example_client.py)

I don't quite follow your question but I'll give it a shot. Here is a high level version of how I am currently using the tool: A user is presented with a bunch of input variables on a web page that are then set by the user. These variables are sent to the server and the server sets the relevant cells using spreadsheet_server. Resultant values from other cells are retrieved by spreadsheet_server and then sent back to the web page and presented to the user in the form of a graph or table etc.

Pretty much all of the logic to get from input to output is handled in the spreadsheet by LibreOffice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> now, we use Filemake acting like a logic engine. In contrast, indeed, writing logic within excel is much easier than FMA.

<comment><USER13> > within excel

Perhaps you knew, but nevertheless, I have to point out: this works with LibreOffice Calc and not MS Excel

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is true that it is running a LO Calc binary.

Not implying that you don't already know, but this may be of interest in terms of Calc/Excel compatibility: [https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_Libr...](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_- _Microsoft_Office#Spreadsheet_applications:_LibreOffice_Calc_vs._Microsoft_Excel)

I have used the tool predominantly with xlsx format spreadsheets created in Excel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think you could add a demo or screenshot linkd in README.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have just updated the example_client and README. Combined they should resolve your suggestion.

Here is the example client: [https://github.com/robsco- git/spreadsheet_server/blob/master...](https://github.com/robsco- git/spreadsheet_server/blob/master/example_client.py)</comment></comment>


Lulzsec back? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/#!/Ingratefully <comment><USER2> Direct link to the pastebin: <http://pastebin.com/c2uH1Byj>

I think this is a copycat or a hanger-on. The rhetoric doesn't seem as aggressive and self-important as the summer's lulzsec messages. It's gone from being like "We have proven you suck and should cease existing" to "Hey, I hacked some sites. Check it out."

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, also I would guess that these guys are dutch and the old lulzsec was british right?</comment></comment>


Phrack #66 is out - <AUTHOR> http://phrack.org

<comment><USER2> "How close are they of hacking your brain"?

Not very, despite the author's thorough Wikipedia research.

Mind reading, though, that might not be so far away. If you're curious search around for "MRI SVM whole brain classification".

<comment><USER3> A careful and thoughtful study of marketing practices and techniques might lead you to different conclusion in terms of how close they are to hacking our brains.

Also, thanks for the tip on the mind reading, that's some interesting stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hacker news on Hacker News.

<comment><USER5> _Cracker_ news on Hacker News.

<comment><USER6> Like it or not, Cracker culture's an important part of Hacker culture.

<comment><USER5> I don't mind that, but I do like to make the distinction between the two.

<comment><USER7> I think you lost that fight over a decade ago, I'm afraid...

<comment><USER8> You're essentially saying to follow the herd then; as a nerd, I can not blindly condone such an action. This doesn't mean you should stop fighting though.

<comment><USER7> Well, that's just how language works. Words gain their cromulence through consensus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where's the tar.gz or file to download? There's a link on the right, but it's broken. Anyone else have this problem?

<comment><USER10> <http://phrack.org/archives/tgz/></comment></comment>


Show HN: Timmy - a Pomodoro timer with a social twist (inspired by HN) - <AUTHOR> https://timmytimer.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Five days ago I got inspired by this post on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22806609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22806609)

and decided to build something for myself. Maybe others will like it. Very early MVP, go easy please. :)</comment>


Show HN: Never ask someone more than once to do something - iPrompted - <AUTHOR> http://www.iprompted.com <comment><USER2> \- Hopefully, the app provides the recipient of the message a way to opt out of all future messages (and deletes their personal information immediately upon receipt of such a request).

\- I'd consider it to be a violation of my privacy if someone who wanted to remind me of something shared my contact details with a third party service without getting my permission first.

\- I'd consider it to be insulting if someone asked me to do something by sending me automatically generated messages. If it's important enough to remind me about, it's important enough for them to spend the time to send me a personal message. I'd only ever use an app like this to send reminders to myself, and there are already dozens of ways for me to do that (e.g., calendar reminders).

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a mechanism to permanently opt out of messages, but I think we should call that out on the privacy page. It's done at the twilio level, [https://support.twilio.com/hc/en- us/articles/223134027-Twili...](https://support.twilio.com/hc/en- us/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-for-opt-out-keywords-SMS-STOP- filtering-), but we should reinforce that.

We've thought a lot about how, in the future, we create the ability to accept a prompt, so not just anyone can assign one.

The tool's sweet spot seems to be for people that need to be reminded. We had some interesting anecdotal research that said that the more I have to remind <person that I care about> to do something, the more frustrated I got. By the time the task was completed, it was hard to be appreciative or grateful.

Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is literally nagware!

:D

No judgement here, I just chuckled and had to say it. (I have had similar thoughts)

Good luck.

Aw shit, I should not say this, but... I once thought up a service where people would sign up to make calls and or send texts. Use cases were:

Get the word out. Politics, fund raisers, events, that sort of thing.

Public service. Warnings, availability of resources.

Deliver short message. Advertising. Think 5 seconds, or a very targeted "tweet" in the form of SMS.

Bounty, info request. Get contact info for X. Or, what system do you use? Who does hiring? Whatever. (Controversial, I know)

The distributed nature of it made blocks hard.

Users, in a short alpha simulation, liked some use cases, hated others. It was difficult to arrive at what activities were worth it.

Since you are entering this space, I will just leave it all here. (Was not for me, for personal reasons)

<comment><USER4> At least we put a smile on one person's face, jk :)

We want users to view the tool as a virtual assistant, and not as the enemy. Over time we hope to add features like daily summaries, more conversational / nlp understanding and, eventually, the ability to understand what the tasks are about so we can offer positive feedback/encouragement.

<comment><USER3> Good luck. I think it is valid and all that. No worries, and yeah, I grinned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have not tested it but curious as to the target audience. The home page feels like a "Mom reminding kids to take out the garbage" front-end (ie, very personal: nothing wrong with that).

As you look ahead and folks request more features it could eventually look like (searching... searching... Ok. Found something):

[https://codecanyon.net/item/activity-board-activity- manager/...](https://codecanyon.net/item/activity-board-activity- manager/634766) (see screenshots)

At this point, it stops feeling like "nagware" as someone mentioned but a more polished/friendly business/GTD tool. I've used similar to the linked sample in the years past (email notifications only) and it's been very effective for tracking virtually everything.

A response by recipient (person responsible for the task) to the email gets added to the database and keeping track of the progress is available to admin(s), team members or all.

I mention the above only because in it's present state (have not kicked the tires, basing it on the front page, do not want to provide actual cell numbers now) it just seems much easier to directly send a SMS.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's truly geared more towards husband / wife, parents / kids. We think that having a system that provides prompts at the right time, for the tasks that matter, can be very powerful.

Personally, we're focused on a post UI world, where sms / voice + push mechanisms manage you...as opposed to tools that you have to manage yourself. It's really important that we build a relationship between the person designated to do the task and iPrompted.

More to come. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is potentially a human Denial of Service attack. Enough SMS nags and phone life becomes impossible. I give it a couple days before it's abused enough for their Twillio account to get flagged. There isn't any validation. I could just start having two strangers screw with each other. You could make a circle of annoyance or use your own Twillio to kind of botnet some large scale annoyance.

I accidentally human DDoSd my boss once by submitting multiple Azure support requests at level A and put in his cell phone number. Several support people started responding but they put them all on the same Exchange list so they kept responding to each other and it sent him an email and text. It took hours to clear it up, his phone was so buzzy he had to turn it off all afternoon while I attempted to stop the helper train with more texts, calls, and emails.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really sorry about your previous experience. The product is for people that otherwise get distracted and need a prompt to help them get on task.

<comment><USER6> I'm just trying to point out how people are going to use your product. Please blog in a few weeks about the fun things you get to mitigate!

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do. We had to institute an exponential backoff, to stop from being too annoying. However, we're seeing ~80 of the tasks assigned get completed AND there are power task creators that create a whole lot of tasks. It seems to be a good tool for type A personalities to manage those around them - but, it's still early.

<comment><USER6> It's sort of a free, automated, harassment robot. It's also pretty useful if you want to phish someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like #2 Replace Email[0]. Has any product come close to solving this yet?

[0] [http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html)

<comment><USER8> I don't think this replaces email in the way PG intends. In a way it's the opposite, this is a way of saying "I've got your number so I am going to force my way to priority 1 in your queue over all the other email/messages you have".

I think that is fine if you are wife/husband/mother/daughter/best friend etc. but not something I'd expect a coworker to do to me. Maybe a boss (a bit like a manual pagerduty scenario).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. We envision some availability for the Assigned to allow people to prompt them.

Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Never ask someone more than once to do something" \-- that's a big promise. Will it work on my son when I tell him to put on his shoes because it's time to go to school?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the exact type of problem we're trying to solve. For me, I can't tell you how many times I need to remind my son to do chores, homework, take meds, etc. Not to mention how many times my wife has to remind me to drop off clothes for donation, take this to the post office or what have you.

<comment><USER10> > > Will it work on my son when I tell him to put on his shoes because it's > time to go to school?

> That's the exact type of problem we're trying to solve.

I can't imagine a more wrong solution to that problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm just not brave enough to stick my number in there.

</comment><comment><USER11> if this was an email based service that might encourage me to test drive it... not sure why sms was the chosen option?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point. We picked one to demonstrate an MVP. SMS seemed more relevant to targeting someone 'in the moment's communication' and is more widely used among teens.

But, we'll add it to our backlog. When I look at traffic, referrals from HN successfully complete prompts way less than through channels that target people with children. Which, as you can see from your and other comments, isn't at all surprising.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Currently, the site only supports prompts to people with US-based, mobile phone numbers. Sorry for the inconvenience.</comment>


Does Gödel Matter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2114561/

<comment> alan-crowe Trouble is, there are completeness results. You can prove everthing that is true in all interpretations of first order logic. The statements that cannot be proven are unproveable because they are false in a non-standard interpretation of arithmetic. It is the existence of non-standard interpretations that is the big surprise, and the fact that statements are, in a sense, false that blocks proving them.

The equation whose roots are the Godel numbers of the proofs that it have no solutions has non-standard solutions. That is why there is no proof that it has no solutions. But the non-standard solution is the Godel number of, err, well what exactly? The trouble with the extra, non-standard numbers is that you cannot reach them by counting, so the proof they number is only finite in the non-standard interpretation. You cannot write it out. It doesn't count because we require that proofs be finite, and by finite we mean finite in the ambient meta-theory, which takes the standard model of the natural numbers.

It would be much better to sumarise Godel's theorem as showing that first order logic fails to tie down the nature of infinity.

Do we care about non-standard arithmetic? If memory serves, there are proofs that non-standard arithmetic is not computable. I can see why Bernie Madoff might find that convenient, but the rest of us can regard the uselessness of non-standard arithmetic as mathematically proven.

Godel's proof shows that first order logic is limited by the existence of mathematical monstrosities that we cannot use (because their arithmetic is not computable) and never encounter (because you cannot reach them by counting)

<comment><USER2> Isn't this broader than the limitations of first order logic? After Turing we know that no matter what formal system of axioms and rules of inference one choses(as long as these can be mechanically done) then there will be some true statements the system wont be able to see. (does the nth turing machine stop?, does a particular diophantine eqn have integer solutions?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've read the book the article ostensibly reviews, and to be honest it's not much cop. It's full of, frankly, a load of rubbish about post-modern thought and the extent to which Gödel's work might vindicate it. There are certainly interesting aspects to it, but it's neither a good biography nor a particularly good introduction to incompleteness, and is liable to merely frustrate anyone possessed of a passing acquaintance with either subject.

<comment><USER4> I read the book, and it was sometimes boring, still there's a lot of positive things makes you continue with the book. I got to learn about the works of Godel, Escher and Bach. And then about the patterns which exist in nature, or any work, where we never thought it could be a pattern. Anyways, I'm not a mathematician or a physicist to comment on Godel's work. I think the book is worth reading, whether it contributed to computer science or not, i do not know.

<comment><USER5> _I got to learn about the works of Godel, Escher and Bach..._

You're thinking of the wrong book...

<comment><USER6> I think he is a spam bot that uses Markov chains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Didn't he put forward two theorems? One about the undecidable statements as described in the article, but the other was much "worse": the consistency of mathematics can not be proven. That is for any axiom system with a certain minimal strength (like strong enough to derive natural numbers) it can not be proven that the axioms don't contradict each other.

Hopefully I am citing it right, as I am too lazy to look it up. But I think that is more of a ticking bomb sitting in the guts of mathematics. It could happen that one of these days the whole building of mathematics collapses because a contradiction in the axioms emerges. Apparently the common way to deal with it is to just deem it very unlikely since things went fine for centuries, and there is not much that can be done about it anyway.

Must finally read Gödel's proofs again, have been meaning to do so for ages :-/

<comment><USER8> The second theorem says that the consistency of a system cannot be proved _within that system_ (sufficiently strong, etc).

If a contradiction is discovered in set theory, either it will be fixed by a change to the axioms, or another set of foundational axioms altogether will become the standard foundation of mathematics. Perhaps the canonical example of this is naive set theory itself - paradoxes were discovered, but set theory was interesting enough that mathematicians looked for alternate definitions that did not contain the paradoxes, and they succeeded.

There are two things to note here. First, axiomatization was a useful tool in distinguishing various types of set theory and defining the ones that did not contain the (known) paradoxes. Second, the full formal treatment of these set theories came relatively late to mathematics, as did widespread use of formal, axiomatic methods in general. Rigorous axiomatic formalisms are very useful mathematical tools, but mathematics got along without them for a long time (not even Euclid counts, by modern standards) and can do so again if necessary. It is unlikely that this will happen, not because axiomatics can be proved to always work or because mathematics cannot get along without it, but because it is too useful a tool to abandon easily.

This was really Godel's point: mathematics is not identical with formalism. They stand and fall separately. This is not to say that mathematics could never collapse for any reason, only that it would take a lot more than finding a paradox at the center of ZFC to make it happen.

<comment><USER7> Hm, I thought set theory already contains arithmetic, so wouldn't Goedel's proof show that such axioms without paradoxes can't be found? I thought that is why he is so famout - for years it had been the goal of mathematics to find the ultimate axioms, and then Goedel showed that it can't be done, ever.

<comment><USER9> The second theorem tells us that we can't prove the consistency of set theory without using an even more powerful system. This doesn't mean that set theory is inconsistent, it just means that we can't prove its consistency in any meaningful way. So yes, Gödel indeed shows that there are no 'ultimate axioms' that contain everything of interest in mathematics.

<comment><USER10> Although it does lead to a mathematically uninteresting paradox: if you let A be the axioms of set theory and you add an axiom P which states that A proves x and not x, (i.e. set theory is inconsistent) then A' = A and P is still consistent.

<comment><USER11> For clearity: A' = (A and P)

<comment><USER9> Ah, that makes _a lot_ more sense now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still don't think we have grasped the importance of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. For example, indirectly it means that we can't ever solve the halting problem. Personally, I also think it applies to physics, especially the idea to find a theory of everything. I think theory of everything won't be possible simply because the incompleteness theorem states that "given any system of axioms that produces no paradoxes, there exist statements about X which are true, but which cannot be proved using the given axioms." (where X can be numbers, computer programs or ...)

<comment><USER13> This is exactly the kind of thinking that the article argues against. Remember that Goedel is speaking within the context of formal systems, so there is relatively little impact to any area outside of the small field of philosophy of mathematics. Anybody who tries to extrapolate beyond those bounds is either mistaken or misled as to what Goedel's incompleteness theorems actually imply. There is a much more thorough and eloquent explanation in the following link. [<http://www.ams.org/notices/200604/fea-franzen.pdf>]

Hell, even Einstein, who was close friends with Goedel and familiar with the result, was searching for a more fundamental physical theory than quantum mechanics, so clearly he did not believe it was a lost cause.

<comment><USER14> Do you know of anyone who has rigorously determined how Goedel's theorems apply to anything outside of mathematics?

While his theorems show the shortcomings of a certain approach to math, I don't think math is the only area where this approach is applied. For instance, granting Goedel has shown math is Platonic, i.e. it is about independently existing entities, not formal structures, then why does it make sense to say the mind that can grasp math is itself a formal system, i.e. the assumption behind strong AI?

So, it is more accurate to say Goedel's work is restricted to domains where formalization (of the correct sort) is applied, which covers more ground than just the philosophy of mathematics.

<comment><USER13> What you say in your last statement is true and helps to clarify a subtle point. I tend to shove all of that stuff (logic, set theory, problems of undecidability, etc) into the nondescript box labeled "philosophy of mathematics." When I meant a field was "small," it was not meant to be pejorative. Philosophy of mathematics is a rich and productive field with many applications within its varied fields. The main problems I see are the ones described the article I linked, in that people attempt to apply the theorems to things like physics, politics, law, or postmodern philosophy.

Of course Goedel's theorems do not totally exist in a bubble that only contains arcane mathematical incantations. For instance, Goedel's theorems imply (like the halting problem) that you cannot create a compiler that would be able to determine whether a program will not terminate and reject it, by considering what happens when you feed it a Goedel statement. However, this problem is something that I would also classify under "philosophy of mathematics."

Also, I hope I did not provide any implication that my view (or any view, for that matter), is the final word on the subject. I'm not dead-set in my own beliefs on incompleteness and if you can provide a convincing argument of a rigorous, nonmathematical application of Goedels theorems, I'd be more than happy to change my mind.

There is considerable discussion as to what exactly the incompleteness theorems imply, and there are many eminent minds on the many different sides of the argument. For instance, I believe Stephen Hawking is somebody who believes that physics cannot ultimately be formulated into a final number of finite principles. Do I believe this to be a rigorous application of Goedel's incompleteness theorems? No. Do I believe that this can be applied to fields outside a relatively restricted problem space? No. Does this mean I'm right? Of course not.

As to your point about Strong AI, I don't want to open that can of worms in this thread. I'm not yet convinced that the human mind is equivalent to any finite state machine, so I'm afraid that we don't even agree upon its the basic premises. However, I would love to discuss it any time outside of the thread.

<comment><USER14> I checked your profile and you don't have any contact information. I'm curious about what you think the mind is. Most seem to think it is an "emergent property" of the brain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, it wouldn't be much of a braid with just Escher and Bach, now would it?

<comment><USER16> Escher and Bach, a semi-permanent silver braid.

<comment><USER15> No, I think that'd just be a twisted pair! :0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes.

</comment><comment><USER18> Extending the standard model to include gravity, and thereby creating a "TOE" (Theory of Everything), is not I think going to be hurt by Godel. Because for TOE to work, all it need do is make predictions over and above the standard model, which can be verified by experiment, but also be consistent with all predictions of the standard model. If it can do this, it will stand as a TOE, at least until it disagrees with prediction, if and when that would happen. In other words, a TOE need not be "provable to be consistent in all it axioms". All it needs to do is include the Standard Model's predictions, then, make a few new ones to include gravity. Like one nice prediction would be to have the value of 10^-120 plank units for the energy density of "dark energy" arising naturally and nicely from someplace. That would be a good prediction, just as an example. If a TOE (inclusive of the standard model, plus a description of gravitons which delt with infinities), could regurgitate all standard model predictions, plus just make one prediction more (like setting the energy density of dark energy without having to appeal to the anthropic principle, mind you), then we got a good TOE. "Provable?" No. But it lives to fight another day, which is the best we can ask of a theory anyway.

<comment><USER19> That's interesting, and I do think that something empirical needs to come into play in order to escape issues with formalism without cheating (Sorry about the incredible vagueness of this sentence). However, what makes me wary of proof by prediction is that it has failed in the past and it is all too obvious why.

At the time, proponents of the Ptolemaic system were able to create a very complicated model that predicted the movements of planets reasonably well (don't know exactly who it was). So judging them by their predictions might have lead to the conclusion that the earth was indeed at the center of the universe.

Also, just try to write unit tests to "prove" that some piece of code is correct with regard to concurrency. What if a particular problem occurs so rarely that it is very unlikely to be caught in any empirical test? What if its occurrence depends on factors that are not well known or hard to replicate?

The problem with predictive models is that they sometimes break down unexpectedly. That doesn't make them useless, but it makes the distinction between logical proof and empirical proof all the more useful.</comment></comment>


Pre-built VirtualBox images of common OSes - <AUTHOR> http://virtualboxes.org/

<comment><USER2> Why should I trust these guys?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually you shouldn't, in the sense that there's nothing certifying that the images are 'clean'.

But: I downloaded one of the images just for testing out some servers setup locally (no deployment to the wild net) and for that I think it's gonna be fine.

Of course, I'll give it minimal access to the Internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I see the network interface is set to be bridged to eth0.

Not something i like.

Better set it to NAT.</comment></comment></comment>