CRISPR 2.0 Is Here, and It's More Precise - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609203/crispr-20-is-here-and-its-way-more-precise/ <comment><USER2> The title in Nature: "Programmable base editing of A•T to G•C in genomic DNA without DNA cleavage"

A brief description of what was accomplished (a modification of cas9): "We evolved a tRNA adenosine deaminase to operate on DNA when fused to a catalytically impaired CRISPR-Cas9. Extensive directed evolution and protein engineering resulted in seventh-generation ABEs (e.g., ABE7.10), that convert target A•T to G•C base pairs efficiently (~50% in human cells) with very high product purity (typically ≥ 99.9%) and very low rates of indels (typically ≤ 0.1%)."

Translation: they modified the CRISPR _associated_ DNA editing enzyme, cas9, to "deaminate" (remove or otherwise alter the amino groups) in A-T or G-C pairs without breaking the DNA, as cas9 normally would.

This makes single point precision edits possible, but I'm not sure what that implies for the "guide RNA" cas9 needs to know where to make the edits, as I haven't read the paper in full yet.

<comment><USER3> > they modified the CRISPR associated DNA editing enzyme, cas9

This is incorrect. They modified a separate enzyme that is fused to cas9.

<comment><USER4> I think that's what they meant, and said. Cas9 "CRISPR associated protein 9" is the protein/enzyme that they modified.

<comment><USER3> I'm definitely getting into hair-splitting territory, but I think it's important to not conflate modifying a protein with fusing two proteins. It would be easy to come away from the GP and think that scientists have the ability to easily change the enzymatic function of Cas9, when in reality they're effectively just connecting a protein to Cas9 and letting it do its thing.

<comment><USER4> Ah, I see what you're getting at. I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While direct editing of bases will be a really useful tool, I think it's worth pointing out to any alarmists about human editing that our ability to make directed changes far outpaces our knowledge of what changes to make (and our ability to make reasonable guesses about how safe those changes are). Although there are a relative handful of diseases that have a single, protein coding change that's responsible (sickle cell, cystic fibrosis, etc), most diseases are due to multiple variants, many of which are non-coding, interacting with environmental factors and chance (diabetes, obesity, depression). These kinds of tools are incredibly useful in the lab for making advances in understanding disease, but we're a long way off from widespread clinical use, if that is even in the cards.

<comment><USER6> I'm more terrified of bioweapons targeted at people with some specific gene and attached to a flu virus. Genocide at a push of a button, orders of magnitude cheaper than a nuclear weapon, no materials other than standard lab equipment needed. Bond villains, rejoice!

Any reason to hope we won't be able to do this for another hundred years? Because CRISPR seems awfully close.

<comment> T-A How would you prevent natural mutations from modifying or disabling the target mechanism? If you can't guarantee its integrity, the descendants of your air- born killer virus will be back for you in short order. That, rather than inability to do it, is what will hopefully prevent it.

<comment><USER7> That's only applicable for relatively rational state actors not insane extremists who believe such terrible events are required as part of their faith

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have two mutations of USH2A, causing blindness. It's a big gene. This kind of tech can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER9> I too have some bad genes that make life pretty challenging at times. This type of tech gives me great hope. I wish I were more qualified to work on it and advance it.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry to be trying to take away your hope but I just don't see the path from CRISPR to gene therapy that can cure diseases in adults. CRISPR allows scientists to modify DNA in individual cells in a lab setting. But it doesn't help with mass editing DNA in cells throughout the body. I've heard of experiments where they take white blood cells, edit their DNA, and then reinject them. But there's currently no way to modify the genes in-place in a person's retina for example.

<comment><USER11> That's extremely far from the truth. The entire CRISPR field is focused heavily on being able to mass edit genes in adults in fact.

The three major CRISPR companies, Berkeley and Broad are all focused on pushing the technology there. It's not a question of if, it's inevitable. They already know it can be done, the challenge is scaling it up and constantly improving the accuracy and the overall command they have of what eg Cpf1 can do (in the case of Broad & Editas).

A very large percentage of all disease occurs in adults after the age of ~30. That is, well after the person is an adult. Take a look at the disease targets that Editas, Intellia and Crispr Therapeutics are pursuing: they're going after adult diseases long-term, including targeting things such as diseases of the liver more near-term (next five years). Most of their initial targets are focused on easier (relative term) editing targets, the retina being a popular target due to the genes there. First they'll learn to crawl, then walk, then run.

You don't have to edit all the genes in the body to cure most genetic diseases.

<comment><USER12> >"That's extremely far from the truth. The entire CRISPR field is focused heavily on being able to mass edit genes in adults in fact."

It doesn't seem so to me. I've noticed less and less focus on toxicity lately, as if they've given up on that. For example, I took a look at one of the papers[1] from TFA. All they look at is percent of sequences from _surviving_ cells that contained the A->G mutation. They don't report how many cells died during the process to get there.

Also, they see these mutations in the control group too (figure 4 untreated A5 = 99.8), so it seems this may be yet another way to use crispr to select for pre-existing mutants. It's hard to say since no info is provided on the toxicity for this new strategy.

On the other hand, the new strategy may be less toxic since it is only supposed to introduce a single strand break rather than double (ie as opposed to cas9). Reviewers should be on this, not sure why they so consistently drop the ball regarding the role of toxicity in these studies.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nat...](https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nature24644.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can CRISPR lead the bald to a full head of hair? A CRISPR hair loss cure would be worth billions.

<comment><USER14> I love the answer Gene Roddenberry gave regarding a bald TNG captain.

At a press conference about Star Trek: The Next Generation, a reporter asked Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry about casting Patrick Stewart, commenting that "Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness." Gene Roddenberry had the perfect response.

"No, by the 24th century, no one will care."

<comment><USER15> I don't really understand it. Is it because they have fixed it to not become bald in the first place (so no cure needed), or is he just saying no one cares about it?

<comment><USER16> Because I guess we'll focus our futur minds on more important things than someone's baldness

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One step closer to either utopia or dystopia. I'm not sure which one.

<comment><USER17> How would this ever cause dystopia?

<comment><USER18> Muliticlass society based on who can afford the treatment and those who can't.

<comment><USER19> Don't we already have that in the US and other countries without socialized medicine?

<comment><USER11> Even countries with socialized medicine have that. If you're rich and Canadian, you're not going to wait eight months for your procedure, you have other options that money provides. The same is true in most socialized medicine nations. There is almost always a superior therapy or doctor available somewhere in the world if you can afford it.

<comment><USER20> Eight months is an exaggeration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hope we can cure treatment-resistant depression of genetic origin with this.

</comment><comment><USER12> In case an author reads this. I tried getting the data from one of the papers:

>"High-throughput sequencing data have been deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive database under accession code SRP119577"

[https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nat...](https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nature24644.html)

It doesn't seem to work (but I haven't used SRA before):

>"The following term was not found in SRA: SRP119577."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=SRP119577](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=SRP119577)

</comment><comment><USER22> We've written a short explainer on CRISPR (if you're not familiar with the basics): [https://humbot.io/How-are-designer-babies- made](https://humbot.io/How-are-designer-babies-made)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hopefully this is going to be great news. I can't believe how fast the research with CRISPR is moving, and can't wait to see what's next!

</comment><comment><USER24> What on earth is up with the paywall on this site? It won't let me read the non-mobile version at all.

</comment><comment><USER25> "It's Way More Precise", Is this good English in 2017?

</comment><comment><USER26> How are we claiming to be able to precisely edit DNA when we can't even properly sequence it all yet - from just a couple days ago: [[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534325)]?</comment>


An Open Letter to Science Students and Science Teachers - <AUTHOR> http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/31/an-open-letter-to-science-students-and-science-teachers/

<comment><USER2> I only wish I could upvote this twice, as I have seen this phenomenon more and more often in online communities about specialized subjects, for example a Facebook group about mathematics learning I participate in.</comment>


Ask PG: What progress is being made on disrupting Hollywood? - <AUTHOR>

A few months back there was a post by PG calling on developers and entrepreneurs to disrupt Hollywood.[1]<p>It gained a massive amount of attention at the time and I'm curious as to whether anyone has heeded that call and if there is now any particular start-up or tech in the pipeline that may have a noticeable impact on that particular industry?<p>[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542 <comment><USER2> I'm working on something to lower a portion of cost and difficulty on the production side. It is not going to kill Hollywood but hopefully it will help low-budget and student filmmakers.

I think killing Hollywood (breaking the stranglehold on distribution) is a long term goal. It will be a lot of smaller innovations that will enable it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out FeedForward: <http://www.feed-forward.net> we're doing a lot namely giving artists incentive to communicate better with our core application which gives artists more exposure when they give feedback for others' work. We also feature a commission free market --sell your work with nothing more than a PayPal account, and we'll NEVER take a cut. We've applied for YC several times, and have never heard back, accept for their generic rejection letter, but we've been at this for years, not months, and I am a musician, so I understand just how hard it is for others like me, and I'm going for community development over riches and fame... Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER4> I think there is still a long future for non-interactive/low-interactivity media. The original RFS acknowledged this. One project that aims to enable high-quality packaging independently of Hollywood is Lib-Ray [1]. Only a small part of the answer, but useful in its own right.

[1] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2144275086/lib-ray- non-d...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2144275086/lib-ray-non-drm-open- standards-hd-video-format?ref=live) (I don't know how much future there is in distributing physical media, but packaging menus and other stuff that non- hackers like in a standard format is possibly interesting.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe it was 'Kill Hollywood'. You might as well have Henry Ford saying 'Kill Horses'. When a viable alternative exists it will gradually replace Hollywood. Just like every other industry.

<comment><USER6> In order for the auto industry analogy to hold, horse breeders would have had to have been actively interfering with early automotive innovation. Did that actually happen? (honest question)

<comment><USER5> Stopping piracy is not interfering with innovation, it is enforcing the law. Unfortunately the defense of piracy is based on it being trivial to copy. Lots of things are trivial to copy, like your private data. Surely you don't believe everyone should have access to your data just because it is easy to copy.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Surely you don't believe everyone should have access to your data just because it is easy to copy._

Straw man fallacy. They aren't analogous.

 _Unfortunately the defense of piracy is based on it being trivial to copy_

That's a pretty sweeping statement. Want to provide some citations?

<comment><USER5> I should have been clearer, that is pg's defense. <http://paulgraham.com/property.html></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is psychological therapy working for you? - <AUTHOR> I've went to countless sessions and therapists (for my own issues, for issues with the kids, marriage counseling etc etc), spent many years and a small fortune - but nothing did any real significant change (despite significant hardships as a kid, all-in-all my life turned out ok, but some things can be better...). I feel like its a fraud, that everybody knows it doesn't work, all this endless talking and digging and analyzing, but are just afraid to admit it. Nothing in the way therapy is done today can be really measured, with metrics that can actually point to any significant progress. Many times I finished a session/therapy and wondered - did I even achieve anything? was there any progress? regress? forget about the money - was that a good investment of my time? <comment><USER2> Your experience is not uncommon. If someone goes into therapy with a high degree of skepticism, a tendency toward cynicism, and unrealistic expectations about the speed and magnitude of progress, they're likely to feel disappointed. It's analogous to the nocebo effect with medications.

I had an extended family member who had similar thoughts about their therapy: Complaints about the lack of metrics, constant suspicion that it was a waste of time, inability to point to solid progress. Every time she talked about therapy, it was complaints, cynicism, and suspicion.

Yet from our external view, it was obvious to see the positive impacts on her life. The slow but steady progress and improvement in her quality of life. The improved response to emotionally difficult situations and the better handling of life stressors. Her pride wouldn't let her admit that therapy played a role in those improvements, though. That, and she refused to acknowledge small progress unless her problems were 100% solved, which isn't a realistic goal.

If it helps, think of therapy as another tool in your tool belt to deal with life stressors and personal issues. Like any project, you can't finish it with a single tool, but having more options in your tool belt goes a long way to increasing your odds. It's still up to you to make an effort to learn how to use that tool correctly, which problems to use that tool on, and when you need to bring additional tools into the project.

</comment><comment><USER3> In short words: yes.

It's been fundamental to who I am today and considering where I come from, I'm very successful.

In your case - let me recommend you a book that's going to help you with three things: 1) To understand what a therapist can do for you and what he can't; 2) How to look for a good professional in that field; 3) What kind of problems psychotherapy deals with that are the most important ones (the book is written in a simple "cause -> consequences" way). I've recommended it to a lot of people, and in case of 70%+ of them it was helpful with making a breakthrough.

"Psychological Defenses in Everyday Life", Robert Firestone & Joyce Catlett

No doubt there's a lot of morons doing counseling out there. No wonder that there's also a lot of people not having progress. Nevertheless, psychotherapy DOES work and it can do wonders if applied properly.

Good luck!</comment>


ONiO.zero: ultra-low-power wireless MCU using energy harvesting technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.onio.com/technology.html <comment><USER3> The harvester(s) are of course built in. There are some pasives - one resistor for a master bias and a handful caps. The antenna is taken directly in - <USER2> solar cell type.

How low power is it - it all depends is the correct answer. The chip is tuned for a few different application scenario:

1\. DVFS mode: Here you select a clock speed/voltage your application require - and you will get the associated voltage/clock speed in return. You can doctor your code with calls to have various performance levels.

2\. Deadline based: You select a deadline for the work to complete within - and the device will throttle by setting clock speed to match this requirement. The voltage is matched for the selected clock speed.

IO voltage is maintained from a seperate regulator - so internal logic voltage can vary with stable IO voltage.

Mask rom + flash...why? Maskrom for some secure boot stuff, stdlib and math - it is less energy per fetch from mask rom vs. flash. Ideally everything should be in ROM - but that makes it hard for the end user to add his/her application

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmm, without a datasheet, its very difficult to asses how useful it is.

Does it have the RF harvesting bits built in? or is it a bunch of passives that I have to add after.

How low power is it? are we talking microamps per mhz(I know we're not...) How much useful time do you have per charge cycle?

the articles section seems to be full of generic health mumbojumbo, which isnt a good start... [https://www.onio.com/article- list.html](https://www.onio.com/article-list.html)

<comment><USER5> You can request the data sheet at the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER6> Nope. They collect contact info but send nothing. At least not automatically. No email sent to my trash email account when I filled out the form as Johny Smith

<comment><USER3> This is correct. And I would not encourage using what is likely not your real name. The initial versions of the datasheet will be watermarked.

<comment><USER6> Um, no.

The initial versions of the datasheet will be read by _NOBODY_ if this is kept up! If you make it hard to see what your product does, who will care?

Learn from STM32 - public datasheet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > 1KB of mask ROM (stdlib, math etc). 2KB RAM. 8/16/32KB ULP Flash. 100k > Writes. Read supported down to 850mV.

Even 32kB of rom is going to be very tight to fit a wireless stack like BTLE. It's not clear if their BTLE peripheral includes the stack or just the radio. I would hope it's the latter.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would love to peek at the datasheet without going through their email harvester.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.mailinator.com/](http://www.mailinator.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The combination of a mask rom and reprogrammable flash on the same product surprised me. Why would you want a customizable mask rom if you've already got 8x or more of flash? Is it a power consideration: are mask roms lower-power to read from?

<comment><USER6> NOR flash is also slow. That is why a lot of microcontrollers that run at hundreds of megahertz have very strange flash accelerators that read slowly in parallel (STM uses a 128-bit-wide bus for example), and then dispense data/code to the CPU quickly in 16 or 32-bit pieces. Most ROMs can be read very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seeing as they hail from Norway, is it a spin-off of Nordic?

<comment><USER12> They are ex-Nordic cadres. You can note, they keep their own key tech cadres incommunicado :). Unlike business people, they have not a single bit of their contact information listed on their page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If this comes out and is affordable, it'll have some really cool applications. As per datasheet, it also has UWB support so you could make a "where's my keys????" (or inventory tracker) without having to worry about dead batteries or limited range of RFID.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would love to know if this is going to capitalise on the 5G rollout .. I seem to remember a few years ago someone making claims that once 5G was deployed, ULP sensors would be more feasible ..

</comment><comment><USER15> Have any hobbyists ever done something similar in a approachable manner? Obviously this could be great for some iot tasks.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Product under development". Might be a complete pipe dream.

<comment><USER17> I worked on a line of wireless energy harvesting based occupancy sensors. It's doable.

<comment><USER16> Doable and commercially available aren't the same thing though

<comment><USER17> Well...I mean we did sell the products so there was a market for them. And yeah, before we released them they were not commercially available...so you got me there ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting.

They have open positions on their career page: [https://www.onio.com/career.html](https://www.onio.com/career.html)

Seems like a great time to join this company and help make this product come alive after years of work. I would guess they are an efficient and driven team where everyone knows everyone else.

I am not affiliated with them, but working at companies when they start to gain traction and to feel how proud everyone is at getting a product out with a relatively small team is great fun!</comment>


16 Tips for Getting 90% of Your Work Done Before Lunch - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/neil-patel/16-tips-for-getting-90-of-your-work-done-in-the-morning.html

<comment><USER2> I don't know who this is for but it's not for me. I need to be around to review pull requests and stuff. Sounds nice though

</comment><comment><USER3> Has a lot of spelling mistakes, guess they were rushing to get it done before lunch!</comment>


Upstart: The Startup is You - <AUTHOR> http://launch.upstart.com/

<comment><USER2> "Upstart lets you raise capital in return for a small portion of your future income. So you can do what you were meant to do."

Hm, I'm able to raise capital without Upstart.. and keep all portions of my future income.

If your idea is good enough, planned out enough, and presentation is good - then all you need to do is talk to investors.

I like how they're trying to be clever, though can't currently see how the service taking future income is justifiable.

</comment><comment><USER3> By the way, this is Dave Girouard's new endeavor (he just left the Apps team at Google): [https://plus.google.com/u/0/100940716892313727285/posts/jL2g...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/100940716892313727285/posts/jL2gCC864NY)

</comment><comment><USER4> I see how this could work in countries where there are no investors, loans or any form of financing at all.

But in the US? Unless these guys want to commit business suicide my guess is they'll only approve individuals with a solid track record (eg: a kid with high grades) and not just any poor bastard that may never amount to anything.

Problem is _wonder boy_ above will get a scholarship to Stanford, and then will meet investors who will fund his startup regardless of what the idea is, so why would he go to upstart which will siphon his revenues away indefinitely?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering what kind of investors would put money into a company which couldn't raise capital through a conventional route.

The only kind of investment which makes sense in this kind of scenario is one where the investors actually don't anticipate any return from the product being invested in itself, but see a cash cow in the form of a share of future income.

In which case, the comparison with payday lenders doesn't seem that far off.

Edit: The fact that this is encouraging young people in particular to mortgage their futures makes me feel worse about this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this different from indentured servitude?

<comment><USER7> Yes, obviously. While it can be whimsical to compare the two, and while you could come up with a single definition that is loose enough to describe them both, they certainly are different.

The analogy breaks when you accept that, then, debtors prison was not meant to be ironic or figurative. It was a literal prison.

Most importantly, the socioeconomic factors matter. Your comment is almost offensive to me. I'm an engineer in the bay area. I work for a startup. It's important to remember that while my colleagues and I aren't full-on rich, we are very very well off. As an engineer with 5-15 years experience, you have myriad options to earn between 100-150k. That's the middle of the bell curve. And it goes up from there with more experience, I just haven't made it that far yet.

Sure, the bay area is an expensive place to live. But even here, that salary is more than double the median.

This concept is aimed at engineers. They're not targeting inner-city troubled young adults. Indentured servitude? Hardly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just last night, I recalled that a company used to offer student loans in exchange for a percent of future income based on current major, grades, SAT scores, etc. some time around the .com crash.

This one is about 10 years old now:

<http://www.lumniusa.net/how-it-works/overview>

</comment><comment><USER9> Sacrificing future income in exchange for current liquidity is the very essence of a loan. The only difference is that the return from a loan is fixed, whereas a _proportion_ of future income represents a variable rate-of- return, with more risk (when assessed through conventional means) but more opportunity for reward.

</comment><comment><USER10> Warren Buffet said in a talk at Columbia that he would gladly pay $100k for 10% of any student in the rooms future earnings, and 50% more if they had strong communication skills. (during that same talk, a student asked Warren why he invested in burlington northern, and he replied, "I always wanted a train set, but my father never bought me one!"

The biggest flaw in this plan is that anyone who took investment is basically saying they don't believe much in their future value and potential, or are too lazy to do the math about their future earnings. It's like running a groupon deal, you are borrowing at an outrageous rate because you are bad at math, and value money now much more than its worth.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the idea has substance. My Interpretation was that they provide you with capital and in return for x% of your future revenue (personally). As opposed to a loan that gets repaid via x% of your income for a period of time. Like a student loan or payday loan.

I would consider this. But considering the investment would include all future companies I may start and not just what I intend to do with the funds in the short term, the terms would have to be much more favourable than if I raised funds just for a single company.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some more details would be good aside from the basically blank hold page.

<comment><USER13> JUST FILL THIS FORM FOR MORE INFORMATION!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am guessing it's going to be a crowd-funding site once crowd-funding is made legal through the JOBS act.

If it is, contact me.

<comment><USER15> why would they contact you ?

<comment><USER14> I am in the same field and am interested to see if there is any collaboration opportunities.

<comment><USER15> not to be a jerk, but you're just some random guy on an anonymous forum who's account is 3 days old. They are a well funded company. Not sure what you bring to the table, but unless you sort of state your expertise to prove your credibility, I wouldn't hope for much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Getting the numbers right would make this work.

$50-250k investment + 6% of revenue w/10x cap maybe?

</comment><comment><USER17> Fascinating idea. How does it actually work?

<comment><USER18> Seems like the equivalent of a payday loan for startups?

<comment><USER17> I was thinking it would be more akin to student loans, at least in timeframe. Wonder what crowdsourced payday loans would be like, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> MyRichUncle tried a similar model in ~2001:

"Through this website, investors could provide money to pay for a student's undergraduate or graduate degree expenses in exchange for a fixed percentage of that student's future income for a set period after graduation."

They're one of my all time favorite startup stories, going from the charter described above, to trying to be a "white knight" in student lending - ultimately going public, then going bankrupt spectacuarrly.

Worth the read:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyRichUncle>

Better luck to Upstart!

<comment><USER8> Yes, that was the startup I remember from 10 years ago. I found and skimmed the same article but didn't find that line. Considering they became one of the biggest lenders, I would say they're a success story.

Also, a competitor I uncovered from same era is part of the Clinton Global Initiative and appears to be doing well in four different countries: <http://lumni.net></comment></comment>


Clang reaches funding target - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang?foo=bar

<comment><USER2> I'm nitpicking, but it's CLANG, not Clang. One's a video game swords thing, the other is a compiler.

<comment><USER3> Thought the exact same thing! I clicked to read about new developments funded for Clang the compiler and was wondering why I haven't heard of the fundraising effort...

<comment><USER4> Well, I honestly don't think Clang needs fundraising through KickStarter :) Apple's $100B+ should be enough. GCC is now deprecated on Apple platforms and will be completely replaced by LLVM family in a year's time, so their whole ecosystem (OS X, iOS, cloud infrastructures) depends on LLVM and certainly they would spend as much as necessary on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I pledged for this Kickstarter even though I'm not overly interested in realistic sword fighting video games. I really just wanted to give something back to Neal Stephenson for all the enjoyment I've gotten out of his books aside from his cut of their purchase price. Helping a pet project of his succeed seemed like a cool way to do that.

However, this Kickstarter really struggled to get funded which surprised me, especially given Neal's "nerd fame" as he calls it. Maybe this is why the AAA title companies haven't taken a stab at something like this, because the interest just isn't there?

<comment><AUTHOR> I pledged for pretty much the same reasons, even though I'm not overly keen on a sword fighting console game. Perhaps you're right and that there's just not enough interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 800k for linux? that seems a bit excessive considering the engine already supports it</comment>


How Apple's phantom taxes hide billions in profit - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/technology/2012/07/23/how-apple-phantom-taxes-hide-billions-profit/m6tEhJwPM67I6L51SmjV7L/story.html

<comment><USER2> Single page - [http://www.boston.com/business/technology/2012/07/23/how- app...](http://www.boston.com/business/technology/2012/07/23/how-apple- phantom-taxes-hide-billions-profit/m6tEhJwPM67I6L51SmjV7L/singlepage.html)

I tell all my business 'students' to look up the Double Irish Dutch Sandwich - knowing the process, even if not the specifics that make it legal, opens your mind to options around revenue, profits, and tax. You'll likely never need that solution, but you'll be less likely to simply make assumptions about money again.</comment>


Elon Musk hates 405 Freeway traffic, offers money to speed widening - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-elon-musk-405-freeway-20130425,0,7423915.story

<comment><USER2> As it turns out, some road improvement projects change the pattern of route usage in a way that they paradoxically make the situation worse. It's called "Braess's paradox" and it stems from analysis of network topology and Nash equilibria:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braesss_paradox>

Also, a typical road improvement project costs between one and five million dollars per mile. Based on the mean value, Musk's $50K contribution would add capacity to 106 feed of roadway.

Nice gesture, though.

<comment><USER3> I imagine the gesture was meant as a way to perhaps incite others to put additional of their own funds into it (outside of the taxes they hopefully pay).

<comment><USER2> I think Musk's involvement will be beneficial more because of his name and his reputation for getting things done, than by way of his contribution.</comment></comment></comment>


Matz on Ruby 2.0 at Heroku's Waza - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/3/6/matz_highlights_ruby_2_0_at_waza <comment><USER2> Nothing earth-shattering if you've been following 2.0 development at home, but seeing Matz is always a pleasure, and he does a good job of summarizing all the major changes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Slides: <https://speakerdeck.com/yukihiro_matz/ruby-2-dot-0-en>

<comment><USER4> kudos. Matz is cool but he's the most annoying speaker I've ever heard, his voice literally hurts my ears!

<comment><USER5> This was the first time I heard him speak, and I thought it was a really funny and informative delivery. Of course, he has a very thick accent, but he can get his thoughts across pretty well. Being German, I'm used to English presentations so horrible they don't just assault your ears, they try to melt your brain. Some of those I might have delivered myself. This keynote was not one of those.

It's always great to actually hear the creator of a project speak, to get a feel for what they're about and what kind of personality they have. I immediately liked Linus Torvalds when I heard him speak, and I was immediately sure that Brendan Eich was not my kind of person to put it mildly.

For this reason, I was quite curious to "meet" the guy behind Ruby, even more so because my image of the Ruby community is one of pure abrasiveness and arrogance. So, Matz is nice and funny. I'm glad I watched that.

<comment><USER6> He's basically the same personality if you ever meet him in person, it's not a stage act for the presentation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something interesting I noticed during his presentation at Waza was his use of a presentation software called "rabbit." It allowed him to see how far ahead/behind he was in the presentation given a preset amount of time. Anyone have any information on the software?

<comment><USER5> <http://rabbit-shocker.org/en/>

It would be so nice if Keynote had that feature.

<comment><USER8> Why not just use rabbit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like Matz. His kind, joyful attitude in himself and towards the language was one of the reasons that got me interested in Ruby. However, this latest news of misconduct on the Heroku part left me with mixed feelings about his place of employment.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really enjoyed the Game vs. API talk at Waza. Also the Heroku decorations were _stylish_. I never imagined so much black and purple could look good inside.</comment>


Fiber-Famished Gut Microbes Linked to Poor Health - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fiber-famished-gut-microbes-linked-to-poor-health1/ <comment><USER2> The problem with this article are statements about value of "fermentable" fiber without giving any real info about the nature of such fiber. (Except it's not digested by gut enzymes, hence "leftovers" that colonic organisms may be able to "ferment".)

There are _many kinds_ of dietary fiber, it's actually quite a complex subject. The basic classification of "soluble" and "insoluble" is not very informative. As the article says, there are a great number of different organisms that can inhabit the "biome", each species of bacteria, fungus, virus, etc. has its own preferred substrates, and produces its own particular set of fermentation products.

I believe the research on biome activity is complicated by the vast range of variation among the organisms as well as the sorting out the beneficial or harmful effects of their activity on the host. And of course, we must not forget hosts also show a range of characteristics and are dynamically variable too.

As the article hints, research shows biome effects on many body functions, such as immune system and metabolic function. However, pinning down specifically what substrates are important to which organisms producing helpful/harmful effects is a daunting mission.

It's going to take a great deal more study before we will begin to have any clear idea about exactly which of the million different forms of fiber is going to be good (or bad) for any given health issue.

<comment><USER3> More research is always nice, but you can get a long way with the two words I learned as a biological anthropology undergrad: dietary diversity.

Eating well isn't rocket science. Eat a wide range of foods. Then you'll very likely hit all the things you need, and not take on harmful amounts of the things you don't. Plus you'll get to enjoy the variety along the way.

<comment><USER4> As a physician I think the diversity hypothesis should really be challenged. Our guts, microbes, and even genes take a while to change. Is diversity really helpful or harmful?

When you study people that live to be very old, many of them eat the same simple things on a daily basis for decades.

Anyway, just a personal hypothesis...

<comment><USER5> As an interested layman, I've wondered about this myself. Ecosystems take a while to stabilize around local maxima. So, although diversity may prevent you from falling into any particular deficiency, it seems possible that a well balanced diet that remained stable over time would allow your flora to really dial in.

<comment><USER6> You could also be avoiding potentially harmful substances which a diverse diet might have exposed you to. That they lived into their 90s on the same diet they had in their 20's implies they skipped TV dinners, Aerosol Cheese and McDonalds along the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to be more careful what I ate, but in the last few years I started a simpler approach: about 60% of my diet is vegetable matter (bok choy, carrots, broccoli , etc. in the winter -- more squash, tomatoes, etc. in the summer).

To the point of the article: I do like fermented foods. My home made pressed cabbage being a favorite, but a local health food store features locally produced live sauerkrauts, kimchi, etc. All tasty stuff.

I think that it is pretty simple: avoid sugar, avoid processed food, and then whatever you eat enjoy it.

<comment><USER8> I think I've said this to you before, but you need to use some other word than processed. Especially if you are talking about fermented foods being good, as that is sort of a classic way of processing food.

Maybe 'refined'? Or even, 'excessively refined'?

<comment><USER7> Thanks Max, I should have made that more clear. By 'processed' I intended not eating packaged foods (cereals, frozen food, bread with lots of preservatives, etc.)

Basically, starting with fresh ingredients and cooking food yourself. In some areas, I have found inexpensive restaurants that do this. There was a vegetarian restaurant my wife and I liked in Milpitas California, about 10 miles from the Googleplex, that I would like physically moved to the town I live in :-) Seriously, you could look back in the kitchen and see lots of fresh food, food was made to order, and their prices were low.

We like to cook, but I realize that not everyone has the time to cook from fresh ingredients.

<comment><USER8> _but a local health food store features locally produced live sauerkrauts, kimchi, etc. All tasty stuff._

Neither fresh nor prepared by you...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It almost sounds too good to be true.

(Just like "enough vitamins", "no fat", "no trans-fat", "no cholesterol", "no carbs", "enough poly-saturated fat", "enough omega 3" seemed to be _the_ solution before)

Anyone with background knowledge can reason for or against the article?

<comment><USER10> In general, eating the same diet as thin/healthy people will cause your microbiome to shift toward the microbiome of thin/healthy people. This is because your microbial population is largely determined by resource availability and resource type, and adaptation happens quite quickly (ie speeds not unlike those shown in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb272zsixSQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb272zsixSQ))

However, I believe it's wrong to conclude that thin/healthy people have the kind of microbiome you should be aiming for.

The microbiome you want (or rather I want) is the one my ancestor's had, just like I want the food I eat to be similar to the food my ancestor's ate. Unfortunately this is basically impossible given modern farming techniques, which remove most of the food-borne microbes found on natural crops.

See [http://humanfoodproject.com/rebecoming-human-happened-day- re...](http://humanfoodproject.com/rebecoming-human-happened-day- replaced-99-genes-body-hunter-gatherer/) for more on this from the founder of the American Gut Project.

<comment><USER11> > The microbiome you want (or rather I want) is the one my ancestor's had

Why? Do you think your ancestors were especially healthy?

Do you think they all had the same microbiome?

<comment><USER10> > Why? Do you think your ancestors were especially healthy?

It's the null hypothesis. For me personally, it's more a bet against the modern microbiome than it is a bet for the ancestral one.

See also paleo vs margarine, no fat, no cholesterol, no carbs, enough poly- saturated fat, enough omega 3. Really paleo vs any nutrition advice that's more than 10 years old (so the science had a chance to check the claims)

IMO we don't currently know enough about nutrition or the microbiome to make a better choice than "whatever our great-great-great grandparents did"

> Do you think they all had the same microbiome?

They didn't, but they had way more diversity and significantly different strains than moderns do. Check out my above link to the american gut project's founder or [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0106833)

<comment><USER12> I think it's bananas that you're advocating for historical eating and getting downvoted. The only reason we're here at all is that it worked well enough to keep people alive.

Maybe it's not "optimal" but considering that obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc rates have all been climbing like crazy for the last 50 years and the diet has changed a lot in the last 50 years, it's not outside the realm of possibility that the change in diet is causative towards these outcomes rather than simply correlated.

And considering how long it's going to take to sort it out definitively, you might have to go most of your life making decisions based on a hunch rather than with proven science. It sucks, but that's life.

<comment><USER13> >heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc rates have all been climbing like crazy for the last 50 years I'm not sure about that, in the past the diagnosis were really different from now so you can't really compare them.

Also the lifespan was much shorted at that time, so people had less changes to get these illnesses.

<comment><USER14> So are you arguing that obesity in children is happening because we are living longer?

<comment><USER15> It's not controversial to say that cancer is a disease of old age, and that rates of cancer are higher now because people are living longer.

That makes a lot more sense than a lot of the nutrition bullshit that gets posted to HN.

<comment><USER16> Dan, I know you like to check your facts. Age-adjusted _rates_ of cancer have been going steadily down throughout our lifetimes. That information has been posted to Hacker News before.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8827382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8827382)

Yes, the absolute number of cancer cases experienced by an individual over the course of life will increase if the individual lives longer by surviving other causes of death, as cancer is mostly a disease that takes a long time to develop. But at a given age, individuals in the developed world are at less risk than ever before to have a case of cancer, and cancer cases are less likely to have fatal outcomes than ever before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Finally I have an excuse for all my farting.</comment>


Pipe Viewer - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe-viewer/

<comment><USER2> This is one of my personal favourite utilities that I find a use for quite regularly and kind of wish was installed by default in mainstream Linux distros.</comment>


Show HN: Weekend project - Gitscore - <AUTHOR> http://gitscore.com <comment><USER2> When you start measuring things, people start gaming them, so for github's sake I hope your project disappears into oblivion.

Klout is the latest major sad example of this phenomenon. People are modifying their Twitter behavior in some fascinating ways to game their Klout score.

However, people love shortcuts, so I'm sure you can refine your service and subscribe clueless HR folks to it.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that means people should not measure things, if we didn't measure things we would never improve.

<comment><USER4> Measuring things would be one thing (number of repositories, number of pull requests sent, number of changes committed, number of comments made). I think the concern comes with boiling down a bunch of (possibly unknown) measurements into a single number. Who is to say that the formula is the "right" one or the "best" one? And what happens when people start getting ranked in an absolute sense based on that score?

And if people start changing their behaviour because they're gaming the system (or is it the system that gamed them?), and that results in unintended consequences, do we (as a whole) come out ahead from where we started?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a collection of pagerank values based on the followers graph from two months ago, if anyone's interested

[https://raw.github.com/clayw/Github- pageranks/master/github-...](https://raw.github.com/clayw/Github- pageranks/master/github-pageranks)

</comment><comment><USER6> So how are you calculating my (horribly low) score? I am guessing each accepted pull request counts ten, or something but I am interested in the algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems broken on my Chrome Dev Channel - lots of JS errors and a blank score

<comment><USER8> I had the same problem and it turned out that if you block Facebook and/or Twitter you will break things.

<comment><USER9> I've the same problem with Safari. I don't see why I need to unblock to see the scores. This is bad design. I'll just pass.

<comment><AUTHOR> An oversight on my part. Should now be fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's cute. How does it calculate each statistic?

<comment><AUTHOR> The score is calculated in three parts. 1) The reputation score is a count of the number of followers you have.

2) The contribution score takes into account the number of repositories you have. It factors in the number of watchers for each repository as well as the number of forks. It then doubles that score if you are the original owner of the repository (rather than the repository being a fork itself).

3) The gist score takes into account the number of gists you have as well as the comments on those gists.

<comment><USER6> Like democracy, it's Pretty hard to game followers. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> looks like some people are having fun with a case sensitivity bug (:

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Github is a great site, but it's not the only place where developers publish code - so be careful.

For instance, there are other places like Bitbucket (which I use myself because of Mercurial and the unlimited amount of private repos), Google Code, and also heavy contributors to big open-source projects that just have their own code hosting.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have Facebook Disconnect installed in Chrome and get an endless stream of "FB is not defined" JavaScript errors.

</comment><comment><USER14> I believe that VisionMedia own the place !

<comment><USER7> He is a pretty prolific programmer and spawner of all things Node.js related.

<comment><USER15> aka he implements ruby libs in js

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Neat project. I built something similar a few weeks ago with Alfred Chan and Michael Grosser that calculates the "gitscore" for startups on AngelList. If you'd like to check it out, the URL is:

<http://startup-score.com/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Small UI note - when you focus the text box the hint text should go away. I found myself trying to select and delete the hint text since it wasn't going away by itself.

<comment><USER18> This is default behavior for the placeholder element in your browser, not an issue with this site's UI.

<comment><USER19> Well, yes and no. It's the default behaviour, but it seems strange as the text is centred. I think if you left-align the text box input, it would seem more intuitive.

<comment><USER17> Maybe I'm more used to sites implementing it with Javascript. It does seem to be the default behavior; I'm trying to figure out why intuitively I expected it to be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 502 bad gateway. On the bright side, if you're overloading nginx with your weekend project it's going pretty well :)

</comment><comment><USER21> "Unable to lookup user whalesalad"

=(

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://gitscore.com/user/whalesalad> :-)

I had an issue where I was caching the rate limit response from github. Fixed now.

<comment><USER21> Sweet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Surely Github has more than 1500 users?

<comment><USER23> It's still indexing as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER22> gotcha. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does not work on Firefox 13.

<comment><USER25> works for me on ff13

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nice!</comment>


Ad Biz Claims It Must Disregard User Privacy to Safeguard "Cybersecurity" - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/06/ad-biz-claims-it-must-disregard-user-privacy-choices-safeguard-cybersecurity <comment><USER2> The EFF appears to be asking the government to regulate the Internet. That's a bit of a change from their usual behavior.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any kind of Do Not Track mandate from the government would be a grotesque overreach.

Data collection and tracking is not infringing on anyone's rights and liberties by itself. If someone believes they have been hurt in a specific way they can go to court and make a case for damages - without any new legislation needed. This whole issue is just being used to score cheap political points by demonizing ad tech industry in the eyes of the ignorant public.

Free web services are supported by advertising. Perhaps the way to fight this ridiculous legislation would be by running site blackouts, just like in the SOPA fight. It is not that different really...

EDIT: Just because you are annoyed does not mean there needs to be a law about it. If you feel advertising annoys you just log off.

<comment><USER4> Data collection is linked to advertising behavior in annoying ways. Yes, I bought brand X car Y years ago I don't want you to send me 2 mailings a week that 'now' is a great time to upgrade. I used Google to figure out how to spell something, no I don't need advertising related to cause Y. And sure, I bought a visiting niece a doll, no I don't have kids you don't need to change my Amazon recombination defaults.

So yes, the inability to control tracking information does directly annoy me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can't wait till profiling companies like Google and Facebook get in bed with the government for "national security" purposes, just like AT&T and friends, assuming it isn't already happening.

<comment><USER6> <http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/>

<comment><USER5> this would only cover instances not under a national security letter, as it is illegal to talk about that.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter></comment></comment></comment>


Most developers don't really know any computer language - <AUTHOR> http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2012/11/16/most-developers-dont-really-know-any-computer-language/ <comment><USER2> Not really sure where the article is going but I will throw out two things:

* "Never memorize something that you can look up in a book."

* We may know about 10k-40k words depending on the study, person, etc, but can generally communicate any idea with those that we do. There's a ton of overlap and specialization that can be worked around with smaller, simpler pieces (Guy Steele's recently linked '98 OOPSLA talk on growing a language comes to mind...).

The second point is pretty familiar when it comes to programming. Maybe you don't know the most efficient algorithm, the most maintainable strategy, the whizbang idiomatic language construct, etc. but that doesn't mean you can't "communicate" useful work to/through the code you do "know".

</comment><comment><USER3> Just like there are more musicians than people who understand music theory, formalism is not required for software development. This is neither surprising nor bad.

<comment><USER4> Unlike music, software can be (and almost always is) grotesquely defective in ways that aren't obvious to the user right away.

<comment><USER3> I'm not so sure; there is plenty of popular music I find grotesquely defective in ways that aren't obvious to the people who appreciate it. Like it or not, software quality is entirely subjective and in the eye of the beholder. There is no other way to explain the continued ubiquity of things like PHP, Windows, iTunes, <insert bane of your existence>, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article gets lost in matters of measurement, drifts off, and in the end fails to say anything worthwhile. Hopefully some of you will read the discussion first and skip the article.

</comment><comment><USER6> I completely believe the conclusion. And I believe that it applies to most of the people reading this thread. Let me demonstrate with a real example.

Perl by default passes by reference, copies by value, and mutates in place. How many Perl programmers have any clue of what I said?

By contrast Python by default passes by reference, copies by reference, and does not mutate values in place. How many Python programmers have any clue what _that_ means?

And how many programmers who have programmed both languages professionally (or other commenters in this discussion) can discuss some of the differences in the languages that arise from this difference? Can you write a concrete piece of code which will demonstrate consequences of this difference?

My guess is that few really understand what I'm talking about. Nor do you need to because the memorized patterns for writing loops, functions, etc work perfectly well whether or not you understand this internal design decision.

<comment><USER7> I have so far successfully avoided Perl, but I have programmed a little in Python. I completely understand those statements, and I can make guesses about difference in some corner cases. I think it's relatively common to know what those statements mean. I agree that a programmer that doesn't know how variables are passed probably doesn't understand the language.

I don't agree with the conclusion though. I think that a programmer "knows" a language if he/she understands the idiomatic way of representing an idea. For example, if a functional language programmer comes to C, perhaps he/she might write a summing function this way:

        int sum(int* arr, int count) {
            if (count == 0) {
                return 0;
            }
            return *arr + res(arr++, count--);
        }

And an assembly programmer might do it this way:

        int sum(int* arr, int count) {
            int sum = 0;
            int i = 0;
            loop:
            if (i == count)
                return sum;

            sum += arr[i];
            i++;
            goto loop;
        }

Neither are writing idiomatic C code, but both show they know different corners of the syntax. I would argue that one does not "know" a language until their first reflex in solving a problem is to write it the most idiomatic way for that language.

When I write code in a language, I try to follow the idioms of that language:

* Go: multiple return values and interfaces

* Java: small, polymorphic classes with tons of getters and setters

* Javascript: prototypes, callbacks and array methods

* Python: list comprehensions, generators, and tuples

* D: templates, "auto" and parameter storage classes (in, out, ref, inout)

A programmer doesn't have to know the nitty gritty details of a language to "know" the language. I think the programmer can omit omit learning crazy #define macro foo, the "comma" operator, type coercion rules, bit alignment in structs (for cheap struct serialization) and the like and still "know" the language. Conversely, the more of these details you know, the more likely it is that you won't write idiomatic code. If you know, for example, that x << 0 is faster than parseInt(i, 10) is faster in Javascript, you'll tend to use that more often than the more idiomatic way. This is an implementation detail and shows that you don't understand the idiomatic way of writing Javascript code.

I use a language depending on the problem domain. Some languages lend themselves to certain problems better than others. I don't, however, know the implementation details that only a compiler designer should know, but I don't feel that precludes me from "knowing" a language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I haven't worked with enough programmers to either agree or disagree, but I personally try to become really fluent in the languages that I use. For example, participating in the ruby-core mailing list has really increased my knowledge of Ruby methods and internals.

It also really pays to know a language when you're using something that compiles into it. You're going to have a bad time with Coffeescript if you're not already fluent in Javascript, and you need to be able to understand the patterns and conventions in the compiled code.

<comment><USER9> The last bit is sort of true and not. Obviously you don't _have_ to know Javascript to write Coffeescript any more than you have to know C to write Javascript (or how your machine architecture works to write C).

But it certainly helps. And you'll never write _good_ code without a solid understanding of the runtime your syntax is sitting on. But I don't think that's any more true of CS/JS than it is for any other environment. Java progammers need to understand the JVM, C people want some ability to read disassembly and understand calling conventions, people writing code generators need to understand the hardware pipeline they are optimizing for.

It's turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER10> It is more true for Coffeescript, because Coffeescript is so closely tied to specific Javascript problems and idioms that it makes it more of JS shorthand than an actual new language.

It's very different than understanding .NET (or Mono, for that matter) to write C#, or understanding the JVM to write Clojure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article starts by claiming developers have only a superficial knowledge of the languages they use, and on that basis, it argues we should teach languages in a more superficial way.

But it's unclear what benefit we'd supposedly reap by teaching languages in a more superficial way?

If there is a substantive point to this article (aside from the pretentious suggestion has a deeper knowledge of programming than everyone else), I failed to understand his point.

</comment><comment><USER12> Most developers don't really know how to host websites.

</comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps I missed it, but I don't see where the author defines what he thinks it means to "really know any computer language."

<comment><USER14> well, he implies you need to have written a compiler front end for one.

and i'm glad i can answer this question as i kinda stopped at that point...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Site is crippling under traffic.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's 404'd now, but Google still has it cached: <http://bit.ly/QN6XTt>

edit: Actually it looks like the entire article is still visible right on the blog landing page: <http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Alternative Title: Most people who see far aren't giants

</comment><comment><USER18> and yet, they still get hired..</comment>


Show HN: A Chrome extension that prevents duplicate downloads - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/have-i-downloaded-this-be/apjambapclnlphnllchfdlmhaijeamah

<comment><USER2> Can't wait to try this out. Some of the course files on my university's website are in .docx format instead of .pdf and I always forget I've downloaded them before, so by the end of the semester I end up with 7 copies of the same file.

As an aside, one of the problems I've had with certain Chrome Extensions is that the Chrome Webstore is telling me that "This application is not supported on this computer. Installation has been disabled." I started noticing this when I upgraded to Win 8 from my Win 7, and when I looked it up it was something about NPAPI plugins being disabled for Chrome on Windows 8. However this [1] and [2] make it seem that this is only for Chrome in metro mode, but I've been getting this message in Desktop mode as well. Now I don't know anything about Chrome extensions and file system access, but it would be great if it can be coded using some other kind of plugin. There is a workaround for Chrome/Win8 [3] but it does require a bit of work and it will put people off from installing it if they have to jump through those hoops.

[1] ([https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tincr-for-chrome- dev...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tincr-for-chrome- devtools/q_cXN5l6kkU))

[2] ([http://blog.chromium.org/2012/07/npapi-plug-ins-in- windows-8...](http://blog.chromium.org/2012/07/npapi-plug-ins-in- windows-8-metro-mode.html))

[3] ()[http://blog.chromium.org/2012/07/npapi-plug-ins-in- windows-8...](http://blog.chromium.org/2012/07/npapi-plug-ins-in- windows-8-metro-mode.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I apologize for the lack of support. Chrome's download API (<https://developer.chrome.com/dev/extensions/downloads.html>) is very flaky and has just been added full support in Chrome 27.0.1448.0 dev-m according to [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15451313/closed- uncaught-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15451313/closed-uncaught- typeerror-cannot-call-method-download-of-undefined)

<comment><USER3> Ah, that explains a lot. This looks useful because I often have an itchy trigger finger and download more than one copy. But you know what I really miss in Chrome would be a decent download manager that lets me select multiple files from one page instead of DLing them one at a time. Last time I looked the only extension for this practically announced itself as malware.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funnily enough, this extension exists as a sample extension in the Chrome extension docs. Apparently, you can't link to specific samples, so just go to <https://developer.chrome.com/dev/extensions/samples.html> and filter by "downloads." The extension you're looking for is "Download Selected Links."

It looks like this: <http://i.imgur.com/XF6S0mu.png>

<comment><USER3> +20 internets to you - that's a serious time-saver for me!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Source is up here: <https://github.com/yefim323/Have-I-Downloaded-This-Before>

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a good idea, but downloading something from the same URL (or filename fragment from an URL) does not necessarily imply that it's a duplicate. Would be interesting to see something similar to this extension that uses attributes sent at the start of an HTTP response - e.g. entity tag or content length - for duplicate checking.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking of also checking for the same file size. Would that improve the accuracy of detecting duplicates?

<comment><USER5> It would, but you'd have to first download the whole file to check which is probably counter productive. Consider storing some http header values such as a reference to the Etag header if provided, and checking that value before saving twice. Also consider storing Cache-Control headers, and Expires headers. The Content-Length header would be a way to detect same file size before transferring the whole file, but for large file downloads which used chunked encoding.

Some resources:

<http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunked_transfer_encoding>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag>

I'm glad you're addressing this problem! I always end up with file(1).zip in my downloads folder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't want a choice! I want it to do the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> What happens if I've deleted the file from my downloads folder? Is that considered to be "downloaded before"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, it doesn't count. The Chrome downloads API allows me to makes sure the file exists on disk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the point? I don't mind downloading it right there again at all...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a passive way of notifying you that you already have this file on disk. You can resume the download if you want to keep the second file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about one that just keeps it from closing when there is a download in progress? So frustrating when that happens.</comment>


Google Deep Mind's Bogus AI Patent Filings - <AUTHOR> http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2018/06/google-deep-minds-bogus-ai-patent.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> I don't know why but the ?m=1 in the url is breaking the site. Go to this url and save yourself the frustration.

[https://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2018/06/google...](https://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2018/06/google- deep-minds-bogus-ai-patent.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Was interested in this, but completely unreadable on an Android phone.

Half the text is basically black text on a black background.

<comment><USER4> That isn't a problem on IOS, but it has some weird text-wrapping. Reader mode fixed it though, can that be done on Android?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for the brokenness. I'm looking at it now on Android and it's terrible.

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, changing to "Desktop mode" fixed it for me on Android.</comment></comment>


Show HN: 3D Videos and Kinect-Like RGBD Streaming via USB iOS App [Record3D] - <AUTHOR> https://record3d.app <comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for a feedback for my new iOS app Record3D ([https://record3d.app](https://record3d.app)). It can be used for live- streaming of RGBD video — essentialy real-time Point Clouds as the camera's intrinsic matrix is included — into a computer via USB cable. Open source C++ and Python libraries are available and are multiplatform (macOS, Linux, Windows), here's the source code: [https://github.com/marek- simonik/record3d/](https://github.com/marek-simonik/record3d/)

I'm looking for an inspiration of how the feature could be used by a wider audience (I made it just for my side projects because I don't own a Kinect and wanted to work with RGBD data).

One idea I got was to make a Blender, Unity or Houdini plugins on top of the C++/Python libraries so that the app would appeal to digital artists for making live performances. I don't know how to possibly market it outside of the developer community — do you have any recommendations? Thank you.

P.S. I'm also interested in your feedback regarding the "True3D" feature (head tracking-based parallax view) — video example here: [https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ReadyLeafyBumblebee- mobile.mp4](https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ReadyLeafyBumblebee-mobile.mp4)</comment>


Great Data Structure & Algorithm Visualization Tool - <AUTHOR> http://5mins.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/data-structure-visualizations/

<comment><USER2> Just a few days ago I submitted a link to The Algorithm Visualization Portal: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2488994>

Direct link to the portal: <http://algoviz.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the link! A new version of the tool (written in javascript, with key new features, including undo) is now available in the same location:

<http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~galles/visualization>

It should run in any browser (even the Kindle, believe it or not. Lousy framerate on the Kindle, though)

</comment><comment><USER4> This blue screened me twice and then didn't appear to be working once I got it to run (by running in a Sandbox). I am running Windows Vista.

I even tried the check for updates option to download the latest version.

</comment><comment><USER5> Such an awesome tool! Great for students and an awesome thing to have when prepping for interviews.

</comment><comment><USER6> Useful tool for newbie participant of ACM/ICPC

</comment><comment><USER7> Thank you for sharing this</comment>


Show HN: Duomly – Interactive programming courses and building real projects - <AUTHOR> https://owwly.com/product/Duomly-programming-courses-37/post/Duomly-lets-learn-programming-82 <comment><USER2> Pricing?</comment>


The Computer Programme and Micro Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p031v2bg <comment><USER2> UK viewable only due to BBC rights distribution. Much of it available on YouTube.

<comment><USER2> Episodes:

1\. It's Happening Now: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMWEiCdsfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMWEiCdsfc)

2\. Getting Down to Basic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYetKjaVl6k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYetKjaVl6k)

3\. Micro Live [with visit to Alan Turing play]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR08vi64GDQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR08vi64GDQ)

4\. Clive Sinclair and Alan Sugar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX01PUVyvHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX01PUVyvHU)

A very good look at changing markets.

5\. -- Compilation

6\. Blocked by YouTube.</comment></comment>


How One Huge American Retailer Ignored the Internet and Won - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-21/how-one-huge-american-retailer-ignored-the-internet-and-won?cmpid=BBD122116_BIZ <comment><USER2> Saving you a click, it's TJMaxx/Marshall's and the answer is 'hard work' and 'the thrill of the chase.'</comment>


New Test for Computers: Grading Essays at College Level - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html

<comment><USER3> There are a few reasons I'm not excited about this sort of thing, but there's one big reason where I think it would be a distinct improvement over the status quo: standardized testing.

Most standardized testing in the US, especially the ones deployed at a national scale, are designed for grading first, and testing second. This is a simple concession to feasibility: if you're trying to evaluate a few dozen million students, scantron is the only current tool that is time-efficient, cost-efficient, and consistent ("fair") at scale. The constraints imposed by that tool are significant, and tying so much incentives to those tests have warped the whole education system.

Automated essay grading, no matter how imperfect, would still be an expansion of the available testing techniques that could be deployed at the national scale. It would expand the range of skills that are measurable, and therefore incentivized to teach.

The cynical way of putting that is, no matter how shitty computers are at grading essays, they're still an improvement when the competition is multiple- choice questions. I have decided to be excited by that.

<comment><USER4> Instead of bothering with grammar, unique personal takes on subject matter, and other complicated things, teachers can just teach students how to spew out Markov Chain incomprehensible crap peppered with high vocabulary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A quote from the article:

"My first and greatest objection to the research is that they did not have any valid statistical test comparing the software directly to human graders," said Mr. Perelman.

That is a good enough reason not to use the software. If it does eventually pass such a test, I doubt that it would ever be better than the _best_ human grader but rather it would be better than the _average_ grader.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure a "good" result for such software would be much progress though -- any success would be the result of students writing for a human grader. If you actually employ the software grader, students write with that in mind and start looking for "tricks" and "holes" in the algorithm that result in a good grade but diverge from what we humans regard as good writing.

<comment><USER7> Your assuming 100% automation, having a person skim for obvious bad faith essays is probably enough to combat such cheating while still saving 90% of the effort of fulling grading each essay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course there are a million-and-one possible problems, but the upside is also massive, especially if an automated grader is used to supplement human graders. Some examples:

-A student can iterate and improve their essays on their own using an auto-grader. They can get it up to a decent level just through iteration before having to get a human involved.

-Human graders are highly subjective

-Human graders tend to be strongly affected by factors such as "number of hours since they last ate"

-Different humans have different levels of harshness, a machine could help calibrate these

-Outside, say, the top 10% of colleges, the vast majority of human graders suck. Especially for standardized tests, they typically get paid near minimum wage and the qualifications are along the lines of "have a degree." While automated graders will probably never be as good as the best graders, they don't have to be.

So overall, I'm pretty excited. Even a half-baked solution has a lot of potential value.

<comment><USER9> _A student can iterate and improve their essays on their own using an auto- grader. They can get it up to a decent level just through iteration before having to get a human involved._

If awarding people degrees based on essays whose form is dictated by trial and error rather than actual comprehension and interpretation is an _upside_...

<comment><USER8> I also hold the opinion that it's much easier to learn programming if you can get feedback from the compiler in a few seconds or minutes as opposed to waiting two weeks between each compile.

<comment><USER10> You don't wait for 2 weeks to get your compiler errors? How do you handle the subjectivity of stack traces then? Dude, that's madness.

But seriously, short feedback loops facilitate learning, and if this shortens the feedback loop, then I'm exited about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Feedback is more than a grade letter. Real teachers provide insights and direction to material like an essay to stimulate critical thought and development. How well can a computer grade system instill this type of learning on students? Can it at all?

</comment><comment><USER12> I actually had to use something like this for a class in college… maybe 2 years ago? It was the worst thing. It would auto-grade, tell you your score, and how you could improve it. However, there was almost no way to actually respond to the grade. It would often tell you you didn't cover a specific topic, even when you had. There was no way of pointing out where you had discussed it, no way in the program of asking for a human review, anything.

All this, of course, was exacerbated by the class being run by possibly the laziest professor I had all throughout college (all essays were graded by this, all tests in class were taken by clicker, all notes were Powerpoint slides provided by the book's publisher). Possibly, in the hands of someone who actually cared about teaching, a tool like this wouldn't have been so bad—but it seems to me that someone who cared about teaching would just grade manually to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER13> As an educator, I appreciate technology that provides students a quicker way to get feedback, but this software only reinforces students' frustration with essays: no one reads them except the professor. Most are written to be read by one person. Artists are able to share their work, but for most majors that require writing, assignments are meant to be forgotten. This is exactly the reason why students who major in these fields graduate without a portfolio of their work.

My husband and I developed <https://chalktips.com/> to solve this problem. We wanted to make essays and school work for college students engaging and shareable. Students publish booklets and slideshows as part of their assignment. Students can tweet or share their work in Facebook or Tumblr.

Last semester as part of the final, I had professionals from different fields comment on student work, and the feedback from students was amazing.

Using AI to comment on essays might be efficient and probably comparable to having ONE person grade an assignment. But it doesn't make use of the power of community. It also does not address the fundamental problem with essays: after it's graded, so what?

We currently have 1,400 users with more than 2,500 booklets and slideshows published. Students are embracing the platform. Of course, I'm a community college teacher without the clout of MIT professors. But we're hopeful that more students start demanding that they are given assignments that have utility after the course is over.

</comment><comment><USER14> The problematic aspects of this software are applicable to MOOCs and online education in general. Truly valuable, high-level education requires a level of precise, individually calibrated feedback in order to train students how to think and express themselves critically and rigorously (there are also obviously signalling, credentialing networking benefits that will never be replicable by MOOCs, but that's not relevant to a discussion of pure educational quality).

Computer-driven mass education will never be able to provide that level of instruction. At best, it's a tool for bringing the workforce up to the basic level of competence necessary to function in an information economy, much like how the original purpose of the public education system was to crank out semi- skilled factory workers and low-level clerks. This may be a valuable end - <USER2> may help to stem the commoditization of the BA and the attendant tsunami of student debt - but there needs to be wider acknowledgement that it is actually fulfilling a purpose that is different from that of traditional higher education.

</comment><comment><USER15> One big advantage of this, if it ever becomes decent: iteration.

Make it available to students. They can write an essay, submit, and get feedback on it. Repeat.

It'd be difficult to get a machine to bring someone to great writing. But clear, concise prose that gets to the point? That seems reachable. And that would be an improvement over the status quo.

In other words, machines won't anytime soon be able to know that a Wodehouse is superior to an Orwell. But an Orwell to, say, a Thomas Friedman or typical ninth grader? Totally.

<comment><USER9> Machines will also "know" that the course leaders' model essays put through a bog standard article-spinner are superior to Orwell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One problem: Essay quality, and that of writing in general, is subjective.

It's possible to assess objective properties of writing, but it cuts off the top end of the spectrum.

      Three quarks for Muster Mark!
      Sure he has not got much of a bark
      And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.

Grade? F. Author: Joyce. Importance: Inspired Gell-Mann's naming of the quark [1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark>

<comment><USER10> But going into a writing class to be graded for the subjective quality of my writing doesn't really make sense, does it? I mean it boils down to whether I get lucky with the grader, whether his subjective evaluation of my work is positive, and it tells me almost nothing. I now know Professor Manning likes my writing. But Professor Sieboldt doesn't. I honestly don't think subjective art should be graded. It has no use to grade it. For example, imagine I want to hire a painter. An objective apraisal of his skill would be useful for that. A for Stroke Quality, B+ for Perspective Drawing. Fair enough. But if I want him to create an artistic work for me, I'd look through his portfolio first. Do I like the images he's done before? Do I like his style of painting? What Professor Manning thinks about his style is absolutely useless to me, and it's even worse if he mixed that grade with his technical prowess, because then all the grades he gave me are completely useless.

But Hackers and Painters right? We do it too, don't we? 5 years of Java experience, 7 years of PHP, and 94 years of Haskell. So 5 years of Java, or 5x1year of Java, or Java as something you do for 2 hours every 2 months? 5 years of Java tells you very little doesn't it? As does A+ for Stylistic Expression.

Were grading that Arts like the Sciences. Judge a fish by it's ability to climb a tree and...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They're facing the same problem as testing (diagnosis) in large scale health care: How to test (and teach really) without having to take on the bothersome, unscalable task of actually getting to know the student.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just figure out "education" once, code it up and then let it run on all of the students? Its easy really, all we need are identical students.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, for this to be even a feasible solution, EdX needs to show more proof of concept...like, here's a sample question, here's the 100 sample answers that were used to machine-learn against, and here's how the auto-grader graded these 10 different answers (both good and bad).

Why should anyone have faith that EdX has cracked the perfect mix of machine learning and NLP and other associated technologies needed to provide accurate assessments of essays? Even Google from time to time has trouble guessing intent. Wolfram Alpha even more so. If the engineers at these companies can't get it always right -- and it's not just engineering talent, but data and data analysis -- why should a school entrust one of its most important functions to EdX?

Grading is something _critical_ to get right, not just, "almost there." Think of how much time you spent arguing with a profesor that your score deserved an 8 instead of a 6, enough points to bring you from a B to a B+ for the semester...Think of the incentive to do so (career prospects). If the machine is ever wildly off just even in one case, would you ever take its assessments as gospel? Multiply yourself by 20 or 50 or whatever a usual professor's lecture load is, and now a ton of lag has been introduced into the grading workflow.

Obviously, there are ways to mitigate this. One would be to write questions that are so narrowly focused that there are very clearly right and wrong answers...Which of course raises the problem of: why not just give everyone multiple choice tests, then?

The sad thing is is that even if these machine graders were empirically better than human graders, they can't just be better, they have to be almost perfect. If a plane's autopilot failed, on the whole, 1 out of a 1000 times compared to 5 out of a 1000 times for human pilots...how much more pissed do you think victim families are going to be when they find out their loved ones died because of a algorithmic malfunction rather than just pilot error? People, for obvious reasons, don't like thinking of their work or their destinies being defined by deterministic machines...so if those machines aren't 99.99% right, then the fallout and pushback may cost schools more than the savings in professor-grading time.

<comment><USER19> > Think of how much time you spent arguing with a profesor that your score > deserved an 8 instead of a 6, enough points to bring you from a B to a B+ > for the semester.

I spent zero time doing this, and I never even realized how widespread it was to try to negotiate grades until I helped TA a few classes. Now I see how much professors hate the students who do.

Seriously, what job is going to care that you got a B vs B+ in a class? If that subject is really so important to their mission, they are probably looking for A+ candidates anyway.

<comment><USER18> GPA is, unfortunately, one metric that is used to quickly sift applicants. So one B+ over a B may not matter for one course, but can be quite significant over the course of four years.

<comment><USER20> Additionally, certain scholarships require a minimum GPA be met. A B vs. a B- can be a huge difference to someone faced with losing their tuition check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well I referenced a Harvard business school public journal and it got flagged as being from Wikipedia. So I do not believe we should let an automated system mark our essays just yet.

</comment><comment><USER22> as a precursor to grading/giving feedback on an essay, i usually pull out a Naive Bayes network for topic classification and see if their report is correctly classified. It's kind of fun and a good indicator for what i'm about to read.</comment>


Leadership without Management: Scaling Organizations by Scaling Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/surge2013

<comment><USER2> > "every line of code is a business decision" (slide 18)

That's one of the best quotes I've ever come across. And it's a great counterpoint to the idea that programmers should be isolated from the business/strategy, as opposed to participating in it.

Still, I'm not sure that "ranking" is inherently bad, as long as it's just division into junior/senior/etc developers for salary purposes. I mean, there's _always_ going to be a ranking based on salary, even if that's not made public. Job titles can be considered a form of partial salary transparency, no? And just because you have multiple job levels, doesn't mean that quotas are necessary.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great! I hate reading slides, but this has to be one of the best things I've read on the topic. Is there a video?

It would be better if it talked about the good things to do in as much depth as the bad things.

A gelled team completely focused on the work is the peak of creative organization. What's not clear is how to build structures that keep hitting that peak as the organization grows. I think the answers to this are evolving bottom-up from experimentation in startups. (It has to be startups because organizations can't much change their DNA.) What I like about these slides is that they come from that layer of experience and point in a direction that feels right, at least to me.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, many of those thoughts really resonated with me. I would love to see a video!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slide 9, "Demotivator: Hierarchical titles," is absolutely true. Yet the 1st slide shows the author having a title of SVP, Engineering.</comment>


Supreme Court of Canada Voids Viagra Patent for Insufficient Disclosure - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6693/125/

<comment><USER2> The problem I have with software patents is that they basically do the same thing. They request monopoly power over the invention while not disclosing how someone in the field could implement it, which would require source code, etc.

Since software patents don't disclose enough for another programmer to implement the invention, I don't see how they are benefiting society. They don't share the knowledge but still get the monopoly benefit.

<comment><USER3> Personally I think a lot of software patents explain well enough that I could implement their "invention".

It's just that the invention is so simple/obvious to us that I wonder how they got a patent and no prior art was found.

<comment><USER4> Agreed.

I'd also like to note that the quid-pro-quo model of patents suggests that, in fact, it shouldn't be enough for the solution to be non-obvious: It should have to be non-obvious _even once you have been told such a thing exists_. Because if the mere knowledge of the existence of something would be sufficient to render how to do it obvious, the inventor cannot hope to keep its workings secret once it is released, and so we are trading for something that would be worthless anyway.

<comment><USER5> there's a logical flaw in your argument, though, because where you say "we are trading for something that would be worthless anyway" it assumes the choice is between "trade secret" and "disclosed." But there is really also a choice between "trade secret, people know it exists and what it does but must guess at how" and "trade secret, no one knows it exists or what it does".

In other words, for some kinds of trade secrets, perhaps inventors might not even let you know of the existence of their invention, since without legal protection this knowledge would render the competitive advantage it confers worthless - even though before disclosure, skilled practitioners did not think to use it, as it is quite novel and those skilled in the art have not come up with it despite its obvious utility once disclosed.

Thus inventors might secretly enjoy its benefits or fruits. (This is easy enough to imagine; there could be a closely guarded manufacturing process in use right now that the public and other manufactuers do not even knows exists, and is not in the final product. The manufacturer simply makes an end product more cheaply, say. But telling us what the process is would give it away.)

Imagine, for example, that Google uses some kind of trade secret as part of ranking web pages. We don't even know what the process is, let alone how it is done. Naming the process would render it public and unprotected. So, it remains the only search engine that uses it, secretly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worth mentioning the patent was set to expire in Canada in ~18 months anyways. The US patent was set to expire in early 2012 but coverage appears to have been extended to 2019. The bigger resulting effect here might be from the establishment of a precedent of the wording that the court is expecting in patent filings. In the full ruling below, the main missing disclosure I can see is:

"Only sildenafil, the subject of Claim 7 and the active compound in Viagra, had been shown to be effective in treating ED at the time of the patent application. Although the patent includes the statement that "one of the especially preferred compounds induces penile erection in impotent males", the patent application does not disclose that the compound that works is sildenafil, that it is found in Claim 7, or that the remaining compounds had not been found to be effective in treating ED."

The full ruling is here [http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2012/2012scc60/2012scc60...](http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2012/2012scc60/2012scc60.html)

<comment><USER7> Ouch, that's nasty. A patent claim that lists a bunch of compounds, of which only one works? No wonder the court struck it down; the filing itself is actively obstructing knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Supreme Court of Canada is extremely well respected by a majority of Canadians and this ruling is a very good example of the reason why it is so well respected.

<comment><USER9> Fellow Canadian here - indeed. You'd be hard pressed to guess which way a particular Justice leans politically, unlike our cousins to the south. Heck, our Chief Justice excused herself from Conrad Black's potential hearing because she didn't want to be in a conflict of interest. That's integrity right there.

[http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1285112-...](http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1285112 --chief-justice-withdraws-from-deliberations-on-conrad-black-s-order-of- canada)

<comment><USER10> We just lean differently up here - federalist instead of sovereigntist. Take a look at this political cartoon that was in Le Devoir during the reference re secession of Quebec - <http://jpzeni.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=64>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Now the most important question here is how will this effect spam levels.

Will they go up due to cheap viagra in canada hawked in the US?

Or will they go down since anyone who wants cheap viagra can get it from Canada?

If the US does not issue a similar ruling, one thing you can expect is histrionics about banning drugs from Canada, even more than there already is.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hahahaha...this is why I love the Canadian legal system! Courts here go back to the founding principle behind a law and not just conclusion resulting from rules of the game.

Go Canada.

</comment><comment><USER13> I do wonder if this will have an effect on investment and research into medicines. If the cost of creating drugs (used to work in clinical trials) becomes greater than the return, I can see some problems.

</comment><comment><USER14> Patent laws generally could certainly be improved.

But by far the biggest problem is software patents. There's no need to make all patents (software, hardware, pharma, etc.) the same because the industries _and the cost structures / innovation cycles_ are very different.

</comment><comment><USER15> With generic drugs coming on the market, Pfizer will certainly soon face some stiff competition.

<comment><USER16> They must be disappointed that their patent just didn't stand up.

<comment><USER17> It was quite obvious they couldn't keep it up for any longer. The harder the competition, the better the fight.</comment></comment></comment>


An hour with great company builder - Eric Ries [video] - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/111091089527727420853/posts/1cHTcQbaagc

<comment><USER3> Great video - I watched the whole thing. I also read Reis' book - <USER2> interview covered most of the main points in the book.</comment>


Microsoft Considers Adding Python as an Official Scripting Language to Excel - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-considers-adding-python-as-an-official-scripting-language-to-excel/ <comment><USER2> That's cool and all, but FWIW, you could just use OpenOffice _today_ and have the immediate ability to write macros / extensions in any of:

Python

Java

Javascript

Beanshell

OpenOffice Basic

And the Java support also entails support for any language that compiles to JVM bytecode, so you can write macros in Clojure, Groovy, Scala, JRuby, Jython, etc. as well.

[https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/Scri...](https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/Scripting/Scripting_Framework)

You can also write your own language providers, and there are OSS providers out there for things like R and others. And you can always program against the UDK directly using C++ if you want.

[https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Uno](https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Uno)

So basically... use OpenOffice and you can do your programming in

Python

R

Java

C++

Beanshell

Javascript

Groovy

Scala

Clojure

Basic

JRuby

etc., etc.

<comment><USER3> Most people use LibreOffice which forked from Apache OpenOffice, rather than OpenOffice itself, because it's being maintained. At one stage I had both installed on my computer because OpenOffice was better for powerpoints, and LibreOffice for everything else.

You can see a summary of LibreOffice scripting at [https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Scripting](https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Scripting) , which says " _LibreOffice internally supports the following scripting languages: LibreOffice Basic, JavaScript, BeanShell, Python. In addition, developers can use high-level languages, for example Java programming language, to control LibreOffice externally._ "

<comment><USER2> OpenOffice is maintained. Please don't spread FUD.</comment></comment></comment>


Polarr Box – The future of photo management and editing - <AUTHOR> https://www.polarr.co/box

<comment><USER2> Neat. However...

Getting real tired of these $XX/month "works only in the cloud" services.</comment>