Programming Doesn't Require Talent or Passion - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@WordcorpGlobal/programming-doesnt-require-talent-or-even-passion-11422270e1e4 <comment><USER2> I'd say programming requires skill and passion.

The only way to become a good programmer is through hard work and learning new things. To keep on going forward while learning something hard, or while debugging problems that seem impossible, or while making countless mistakes requires passion.

Maybe not passion for programming itself, but for solving problems or creating something from nothing. Without any kind of passion to drive me I'd be burned out and miserable by now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. Nothing requires "talent"

Yes. Passion is not required, but makes things easier.

Talent is a myth.

Skills come from training.

Training is done if you want or have to do it.

Passion can make you want to train.

And yes, there is a huge amount of programmers who have passion but are simply bad. Because they like to program, but they don't train.

It's like learning new songs or techniques on guitar vs just playing the stuff you already know. The last makes fun in its own, so many people just don't learn to play better.

<comment><USER4> Passion usually means you are willing to / enjoy putting in the hours of training, no?

<comment><USER5> Passion CAN lead you there, but not necessarily. Training is usually "doing the hard parts", and its easy to just "do the fun parts" even if you are passionate about something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Translation:

"I asked a few extremely talented programmers -- programmers so talented that they're blind to how talented they are -- and they said talent doesn't matter."

Programming doesn't require talent or passion. __Good __programming otoh, requires both plus compassion and a good work ethic.

I have two of the four...

<comment><USER7> Here is the thing:

You want to be a good programer, you need a brain, a time investment (a bad work ethic slows this down) and a thick skin. If you can't take criticism of your work, your never going to get better.

Once programing becomes something you can "just do" then your going to need another set of skills: Understanding users and understanding business. Here again the hard work comes into play, and a bit of social skill and empathy.

Tallent and passion are an accelerator. Name someone GREAT in anything and they probably have both of those for what ever it is they are great at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would instead phrase it as, the following types of programmers are all capable of writing successful software:

* Programmers with imposter syndrome

* Programmers who insist they aren't smart (but are pretty darn smart)

* Programmers who've reached the middle of the Dunning-Kruger curve, where one underestimates one's own skill (rather than overestimating it as in the low-experience part of the curve)

* Programmers who sometimes get stumped over something simple (which is all programmers)

* Programmers who will never as be as good as someone else at some aspect or area of programming (which is all programmers)

* Programmers who haven't been programming since childhood

* Programmers who have had other careers and may have other careers again

* Bad programmers (see PHP)

<comment><USER9> IMO, the main connection between all of these is that humans are really bad at estimating our own skill. And even if we can estimate our own skill, we would need to compare it to a programmer with the same number of hours, rather than to all programmers. (E.g. a programmer doesn't need to understand templates or multithreading in their first week.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's definitely time to stop deifying programmers, but I'd stop short of saying that it doesn't require talent. Every skill or trade requires some measure of talent.

I pay my bills by being a perfectly average software developer. Luckily I was naive enough to dive into it even though I didn't have a CS degree.

I'd hate to think that anyone getting started today would be discouraged by this attitude that programming is a skill bequeathed at birth to a lucky few.

</comment><comment><USER11> >>Rasmus Lerdorf (Creator of PHP)

>> I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests.

At least now I understand why PHP is such a miserable language. It's not incompetence, just apathy.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is really a lame excuse to be a lazy and bad programmer.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would say programming requires either natural talent or passion. Even so with natural talent and without passion the chances of burnout in programming are high.

I believe that talent can be learnt through hard work and an individual is only likely to give forward the amount of hard work needed if they are passionate about it. Also, by hard work I mean coding on your own time, either for work or personal projects.

If I didn't have a passion for software development, I would have stayed in the investment industry where the work is significantly less challenging and the pay is also higher.

</comment><comment><USER14> My success at programming congress from a fundamental desire to write better code tomorrow than I did today.

Some may call that passion, but it can come from any number of places. It's not very important why you choose this path, or really how you accomplish it, just that the attitude and (to a lesser extent) outcome are present.

I'm sure others have found success by different means, but this has been a common thread in the small part of the programming community that I've observed

</comment><comment><USER15> Talent and Passion will help you avoid burnout from the development process madness like lack of specs, ever changing specs, unrealistic requirements, and super tight deadlines.</comment>


Ask HN: How to run commands without running whole program? - <AUTHOR> Is there a way to run just parts of software programs without having to open the entire program?  like just the commands? <comment><USER2> There is no generic answer to that question. It depends on the program in question, and how deeply you're willing to get hacky.</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone ever made money selling a font? - <AUTHOR>

I had a novel idea for one and was hoping someone would have some tips! <comment><USER2> Microsoft has/had a font that was offered to support their Office apps named "Arial Unicode MS", that was sold, not given away:

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

But in the present circumstances, it would be difficult to protect a font against casual copying, not because of larcenous intent, but simply because fonts are no longer thought of as private property. It's a perception problem.</comment>


Why Rails 4 Live Streaming is a Big Deal - <AUTHOR> http://blog.phusion.nl/2012/08/03/why-rails-4-live-streaming-is-a-big-deal/

<comment><USER2> Rails is turning into a framework that includes everything, including the kitchen sink. Personally, I prefer to use the best tool for the job and node.js seems to be a much saner choice when doing realtime communication, since everything in node.js is non-blocking. There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you develop large realtime systems in Ruby (or any other language that includes a lot of blocking libraries).

<comment><USER3> Actually _not_ everything in Node is non-blocking. IO is largely non-blocking by but there is also blocking IO in Node too (synchronous file system functions). Not to mention you definitely will block by doing something computationally intensive in a single tick of the reactor loop.

Have you ever written a non-trivial "real time" app in Ruby? I have (<https://github.com/stevegraham/slanger>). I think Ruby is actually very well suited to event driven apps. Eventmachine is a very mature library providing asynchronous I/O based on the same pattern as Node. Ruby also has fibers as a native language feature, allowing you to write asynchronous code that looks synchronous, i.e. no nested callback hell, and consequently this makes it a lot easier to write tests for.

Comparing Node to Rails is also absolute nonsense. Rails is a web framework and Node is much lower level than that. Rails is essentially a suite of DSLs for building web applications. Of course there are costs associated with that amount of abstraction.

<comment><USER4> One thing that keeps me from considering Eventmachine mature is that the built in http clients are very crude and undocumented. Example: to get working error handling one needs to use an external http client library like igrigoriks em- http-request instead of the defaults. In this regard Node comes out ahead with better core utilities to boot. Stuff like that is very confusing for new users and puts the whole framework into question (shipping with a http client that is not suitable for production use).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Can Rails compete with Node.js?"

For the perplexed: Node isn't a web framework.

<comment><USER6> It isn't, but in the context of the article I was talking about competing on the ability to support certain I/O use cases, not comparing features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Cons: If a thread crashes, the entire process goes down."

I wrote this thing called Celluloid and I can assure you this isn't true. Ruby has "abort_on_exception" for threads, but the default is most assuredly false.

"Good luck debugging concurrency bugs."

Good luck debugging concurrency bugs in a callback-driven system!

<comment><USER6> > I wrote this thing called Celluloid and I can assure you this isn't true. > Ruby has "abort_on_exception" for threads, but the default is most assuredly > false.

I'm talking about CPU instruction level crashes, not language level crashes. Things like writing to an invalid memory address or heap corruption.

> Good luck debugging concurrency bugs in a callback-driven system!

Actually I already mentioned concurrency bugs in evented systems in the article.

<comment><USER7> "Things like writing to an invalid memory address or heap corruption."

So what you're trying to say is if the entire virtual machine crashes, you lose all running threads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's becoming more like... _GASP_ JavaEE _GASP_

<comment><USER7> Rails: reinventing Java one feature at a time (and that's not necessarily a bad thing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So these changes won't be available in the free version of Phusion Passenger 4?

</comment><comment><USER10> > _Several days ago Rails introduced Live Streaming: the ability to send > partial responses to the client immediately._

Would this be analogous to what PHP does if you being writing a response without output buffering?

<comment><USER6> Yes you can do the same in PHP by disabling output buffering. You're limited by the web server's concurrency model however. Apache's mod_php only works on the prefork MPM so your concurrency is limited by the number of Apache processes you can spawn (which can be quite bloated because you run the PHP interpreter inside Apache). Another less commonly used but still notable setup is PHP via FastCGI (e.g. when using PHP through Nginx). Here you are limited by the number of PHP-FastCGI processes you spawn.

</comment></comment><comment> why-el Pardon the ignorance, but can't this be achieved by simple Ajax requests provided by any of the js frameworks? How is this better?

<comment><USER11> Ajax requires long polling, this PUSHES the response to the server, thus obviating the need for long polling.

<comment><USER12> > this PUSHES the response to the server

Erm... it pushes the response to the client, not the server, and only pushes after a normal HTTP request.

And of course, it also ties up a huge amount of server resources (total number of clients = total number of workers, since each client permanently ties up a connection forever). Phusion Passenger's docs recommend 8 workers/GB RAM, hope you expect users.

<comment><USER13> 1\. Long polling can tie up server resources too. There is a process on the other end of that long AJAX request. The mechanism for delivering the streaming connection to the client is orthogonal to the mechanism for handling that connection on the server.

2\. You say a streaming connection "ties up a huge amount of server resources," but the whole point of the linked article is that this does not have to be the case; Node.js can (when used correctly) handle loads of connections in a single process, and Phusion Passenger is clearly trying to evolve their model to achieve similar if not fully comparable results.

<comment><USER12> > Node.js can (when used correctly) handle loads of connections in a single > process

Node uses an evented IO layer, that is completely orthogonal (and thus irrelevant) to streaming responses. You can stream responses with blocking IO, and you can buffer responses with evented IO.

> Phusion Passenger is clearly trying to evolve their model to achieve similar > if not fully comparable results.

If you think that can happen, you're deluding yourself. Ruby+Rails's model means you need one worker (OS-level, be it a process or a thread does not matter) per connection. With "infinite" streaming responses this means each client ties up a worker forever. OS threads may be cheaper than os processes (when you need to load Ruby + Rails in your process) but that doesn't mean they're actually _cheap_ when you need a thousand or two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this any different than what SignalR provides for ASP.Net Web Applications?

<comment><USER12> It's got essentially no relation with SignalR. It's equivalent to using `response.OutputStream.Write` in your HttpHandler.

If you're looking for a SignalR equivalent in Ruby, you need EventMachine.</comment></comment>


FCC eliminates rule requiring a local presence for AM/FM/TV broadcasters - <AUTHOR> https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-eliminates-main-studio-rule <comment><USER2> The Minot toxic spill and senator Dorgan's outrage is appropriate

" When a train derailment in the middle of the night released a frightening cloud of anhydrous ammonia, Minot police sought to notify the citizenry of the crisis. They called KCJB, the station designated as the local emergency broadcaster, but no one was home; the station was being run by computer, automatically passing along Clear Channel programming from another city.

Clear Channel argues that only a technical glitch prevented word from getting through. But glitches aside, the six stations now have only one news employee among them."

Radio is key in disasters. Why do this?

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2007/01/what_really_happened_in_minot_nd.html)

<comment><USER3> I'm kind of curious about this myself. With the recent wildfires in Northern California, there was plenty of confusion on the ground as residents groped for a solid news source. The local radio stations (KSRO, in particular) were key communications infrastructure for citizens and first responders.

As much as we like to think we've got the technology thing figured out, your smartphone becomes a useless brick when the cell towers start melting. Don't take your infrastructure for granted.

One by one, with the exception of AT&T (salt water battery backups anyone?), the wireless networks and cable TV went down. When you've got your bags packed and you're ready to bug out, you tune in to the _local_ radio station because the spotty overtaxed 4G and Satellite TV can deliver only so much relevant information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, in summary, your "local" radio station can now become a broadcasting node for a centralized mass-market company, and the actual content can come from anywhere. Put another way, it's like calling the New York Times your "local" paper, when you live nowhere near New York City.

Granted, the FCC does have a point in stating that this could allow small rural stations to stay on the air when they might otherwise go dark. But if you're just going to give me an ad-filled, OTA version of SomaFM (only with crappy, "one-size-fits-all" generic pop), maybe it's best to just let them go dark as an artifact of an earlier time. Some day kids can go on field trips to look at the equipment, which will be right next to the telegraph exhibit.

<comment><USER5> I think you're only focusing on the drawbacks. PBS/NPR can benefit greatly from this too - two sides to every coin

<comment><USER6> The vote was 3:2 on party lines with a Republican majority. Something tells me they didn't do it to benefit NPR and PBS.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone who has been actively listening to the radio or watching local TV broadcasts for the past 10-20 years can probably already attest to the bland homogenization and conspicuous corporate take overs (I immediately think of this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA);](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA\);) it seems like this is the next logical direction for them.

Personally I detest this and miss the flavor each city brought to its local media, instead of the _same_ stations playing the same 30 songs repeatedly, but with phone music streaming becoming so popular I cannot see a lot of people being outraged by this.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a resident of Alaska, it is frustrating when there is huge and important news happening locally that is difficult to find coverage for, but a snow storm in New York (where the media mostly live and work) gets wall-to-wall coverage even on "local" stations.

</comment><comment><USER10> I consider Pai a malign and ignorant mouthpiece of Big Media but I have a hard time seeing the big problem with this.

I mean, what are the alternatives? If the station can't afford to keep staff around the clock then should they shut down the transmission at those times like in the old days?

These days most TV and radio stations are simply remote retransmission sites for Big Radio anyway, simulcasting a computer-selected assortment of anodyne crap into every market where they have a franchisee. Whether there's some poor sap at the reception desk or not doesn't change that.

Now if Pai really believed that FM radio is a public safety resource (cf his fatuous posturing about FM radios and mobile phones) then this order could have had a requirement that public safety officials be able to add warnings or even recruit a volunteer to take over the station temporarily.

But failing that, broadcast radio and TV are basically zombie media primarily aimed at a literally declining audience of old folks. There's nothing the FCC can do about that (except pander, when there's still profit and/or votes for the string-pullers).

<comment><USER9> This is a good comment other than the first sentence which feels unnecessary (I didn't downvote it for)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for your note.

> other than the first sentence which feels unnecessary

That comment is there for two reasons. First, in our hyper-polarized environment its easy for someone to assume that if I support something this FCC chair says I must be a hyper-partisan "alt-rightist" (and if I oppose I must be a "libtard"). I wanted to point out that regardless of what I might think about the current FCC's attitude to regulation and regulatory capture, we shouldn't assume from a knee-jerk point of view that _everything_ suggested is wrong.

Second, I do think that about Pai. My comment about him is relatively sympathetic; I have worse to say about other members of the administration.</comment></comment></comment>


Lawnmower.io: Turn your spare change into cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> http://lawnmower.io/

<comment><USER3> Neat concept. I wonder if crypto portfolio management in the future will be like portfolio management nowadays in that you sometimes hire a professional to do it. Like, does the concept of professional financial advisement go out the window (along with all of the other traditional fiat aspects that we seem to be leaving behind)?

</comment><comment><USER4> Dig the concept, great way to easily kind of dollar cost average into btc without being tempted with market timing. Would be great if you could specify an overall allocation into different crypto (i.e. that $.75 extra split into 60% btc, 40% ltc, etc.) that you could manage and monitor your overall crypto portfolio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we definitely aim to go in that direction. Bitcoin was the easiest to implement from the start (due to the WAY higher availability of APIs/libraries) but overall our vision is a platform for passive, casual investment into the entire cryptocurreny ecosystem. Could get even more interesting if something like swarm.co takes off - where it becomes commonplace for companies to issue their own cryptocurrency. At what point do we cross into the realm of traditional share purchasing, and what baggage will we bring/which will we leave behind in making this transition? I wish I knew. At this point, we just want to provide a platform that makes it all more accessible.

<comment><USER4> Definitely agree with the vision, and an easy to use platform to allow the common public to access these markets and diversify their assets is exactly what we need. Breaking into different cryptos can be a huge headache for the average person and the wild price volatility certainly does not help with the intimidation factor, but the thought of an investment as small as the change in your cup holder is a great way to ease people into the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> That-s a perfect way of putting it. We already consider the USD change we receive from each transaction to be nearly worthless when considered individually. The idea is to make that change work for you in (admittedly) volatile context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A minimal effort tool for the average person to break into the crypto markets? This could really help change the perception that crypto currency is only something for computer geniuses.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was certainly a huge inspiration for us to develop this. Too many times have I heard my less tech-savvy friends talk about getting into bitcoin/crypto but not actually committing. I think it's a combination of the technical hurdles as well as what seems to be the "large upfront cost" \- a layperson may see that 1 BTC = $300 USD and lose interest immediately. It's almost an intimidation factor.

Of course, the technical aspect has been a barrier for many people a while. However, I think that because this has been such a visible issue for so long many companies are attacking it (which is fantastic). The other issue - <USER2> mental barrier of not wanting to commit - is where I think we bring a unique approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds badass. Kudos brotha!

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice app

</comment><comment><USER8> Hi

</comment><comment><USER9> Definitely an idea easily adoptable by the regular joe. Millions already use the 'Save the change' feature in their bank accounts so why not actually invest (and support) digital currency like Bitcoin? Definitely something I look forward to see flourish in full scale. The market could use a comparison exposing benefits to engage in this kind of activity. Something like "drop those penny stocks, come into the digital investment world with Bitcoin"</comment>


Selected Papers in Anonymity - <AUTHOR> http://freehaven.net/anonbib/

<comment><USER2> Sorry if this is not the correct way to phrase this, but why post this again when it was on the front page less than a week ago? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9938893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9938893)

<comment><USER3> Why did you not ask the same question when the link was posted 5 days ago? That was the second time it was submitted by the same person in as many days. The real question is who cares? If it gets voted to the front page it is because people want to see it...

Selected Papers in Anonymity -- xvirk 8 hours ago 3 comments ([http://freehaven.net/anonbib/](http://freehaven.net/anonbib/))

Selected Papers in Anonymity -- ShaneWilton 6 days ago 14 comments ([http://freehaven.net/anonbib/date.html#](http://freehaven.net/anonbib/date.html#))

Selected Papers in Anonymity -- ShaneWilton 7 days ago 0 comments ([http://freehaven.net/anonbib/date.html](http://freehaven.net/anonbib/date.html))

Selected Papers in Anonymity -- sj4nz a year ago 0 comments ([http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#2014](http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#2014))

Anonbib - Selected Papers in Anonymity -- fs111 4 years ago 0 comments ([http://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/](http://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/))

Selected Papers in Anonymity [1977-2010] -- gbrindisi 5 years ago 0 comments ([http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html](http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html))

<comment><USER2> Because it had been posted over a year ago prior to being posted a week ago. And yes, you are right in pointing out that the same person submitted it twice in two days, but the first time it appears that nobody saw it. IMO, this is within the HN repost guidelines, but that's a matter of interpretation.

But I agree with you that "If it gets voted to the front page it is because people want to see it..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Paul Ohm's work on de-anonymization missing?

<comment><USER5> People will soon pay a lot of money to be de-anonymized.

<comment><USER4> I'd expect the opposite. People will make money de-anonymizing others, and those others won't be able to reverse the process no matter what they pay.</comment></comment></comment>


You Draw It: Family Income vs. College Attendence - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/28/upshot/you-draw-it-how-family-income-affects-childrens-college-chances.html?WT.mc_id=2015-JUNE-FB-PROPENSITY_EDUCATION-AUD_DEV-0616-0630 <comment><USER3> Drawing an assumption before evaluating data is a really good approach. Ten points to Griffindor for that one.

They said their guess and the data differ the same way as my guess. But then they think the data is correct and they just throw out their guess. That's actually wrong. This point is very important in statistics, but you actually already learn it in 4th or 5th grade math classes. Make a guess about the end result and if your calculated results is quite different be sceptical about your calculated result. Our ability to guess is not good at getting the exact numbers right, but it's really, really good at getting the big picture. Therefore when data and guess disagree there's a really good chance the data is wrong and we must question it and not just our guess (which we can also question, but questioning the data is more important).

PS: It's quite funny how often we consume lots of data and calculate a lot and still the right answer to the question is: "Dunno yet"

At least for me that's what I learned in the last few years on HN.

<comment><USER4> Well, one thing they glossed over is the cost of tuition at the colleges in question varies. The poorest families are more likely to send their children to cheaper colleges. You might get an S curve if it was for colleges with $50K tuition, or whatever.

<comment><USER5> That was actually mentioned in the text though.

<comment><USER4> Ooops...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The level of variations in the text of the article depending on the drawing is a nice touch: [http://imgur.com/a/pbmfc](http://imgur.com/a/pbmfc) (didn't get anything special for drawing a bell curve BTW)

<comment><USER7> Nice. It is also possible to get a "trust-fund dip" if you move the line downward near the end. You get a text with something like "you thought really rich people don't feel compelled to go to college".

<comment><USER8> I did that and didn't get that message. Wasn't a very extreme dip though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like the way the article gets its readers to interact by drawing the line and giving tailored feedback. It makes the article way more memorable and engaging.

This is _EDUCATION_ done right.... Quite fitting really as the article is about Uni and education in itself!

This post definitely gets my up-vote.

<comment><USER10> I think it's an amazing achievement and definitely worth studying. The nytimes have been doing a great job with visualizations and engagements like this - not in a spurious "hey click the flashing light" way but in a "think carefully, and now here's this article in terms of what you think" way.

Incredible! If only text books worked like this.

Desmos is trying to do this for math lessons: [https://teacher.desmos.com/](https://teacher.desmos.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Previously [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9618827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9618827) (95 comments)

</comment><comment><USER12> I really like the idea of having the readers draw their assumption out. A great approach to creating conscious engagement with a complex topic.

The scales in this particular example are problematic, though. By using a logarithmic scale for the x dimension, the non-linear relationship between income and college attendance is hidden to the majority of readers. Logarithmic scales are hard to grasp for most people not working with numbers all day. Having percentages on both axes but only one of them being linear further obfuscates the variable relationship.

<comment><USER13> Am I missing something or are they not both linear?

<comment><USER14> It's income rank, rather than actual income. In my explanatory text they mention that the difference between two points on the far left is a few hundred dollars and the difference between two points on the right is a million or so (I forget the actual numbers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I got the starting and end points reasonably close, but I too drew an S line since I did not think that reality could be so linear.

Something so linear just makes me question whether there is some trickery going on. You learn early on that data is never so easily fitted.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting article but mostly because of the form not the conclusion - <USER2> refered in other comments, most people will guess the big picture. What's really impressive IMHO is that people in NY times are consistently killing it in mainstream interactive journalism.

</comment><comment><USER17> Would be a good weekend project to make a generalized form of this(enter your own data, it constructs a page). Maybe I'll try it if I go to a hackathon sometime later this year, but someone should beat me to it!

</comment><comment><USER18> I would really like to see this with actual income on the x axis rather than just the percentile. And then again with the log of income.

<comment><USER19> See [http://unside.t4you.in/data/intuitive- axes/](http://unside.t4you.in/data/intuitive-axes/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The link to the study comparing income and graduation was broken.

Here it is : [http://www.nber.org/papers/w17633](http://www.nber.org/papers/w17633)

The female advantage graphs are truly interesting.

<comment><USER21> This sentence from the paper sums up to me a remarkable trend:

> For the most recent cohorts, the four-year college graduation rate for women > (32 percent) is ten points higher than the comparable rate for males (22 > percent).

This means that women were completing college (I believe in the year 2006) at 1.5 times the rate that men did. That's a huge difference, and from the charts it appears that the difference has been increasing for decades without signs of leveling off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hasn't this been posted on HN before...like, about a week or so ago?

</comment><comment><USER23> In college they would say "Attendance".

</comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one who constantly has nytimes website flip to another page due to scrolling? It's every time I read an article.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why do the richest bother going to college if they can just live very well off interest and investments?

<comment><USER25> It's a good place to meet people.

It's interesting.

It's fun.

<comment><USER8> I imagine you could get all that without having an obligation of coursework hanging over you, but I guess at that point that doesn't matter much either

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very interesting. I was extremely accurate, but the 50th percentile point helped tremendously.

I started drawing from the left, with the approach given below, however by the time I was at the 50th percecntile mark I was nowhere near 50% so I moved those up a bit. Around 40th to 60th percentile is when I would have done the worst without the aid of the middle point. (Which brought my graph up.)

My graph: [http://imgur.com/a/hjvdf](http://imgur.com/a/hjvdf)

 _\- You drew a more accurate picture of reality than about 98 percent of people who have tried so far.

\- Your line was relatively straight, reflecting one of the more striking findings of this research: The relationship between college enrollment and parental-income rank is linear.

\- Your guess was extremely accurate. Is that you, Raj Chetty?_

This was my methodology for drawing "extremely accurately":

Starting at left (where I started drawing) I reasoned, primary and secondary education is free and mandatory in the united states, and there are huge scholarship and other support programs. So while the poorest of the poor have everything going against them in terms of family support and even culturally, plus likely the pressure of starting to work early, still, I reasoned at least one out of five can make use of the opportunities and begin attending college.

I then intended to proceed up steadily, but I intended to level off somewhat between the 40th and 70th percentile, because a lot of average-income people simply start working. As you can see, the free point moved my graph up (via adjustment by me when I saw that I was still short of it at that point) heavily.

I had then intended to proceed up linearly to a very high rate of college attendance, and after a certain income level (say, top 5%-3%) I intended to be around 100%. I thought basically 100% of the top of the top attended college, but for me being in the top 5% of income would have assured that. It's not like measuring "graduate degree" or something else. A college degree is quite standard for children of the top incomes. I also thought it would stop levelling up because some people from extremely rich families produce lazy children by spoiling them. If your child doesn't go to college when you're making $150,000, they're not going to go to college when you're making $200,000. If they're not going to go when you're pulling $1M per year, they certainly aren't when you're pulling $5M per year. (in fact might be slightly less likely to.)

As you can see from the rest of the album - [http://imgur.com/a/hjvdf](http://imgur.com/a/hjvdf) \- I did quite well. But these effects aren't present at all.

Some of the poor attended exactly as I predicted, and this rose immediately with income. The effect I predicted that did NOT appear is that in the middle class, there is a firm distinction between being at the 40th or 60th percentile - it is still linear. I would have thought it didn't matter. If you look here - [http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2014/10/02/incomes- are-m...](http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2014/10/02/incomes-are-much- lower-than-you-think/) \- sadly they only show a few select percentiles, but let's go around the $51,939 level at 50%. That is let's say $3,100 per month take-home pay, give or take. I wouldn't have expected there to be a huge decision on whether YOU will attend college, depending on whether YOUR FAMILY is earning $2,800 per month or $3,500 per month. Essentially, I think this wouldn't figure into your decision at all, period. Also, I think that being at the 40th to 60th percentile does NOT mark a shift in cultural status (what part of the middle class you're in), and also is incredibly fluid. A family's income could easily shift by this amount from one year to the next - what, would their child not attend college in 2003 but would attend in 2005, because they're taking home $3,500 per month instead of $2,800? Maybe to some small extend, but certainly not linearly.

So I expected a smooth or levelled-off part in the middle percentiles. This didn't happen, but the supplied point helped me avoid it - I actively adjusted my graph due to it.

I wonder what the reasoning was behind giving people a supplied point. I guess they wanted to know the shape people guessed, rather than the levels people guessed? Or set people's expectations, so that they don't have wild expectations about the percentage of the population that attends college?

<comment><USER27> > I wonder what the reasoning was behind giving people a supplied point. I > guess they wanted to know the shape people guessed, rather than the levels > people guessed? Or set people's expectations, so that they don't have wild > expectations about the percentage of the population that attends college?

Exactly. They essentially fix the "m" in the y = k*x + m equation, and let people guess only k. That is, you factor out a lot of the guesswork about how many actually attend higher education and let the question focus on how it varies with income. When you ask people for a guess it's much easier to average a scalar value than a tuple. Clever, if you ask me.

<comment><USER26> Yes, but anyone who has information about their immediate percentile-neighbors (but nobody else) now 2 data points (their own income-part of society and the supplied data point) and so unless they're around the 50th percentile themselves you have supplied them with a ton of information. I think it would have been far more instructive not to include that data point: people's guesses also would have been more revealing (the last, aggregate-guesses graph on the results page). (Especially since we can have a good idea about who the guessers are - readers of the NY Times who choose to complete this specific graph exercise.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28>
        You drew a more accurate picture of reality than about 92 percent of people who have tried so far.
        You correctly guessed that children from the very poorest families face tough odds in going to college – only about one in four do.
        You underestimated the chances of college enrollment for the very richest children. In reality, about 94 percent of children from America's richest families go to college. (You guessed around 77 percent.)

</comment><comment><USER29> One part Gimmick, two parts Chart Junk with a large dash of Navel Gazing and a squeeze of Self Re-inforcement.

This is almost the Comfortable Middle Class version of the Find-your-way- through-a-Maze puzzles that you find on paper placemats in roadside Burger Restaurants.</comment>


Truth in Parenting - <AUTHOR> http://www.kingstribune.com/magazines/may-2011/1262-truth-in-parenting <comment><AUTHOR> I'm interested to know what people here on HN would do. My sense is that HNers tend to have an unswerving loyalty to the truth, and decide that the truth is right, and everything else takes second place. When all is said and done, finding a way to communicate the truth is the most important thing.

Or is it? Are there times when "Lies to children" is the right approach?

</comment><comment><USER2> Hmm, my moral code must not be as strong. I would have either climbed the fence right there and then or told my kids what I did.</comment>


Porting to Python 3 is like "eating your vegetables" - <AUTHOR> http://nothingbutsnark.svbtle.com/porting-to-python-3-is-like-eating-your-vegetables <comment><USER2> I just looked at pg. 6 of K&R (I had the 2nd edition handy). There's a program there, short enough to reproduce here in full:

        #include <stdio.h>

        main()
        {
            printf("hello, world\n");
        }

I keyed in the program and typed

        cc hello.c

I then typed

        a.out

and I got the output

        hello, world

That worked in 1978 and it works in 2015.

But, surprise, surprise, surprise, Python 3 broke "hello, world", consequently Python 3 broke 99+% of existing Python programs.

Ergo, it follows, Python 3 is a new language. Similar to the previous, but different enough to be annoying.

And, in the case of print statement --> print function, _gratuitously annoying_. Oh, sure, there's probably a PEP justifying this, but still, some things are best left alone.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love Python 3, but the main reasons I haven't converted everything over is because half of the libraries I use only work with 2.

Creating an entire new version after lots of people already built their entire projects on the previous version, with no real backward compatibility, reminds me of the Visual Basic days of Microsoft.

How can you possibly expect acceptance after 5 years?

<comment><USER4> Out of interest, what are you relying on that's not available?

There were various big missing pieces I remember (database drivers, then web frameworks, then scipy). The last big one remaining is twisted. (and fortunately there are not that many big twisted applications around) But otherwise, I haven't run into any py3 issues lately.</comment></comment>


Fighting Hype with Hype (On the recent Ars Technica story on quantum computing) - <AUTHOR> http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=449

<comment><USER2> Does anyone take Ars Technica seriously anymore?

The interesting part of this, for me, was the last comment: there's a public- key cypher that can't be broken in an obvious way using Shor's algorithm. That's really good to know.</comment>


The extraordinary influence of the Iliad and Odyssey - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/measure-of-homer-review/ <comment><USER2> I'm fascinated by old stories. Stories are the oldest medium, and they've proven to be surprisingly good stores of information. Erik the Red was real, and he navigated to lands across the ocean just like the old stories said he did.

I think the writer sells short the comparison of Homer to the bible. It goes a lot deeper than "the one book everyone knows."

Homer is often thought to be describing events during the bronze dark age, the period between the collapse of middle eastern bronze age empires and the rise of iron age empires (like the greek one).

This is what the bible is too, to a large extent. The exodus, judges, King David, prophets, heros... Stories about the legendary dark age written by decendants during the early iron age.

As civilization (and population) re-grew these stories formed a cultural core. Judeans got swept into the aramean, babylonian, persian and later hellenic empires. The library of knowledge grew enourmously. But, the old stories still remained at the heart of the cultural.

Something similar happenned in greece. Greeks civilisation grew. greek scholarship got advanced, and worldly. They later created a world empire, existed under the roman empire. Still the stories remained, a stable foundation for more culture to graft onto.

In both cases, we have stories from the bronze age, that somehow remained important enough for _100 generations_ to remain at the heart of cultures today. Stories of desert nomads and aegean pirates on the margins of civilisation.

<comment><USER3> perhaps because the messages they carry transcend time. Fundamentally many of the old stories we still value have moral or philosophical components that are foundational to our cultures.

<comment><USER4> What does that mean, practically? For Odysseus for example, what foundational message does it have? I read it and it was interesting and even fun, I don't know what philosophical or moral component you have in mind. It had nuanced characters, but even that seems to be ignored by our popular culture which focuses exclusively on sirens and such.

<comment><USER5> Not the OP, but surely one of the most pertinent moral positions of the Odyssey is the idea that justice will prevail: the good guy wins and gets the girl, the bad guys lose.

<comment><USER6> > surely one of the most pertinent moral positions of the Odyssey is the idea > that justice will prevail: the good guy wins and gets the girl, the bad guys > lose.

There's nothing good about Odysseus; he's a bad person and, IMHO, one of the most annoying, obnoxious personalities in literature. He leads his group around murdering and pillaging, not to mention using and manipulating - he's renowned for his lying and trickery. He gets his men killed over and over due to his capricious, pointless acts of ego - at one point much of his fleet is sunk and men die because he pointlessly taunts enemies as they sail away. But if someone should act against him, he switches to victimhood and moral outrage - poor Odysseus! All his troubles and tribulations!

In the end he returns home alone, having gotten all his men killed, and encounters the 'suitors', who presume that with him missing for 20 years, likely he won't return. They are peaceably [EDIT: up to a point then that changed; see the reply below], though obnoxiously in some ways, competing to see who gets his throne and his wife's hand - leaving the choice to her [EDIT: though as the reply below states, she is being forced to marry one of them; she can't say no]. He slaughters them all, indiscriminately, for their presumption. The slave girls (did I mention that he takes and keeps slaves?) that are suspected (there is no trial or evidence or anything more than someone's accusation) of the grave crime of dalliances with the suitors, he unceremoniously has a rope wrapped around all their necks and hangs them together. Then he says, we need to replenish our stocks - depleted so unfairly by the mean suitors! - so we'll soon set out to raid and steal them.

Is this a good man? Did the good guy win? The Odyssey is a rich story of and study in personality and in human relations, and in politics; it's not at all about justice.

<comment><USER4> You left out that suitors are planning to kill Telemachus, son of Penelope and Odysseus. That is not a minor detail. The suitors are described as abusive. Penelope does not want them there and Telemachus does not want them there. Both complain about suitors wasting house resources, killing animals, giving nothing useful in return and slowly bankrupting household. Pretty much any character complains about their behavior.

Penelope does not want any of them, she is however forced to choose. Telemachus ask them to leave the house openly, they refuse and treat him badly.

Penelope wants Odysseus come home soon and hopes for him coming home, because only him is assumed to be able to get suitors out of house. So much for Penelope _freely_ choosing from them.

Odysseus is pirate and warlord through and poem is not hiding it. It is about warlord without glorifying the said warlord the way action movies tend to glorify similar characters.

<comment><USER6> > You left out that suitors are planning to kill Telemachus, son of Penelope > and Odysseus. ... Penelope does not want any of them, she is however forced > to choose.

Agreed, those are major omissions on my part (due to writing quickly and not thinking it through, sorry). However, they don't change my overall point. The worst person in the story is Odysseus (unless I'm overlooking some secondary character), who would have done the same and worse, and if there was any justice he would have been captured, tried, and imprisoned long ago - by the Trojans before the story began, in fact.

> Pretty much any character complains about their behavior.

That's not a reason to murder people. Also, the narrator is very sympathetic to Odysseus and makes his enemies unlikable, as narrators do. I take the narrator's depictions of them with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER4> Only suitors are so unlikeable. The other characters are either described by Odysseus himself or not nearly as much unlikeable. And also, narrator describe moments when one of suitors attempt to calm their behavior. I don't think narrator goes out of way as contemporary "narrators do". This is imo where Odysseus is different then action movies and adventure books, altrough people project that attitude on the poem.

The characters complains are concrete and provide multiple vitnesses to the abuse. The suitors are described to be abusive, threaten people living in house, mistreat them, kill animals and refuse to leave with open threat of violence if you try to make them leave.

The good innocent boys interpretation is not supported by the text, even if you mistrust the narrator. You can make that case about cyclop where Odysseus is intruder, but not about suitors.

<comment><USER6> > The good innocent boys interpretation

That's not at all what I'm saying. I don't think we disagree very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish reviewers would stop latching on to the concept of "relevance" when describing the merits of an ancient text. Such a strangely utilitarian way of thinking about literature, as if its value lies in what it can do for us today.

Also, this seems to me to be utterly unfounded: "Which poem is better, the Iliad or the Odyssey? I don't have hard numbers to back this up, but today it seems pretty clear that the Odyssey wins hands down in the mass popularity stakes."

<comment><USER7> _> Also, this seems to me to be utterly unfounded: "Which poem is better, the Iliad or the Odyssey? I don't have hard numbers to back this up, but today it seems pretty clear that the Odyssey wins hands down in the mass popularity stakes."_

The _" which is better"_ is unanswerable but in terms of _popularity_ , the evidence seems to show that The Odyssey is more well-known to _today 's_ readers.

One reason is that many USA high schools use The Odyssey instead of the The Iliad in reading assignments.

As for another datapoint to popularity, compare the number of ratings & reviews of The Odyssey (~760k) vs The Iliad (~305k) on Goodreads[1][2]. Similar popularity differences can be found on Amazon for other translations.

The 2004 film _Troy_ may have increased awareness of The Iliad but it still seems like The Odyssey is more popular.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1381.The_Odyssey](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1381.The_Odyssey)

[2] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1371.The_Iliad](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1371.The_Iliad)

<comment><USER8> The Odyssey is the archetype for an entire genre of "road trip" stories throughout history. It's also, more broadly, a key point of influence for many aspects of the Campbellian hero's journey. The Iliad simply hasn't exerted the same level of influence on storytelling.

<comment><USER9> That's probably true, The Odyssey is a coherent story with a single protagonist and works better as a whole narrative. The Iliad is really a collection of stories, but taken together it's a treasure trove of characters, events and ideas.

The Golden Apple, the beauty contest of the goddesses, Helen's elopement with Paris, the Greeks burning their boats, the story of Achilles and his famous vulnerable spot and death, the wooden horse, the destruction of Troy.

Its a huge fund of anecdotes, sayings and archetypes that infuse western society.

<comment><USER5> Most of the stories you mention in relation to the Iliad don't actually appear in the Iliad, you know.

Also, if anything can be described as "a collection of stories", it strikes me that Books 9-12 of the Odyssey (Odysseus' stories about the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians, the Lotus-Eaters, Scylla and Charybdis, the Cattle of the Sun, etc.) fit the bill much better than anything in the Iliad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sidenote:

In the past, if you were wealthy and powerful, or nationalistic, you'd try to trace your ancestry or your people's lineage back to Troy. Caesar did it, the Habsburgs did it, and so did Trithemius, for some reason.

That is Johannes Trithemius, a 14th and 15th century librarian and abbot with a marked interest in the occult. (Turns out he was also an early practitioner of cryptography.)

Early on, Trithemius built an awesome library at his monastery, but then they split up and he became a counselor to the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian. The Emperor was of Habsburg descent, and the Habsburgs and other Franks were claiming Trojan ancestry... so Trithemius wrote an elaborate fake history of the Franks, leading back to Troy, and had it published.

There's a lot more to this guy than just that. He wrote "Steganographia" and "Polygraphia", which are dripping with occult influence but turn out to be a combination of fake alphabets and substitution ciphers. But because of his man-crush on Maximilian, he committed this extremely intricate forgery and obliterated his reputation. That's how significant the Trojan War was in the 1500s.

Fun fact: Polygraphia's fake alphabets include Theban, which Wiccans now use to write spells, and two fake Frank languages (one that he said was used by a fake Frank philosopher) to bolster his fake Frank history.

Oh and he invented the bibliography. Here's one now.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=6lE- OdAQPJsC&lpg=PA59&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=6lE- OdAQPJsC&lpg=PA59&ots=WkWL16iQfa&dq=trithemius%20conjures%20the%20past&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[http://microcosmographia.com/2012/12/15/johannes- trithemius-...](http://microcosmographia.com/2012/12/15/johannes-trithemius- and-the-orthographies-of-invention/)

[https://reader.digitale- sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/...](https://reader.digitale- sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10943192_00496.html?zoom=0.5&numScans=2)

[http://old.post- gazette.com/healthscience/19980629bspirit1.a...](http://old.post- gazette.com/healthscience/19980629bspirit1.asp)

</comment><comment><USER11> One of my literary touchstones is "War Music", a re-telling or re-imagining of the Iliad by the British poet Christopher Logue. I've read a couple of translations, but this is the one that really set my head alight because he takes liberties with the content (including occasionally delicious anachronisms like "the thumping of helicopters overhead") without taking liberties with the story. It feels faithful to the original yet very modern in its expression. He was dedicated to performing poetry, and I think this comes out in the text - I found myself hearing the sounds of the words in my head as I read it.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree with this. I think War Music is one of the greatest 'translations' of an ancient work ever written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can I also recommend Adam Nicolson's "The Might Dead: Why Homer Matters", as an excellent read, which explains how and why Homer is still relevant today.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly, Indian culture is also heavily influenced by epic poems i.e. Mahabharata and Ramayana

<comment><USER5> These are essentially holy scripture in Hindu culture, aren't they? The Bhagavid Gita is taken from the Mahabharata, for example...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Paradoxically, in spite of its Christianization, the Byzantine Empire: ". . > . saw to the transmission of the old authors. The classical tradition was > thus maintained in Byzantium where, from 425 to 1453, the schools of > Constantinople remained its pillars. This is why it is unsuitable to speak > about the "Renaissance" in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the West, on the > other hand, the rediscovery of Homer was a striking fact for the first > Italian humanists."_

The Christianization of the Byzantines was not some crude "Old Testament as literal truth" kind of dogma, but a mix of New Testament ideas with neo- platonism and influences from ancient Greek thought. The early theologians (considered "saints") had all studied those philosophies and had extended knowledge of ancient Greek thought.

Early Christianism was much more subtle than the crude version of Christianism post protestantism (protestantism itself being a fundamentalist movement, to go "back to roots" and back to the book, it's easy to understand why. It was a version of the religion for simple minded Germanic folk at the time that couldn't handle much subtlety).

Homer, to get back to the point, was official reading in Byzantine school education.

Worth noting, that unlike the western empire, that had the rule of the pope, the Byzantium had separate church and state.

<comment><USER15> This is a really bizzare comment. The early Protestant reformers were all highly educated academics. Luther was a classically educated professor of theology. Calvin was a university educated lawyer who had published commentaries on Seneca (a Stoic philosopher). Philip Melanchthon was a university lecturer on oratory and Latin literature, and published a Greek grammar. It is a bit of a stretch to paint them as simple-minded Germanic folk (especially since Calvin was French). All of them were familiar with the theology of the early church fathers and appeal to it in their writings.

While the pope had plenty of temporal power in the renaissance, it's certainly incorrect to say that any pope ruled anything that could be called the western empire before that. Instead of a strict separation of church and state, the Byzantine emperor Justinian appointed 3 successive popes after re-conquering Italy from the ostrogoths.

<comment><USER16> Luther certainly was not a simple-minded German folkperson, however in his time the Mass was commonly in Latin, which was not understood by the folk. One of important results of the Reformation was the translation of the Bible and liturgy in the language of the people (this happened in Czech lands already at the time of Jan Hus, but not elsewhere). The Catholic hierarchy was also perceived to be highly corrupt and the teachings not accessible by the common people, so the Reformation aimed to change all that. This is sort of what I feel where the OP is going with his comment.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that's part of where I was going.

The new theology caught on as a simplified "back-to-basics" doctrine for the masses, and shed a lot of the subtlety of earlier theology.

Instead of being less indoctrinated protestants became more fundamentalist and less nuanced than Catholics -- which can be seen in a very crude example in today's "bible belt" version of christianity (and even someone like Nietzsche alluded to that kind of influence by Luther).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At the same time we have an utterly boring/dogmatic salad of tales, such as the Bible and Quran, which remain important in the modern world - due to the still prevalent ignorant multitude. They would not mind if you desecrate the Iliad though. It belongs to a different audience.

<comment><USER2> That's a little harsh, perhaps.

The legacy of be blical stories is far deeper tham dogma. The other day, i watched a (very sacreligious) cartoon (castlelvania e1). In it, Dracula's wife is burned at the stake for witchraft, by the church. On her way out, she calls out to dracula. " _Forgive them! Don 't take vengence. They don't know what you're doing._"

This is exactly what the author is talking about. The dogma isn't there. If the scene was boring or banal it wouldn't have been recreated in the cartoon.

Still, its a reference everone gets, and the metaphor is extremely deep.

<comment><USER18> Well, in our modern world, we still face passionate denunciation of women and people hating on gays Etc because someone wrote something thousand of years ago. So it's okay though point out problems with these originalist documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dominique Venner analysis: [https://www.counter-currents.com/2010/09/homer- the-european-...](https://www.counter-currents.com/2010/09/homer-the-european- bible-part-1/)

TLDR; [https://thegoldenone.se/2018/02/21/dominique-verner-epic- quo...](https://thegoldenone.se/2018/02/21/dominique-verner-epic-quote-on-the- iliad/)

<comment><USER20> natmaka, are you aware that those websites preach racism?

linked from 'about' page: [https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/new-right- vs-old-ri...](https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/new-right-vs-old- right/) quote: "Second, because of the leading role of the organized Jewish community in engineering the destruction of European peoples, and because the United States is the citadel of Jewish power in the world today, the North American New Right must deal straightforwardly with the Jewish Question."

Holy shit.

also, [https://thegoldenone.se/2015/04/20/why-hitler-is-so- popular-...](https://thegoldenone.se/2015/04/20/why-hitler-is-so-popular-and- why-we-need-new-role-models/)

<comment><USER19> No, I wasn't aware, nor do I share the opinions expressed in the documents you point to, but if I find a pertinent and interesting document I point towards it whatever the website publishes otherwise.

Even if I knew I would have proposed this link to a document in my opinion pertinent and where I don't find any racism-preaching (this particular website/the Web/the universe all have their share of shit).

I'm all for exposing and debunking dumb and dangerous doctrines instead of feigning not to know about them and letting some think that they have to be true because no one criticizes them, therefore I don't refrain to directly link to such material, while expressing at least that (and, better, why) I don't agree (as you just did).

The author discussed in the documents I linked to is Dominique Venner. He wrote a book titled "Histoire et Tradition des Européens: 30 000 ans d'identité" which seems pertinent to me in this thread because it exposes a thesis about the relative importance in European cultures of Homer's literary work. Venner was considered far-right, I don't know he was nor if it extended to sheer racism and such fuckery, but it may explain why one may find many material from/about him on such websites but not much elsewhere as, IMHO sadly, censorship and ad hominem are far too common. Racism is as dumb and dangerous as censorship.</comment></comment></comment>


I just built this with my bare hands! (EXPLICIT audio) - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/40900072 My buddy's start-up car company (http://exomotive.com/) produced one of their first units and some jerk backed into it with 0.3 miles on the odometer. Rough!
I think his narration expresses the passion common to most entrepreneurs.
Note: some childhood innocence was harmed in the making of this movie <comment><AUTHOR> From the owner: "First drive for the Exocet. Went approximately .3 miles from my house to the Chevron gas station while on the way the Exocet laser aligned. Ford Expedition backs into it literally in the first 10 minutes of it's life. Apologies for coarse language.

I've never been able to capture true anguish in my voice until this video."</comment>


First comprehensive analysis of two cancer genomes - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/wtsi-lca121509.php

<comment><USER2> Pooh BBC, linkbaity headline and no link to the study? Well, they're really bad about external links anyway...guess they don't want people leaving their website for any reason _grumble_

Interesting news though, thanks. More informative press release: [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/wtsi- lca12150...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/wtsi- lca121509.php)

Project page with lots of resources: <http://www.sanger.ac.uk/research/projects/cancergenome.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Nature journal articles in question (you'll almost certainly need a university account to see these):

Melanoma: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08658.html)

Small-cell lung cancer: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08629.html)

Erin Pleasance is the first author on two Nature articles in the same issue. That is insane!

</comment><comment><USER4> They didn't really crack it. They found a whole bunch of dna errors in cancer, but they don't know which ones matter.

<comment><USER5> They don't even know which are DNA mutations, and which are systematic sequencing errors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Correction: _two_ cancer _s_ , not all cancer.

</comment><comment><USER7> BTW, don't downvote the preceding comments complaining about this post. They're responding to the article that was here before I replaced it with the one anigbrowl suggested.

<comment><USER8> Would it have been better to simply submit a new article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would the idea now be to compare multiple cases of lung cancer to identify the genetic error that causes the tumour formation and develop a way to actively target said errors?

I mean would it eventually become feasible to put a chemical (or something) into a cigarette to greatly reduce the risk of lung cancer? Similarly could a chemical be devised for addition to sun block, or even after-sun to actively fight the cancer before it develops.

<comment> barry-cotter Chemical as in simple compound? No. I have no idea what the worst mutagen in cigarette smoke is but there are lots and their effects are going to be random statistically, sometimes they'll change this gene, sometimes the other, though some sections will be especially vulnerable/likely to mutate in a specific way.

I could see some bloody complicated RNAinterferase thing working as a targeted anti-mutagen, in theory. But if you can deliver an airborne, persistent heat tolerant RNAi cancer is at worst a chronic disease like diabetes is now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could you diff a healthy genome and several cancerous genomes and come up with the offending commit? Can someone give me more background on the ins and outs?

<comment><USER11> Well, in the article it says there are 30,000+ mutations, so narrowing it down to the specific ones caused the cascade of other mutations is far from trivial.

A VC system with a corrupted database silently wrecking everything that touches it might not be a bad metaphor, though. (I've had it happen with Perforce. Not fun.)</comment></comment>


Mine Kafon - <AUTHOR> http://minekafon.org/ <comment><USER2> I watched the video twice and I can't figure out what the purpose of this is.

The copy on the website suggests it's a mine clearing device but it doesn't seem you can use these to methodically clear a tract of land in order to 'reclaim' it - the paths that these things take are subject to winds and the terrain. Also there's the issue of retrieving the device to repair it and then if you can't retrieve it, there's the issue of these things littering their debris everywhere.

Then at the end of the video he says that it's a tool for local peoples to "cheaply survey the danger in their own environment". This makes more sense. If rolling this thing over a piece of land causes a detonation then you know the area around the detonation is likely to contain more mines so you can avoid that area.

Maybe someone with more insight or a better understanding can chime in.

<comment><USER3> Most of what the device is 'supposed' to be doing is quite clear from watching the video. But leaving the wind to decide which path to take and clear in a given environment won't allow the people in affected areas to solve the problem methodically. At least the iteration of the device presented on the website and in the video does not solve how it can be deliberately moved across a certain area, hauled back in and moved across a neighboring strip of affected land.

This looks more like an art project to me at the moment. I be believe a device fashioned in a similar vein could actually be quite helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Posted before on HN but rats seem like a more practical and out of the box solution.

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/giant- afr...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/giant-african-rats- detect-land-mines-and-tb-for-a-living/)

</comment><comment><USER5> What about an earthquake machine?

<comment><USER6> A machine that produces earthquakes?</comment></comment>


Google CodeJam APAC Test - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/codejam/contest/5214486/dashboard

<comment><USER2> This would be a good second programming interview test after FizzBuzz. A decent programmer should be able to handle it in 50-100 lines of any modern language, it's easy and quick enough to explain, it doesn't require any deep mathematical knowledge, the algorithm is pretty simple and obvious, and there are lots of little potential bugs waiting for you if you're not careful.</comment>


Show HN: Dex OIDC Provider for Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/coreos/dex#dex---a-federated-openid-connect-provider <comment><USER2> Dex is great stuff (I use it to hookup Active Directory to k8s), but I wish the example app was a bit more user-friendly.

The first "login for / extra scopes" page is pretty confusing for new users. Luckily it is all open source and I can hack it, but would prefer not to.</comment>


Fairy Lights in Femtoseconds - <AUTHOR> http://digitalnature.slis.tsukuba.ac.jp/2015/06/fairy-lights-in-femtoseconds/

<comment><USER2> What I would do to have a projector with that resolution. Sigh, I don't even want to remotely know the price tag on that. But it's also the absolutely coolest thing I have seen in plasma tech/research recently.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is nice. But at the same time, I wonder why we still cannot make light- field displays, i.e., displays where not only the emission of light is controlled, but also the direction. This seems like a more generic approach to the problem.

<comment><USER4> Raskar's group at MIT (and others) have made light field displays. They're expensive. Abstract:

> For about a century, researchers and experimentalists have strived to bring > glasses-free 3D experiences to the big screen. Much progress has been made > and light field projection systems are now commercially available. > Unfortunately, available display systems usually employ dozens of devices > making such setups costly, energy inefficient, and bulky. We present a > compressive approach to light field synthesis with projection devices. For > this purpose, we propose a novel, passive screen design that is inspired by > angle-expanding Keplerian telescopes. Combined with high-speed light field > projection and nonnegative light field factorization, we demonstrate that > compressive light field projection is possible with a single device. We > build a prototype light field projector and angle-expanding screen from > scratch, evaluate the system in simulation, present a variety of results, > and demonstrate that the projector can alternatively achieve super-resolved > and high dynamic range 2D image display when used with a conventional > screen.

[http://web.media.mit.edu/~gordonw/CompressiveLightFieldProje...](http://web.media.mit.edu/~gordonw/CompressiveLightFieldProjector/)

<comment><USER5> >They're expensive.

I'm pretty sure that femtosecond lasers aren't cheap either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what is meant by "tangible interaction". If you touch the fairy you get burnt by the laser?

<comment><USER7> An example of "tangible interaction" is pressing this checkbox in this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=100&v=AoWi10YVmfE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=100&v=AoWi10YVmfE)

In terms of what the projection feels like, this article explains that to some people the laser feels like sandpaper, and to some people it feels like a static shock:

[http://www.popsci.com/secret-interactive-holograms-plasma- an...](http://www.popsci.com/secret-interactive-holograms-plasma-and- femtosecond-laser?dom=fb&src=SOC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Holy crap this is cool. Ironman-style computer UI incoming!!!

</comment><comment><USER9> looks like it's down now

<comment><USER10> Here's the YouTube link with the demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=63&v=AoWi10YVmfE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=63&v=AoWi10YVmfE)

Someday we may have the displays we see in the movies at this rate.

<comment><USER11> beside the images functionality, i wonder whether it can be used to precisely "herd" say a cloud of deuterium ions to get something like microfusion

<comment><USER12> A similar thing does exist and is actively used: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Larry Page: smart, highly focused, strong-willed - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_17162973

<comment><USER2> And here is his profile from the previously linked The New Yorker article:

"He is a very private man, who often in meetings looks down at his hand-held Android device, who is not a comfortable public speaker, who hates to have a regimented schedule, who thinks it is an inefficient use of his time to invest too much of it in meetings with journalists or analysts or governments."

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't Page responsible for Google's whole mobile strategy including the purchase of Android, Inc.?</comment>


Show HN: Decorating: Animated pulsed for your slow functions in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ryukinix/decorating <comment><USER2> That's a cool project, nice job!

The pulse looks useful for functions that take seconds, if it takes minutes something like tqdm [1] that gives an estimate on how long it takes seems more appropriate.

And your cache decorator is also available in the standard library as functools.lru_cache. [2] That one is implemented in C so it should be faster. [3]

[1]: [https://github.com/tqdm/tqdm](https://github.com/tqdm/tqdm)

[2]: [https://docs.python.org/3/library/functools.html#functools.l...](https://docs.python.org/3/library/functools.html#functools.lru_cache)

[3]: [https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.5.html#functools](https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.5.html#functools)</comment>


The touch-friendly editor for coders  - <AUTHOR> http://ramblinapps.com/minify/

<comment><USER2> I can't run this (not running Windows), but are you sure that's the screen shot you want to go with on your landing page? Those are two SQL injections just waiting to happen.

<comment> slipstream- ..I came in here specifically to say that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I incorporate my new company? - <AUTHOR> I started a project on the side and would like to release it to the world for use - charging users a tiny fee to use the service.<p>My question is - do I now need to file for a business name, Corporation vs LLC, or any legal things? This is my first time releasing a service/product and have no idea where to start, can any one assist me? <comment><USER2> I'm not a lawyer, but I think you should (a) get an LLC, and (b) not spend real (meaning: hundreds of dollars) money on it. You can get a DE LLC online about as easily as you can order a book from Amazon.

The LLC allows you to enter into contracts as your firm and not you yourself. If any arrangement you enter into ever blows up and threatens you with tens of thousands in liabilities, the company eats it, not your home equity. If you're savvy at negotiating, you can even get some of your overhead expenses (rent, Internet) in the LLC's name, so if the firm dies you're not on the hook.

Having an LLC also makes it possible for you to do business-to-business transactions with big companies. Consultant friends of mine have learned that invoicing a bigco as a sole proprietorship is likely to end up with that bigco withholding taxes, or worse, severing the contract altogether.

The reason not to spend money now is that contract liability protection is really the only thing an LLC is getting you. Most of what you're spending legal dollars on with a new company has to do with equity allocation. With neither partners nor investors, there's no reason to get that stuff nailed down perfectly. In fact, should you ever raise a round, chances are you're going to rip all your current incorporation stuff up anyways.

<comment><USER3> I am also not a lawyer, but unless O.P. is in DE, he/she will almost certainly have to register as a "foreign entity doing business" in his/her home state despite being registered in DE. In many states, this is about as expensive as simply registering the LLC there in the first place. Some states (such as NY) have somewhat byzantine requirements such as having to publish the application for your foreign (or even native) LLC in two local papers.

But otherwise, an LLC is the way to go; you might however want to elect to have the LLC taxed as an S-corp so you don't get taxed twice.

<comment><USER4> Diddo. My understanding is if you're doing an LLC, you should just do it in the state you're operating in not Delaware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You're familiar with the term "premature optimization", right?

Don't bother forming a corporation, renting office space, or even making business cards when you don't have any customers or revenue.

It's perfectly acceptable, and the recommended approach, to simply operate as a Sole Proprietorship (no legal entity for the business, just self-employed income for you) until you have a REASON to form a corporation -- things like, to mitigate liability, to hire employees, to take on investors, etc.

As a sole proprietorship, you can still do business under a company name - this is called DBA, "doing business as". So if you go to get a business bank account, for example, you can open the account under the name "Firstname Lastname DBA MyCoolInternetCompany". You can also get an EIN or TPIN (employer ID number, taxpayer ID number) from the IRS without an official business entity.

Later on, once you have customers and revenue, you can then form an LLC for a few hundred bucks depending on which state you are in. You can do this first, of course, before actually starting your business and getting revenue/customers, and many people do -- but it's a common mistake for new entrepreneurs to focus on the fun/exciting stuff like making business cards etc instead of the boring but critical stuff like, you know, actually making money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice! When I file for DBA, lets say "cool internet company", is it best to get the business bank account, EIN, etc? Or can I just skip this step?

<comment><USER6> The chief reasons to get a business bank account are a) if you're going to invoice larger companies it will make getting payments rather easier (you appear to not be doing this) and b) it makes it marginally easier to segregate business and personal finances, which will simplify your tax compliance.

I didn't have a separate business bank account for, hmm, ~7 years. It is skippable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I may go the business bank account route though, it seems to complicate things less...and hey maybe my service will be a success : )

Thanks again for the advice

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would urge you to find a local lawyer that handles incorporation. Most small law firms will do a one-hour introductory consultation for free where you can get professional advice. They can explain properly the various choices and what that means for your situation specifically.

</comment><comment><USER8> It really depends on your product, what you are doing, etc. pzxc is right, do prematurely optimize. You also need to decide if you have any serious liability. Is it just you are do you have any partners...

How to start a startup legal lecture [http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/)

How to file in delaware [http://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform.shtml](http://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform.shtml)

Types of companies [http://www.bizfilings.com/learn/compare-company- types.aspx](http://www.bizfilings.com/learn/compare-company-types.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER9> Operate as a sole prop (report income on Schedule C) until you make serious money (really $75k+/yr). If you have substantial assets to worry about protecting from liability, then it's worth it to do a proper LLC or corp.

</comment><comment><USER10> Without knowing what you are doing, I would say this is an ounce of prevention vs. a pound of cure problem.

Limiting your liability by setting up an LLC, or other liability-limiting entity, is worth the peace of mind, at least it is for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> For a C-corp you'd be in over your head trying to meet all the requirements to stay legal. And it's totally not needed unless you have investors. An LLC in your home state is easy and probably about $100. But it's also not needed unless you expect substantial income--because the only way to actually limit liability is to separate personal finances from business. Probably with an LLC you'd end up filing a tax return where you merge business income into your personal income, so there's not really a tax reason then.

In summary, if spending $100 is no sweat, sure get an LLC.

\--not a lawyer--

</comment><comment><USER12> For those suggesting an LLC for liability protection purposes, just a quick note to be careful here. Depending on your state, a single-member LLC might not actually provide any legal protection. For those interested, do a quick search for "piercing the corporate veil".

tl;dr the courts may see through the LLC "veil", determine the "company" is really just you, and may stick you with any liabilities/debts.

</comment><comment><USER13> Initially I would start out as a Sole Proprietorship, you can get an EIN number in your business name so you don't have to provide your SSN when working with companies who will be sending you a 1099.

Once you gain traction or see you have revenue growing then form an LLC . . . I would only form a corp if you take on investment or your accountant recommends it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Do you have any assets? If your personal net worth is 20k+, I would form an LLC. It's relatively painless, depending on which state you file in, and the cost isn't ridiculous.</comment>


Attensee – The closest you can get to eye tracking - <AUTHOR> http://www.attensee.com/ <comment><USER2> It actually works, and without any hardware or even a webcam. Clever ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Framework for resolving disputes and technical disagreements? - <AUTHOR> In a challenging environment where there are obstacles to move forward and there appears to be analysis paralysis.  I am hoping someone could recommend a book or framework for making progress and a decision and having everyone happy even if their choice is not selected.  It is difficult because the tradeoffs are close, I have my opinion but it is difficult to 'prove' one way or the other.<p>even if the book is not technical I am happy to take a look as I am not sure a technical solution to this paralysis is required.  just need to get moving!<p>[edit: so many grammatical and typos..woops - probably stilll a few] <comment><USER2> If it's difficult to prove one way or the other, why do you care which option is chosen? Just pick one! if it doesn't work once released into production, pick something else! Remove emotions from the equation. No one should feel happy or sad that their option got chosen, nor should one feel happy or sad when that option works or fails. In the end, the only thing that should matter is the business value the solution is providing. Do you think your customers' care whose solution got picked? If people get 'hurt' easily when their solution is not chosen, then they need to grow up.</comment>