Earth as a nuclear furnace (geothermal heat is mostly from radioactive decay) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient <comment><USER2> The beauty of this is geothermal heat adds the opportunity for life to develop/survive outside the Goldilocks Zone [1]. Not just in our solar system where the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are very active geologically due to tidal forces [2] but on extrasolar moons and planets that otherwise may not be suited to life.

Perhaps there is more life in the universe where the base energy source is that of geothermal than that of radiation from a star? I wonder what an sentient life form evolved from this environment would be like?

I feel a short story coming on.

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

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_force>

<comment><USER3> The long term stability of such a heat source is poor (it would start very hot, then cool exponentially). But it's an interesting idea.

<comment><USER4> How long is long term though? If I'm reading this right, the highest generator of heat is naturally radioactive thorium, which has a half-life of about 14 billion years. The Earth is only about 4.54 billion years old.

<comment><USER3> No, thorium is the lowest, not the highest. It decays too slowly to be a large source of heat.

Potassium-40 (1.2 billion years) is the highest.

<comment><USER4> The article says that thorium releases 3.27×10^-12 Watts of heat per kg of mantle, while potassium releases 1.08×10^-12 Watts.

Isn't that more, or do I just fail at basic math?

<comment><USER3> I got my info from here: [http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/12/10_heat....](http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/12/10_heat.shtml) which said potassium. Shrug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised of how little potential geothermal has as a sustainable energy source. The total heat flow from the earth is 42 TW, and wikipedia says world energy consumption in 2008 averaged at 15 TW. We'd need a better then 30% global efficiency to use geothermal exclusively long term. This pretty much makes geothermal non-renewable...

Solar energy on the other hand clocks at 173 petawatts (of which 30% is reflected, so that makes it 120). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earths_energy_budget#Incoming_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earths_energy_budget#Incoming_energy)

<comment><USER6> Did that Wikipedia article disappear in the one hour since you've linked to it?

EDIT: Never mind, correct link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget>

<comment><USER5> We should make it a standard that url's be copy-pastable. Sorry and thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


Will the Google Chrome Web browser come to Apple's iPads and iPhones? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/will-the-google-chrome-web-browser-come-to-apples-ipads-and-iphones/2386

<comment><USER2> Google can certainly put its "chrome" around webkit on iOS, the way Chrome (and Safari) started, and the way iCab or Atomic do on iOS today.

Desktop browser sync, bookmarks and tabs management, integration with Google services, all make good sense to put under a Chrome logo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless there's some outrage from all of us about Apple rejecting it, I doubt it.</comment>


Early Stage Telecommunications/Advertising Field Opportunity - <AUTHOR>

We are creating the first "plug and play" solution for every Internet Based telecommunications service, with guaranteed delivery and non-intrusive Call Sponsorship, which could be; political messages, advertisements, viral information, surveys or polls. For many years sports, special events and celebrities have benefited from sponsorship; isn't it about time that the everyday consumer has the same availability in their daily lives without sacrificing quality and routine?<p>The premise of project C.A.I.N. ™ (Communication Advertisement Intelligence Network) is simple; when a subscriber makes a phone call through a service that utilizes VoIP, they will be presented with a patent pending logically targeted message from a sponsor. That sponsor could be the government or commercial entity, who will be covering the cost of that phone call for the subscriber. The key lies within a 10-15 second window known as the "ringback".  The "ringback" is the timeframe in which you hear the ringing sound after you dial a telephone number. The message heard by the subscriber will be delivered in conjunction with the normal ringing sound they are used to hearing when making a phone call, the ringing noise will be lowered and kept in the background as to keep the subscriber as comfortable as possible. All Telecommunication companies are looking for ways to subsidize infrastructure cost.  All consumers are looking for ways to save money.  Sponsors are always looking for a new medium.  Our service will benefit all. <comment><AUTHOR> If interest email email@example.com</comment>


CSS3 Animated St. Valentine's Card - <AUTHOR> http://marynaaleksandrova.info/labs/valentine-card/ CSS3 Animated St. Valentine's Card. No JavaScript. Works just in Chrome. <comment><USER2> It doesn't work in Firefox (only -webkit- prefixes :-( )

</comment><comment><USER3> please make work in Firefox, always. and Opera when possible and time/resources allow.

<comment><USER3> now it works :) +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is nothing that couldn't have been done with Firefox. It's great when -webkit prefixes are used to push boundaries, but it goes against the idea of an open when something doesn't work in Firefox out of laziness.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well done! Too bad I had to open Chrome to see it working (Firefox is my main browser).

</comment><comment><USER6> Very clever way of using transforms, thanks this is great,

</comment><comment><USER7> That was so cute! Sweet!</comment>


The only Maya city with an urban grid may embody a creation myth - <AUTHOR> https://www.archaeology.org/issues/303-1807/features/6684-maya-urban-grid <comment><USER2> It's fascinating to imagine how future peoples might interpret current day cities, should there be a similar loss of knowledge in between.

Skyscrapers in particular will be interesting, given that to date no building over 200m tall has been voluntarily demolished[0], and there are currently 1340 buildings in the world over 200m tall[1].

[0]: [http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/buildings?list=tallest- demol...](http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/buildings?list=tallest-demolished) [1]: [http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/](http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/)

<comment><USER3> I wonder what they'll make of "Manhattan-henge". That always comes to mind when I hear of folks of the Graham Hancock type speaking knowingly of advanced astronomical intentons being encoded into the various layouts of ancient buildings... and I find myself thinking " _er, no... stuff lining up on astronomically relevant dates occurs whenever you arrange stuff regularly, and if you're willing to 'force' these to fall on equinoxes or solstices you only have to mess around with the dates you're willing to quote for construction_ ".

(To wit, some of these theories may be correct, but it's easy for one's sense of skepticism to be blindsided by apparently compelling cases that arise by sheer chance.)

<comment><USER4> Vaguely related humorous piece about archaeologists of the distant future discovering a well-preserved example of a mid 20th century motel; they conclude every unfamiliar item within it from the toilet to the television has religious significance

[http://sultanaeducation.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/Motel...](http://sultanaeducation.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/Motel-of-the-Mysteries-Macaulay.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't find the GPS coordinates for Nixtun-Ch'ich' listed anywhere, so I went hunting for it around Lake Petén Itzá and found it here: [https://email@example.com...](https://email@example.com,-89.9282972,2165a,35y,90h/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8f5f924b4bd4e37b:0x3ece0839b7306ec4!8m2!3d16.9948175!4d-89.8224054)

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

What is this:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/16%C2%B058'10.7%22N+89%C2%...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-89.9980407,2313m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x8f5f924b4bd4e37b:0x3ece0839b7306ec4!2zUGV0w6luLUl0esOhLVNlZQ!3b1!8m2!3d16.9948175!4d-89.8224054!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d16.9696505!4d-89.9958518)

It is to the west of the old city and points directly to the city. Distance to the city ~7.4km

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So did I just miss it, or is there really no image with this supposed 'crocodile' overlaid on the layout of the city as they found it so far?

<comment><USER8> Apparently the weak point of accepting this explanation of the layout is that so far they have _not_ found such confirming evidence as this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is very, very difficult for archaeologists (or any humans, really) to say, "I don't know why".

</comment><comment><USER10> It's somewhat important to note that this is the only _Maya_ city with an urban grid. The city of Teotihuacan, as pointed out in the article, was much bigger and also had a planned urban grid system. It also was founded several centuries later.

</comment><comment><USER11> The key here is "may".

</comment><comment><USER12> Add this to the long list of evidence of ancient contact between Asia and the Americas.

<comment><USER13> The words "long" and "evidence" are gross overstatements, but the claim is trivially true if including the Asian origin in "contact". While there is no definite proof for extended contact beyond that, there is no final proof to the opposite either.

The basics are easy to look up. There is plenty of time for exchange in the at least 4000 years of immigration from Asia through the Bering Strait before it almost completely submerged at a time when the first civilizations already emerged, among them chinese.

Still though: Mezo America is far from there in time and space; Grid layout is kind of natural, because only a few space filling polygons exist; The linguistic evidence is very weak at the very least because of the time span, isolation, the lack of written records and corruption of oral tradition.

The search space is huge. A few attractive artifacts may just be noise in the signal. All it takes to satisfy the claim beyond the initial exchange is a single successful explorer.</comment></comment>


Automated cold e-mails for sales people? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ejzn/Fresh

<comment><AUTHOR> I decided to teach myself some ruby this afternoon. The idea is that using Mustache, and a list of names, a salesperson would be able to automate some of the targeted e-mails they send to a market vertical. ie: Imagine going after a single industry and having target material including attachments, white papers and a good template. The offer can include coffee, along with their name and company. Looking for some feedback on usefulness compared to MailChimp or tools.

</comment><comment><USER2> I made something like this a while back, but after some research I found that it's illegal to send unsolicited emails and you could be fined by the FTC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's ok to open source the code so people can use it at their own discretion, but making it into an actual product would run into legal troubles?

</comment><comment><USER3> Honest question. Is this any different from spam?

The end users of MailChimp require double opt-in before being signed up for receiving news letters, email, whatever, etc. Your use of "Automated cold e-mails" in the headline sounds oddly similar of spam to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is spam. There is no doubt, the goal at least from my perspective as someone who has been experimenting with sales and selling is to send a quick note that is hopefully a bit personalized and allows them to be interested in your product...this script obviously allows you to do that at scale.</comment></comment>


Breaking your legs to make yourself taller.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2221843 <comment><USER2> What a Puritan. "Hey! She thinks she'd be happier if she was taller? How can I stop that legal adult from making a decision I disapprove of?"

What's the compelling basis for us collectively to stop her?

<comment><USER3> How about the burden on an already overwhelmed medical system because doctors are focusing on nonhealth related distractions.

<comment><USER2> The "already-overwhelmed" medical system in Russia? Paid for out of pocket (I assume, the article doesn't say but I have never heard of an insurance that would pay for _that_ )?

(Besides, the laws of economics tend to ensure that supply will match demand when the market is left alone. If we weren't working so hard to disconnect all the market forces that go into causing that Econ 101 result, maybe our system would be less "overwhelmed". The food I purchased today did not take food out of your mouth; the medical services this woman purchased don't have to take medical services from you.)

<comment><USER3> The supply may match demand if the supply of doctors weren't limited by the AMA. And I wasn't speaking only of Russia, I was speaking _in general_ and especially about the U.S.

I'm not arguing that we should stop the practice, just offering some legitimate reasons to limit this kind of practice.

It is true though, that if more doctors are performing non-health related procedures, there are fewer doctors to do health related issues.

The question is: How much should doctors be doing to make people better than normal, or intentionally abnormal versus doing things to make people _not_ abnormal?

Plastic surgeons are already limited in what they can do. This article for instance: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2002/mar/11/health.lifeand...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2002/mar/11/health.lifeandhealth) which talks about wings, horns, tails and the like, "If the medical-ethics board allowed it..."

<comment><USER2> "It is true though, that if more doctors are performing non-health related procedures, there are fewer doctors to do health related issues."

No, that's only true instantaneously. It's not true across a time span where the number of doctors can adjust to market conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the whole argument against this kind of procedure revolves around the fact that operations such as this are complicated, painful, dangerous and expensive.

Once cosmetic surgery is so advanced that it is simple, fast, reliable and painless will people have any issue with it?

I'd be interested to hear opinions... Would you have a cosmetic procedure done if it was not a big deal?

The next step after commonplace cosmetic procedures is routine performance enhancement! Boron carbide skeleton, here I come!

<comment><USER5> This TED talk about performance enhancing prosthetic legs (including making you taller) covers a lot of these issues:

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html)

<comment><USER4> Great link! Very thoughtful talk...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gattaca, anyone?

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

<comment><USER7> Awesome movie. I literally just watched it today and it was totally inspiring.

If anyone needs a break, you can watch the whole thing here (Parts 1-10): [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6zvCmQAHQc&feature=chann...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6zvCmQAHQc&feature=channel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe that Rivers Cuomo (Weezer) also travelled to Russia to have one of his legs lengthened (he previously suffered from some pretty severe back problems). So there are reason for lengthening legs beyond wanting to be taller.

<http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/bio/index.jsp?pid=149273>

<comment><USER9> I wonder why he felt the need to go to Russia. There are many competent physicians in the US doing Ilizarov procedures.

<comment><USER3> it's cheaper. just like off-shoring IT. Lots of patients needing complicated or expensive medical procedures go to India, China, Thailand, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow. A friend of mine had an Ilizarov frame for some 5 years at least (born with a shorter leg on one side, they were aiming for 4 inches I think) starting at age 10 or 11, and after seeing what an absolute mission that was for him, I'm staggered at the idea that someone would undergo that procedure for cosmetic reasons. It's seriously non-trivial surgery: installation was 13 hours, and he became far more familiar with various painkillers than any kid that age deserves to.

</comment><comment><USER9> This likely was the method employed:

<http://www.ilizarov.org.uk/content.htm>

I have talked to wearers of such cages. Not fun, but they are a great alternative to amputation.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a shorter person myself, that is amazing to me. I've heard of that surgery and am baffled that anyone would go through that. (Also, I'm fairly sure athletes don't go through that because it leaves your leg bones too weak.)

I mean, being short is generally not a good thing, except when you're in coach on an airplane and have ample legroom. But it's not bad enough that I'd willfully even break a toe to correct it.

</comment><comment><USER12> If only she'd heard of high heels and platform shoes before the surgery ...

</comment><comment><USER13> This operation sounds horrible!

<comment><USER14> It looks horrible too. A family member has undergone a similar one in Russia, although in her case it was a necessity (she could not walk a mile without her feet starting hurting). They break your bones and install fixtures with metal rods driven through your feet/ankles/shins. Then they use these fixtures to control the way your bone fragments knit back together over a period of several months.

It is hard to imagine that someone would put herself through this for pure cosmetic reasons.

<comment><USER15> Many intelligent people spend many hours every week of their lives and many dollars doing things for purely cosmetic reasons: putting on makeup, picking out clothes, buying clothes, painting interior walls, waxing and detailing their cars, taking photographs of things because they're beautiful (rather than because they need to remember something about them), painting on canvases, performing plastic surgery, getting tattoos, tattooing other people, piercing ears, brushing and cutting and styling hair, listening to and playing music, dyeing fabric...

Although in the case where the canvas is oneself, you can raise the objection of narcissism or selfishness, I think these pursuits are fundamentally worthwhile and even noble.

<comment><USER14> It wasn't a question of time and dollars, it was a question of pain and discomfort. What I meant, going through all that pain and discomfort for being a few inches taller - that's what I found hard to understand.

<comment><USER15> I don't know about you, but I often prefer being in pain to spending money or wasting time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wake me when they can give me surgery to make me smarter.</comment>


An Illustrated Proof of the CAP Theorem - <AUTHOR> https://mwhittaker.github.io/blog/an_illustrated_proof_of_the_cap_theorem/ <comment><USER2> "CP/AP: a false dichotomy" [https://martin.kleppmann.com/2015/05/11/please- stop-calling-...](https://martin.kleppmann.com/2015/05/11/please-stop-calling- databases-cp-or-ap.html) . Martin Kleppman is the author of "Designing Data- Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems" [https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive- Applications...](https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications- Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321)

<comment><USER3> I think that the CP/AP dichotomy is a good example of how we treat fundamental, but not hard tradeoffs as hard.

E.g. often we have a fundamental tradeoff between latency and throughput, and it's impossible to get 100% in both metrics. However, we can still do very well in both, and that's what matters in practice.

We have the same thing with CAP. You _can_ build a CP system with high availability.

<comment><USER4> Fundamental tradeoffs in CAP are latency/time for consistency, since real world networks are always partitioned. You are just using a different meaning of availability when talking about high availability, not the one from CAP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once it's clear what the terms mean, the theorem is so obvious as to scarcely need proof. If G1 and G2 can never talk to each other, of course you can't write data to G1 and read it back from G2.

I think the point is more about timing. If your client writes to G1, then you pretty much have to wait until the write has propagated to the entire network to acknowledge the write or accept some risk that some other client will read back stale data after the write has been acknowledged. I should think this would be obvious to coders also, but it is not at all obvious to managers.

I say "pretty much" above because there is technically a ridiculous third option where you essentially lock down the whole network with every read. But it still doesn't get you around CAP.

<comment><USER6> The combination of partition tolerance being mandatory and the timing caveat is why I prefer to think in terms of an extended CAP theorem called PACELC[1].

The first part, PAC, is your traditional CAP theorem - in the presence of partitions (P), you can provide either availability (A), or consistency (C). The second part, ELC, describes the system characteristics during the normal, non-partition case. It reads as "else (E), you can provide either low latency (L) or consistency (C)".

Even tho apart from some curious outliers most systems are either PA/EL or PC/EC, I find the framing helpful for reasoning about a system in more than just the partition or failure case.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACELC_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACELC_theorem)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not really a fan of that proof because it's a proof by contradiction in the least helpful sense. It doesn't tell you _why_ the theorem is true; only that some assumption was wrong. Much better would be if the proof were accompanied by examples of systems that had CA but not P, CP but not A, and so on, to show that this result is best possible.

<comment><USER8> Proof by example or analogy is not a proof.

<comment><USER9> Proove that you can walk. Walk. Prooved by an example. Basically to prove that something exists or that a property is not valid for every element of a set, you can proove with an example.

<comment><USER10> Proove that you can't walk. Don't walk.

Hmmmmmm.

Of course you can prove something exists by an example. And you can prove a property does not always hold with a counter example.

But if you want to prove that something doesn't exist, or a property always holds, then you shouldn't be looking for examples.

<comment><USER9> This is exactly what I've said. My initial "proof by example" was an answer for the op's statement:

> Proof by example or analogy is not a proof.

So as you also said "Of course you can prove something exists by an example".

To answer this: > Proove that you can't walk. Don't walk.

As I said, proof by example works only

> to prove that something exists or that a property is not valid for every > element of a set.

Divide your lifetime in seconds. With that, you're trying to proove with the property "walk" isn't valid for every element of the set lifetime. To proove that the property can't walk dosen't hold for every element of the set, just show an example of second while you were walking and you're done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This proof is missing a step showing that the problem exemplified by the simple two-node system applies to _all_ system topologies. This website only proves: "there exists a system for which CAP is impossible." I do not think the generalizing argument will be complicated, but it should be included.

<comment><USER12> I noticed this as well. Now I'm wondering -- how would one generalize this proof, keeping the same easy-to-grok style?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once you understand exactly what is meant by the terms, the theorem seems immediately obvious. If your servers G1 and G2 cannot communicate with each other, of course you can't write data to G1 and read the updated data from G2.

</comment><comment><USER13> What if you added a rule that if 2 nodes lose communication then after some period T the lowest ID node kills itself? And you add a delay of 2T to all client/server communication to give that a chance to happen.

Then in the example, client writes to V1, V1 waits T time to communicate with V2, it doesn't manage to so it returns failure to the client and kills itself. Then the client writes + reads to V2 instead.

Does this break availability because returning an error that you can't act on a client request counts as ignoring it in this informal definition?

<comment><USER14> Returning an error is basically saying "I'm not available", because there is no guarantee there is an alternative.

Your example can't deal with there being no path _at all_ between V1 and V2. So even the client can't reach V2. In that case the entire system V is unavailable to the client.

Availability in CAP is about being able to reach a node, but not all of them and because of that the system doesn't function. I guess killing a node when a problem occurs can be argued to defeat CAP (all the nodes that are up can reach each other), but it definitely doesn't improve the situation.

Also what does you system do when V5 out of a 5 node cluster crashes? Do the nodes V1-V4 kill themselves, because they can no longer reach a higher ID node?

<comment><USER13> Ah I see what you mean, fair point - I'd agree that doesn't really work!

TBH my 2-node system was a simplified version of Corosync which I've worked with a bit, in that you allow quorum if you have half+1 of nodes up - so 4/5 up will maintain quorum. The highest-node lives rule is just a tie breaker in the case of a half/half split which the 2 node system always has when one node goes down. Good point though, that rule alone is definitely not a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is partition intolerance the only piece of the three that disproves it? I'm curious to know more about how partition intolerance is handled.

<comment><USER16> The proof only shows that you can't get all three CAP. You can get any two out of three though.

In practice, partition tolerance is the most important property to have, since there's no point in having a distributed system if it can't function if any part of the system is down (it has to be fault tolerant).

<comment><USER17> > partition tolerance is the most important property to have, since there's no > point in having a distributed system if it can't function if any part of the > system is down

This is really a question of definitions, no?

If partition-tolerance is a defining property of a distributed database system, then of course they all have it. Plenty of database systems don't have partition-tolerance: non-distributed database systems.

<comment><USER18> Partition tolerance is not a defining property of distributed systems, just a very valuable one.

You only really want to sacrifice partition tolerance if the precise correctness of your data is not tremendously important. A CA system can always respond and appear correct, but network partitions result in desyncs. I believe this approach is fairly popular in video games, where a CA system for multiplayer can provide each client with a coherent gameplay experience at the expense of things just breaking if a partition forms. Sorry, game over, please try again.

Most serious systems, though, require P.

One potentially interesting example that uses the current fashion of the day could be to compare payment networks. Visa's distributed payments system is CP, which is to say that it's a consistent system and getting a successful response back means your payment has gone through, but you have no guarantee of getting a successful response. The bitcoin network is AP, which is to say that it's a highly _available_ system which will never fail a response (so long as you can reach one node), but getting a successful response is no guarantee that your payment has gone through.

In all cases, the sacrificed letter is not gone, merely imperfect. This does not mean that Visa is not Available, it just isn't _perfectly_ Available. It does not mean Bitcoin is not Consistent, it just isn't _perfectly_ Consistent. It does not mean that your video game is not Partition Tolerant, it just is not _perfectly_ Partition Tolerant.

You can sacrifice any of the three and still have a distributed system, it will just behave differently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are there solutions that don't meet the formal definition but still perform just as good as if they did in practical situations?

(As in the formal definition is not what we actually need to get a consistent and reliable system for our real-world application. We need something a little less and then suddenly it's possible to get a similar solution that actually provides C A and P.)

<comment><USER20> Google Spanner

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it just me, or the proof appears to be incorrect? In the last example, the write operation should simply block before returning "done" to the client, before it's able to replicate the state to the other server. In fact, in a fault-tolerant system there cannot be just two servers, because it would be impossible to achieve a majority vote.

<comment><USER22> The example looks fine to me. If the writer blocks until the partition is resolved, then it isn't Available for writes, so only meets CP.

<comment><USER21> OK, if you define the availability of writes in this way, that they must complete immediately, then indeed the availability part of CAP is not met.

However his definition reads: "every request received by a non-failing node in the system must result in a response"

It doesn't say anything about the timing of response. The network partition will be resolved eventually and thus the write operation will complete. Or it can time out and return an error, which is also fine based on the definition of availability (must result in _a response_ ).

<comment><USER23> Yes, but if you're allowed to timeout, then any system is trivially available, even a system where the nodes are always offline (simply timeout every request).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know this is probably a stupid question, but please humor me. Since the Client node has bidirectional communication with both servers, why can it not be used as a channel to facilitate communication between the two servers when a direct link is not available?

<comment><USER25> I think in that case the client would essentially be another broker. It would need to understand the cluster topology and manage replication awks etc. It would resemble a p2p protocol like BitTorrent.

I think that might also make split brain situations more likely if all the client brokers didn't have the entire cluster topology known. You'd end up with different data in different places if the clients are partitioned in addition to the brokers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> this proof is sound (for this simple structure) but does it imply you can never have all three (CAP) in some scheme where you can draw from many nodes and edges (not infinite) to handle partition failure while always being available and consistent? Perhaps a proof that you need to draw from infinite nodes and edges to achieve CAP would be interesting.

disclaimer: i am not well educated on the literature in Distributed systems :(

<comment><USER27> I was thinking the same thing. The ability to handle partition failure comes from having more nodes. This proves this is not possible when haviing just two nodes. Kind of makes sense as it stops being a distributed system if you disconnect all nodes.

<comment><USER28> The CAP Theorem thinks about guarantees, not probabilities.

There are various ways to reduce the impact and probability of partitions, but increasing the quantity of nodes does not make partitions impossible -- in fact, you now have to worry about n possible partitions (n being the number of nodes).

the only way to guarantee partition tolerance is by majority votum. If you do that, you can no longer guarantee availability. For example, a cluster of 11 nodes might be partitioned thrice. (2 + 4 + 5) None of the nodes are allowed to answer, breaking the availability guarantee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Google's Spanner database is very likely an example of overcoming CAP. There's more details here: [https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub45855](https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub45855). From what i've read, Google is able to do this because they control the physical data transfer infrastructure (the nuts, bolts, cables) which in many cases is the reason why CAP is defeated.

<comment><USER30> >Does this mean that Spanner is a CA system as defined by CAP? The short answer is "no" technically, but "yes" in effect and its users can and do assume CA.

>The purist answer is "no" because partitions can happen and in fact have happened at Google, and during (some) partitions, Spanner chooses C and forfeits A. It is technically a CP system. We explore the impact of partitions below.

...

>Conclusion

>\</comment></comment><comment>---

>Spanner reasonably claims to be an "effectively CA" system despite operating over a wide area, as it is always consistent and achieves greater than 5 9s availability.

From the paper

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there a paper about proving whether or not an arbitrary system is subject to the CAP theorem?

</comment><comment><USER32> Having never seen this theorem before, it seems so trivial that it's completely useless. If you have no guarantee of having connected systems, then of course you can't always have consistency between them if they're required to answer all requests. Am I missing something here? What are the applications of this idea, beyond assigning a name to a triviality?

<comment><USER33> The immediate application of it is that when you choose a DB, you should be able to tell if it's either CP or AP. The field is full of subtleties (eg Network is not 100% reliable so no system should be CA - it's way subtler but that is the gist of it. I'm no expert btw).

Lots of DB vendors have tried to circumvent the therorem by introducing their own concepts or stretching the definitions. "We can beat the CAP theorem"

<comment><USER34> is CA even possible in a distributed system though? I mean, it's not like "the network never fails" is a design decision you're allowed to make (short of removing the network altogether and therefore not being a distributed system at all)

<comment><USER30> That's what Google spanner is claiming, that Spanner is Consistent and highly- Available (nine fives, or 99.99999% of the time available), which "in practice" they say is "CA".

<comment><USER35> From the perspective of the CAP theorem, Spanner is unquestionably a CP system, as the original paper [1] makes clear. (It relies on Paxos to elect leaders, and Paxos chooses consistency over availability.)

The "CA in practice" claims are purely marketing.

[1]: [https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public- publication-...](https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication- data/pdf/39966.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


In 10 years there are over 40M wallets as blockchain download now exceeds 250GB - <AUTHOR> https://www.coin.space/core-coins-and-crime-the-crypto-wallet-journey/ <comment><USER2> There are some interesting stats in the article

I wonder how many out of the 40 million wallet addresses are actually active, or have 10$ worth of crypto in them....

And this stats is only about bitcoin wallets?</comment>


Show HN: TapChat is mobile IRC done right - <AUTHOR> http://tapchatapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for checking this out! I wrote this because it's the app I've always wanted, and would love to hear your feedback.

</comment><comment><USER2> I came here to rant about "yet another service that logs all its users conversations" and then it turns out this one is self-hosted and open-source. Great job!

<comment><USER3> Seemingly open-core.. The webapp is open source.. but unless i am mistaken, seems to push notifications through <https://tapchat.heroku.com/.>. and the android app is payware, without the source..

It also doesn't support secured networks that i can see (which also means no znc integration)..

Having said that.. it does seem pretty well polished...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any chance for iPhone support? I am kind of tired of my weird znc + colloquy setup.

<comment><USER5> What do you find lacking in your znc + colloquy? Mine works pretty well. Plus, no one else has push highlights...

<comment><USER4> I find znc rather finicky

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finally, IRC is now usable on a mobile device. Great work Eric.

</comment><comment><USER7> You beat me to it, this has literally been sitting at the top of my "one of these days" list for a few weeks now. Looks great, I'll be trying it out tonight.

</comment><comment><USER8> This costs money and I can't really test it before I spend a substantial amount of money (for an app, common!). Any chance to get a trial version or something like that?

</comment><comment><USER9> We had a pretty good app on webOs for IRC, wIRC. I always felt it was mobile IRC done right. Here's the project page:

<http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:WIRC>

It's open source too, code can be found here:

<https://github.com/webos-internals/wIRC>

It helped me learn webOS plugins, which are native components written in C++ that set up a special interface for javascript-plugin communication. It's a great app.</comment>


WTF is a Hackathon? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/92668579601

<comment><USER2> When people ask me what a hackathon is, I usually send them to [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+a+hackathon](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+a+hackathon) \- making this link useless.

<comment><USER3> I don't think any of the results really does it justice at all. If I didn't know what a hackathon was, I'd still have no idea after reading most of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get so sick of explaining 'its not that kind of hacking' that I just quit using the term to non-techies lol. [http://www.radiumcrm.com](http://www.radiumcrm.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Great post, well written. Definitely going to send this to friends when they ask me what i'm doing this weekend.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did my best to explain what a hackathon is in layman's terms

</comment><comment><USER6> check out www.gopilot.org! inspiring the next generation of hackers/entrepreneurs</comment>


Legalization could slash the price of pot 80% - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0708-pot-legalization-20100708,0,2661645.story

<comment><USER2> This is all a bunch of nonsense.

First off, we couldn't even manage to pass gay marriage because of the large number of conservatives who vote, but who we don't hear about.

$38 for an ounce? Even optimizing everything with NO taxes, this would be incredibly difficult.

Not that I have researched the matter...

<comment><USER3> Growing it at home is practically free. Like home-brewing beer people will grow for fun. More entertaining than a tomato garden.

<comment><USER2> except for all the electricity, fertilizer, equipment, water?

You ever look up the type of lights you need and how much power they draw? how quickly various bits of the setup degrade?

but yes people will grow a plant or two for fun...

<comment><USER3> Having never looked into it before [http://www.specialty-lights.com/plantgrow- questions.html#fun...](http://www.specialty-lights.com/plantgrow- questions.html#functioning)

$250 for a 400W grow light with a 5 year warranty

$20/mo for the electric for the lights

$16 to fill a 5,000 gallon pool. No idea how much water the plants would need, but I assume less than that but lets say that is a monthly cost.

$14 for a 40lb bag of fertilizer

Never had to purchase drugs, but lets say the seeds of the strain you want cost $250.

$500 startup cost and $50/mo for running costs. 5 producing plants and 5 seeding plants

Over the course of a year you spend $600. The net claims 17.5oz average yield per plant.

Unless I made a gross error $30/oz is completely reasonable.

<comment><USER2> one 400W bulb isn't sufficient, as far as I know (I have also never grown, but have known people that have) From what I hear, one bulb MAY get you ONE plant harvest (2-3 ounces) every 3 months, IF you do it all right. My understanding was you need 3-4 lights. There's no way you're growing 5 plants from 1 400 watt bulb.

>$20/mo for the electric for the lights

this doesn't seem right, let's do 500 watts for simplicity (watering system etc needs more power) So, 0.5 kwh 18 hours a day, so 270 kwh per month so you're starting at like... $40-$70/light.

so maybe $400 + $70/mo per plant, 3-4 harvests a year depending on how often you fuck up, that's like 300-400 a plant or about 100-150 an ounce, same as know-a-guy prices outside of cali...................

>Never had to purchase drugs, but lets say the seeds of the strain you want cost $250.

They're way cheaper than that, but you also need mylar lining, watering system, etc.

forget about the warranty, you can't send them weed encrusted stuff and expect to get it back.

<comment><USER3> > So, 0.5 kwh 18 hours a day, so 270 kwh per month so you're starting at > like... $40-$70/light.

Electricity is 10 cents/kwh in my area which comes out to $27/mo (I used a 400W light in my original post @ $20/mo) unless I'm calculating it wrong? But I just realized we're talking about CA here and their electric bill calculations seem to be all sorts of messed up, so I give up.

>forget about the warranty, you can't send them weed encrusted stuff and expect to get it back.

If it was legal I don't see why warranties would be a problem. In fact, the light retailers would be able to start marketing explicitly to that market rather than side stepping the topic.

<comment><USER2> ahhh yeah I live in CA where it's insanely high and has that crazy sliding scale, I figured it as 0.15-0.27 from some website.

Unless the company was in CA and it was totally legal, the equipment becomes paraphernalia and they won't do shit with it... and of course if they can screw you there they will.

anyway whatever it's a moot point, law will never pass

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pot is a weed. It's like growing St. Augustine grass, or dandelions. If it were legal to grow, before taxes it'd be about a dollar an ounce to make wholesale. Decent soil, lots of water, my favorite 8-12-16 fertilizer, epson salts, a bit of iron sulfate, and that stuff would explode. Once it's being grown on many acres, the cost per ounce is trivial.

</comment><comment><USER5> Which, ironically, makes it harder for legalization advocates to get it done. No matter which side you're on, it's tragic that uncertainty will probably kill this motion - at least, that's how the article read to me.

<comment><USER6> This seems clearly to be written from an anti-legalization perspective as a worst case scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> God I hope so. We are paying $100 an eighth for Sour Deisel in NYC. Outrageous.

<comment><USER8> While I don't take drugs I know people who do and let me tell you that they're making a fool of you; $100 for an eighth is way too high anywhere in the world, even in NYC. Anything above $50 is completely unrealistic (and even that's ridiculously expensive). You should find a better "young entrepreneur".

<comment><USER7> Well I know people who have been smoking for well over 25 years (me) and I can tell you the bud I buy for $100 an eighth is Amsterdam Cup quality.

And $50 has been the norm for an eighth in NYC for the last 10+ years.

It's still outrageous though. I used to buy similar quality for $450 an oz. That guy is doing 15 years now though.

<comment><USER8> Well, where I live (London, UK), the regular price for "Amsterdam" quality is £20 for an eighth, which is about $30, it's a bit surprising that they charge that much for it in NYC. I suppose all the smuggling and the demand make it more expensive. But once again, I don't take any drugs, I only heard about it from friends / heard about it on the radio, so I don't have any first-hand experience, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author of the article doesn't understand the government's capacity to tax.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention peoples appetite for profit and the power of anchoring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whould it be heavily taxed like cigarettes?</comment>


Show HN: An Ethereum Dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://eth.chart.ly/ethereum/dashboard <comment><AUTHOR> Would love any feedback on this. We currently are pulling this out of an Amazon Redshift instance, but are considering moving to the new BigQuery dataset that was recently released.</comment>


Making Jet Fuel From Seawater While at Sea - <AUTHOR> http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas <comment><USER2> Extract CO2 and H2 from seawater, react to form hydrocarbons of varying lengths, then refine. Presumably all powered by the nuclear reactors.

 _initial studies predict that jet fuel from seawater would cost in the range of $3 to $6 per gallon to produce_

<comment><USER3> That is exactly why its such a big deal. Current jet fuel costs over $8/gal delivered. It costs so much because even if it comes out of the refinery at San Diego at $2/gal it has to be loaded into an oiler [1] and then driven out to sea where the carrier task group is.

If you're on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier you have plenty of electricity so this is a pretty huge win.

Of course an alternative way to make this feasible for the fleet would be to build a nuclear powered oiler. It could process seawater into jet fuel as it cruised along with the fleet and transfer fuel as needed, but to this day fuel transfer at sea is one of the more dangerous things they do.

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

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gerald_R._Ford_(CVN-78)> notes that ``Unfortunately the power limitations for the Nimitz class make the installation of the recently developed [Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System] impossible.'', which seems to indicate that existing nuclear powered aircraft carriers don't always have large amounts of electricity to spare. However, more electricity will be available on future aircraft carriers.

<comment><USER3> If you look at the power requirements for the EMALs system you will see why a Nimitz class carrier can't power it. Not only is it a crapload of power, its needed all at once. The JP4 from Seawater project can run at much lower powers and for long periods of time.

<comment><USER5> And in fact, here is another illustration of just how hard it is to replace conventional energy storage systems with electricity. High pressure steam stores an enormous amount of energy. EMALs effectively uses 4 flywheels as rotational energy stores, suggesting battery / supercap technology just isn't viable. It does have an efficiency advantage over steam though.

<comment><USER4> I bet batteries don't tend to like going from full to empty in the time it takes to launch a plane.

I wouldn't be surprised if later in the Ford class's life, we do see supercapacitors taking over.

<comment><USER3> Batteries operate by the principle of ion formation. The chemical process is exothermic with respect to the transfer of electrons from the cathode to the anode. So the more charge that is moved the hotter the batteries get. This is often the limiting factor for charge conversion.

Capacitors on the other hand simply store charge using electrostatic field attraction, the only barrier to their current flow are the i2r heat generated in the conductive paths (a superconducting supercapacitor for example could dump all of its charge instantly without any problems, if such a thing existed, its manufacturer would be worth more than Apple :-)

Flywheels store energy mechanically as angular momentum, they have good energy density, and can return it quickly by being attached to a generator, but are generally hard to deal with in systems with an external acceleration because their tendency to precess if that acceleration results in a rotation that is perpendicular to the flywheel. The proposed carrier ones I've seen are shown as being on gimbals for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a good reason why Tesla cars are folly.

This is why electric vehicles won't work. I'll copy in most of a comment I made a few days back.

Let's say tomorrow some grad student gets fusion going at a very low price. The best way to use this to power cars would be to use it to create a fuel with a high energy density. If you had 'free energy' you'd extract C02 from the atmosphere and turn it into a hydrocarbon.

For more info look at:

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

and this interview with Nobel Prize winning Physicist Robert Laughlin

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/08/laughlin_on_the.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/08/laughlin_on_the.htm..).

the key quote is: "The ones that are technically trained get it right away: hydrocarbons, which we burned today have the greatest energy density possible of all fuels. Things that have carbon in them. Will people fly airplanes? Usually people say yes for the same reasons. Well, how are you going to make the airplanes fly? Battery. Batteries are pretty heavy. Oh--you can't have airplanes unless you have hydrocarbon fuels. You could in theory do it with hydrogen, but it's highly dangerous, noxious fuel. Quantum-mechanically, we know the energy content of those fuels is optimal. There will never be anything that beats them." A massive breakthrough in energy density for batteries might be possible but it's unlikely. Huge resources have been put into improving batteries and while they have improved it's not been enough to get near the energy density of hydrocarbons.

<comment><USER7> No.

Electrolysing water to make H2 and extracting CO2 from the environment, and then synthesizing hydrocarbons from them, is _extremely_ energy inefficient.

Sure, theoretically, it can be done, and maybe one day it could even be done efficiently. But Tesla is making battery-electric cars that work _today_.

The military does not care about efficiency because they have nuclear reactors on their ships and their goal is to not to have to transport liquid fuel.

<comment><USER6> If they can hit $3 / gallon why does it matter?

Tesla's cars are wildly price inefficient because they cost $100K. For 10K you can get a decent car that has 4 times the range. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster>

How many gallons of fuel can you get for 90K?

They are nice toys for rich people. Perhaps there is a market for that. Good luck to them.

But for mass transit unless you can get the price of the batteries to plummet it just does not work.

<comment><USER7> $3 a gallon is what the fuel costs today when it comes straight out of the ground. Claiming to be able to build and run a nuclear reactor and then synthesize the fuel through multiple energy inefficient steps all for the same price is a pipe dream.

<comment><USER8> It's not competing against the price straight out of the ground; it's competing against fuel that's been refined and delivered to a moving ship somewhere potentially very far away. Instead of $3 a gallon, it could be up to 10X more.

<comment><USER9> And, dollar cost of the fuel is not the only cost of maintaining a "long supply tail." There's also the dollar cost of all the ships and sailors on that tail, and there's the logistical opportunity costs: we have to protect that tail with military resources that might otherwise have gone to more directly military purposes, and the head of the tail (the military activity at the front) is held back and slowed down by a "heavier" supply tail.

This doesn't eliminate the tail (we still have to deliver ammunition, lubricating oil, food etc. to the fleet) and it doesn't eliminate replenishment at sea (we still have to get that stuff from supply vehicles to ships), but it does lighten the supply load and create more military options.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Less replenishment means more flexibility.

Lots of people killed by IEDs on long supply lines in Afghanistan is an extreme example of the human and military costs. Some of those died to fuel A/C for uninsulated tents... madness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When energy is cheap, plentiful and clean things like this are possible. If only we built more nuclear power plants and solar power farms. Turning coal into jet fuel isn't a great idea :)

<comment><USER11> Rejoice then, because this will almost certainly be done on carriers powered by nuclear power plants.

<comment><USER10> But of course! That was sort of my point...

<comment><USER11> Duh...my bad. It's late :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the main endurance (and damage control) problems for a nuclear carrier is the huge amount of jet fuel used by the air wing, so this would be a huge deal. After jet fuel, they just need to underway replenish armaments and food, both of which are easier than fuel (food isn't dangerous, and most missions don't expend weapons now, so the total volume is lower than for fuel).

</comment><comment><USER13> Once again, military research might lead the way. Note, if they invest into this, it's _not_ because of reduced price, increased efficiency or reduced greenhouse effects, but because of an _strategic_ advantage against "the enemy".

Personally, I read about similar methods, for synthesizing carbon based fuels, many times before. Most of them were private founded but rather small scale. I can't judge if there was a significant science or engineering breakthrough. So, I suspect the only thing that might have changed, is that a clever guy convinced the military this would be a huge strategic advantage.

The ironic thing is, the US could instead focus on producing all their fuel at home to end the dependency on oil from the middle east. Then, they would have an even bigger strategic advantage and wouldn't need as much military investment. Anyway, we might end up with synthetic carbon based fuel with all its advantages - and probably the military can keep their carriers.

<comment><USER14> I think Sasol (SA) has this Gas-To-Liquid fuel system working, and on a larger commercial scale [http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/frontend/navigation.jsp?...](http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/frontend/navigation.jsp?navid=21300010&rootid=2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting.

Can someone who knows about this stuff comment on whether the energy required to _extract_ the H2 from the water, is more than the energy contained in the _chemical bonds_ of the H2 itself? (assume both sides of the comparison contain equal number of molecules)

I suspect it is.. otherwise they are potentially sitting on a much more important innovation, than mere jet fuel.

<comment><USER16> Consider it from the perspective of the conservation of energy:

2H2 + O2 = 2H2O + energy

The energy is on the right because the reaction is exothermic.

The opposite reaction _must_ be endothermic and must have the _same amount_ of energy on the left:

2H2O + energy = 2H2 + O2

Otherwise, energy isn't conserved.

Because nothing is 100% efficient, there's also energy lost to inefficiencies. So the answer to your question is that yes, you need more energy to make the second reaction happen than is stored in the chemical bond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Isn't this also heavily destructive to our ecosystem because they use the carbon trapped in the water and release it into our atmosphere? Didn't we want more trapped carbon than less?

I don't get why everyone finds this great since it takes a very long time for carbon in the atmosphere to get trapped in seawater.

<comment><USER18> It's not that simple:

CO2 in atmosphere -> CO2 in water -> Ocean acidification[1] -> Change in ocean ecosystem

The oceans absorb OC2 from the atmosphere, which you could argue is good, but it is not without consequences. Putting CO2 in the water moves the problem from having it in the atmosphere elsewhere, but it's still a problem. In some ways then, this can be seen as a good thing, because it is undoing the effects that increased CO2 in the atmosphere has on the oceans. Obviously though, I doubt that its effects would be at all noticeable.

The wiki article already linked has a chapter called 'Possible Impact'.

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification>

<comment><USER17> I'm not for putting more carbon into the oceans... just against taking the currently stored carbon out.

<comment><USER19> There is already too much. Any we can take out is a good thing.

<comment><USER20> But it's taking carbon out of the ocean and releasing it into the atmosphere. The issue becomes, how long does it take for the released atmospheric CO2 to be reabeorbed back into he ocean? Does it do more harm in the atmosphere or in the ocean?

<comment><USER21> Right now we're taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the atmosphere.

The ocean presently has a lot of extra carbon, which it absorbed from the atmosphere. So this is an indirect way of taking carbon out of the atmosphere and then putting it back...a closed loop. If we did this for all our hydrocarbon fuel we'd be carbon-neutral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> France could certainly use this technology. With their abundance of unused nuclear power and access to the sea, this could bridge the gap between hydrocarbon powered and electric vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER23> Okay great. Where does the energy come from?

<comment><USER24> If it's an aircraft carrier, probably the nuclear power plant on board.

<comment><USER25> Yep, it's a pretty good use of 200MW of power when you're just sitting around in the ocean.

<comment><USER26> > _when you're just sitting around in the ocean_

Watch any of the documentary series about life aboard an aircraft carrier [1] and you'll see that there's essentially no "just sitting around in the ocean." But your main point is still accurate: If there's power available, putting it to work making jet fuel might be a good trade-off for the additional drain on the nuclear fuel.

[1] E.g., <http://www.pbs.org/weta/carrier/>

<comment><USER27> From friends and family in the navy: whenever you see a fleet or battle group "stationed" somewhere, it means they are basically doing right turns in the middle of the ocean (a joke being that someone has to balance the effect of all those left turning NASCAR races). While they are doing operations etc, a lot of this time is considered extremely boring, more so than even long voyages going somewhere. Further, they usually aren't going full speed, so to some extent they are "just sitting there", particularly in the effect that they aren't using the full output of their power systems - leaving lots of power and (if needed people time) available for fuel "creation".

<comment><USER26> Former Navy aircraft-carrier nuclear engineering officer here. The basic point --- that a carrier might be able to refine its own jet fuel --- is certainly valid. But so that future readers don't get the wrong idea: _Any_ time a carrier is at sea, it does a lot of flight ops just about every day, whether for actual missions, for war games, or just refresher training. That in turn means most of the crew is hustling, usually 12 to 14 hours a day minimum, and sometimes 'round the clock. Maintenance has to be done in the gaps. When we were at sea, it was rare to get six hours of uninterrupted sleep in a night. Somehow I doubt that has changed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Believe You Can Change - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dweck <comment><USER2> I love posts that empower us to be stronger in the face of life !</comment>


The Supreme Court, Domino's, and web accessibility for the visually impaired - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/supreme-court-dominos-web-accessibility-visually-impaired.html <comment><USER2> There's a dark side to this case that no one talks about... The accessibility standards have quite a bit of subjectivity to them and they also infringe greatly on free speech/ freedom of expression for places of public accommodation.

This dominos case is actually incredibly important as it will impact hugely the costs of building websites and the minimum standards required to build them. IMO This REALLY shouldn't be an ADA/ tort thing, we as a country should set up proper standards for accessibility and approach it from a legislative position not allowing every business in America to get sued because they forgot to add an alt tag to an image.

more info here: [https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hotels-ada- compliance...](https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hotels-ada- compliance-20181111-story.html)</comment>


Tulipe Natural Skincare – Launching Soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.shoptulipe.com <comment><AUTHOR> We are a one product cosmetic startup developed by two software engineers interested in natural skincare. Our face moisturizer formula was developed to achieve an all-day glow. It is free of synthetics and is vegan. All of our ingredients are made in the USA. No chemicals, just plant magic!

For insider access prior to launch, sign-up on our website. If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions regarding our launch page, we want to hear from you!

<comment><USER2> You should repost this when you've actually launched. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638) and make sure you include technical details. You can email email@example.com for advice when you're ready. But don't post this before there's something specific for people to look at—it's too hard to distinguish from spam.</comment></comment>


Life after Parse – 3 awesome alternatives - <AUTHOR> https://www.codementor.io/development-process/tutorial/what-to-do-after-parse-shuts-down <comment><USER2> Parse Open Source Community in Slack bit.ly/1SxTVIi ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome article!</comment>


Magic Leap reveals more details about its technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/20/magic-leap-wsjdlive/ <comment><USER2> I'm still not convinced. AR through visual SLAM is not extremely difficult. All the demos here are indoor and from the occlusion handling for the first scene (0:13) you can see a slight shadow on the right of the table leg so I assume it's using some kind of structured light to sense the depth (versus multi camera/stereo systems). Outdoor tracking with this kind of approach is very difficult because sunlight basically destroys all the information.

The difficult part is where the system portrays this information to the user, which they have not shown yet. Their patents indicate some kind of projection directly onto the eye but there are obvious problems with that, such as when you move your eyeball. Also, running visual slam on a mobile device at real time with a respectable framerate is another challenge.

<comment><USER3> For the display they use a vibrating optic fibre. At least according to their patents. The fibre spins vibrates in a spiral pattern and uses a modulated RGB light to build up an image (like a CRT).

The latency on this demo looks pretty bad though.

<comment><USER4> This patent? [https://www.google.com/patents/US8950867](https://www.google.com/patents/US8950867)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The OS has to control atoms, photons". Uh, every OS does this already. Unless you mean directly in which case that sounds like some pretty amazing software+hardware if you're instructing atoms and photons directly in the OS.

All these folks have to do is find someone trusted to go get a demo and put everything to rest. A simple tweet from a well-known, non-celeb would do it: "Tried it. Looks like demo."

<comment><USER6> Benedict Evans from A16Z did pretty much exactly that today;

[https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/656678054064865280](https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/656678054064865280)

He's not completely impartial (A16Z invested in Magic Leap) but Evans seems to be pretty quick to call out underperforming companies even if they're an A16Z investment.

<comment><USER7> Not sure that is a ringing endorsement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At first I thought it was the other leap ([https://www.leapmotion.com/](https://www.leapmotion.com/)), it looks like the two can be a perfect combination.

<comment><USER9> I did as well until I read this comment, thank you! The names are similar, but these are vastly different products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "We're gearing up to ship millions of these things," Abovitz said. "We're not announcing when we're shipping. But we're not far."

So this is a total SWAG, but I'm thinking that translates to "At least a year, maybe two"

Looks incredibly cool. The technical challenges must be amazing! Can't wait to see one in real life.

<comment><USER11> Can't wait to see one, if it lives up to the hype.

Up till now, they have only revealed a tiny new part of their technology while emphasizing all that they have revealed before. To me, it seems like they are waiting until they need new funding to talk in public, and then only revealing tiny details so they don't commit themselves to certain features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I find most interesting is that even the darker areas of the 3d model are opaque.

</comment><comment><USER13>
      > Abovitz describes the Magic Leap tech as unlike anything you can get today.
      > With virtual reality, you're basically strapping two screens to your head.
      > Magic Leap is something else entirely.

I find this intriguing. Oculus and Hololens are a bit of a nonsense to me as I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd want to strap tech to my face in that way. Even if it was shrunk to Google Glass size, I think the general reaction to that shows that it might struggle to gain traction.

Can anyone think of a different form factor that might offer an alternative?

<comment><USER14> The patented technology that Magic Leap is using is optical, it projects the image directly onto your eye.

So it will basically just be as small as an optic fiber directed at your eye.

Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UF9fJtZHAY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UF9fJtZHAY)

The US patent that use that technology shows that Magic Leap inverted the "camera" to do the opposite.

Source: [https://www.google.com/patents/US20140003762](https://www.google.com/patents/US20140003762)

My guess is that they will use it in both ways, as a camera to see the world through "your" eyes and the projector to place the objects correctly in your field of view.

The demo video shown here focuses the "eyes/camera" on the objects and they respond correctly by going out of focus - this means it has to know how the eyes behave.

<comment><USER15> How do you think the system deals with your eyes moving around? So if you move your head left and swivel your eyes right and focus in close... I don't think I'm understanding how all that works together? They are detecting all movements - head, eyes, lens focus?

<comment><USER14> Eye tracking have been around for quite a while and it seems that even normal cameras can track the eyes and eye focus (Tobii being world leader).

If they use the technology mentioned here, it would be very high resolution (4K mentioned in the demo video) at a short distance (mm's) at full focus.

But - just as you say, no one yet knows how Magic Leap reads the environment to do proper mapping and focusing on an object in real life (rather than on a screen like some VR headset do) should be very unpredictable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really like magic leap but I just don't understand how they make these demos... They keep claiming it isn't manipulated but there's a change of depth of view/it's inside/etc. I hope whatever it is it just comes out soon. I'm tired of hoping it's real.

</comment><comment> the-dude If the projection is into the eyes, how are these demos being recorded?

Or are these demos just being 'rendered' ?

<comment><USER17> If you can project it into an eye, why wouldn't you be able to project it into a camera?

<comment><USER2> I'd imagine it'd be the same reasons as to why a TV or projected screen looks great in real life but terrible when it's through a camera.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So....it's basically a technology that duplicates the retinal projection in Star Trek TNG's "The Game"?

Interesting if it works that well. I could see people using this far more than the others coming out.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a feeling that they want to create their own "OS" just to avoid the growing field of patents surround AR and VR right now.</comment>


the http-types library broke 26 packages to fix a typo in a joke - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fpco/stackage/issues/2976#issuecomment-338478982 <comment><USER2> False. Per the issue comments, there was a breaking change in 0.11, aside from the teapot change.</comment>


IPad: Giant Meh - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/2010/01/28/ipad-giant-meh/ <comment><USER2> He wasn't exactly bowled over by the iPhone either when it came out: <http://mattmaroon.com/2007/07/13/iphone/>

Also, it did sell more than 10 millions units by the end of 2008 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_simple.svg)

<comment><USER3> So the real question is, is he a reliable counterindicator?

<comment><USER4> Reliable contraindicator:

Apple comes out with something attempted by the Wintel cabal 4 to 5 years ago. (The Windows Tablet also had magazines and many other parallels with iPad.) However, Apple does it with a much better design, presentation, and end-to-end experience.

Techies who use tech so easily that they don't _need_ the above so much proclaim that such things were already around, we can get better spec devices that do the same thing for cheaper, etc. (I call this the CmdrTaco syndrome.)

My prediction: this is only the first step. The functionality of the Newton/Microsoft Courier is the way forward. Integrate a camera with the thing, and we'll have augmented reality in a practical way. (One that doesn't make you look like a Cyberpunk RPG nerd in public.) I can imagine executives keeping their personal assistants on tap through iChat with this thing. I can imagine the same executives sitting in meetings with this propped up on its docking station/stand like a teleprompter, their staff listening in, and popping up relevant information for them. (And if someone develops a software bluetooth keyboard/touchpad App on the iPhone, they can do discrete chat under the table to ask their staff specific questions.)

Actually, integrate _two_ cameras with the thing, so you can iChat and stream the video of the meeting/presentation.

Apple should do some Bonjour integration with Keynote, so that you can do a low-bandwidth sharing of _someone else's_ currently playing Keynote presentation on a different through iChat by just pressing a button. The presenter could flip a setting and multicast the slides. Anyone on the same WiFi subnet could then share it with iChat partners automatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was an HN discussion recently on what you understand and know and assume, and extending that expertise out into areas where You Have No Clue, and how that goes badly wrong for smart people.

iPad isn't aiming for us members of the nerd herds that are using laptops and netbooks and for whatever reason we're hauling them around; it's not a laptop replacement. Duh.

It's an eFrame for your desk that you can do stuff with.

It's a data entry device for the back of an ambulance or in an ER.

It's a device that can replace a rack-n-stack LCD console in a server room, or that can sit on an operator's or guard's desk or maître de's podium, showing status.

It's a device your mom can use for pictures of the kids, and for hosting cookbooks and recipes in the kitchen.

Add a cash drawer via that dock connector and...

Its an instant and portable Point-of-Sale device; the Apple folks will have these all over the Apple Stores just as soon as they can.

It's a dorm TV.

It's for a bunch of tasks we haven't even yet thought of.

Most of us nerds suck at this non-nerd UI stuff. And we can assume that what we want and what we understand and what we need is what everybody wants. And that isn't necessarily reality.

Whether Apple hit their target markets here remains to be seen. But I can see use.

<comment><USER6> Very much agree with your statement. I can see a ton of use for this device, I think it's another great step towards integrating the web and computers into daily activities and non-desk-work environments.

Specs alone just aren't the way to win people over or to judge a device like this. The experience matters and the iPad offers an experience custom-tailored to tables, unlike other slates where Windows 7 is slapped on without modifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a lot of fun reading posts like this and mentally replacing any statement along the lines of "existing tablets do this already" with "existing MP3 players do this already".

<comment><USER8> yes. and to go after another one of matt's points, i doubt the people at nokia, motorola, et al were all that scared of the iphone in the beginning, either. ed colligan, then the ceo of palm, famously said "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." no matter how cool the iphone might have seemed, they just couldn't fathom it doing well in the tightly-controlled mobile space.

having said all that, i agree with matt's main point. i'm a little underwhelmed with the ipad as well. the scuttlebutt was that apple had tried making tablet computers for years, but jobs always torpedoed them with "what is this for, other than reading the web on the can?" since they were finally releasing a tablet, i figured they had thought up a compelling use case, other than reading the web on the can. personally, i'm not seeing it.

seems foolish to bet against jobs, though. if he thought it was a good product, i think it might catch on.

colligan quote here: [http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9110/colligan-laughs- off-...](http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9110/colligan-laughs-off-iphone- competition/)

<comment><USER9> That quote from Colligan is from _before_ the iPhone was announced. Matt's entire point was that _after_ it shipped it was clear to everyone that this was the future of phones, and that other cell phone makers were scared. History has shown that that is precisely what they believed because 3 years out every mobile phone maker has an iPhone clone. On the other hand, Matt is saying that _after_ the iPad was announced, most mobile PC makers did not think to themselves "how on earth are we going to go up against this" (whether they are right or wrong is of course another story). I agree that its not like every tablet/netbook owner now wants to throw their tablet away and get an iPad (the way a lot of phone owners wanted to throw their phones away and get an iPhone), however this _may_ be because their simply aren't a lot of tablet/netbook owners or its a young market or whatever.

<comment><USER10> "...most mobile PC makers did not think to themselves "how on earth are we going to go up against this""

What I've been hoping ever since yesterday is that someone should release an "iPad" with a heavily customized open source OS on it. Add some Amazon integration (ala iTunes for books/music), customize the main apps to suite the form factor and a semi-open repository/app store for extra apps.

I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER11> Several such machines were demo'ed (usually by chip-manufacturers) at CES earlier this month. The marketing blitz around the iPad makes it much more likely for someone to take these and build an actual end user product. Possibly your telecoms provider would want to sell you one with a contract and their branding.

There appears to be a distinct lack of touch based 'remixes' of Android or Ubuntu though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Same story as with the iPhone. When it first came out I laughed out loud: $600 for a locked in device with a crappy network? No thanks. Guess what my phone now is?

I think the conventional wisdom for Apple products can be applied here: don't buy the first gen device. Think about it this way, right now the iPad starts at $499. I mean that's almost two netbooks... On the other hand what if the next generation one is 2-3 times cheaper, with a better screen, etc. Where I wouldn't buy a $500 iPad, I might consider a $200 iPad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't hold your breath for a $200 iPad. Apple will most likely add more features to the lineup, but keep the prices the same. That's why I still can't afford a single Apple product.

<comment><USER12> True, they do tend to keep the price and add features. IPhone was an exception to this rule though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Anyone who has an iPhone, Android, or WebOS phone will tell you that web surfing on it is somewhat painful. Far less so than on the Treo 650 we had previously, but still no picnic. There's all this pinching and swiping. It's kludgey. Even the sites and apps designed for it entail fat-fingered misclicks and slow page loads."

I don't know if he owns an iPhone but he's wrong about web surfing. I often wish I could navigate on my desktop they way I do on the iPhone. Double tap to zoom is a killer app.

<comment><USER11> The problems mentioned there 1. small click targets, and 2. slow page loads are instantly and trivially fixed by a big screen and faster hardware.

I'll also note that despite the multi-touch hype I never use the pinch gesture while surfing the web on the iPhone, the auto-zoom double tap works in basically every situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the post: _It's no more convenient than a laptop. You can use it pretty much only when and where you could use a laptop._

A bit hasty there. This is something that you can actually carry around like it was a Frommer's guidebook. Put a camera on this form factor, and you have the potential for some _really_ kick-ass Augmented Reality. That's _not_ something you can do with a Laptop. (Unless you're willing to look _very_ dorky. <http://amzn.com/B001G713NO> )

With such a light form factor and a freaking _month_ of standby, you can treat this thing like a journal or a sketchpad. At $15 a month, college and high school students can actually afford to connect this through 3G. (If Apple is smart, they'll student discount this thing like mad!) You can basically replace your phone use with Skype IMs for paging and do your heavy voice communications when you get to a cafe with WiFi. Not something that I would want to do. But my broke-ass violinist bandmate working at a technical bookstore? Yes, he'd do that in a heartbeat.

If Apple can take a cue from Facebook and co-opt the College crowd, the High School crowd will follow, then everyone else. We'll have angsty teens writing on Facebook walls from cafes, posting their Brushes sketches, Skype calling their girlfriends.

</comment><comment><USER14> The iPad might be a lot more like the original iPod rather than like the iPhone. I don't think Creative or Nomad were cowering in fear after Apple's presentation in 2001.

The Apple of 2001 is certainly not the Apple of 2010, so it won't be all that similar, but relativly slow yet steadily accelerating uptake coinciding with constant evolutionary revisions seems plausible.

The only difference is that in 2001 not many cared whether the iPod would become a success or not. Apple was still the Mac company, that's no more the case today. If the iPad uptake is relativly slow we will most certainly see dozens of "iPad dead" articles within the first month the device starts selling.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would buy one if(any of these):

1) I didnt own an iPhone

2) I didnt own a MacBook Pro

3) It had at least 1 camera

4) It was hackable or could run any OS X app

5) I could use it for general purpose storage

Maybe iPad 2.0 will have some of these, as someone posted above... I think this is just a first step and future versions might have some of the above.

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't it ironic that everyone thought that the iPad was going to bury the CrunchPad, but the CrunchPad was vastly superior in every way -- and cheaper.

<comment><USER17> The iPad is still going to bury the CrunchPad. First of all, no one outside of geek circles has heard of the CrunchPad, TechCrunch, Fusion Garage, Juju or whatever the hell other name that thing is going by these days. Whether it's superior in every way or not couldn't be any less relevant when hardly anyone knows anything about it. Is that thing even going to see the light of day? If so, does anyone know what it's going to be called or where it can be bought?

<comment><USER16> The CrunchPad is dead: I used past-tense.

But no, the iPad is going to bury itself because it's locked-down and feature- anemic. Any competitor can beat this, and many are coming.

<comment><USER17> I agree with your assessment of Apple's tablet, but I think you underestimate their position. The vast majority of consumers simply don't have the awareness of such issues to even care. To a degree, the same criticism applies to the iPhone and it's been an overwhelming success. Competing with Apple is no small task. Features aren't enough when they have market share, mind share, are able to set trends and have a marketing department that has convinced the world they are the only company able to do the things they do.

<comment><USER16> You're right, of course. Market share and mind share are important. But this is something new, and products like this _have_ to go through the diffusion of innovation from early adopters to get to the early majority and I personally know of _no_ early adopter who is happy with this thing (all of whom had an iPhone when it launched, etc). The word among early adopters is "bullshit". I don't care who Apple is, or who they think they are, they can't beat that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kaspersky Finds New Nation-State Attack–In Its Own Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/06/kaspersky-finds-new-nation-state-attack-network/ <comment><USER2> Kaspersky is pretty much the pawn of the Putin administration and works against Western interests. Wired has a decent writeup here:

[http://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/](http://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/)

They're fair game as far as I'm concerned, considering the things they've done in the past. They're not this innocent tech company morally above the dirty games nation states play. They're an active participant. Pretty much every "important" industry in Russia is controlled by the Putin administration and is a tool of it. See how the founder of VK didn't want to play ball and had to flee the country. Now VK is run by Putin stooges.

<comment><USER3> The possibility of Kaspersky being a "stooge" for Putin is much less than the possibility of Symantec, Norton et all being stooges for US Government (well its a certainty actually) + all the arms of the octopus. This is why I use Kaspersky @ my home PC, at least I know if there are any backdoors, it would be very difficult for anyone in the west to get Russia to provide any useful data on me. While for Symantec - it would take one call and the backup keys to unencrypt your drive/snoop on you is in the hands of people who painted you a target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Source: [https://blog.kaspersky.com/kaspersky-statement-duqu- attack/](https://blog.kaspersky.com/kaspersky-statement-duqu-attack/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Another discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9691654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9691654)</comment>


America as Texas vs. California, Part II - <AUTHOR> http://blog.american.com/?p=9079

<comment><USER3> Summary: Texas is better at education than California.

My response: They're sure as hell better in technical areas. Texas has put a lot of money and effort into funding and licensing STEM teachers at the secondary level (and maybe earlier). At the AP CS exam reading every year, Texas is always very well represented, and I'm always a little jealous of the level of support they get just in terms of state standards and that kind of thing. (Another state you might not expect is Georgia, actually. The state universities there have done a lot to raise awareness in their feeder schools ---i.e. the high schools in the state---of the importance of computation and CS.)

<comment><USER4> Yet, California has ~14% higher per capita GDP for some reason (Edit: Climate, location, etc). So Texas spends more of its GDP per person on education because California only spends an extra 12% on education.

PS: What's with the down vote the article talks about each states GDP for a reason, but ignores that difference when comparing education spending. Areas with higher GDP have higher costs as well. People love to dump on California but it's got a higher than average GDP compared to the rest of the USA so it's not completely broken.

<comment><USER5> If it were a closed system (walled borders), that might be more true. However, judging a state as "doing well based on GDP", when it happens to have Hollywood, Napa Valley, Silicon Valley, and La Jolla, I think would be ignoring immigrants to California and geographical luck too much.

In other words. There's good chance, if you're a wealthy Californian, you're an immigrant to California, or you're exploiting it's geographical assets (coast, sunshine, soil). To give the credit to the state government or the school system for those things seems a bit generous.

<comment><USER6> I agree that it is easy to miss the power of immigration.

However it is also easy to miss the power of key laws whose influence is so pervasive that nobody even thinks about them. For instance take Silicon Valley. I firmly believe that one of the reasons that took off in California is that California law says that anything you do on your own time with your own equipment is yours. Period. And no, you can't sign that away.

This makes it extremely difficult to contest an employee who gets a startup going then leaves to further their startup. Which stops legal challenges that otherwise would kill the Silicon Valley startup culture.

I am not a lawyer, but my belief is that Texas law is the same as the default in most of the USA - if you are a professional employee with the wrong contract then work you do on your own time with your own equipment that relates to the skills you are hired for belong to your employee. I personally know people in other states who tried the whole "start a startup, then leave you job for it" thing under regulations like that who were flat out told, "You can quit if you want but everything that you've done for that startup belongs to us." Not a fun situation.

That fact is one of the reasons why I, personally, choose to live in California.

So yes, luck. But yes, state law as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is one aspect of the USA that is extremely good. There is space for states to do different things. If something doesn't work, people have the ability to vote with their feet.

Another aspect of this is the right to work laws vs. pro-Union laws in some states.

It would be sad if this aspect of the USA disappears (with a more powerful federal government).

<comment><USER4> Clearly, it's a highly chaotic system, so simple assumptions don't always reflect reality's for incredibly complex reasons.

A counter intuitive aspect of this is that areas which increased government spending on things like police, parks, schools, or roads could attract individuals with a higher income to live and or work. Which can result in a lower tax rate even as the local government continues to spend more money. And rich people tend to cluster by other rich people, and get surrounded by the slightly less affluent etc, so high properly values tend to discourage crime etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate these assessment tests. Having done all my schooling through high school in Texas and having a mother who still works in the elementary system there I know that they like to focus largely on testable material, almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Schools and teachers are judged very closely on how their students perform on standardized tests and so anything not on the test is generally given a cursory briefing if it's mentioned at all. I definitely like being able to measure things and see charts and graphs but this seems to be one of those things where the presence of these metrics has drastically altered the way the programs operate.

<comment><USER9> "[T]his seems to be one of those things where the presence of these metrics has drastically altered the way the programs operate."

I think this was actually the whole point.

<comment><USER8> My point is that I don't think that it is a good thing. Classes start to focus exclusively on underperforming students - which is good - but not to the exclusion of well performing students who need to be challenged as well.

Of course, Texas is the state who (at one time at least) had the educational program that focused on "The Three Rs" (Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic). Ugh. And they wonder why the US is behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's not enough data in this post or the earlier one by Streeter to evaluate this thesis, and no discussion of specific data points relating to trade, industrial segments, population trends, regional disparities within the two states, etc.

<comment><USER11> And I don't see how they can discuss the sorry state of California without mentioning those marvelously wonky ballot initiatives (give us unlimited services but don't raise our taxes) that are the real source of the problem. And don't forget that this is the American Enterprise Institute talking - <USER2> story is skewed and filtered to fit their world view.

<comment><USER12> > give us unlimited services but don't raise our taxes

Except that that's not true.

Income and sales taxes are, in principle, unlimited. (Prop 13 is actually keeping city and county revenues from cratering - my property taxes went UP this year thanks to prop 13.) And the amount spent on voter mandated services doesn't dominate the budget. (There's a 50% on education requirement, but that's just a tax on spending on other things.)

CA added a lot of programs and spending since the golden era, almost all by legislative action. How much of it made things better?

CA's govt is incapable of prioritizing within the constraints laid out by voters. Yes, if voters say spend money on something, that means that the legislature may have to go without some program that they'd like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The which-state-is-richer bit is a huge fallacy. I would argue it's much more difficult for an education system to function in much of California because of the wealth gap created by the tech and entertainment industries. These industries poach a lot of talent, much like the way the finance industry did in NYC. If I still lived in NYC, I'd probably be teaching on the side because my day job would be boring. But I'm in California, so I'm going to try at a startup instead.

This wealth gap also makes it difficult to educate disadvantaged kids because similarly, the rich districts poach teachers from the poor districts. Again, first-hand experience in NYC, and I see the same factors at play here in the Bay Area. Only up in SF where you have an abundance of lifestyle ( _cough_ hipsters _cough_ ) folks do you have schools that are much better than their funding levels ought to indicate.

All said, it's probably not a good idea to raise your kid in a state where the economics are tilted against the education system. So yea, Texas wins... but that's a pretty stupid win.</comment>