Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've been working on this lately as well. Not finished with the process but here's a few things I've tried:

* Read part of a book before starting work.

* No HN/reddit/etc until noon.

* No Facebook until 6PM.

* Disable almost all notifications.

* Only check emails/texts once an hour at the top of the hour.

* Use software that respects my desire for focus.

The last one is currently the most interesting to me. When I was going through disabling all my notifications, I realized you can't truly turn them off on FB messenger. You can only mute them for up to 24 hours. After that I decided to remove any software from my life that was created to manipulate users rather than empower them. That's mostly meant switching to OSS apps and self hosting.

[https://github.com/Kickball/awesome- selfhosted](https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted) has been an incredible resource

<comment><USER3> How about "no facebook, period"?

<comment><USER2> Honestly since I removed the app from my phone my usage has dropped drastically. Haven't missed it much

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Attend a 10-day vipassana retreat. They are donation-based and all over the world.

[https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/locations/directory](https://www.dhamma.org/en- US/locations/directory)

This will bring back + tremendously improve your attention span, in 10 days, guaranteed.

Once you leave the retreat, you will encounter the same environment and habits which robbed you of it. Which you will need to address.

Knowing that social media is being intentionally weaponized to extract attention from its users is helpful as your attitude toward social media and internet usage is likely a big part of it.

<comment><USER5> This is a bit like recommending a marathon to someone who is sedentary. Building a daily meditation habit of at least 20-30 minutes of sustained attention might be a good preliminary step.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Isolating from an environment which supports constant interruption and does not support focus, is incredibly important.

Also, meditation is not running, meditation is rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nutrition.

I have struggled quite a bit with attention. The single most effective thing I can do (more effective than medication) is to improve my diet by cutting out carbs. I find if I am in a mild state of ketosis (greater than 0.3), I can concentrate way better. I am not advocating that everyone go on a ketogenic diet, but cutting out refined sugar and eating only healthy nutrient-rich carbs does wonders for my brain, i.e. salad, blueberries, kale, etc

<comment><USER7> It's not just me! I thought I was imagining things, but changing my diet recently has had a positive impact on my ability to focus and be productive.

<comment><USER8> You can test this easily within a single day.

Get up a little early and go eat a decent breakfast one day. An easy way is to go to a five star hotel and eat breakfast at the buffet, they always have an out-of-hotel guest deal, heaps of fruit, salad, etc. Ignore the cost, this is an experiment.

Check your energy levels and achievements in the late afternoon and see if you don't feel noticeably more awake and energized versus regular diet.

 _Secrets of the illuminati, #18283: breakfast is non-negotiable._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meditation is, essentially, concentrating on one thing (e.g. one's breathing, a phrase) for an extended period. It's kind of like using a piece of gym equipment to exercise just one set of muscles, repeatedly. So, how does one increase attention span? Practice paying attention, in an environment with fewer distractions, and keep practicing until you become good at it again (don't expect that to happen quickly).

Also, you accidentally put "it" instead of "I" in the question. Perhaps related?

<comment><USER10> Something I always like to add to suggestions of meditation is this clarification: clearing your mind completely is _not_ the right way to do it, because completely clearing your mind is nearly impossible. At least for most, maybe some folks can do it. I cannot, and I don't know anyone who can. Instead, it makes me _more_ susceptible to distraction, because brains want to be brains, they want to think and do work.

A nice side-effect of that approach, or perhaps the whole point of it, is that you can now consider meditation as a general thinking tool rather than a more specific way to deal with some specific problem as in OP's case (solving attention problems).

Instead, like OP says, meditate on something instead. Consider if the difference between zero, one, and a million. Zero thoughts works but is hard, one thought works pretty well, and one million thoughts is simply restating the problem.

<comment><USER11> I've been meditating for a year or so. I think it's important to be clear about what meditation is and is not. I don't look at meditation as a way to _clear_ my mind, as you said, that's nearly impossible to force; rather, I think of meditation as changing the way I associate with the thoughts that pass through my mind. Instead of stopping and engaging with each one, I let them pass on by like clouds in the sky. Disconnecting from the thoughts like that has allowed me to arrive at a clear mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel like I'm struggling with this problem to. Somewhat luckily my attention span was never that big so I haven't lost a lot.

I think most of the things we do in day to day live consist of habits combined with choices we make. I think our attention span is mostly a habit.

The things I do in day to day live ingrain some habits. I like to read a lot on the internet, learn about things. However a lot of the content on the internet currently focuses on short attention spans, things like reddit (clicking on a few pictures, opening an impressive title) and social media. They focus on short attentions spans because it's easier to keep someones attention that way. For me this formed some habits which fit short attention spans like opening up a lot of pages and reading small parts of them. For me this lead to fast short term rewards.

Reversing this habit of a short attention span is like an exercise. Staying away from sites which cater to short attention spans and only opening one page at a time which I read completely. In that way I try to learn a new habit. I don't use reddit a lot anymore and I try to use hackernews instead because there are a lot more longer articles here of greater quality, requiring longer attention spans. Maybe that could help you. But all of this is obviously completely personal and anecdotal.

Some things which I found helpful: Charles Duhigg: The Power of Habit (Book about habits) The Coursera course: Learning How to Learn (Since learning requires a long attention span)

Ask HN More Like Hackernews: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3734303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3734303) Contains a lot of sources like longforms.org, [https://aeon.co](https://aeon.co) and [https://aldaily.com](https://aldaily.com) websites which have content which requires long attention spans.

Possibly there are some things in this post which are a bit unclear I've got a bit of trouble writing English since it's not my native tongue. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

</comment><comment><USER13> In my experience, the best way to improve my attention is by practicing śamatha meditation. The śamatha practices that entail mindfulness of breathing are thought to be ideal for those living in modernity.

The best introduction to śamatha that I'm aware of is B. Alan Wallace's "The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind."

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been heavily working on this lately as well. Here are my best tips in order of importancy:

1) Get off your phone as much as possible. Disable all notifications if you can except text / call. Delete apps you don't need to aimlessly check out of boredom (Social media, Reddit, HN, etc).

2) Meditate in some form. For me, this is yoga and taking soothing baths in the morning before work. Clearing your head and getting away from technology for a bit. Allow your brain to breath and think without information being shoved in it's face.

3) Practice focusing on context switching instead of "multi tasking". Realize that as humans, we cannot actually multi task. Assuming you work at a computer all day, don't have streams up, a million tabs, emails, chat services, etc. You only need to have open what you NEED open and nothing else.

4) Exercise. I've found running in short 2 mi increments 3-4 times a week really provides me the energy I need to complete the above 3 items.

Cheers and good luck mate!

</comment><comment><USER15> I went to local bookstore bought 15 books. Tried one at a time to read them instead of playing with laptop/iPad/ iPhone . By 7th ( not making it through 7th one I could enjoy reading 8th book again and enjo reading now to still my brain at end of day . Not a cure all but it helped me regain a bit of focus . Hope this helps

</comment><comment><USER16> You don't really give details, so this is pretty scatter shot:

1\. Look to your health. This is a complex topic and I have zero info about your health, but the short version is _a sound mind in a sound body._ Health issues of various sorts tend to erode cognitive function.

2\. Find a way to take control of your life, to set goals and carve out space to pursue them. The problem isn't that social media (etc) clamors for our attention. The problem is that we feel obligated to give it. Use notifications for your purposes, but don't let them make you a slave to social media or other people. There are various techniques for doing this, but I think the essential detail is exercising agency on your own behalf.

3\. Take a break from your life. Go on vacation or change jobs or move to a new place. Getting out of your usual context can help you see it more clearly. This can clarify where the problem lies.

</comment><comment><USER17> This will sound sarcastic, but it's not.

Stop visiting HN more than once a day. Repeat this for every "news"/"feed" site and app that you use. It sounds completely nuts, but it forces you to stop slicing up "read the news" (a focused activity) into "read the news distractedly" (a timesliced activity).

Shut off push notifications for anything that is not money/shipping related or a direct IM with individuals. Email notifications off, news and feed notifications off, social site notifications off, Twitter "favorited" notifications off.

Turn off notification sounds for everything that's left except direct messages from human beings or e.g. Pagerduty.

Aside from direct IMs — I got a total of 10 pushes yesterday. None made a sound. None required a response. None required interrupting my focus.

Do this for a month, on desktops, laptops, mobile. Your focus will improve dramatically, simply for having not wasted all your brain's dopamine on "new email alert sounds".

EDIT: Meditation is far more challenging when your brain is constantly looking out for the next "new notification" ding. It took me nearly a month to overcome the Pavlov ding response when I first implemented this approach in 2005. You're going to hear a lot of phantom dings for a long time.

EDIT2: If you haven't already done this muting approach, set your push notification sound to the red alert klaxon from BSG (three repetitions) – or any red alert sound from any sci-fi show. If ever there was a way to amplify the visceral effects of notification sounds to your conscious thought level for evaluation and consideration, that'll do it.

EDIT3: If you're autism spectrum, you may have "executive dysfunction", which is a willpower disorder of sorts. Focus is willpower-related. There's no magic fix, but awareness is half the battle, and it may offer steps you can take to reduce your life's "willpower" drain so that you can have more of it for "focus" instead of whatever.

<comment><USER18> I started doing this about a week ago, and it's nice to hear it took you a month, because it's kinda been painful this past week.

I still unlock my phone and look at the homescreen only to realize "oh yeah, I removed that stuff so there's nothing to do here". I'd thought that by removing social/news feeds, I would find _something_ else to do with my thoughts by necessity, but really nothing has replaced the "open phone for 30 seconds to find something briefly entertaining".

I was expecting to be bored, but it's more of a low-level frustration at all times except when I'm focused on something, like I know I could be finding some trivial but interesting thing.

<comment><USER17> I've found that there are times where I'm frustrated at everything and nothing is interesting now that I'm not always seeking 30 second bites.

Unexpectedly, that's turned out to be a key hallmark sign for "I need to take a nap", and sure enough, I usually end up with 20-30 minutes of hard REM sleep and then I'm interested in the world again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reading novels seems to help for me. More directly, there's always meditation.

<comment><USER20> Meditation is frequently mentioned in this context, is there a specific meditation design for for attention span ?

<comment><USER21> There is a basic meditation technique where you just lightly focus your attention on your breath. When you notice you're not thinking of your breath, which will happen 10s to 100s of times a minute, typically, you bring your focus back to your breath.

It's incorporated into a general school called "mindfulness" which you read more about. A book I'd recommend for beginners is "The Joy of Living" by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

The theory is that training your mind to focus on something mundane like your breath for 10 minutes, you will generally train the capacity of your mind to direct focus.

This greater focusing ability will come in handy when you want to focus on other specific things without being distracted as easily, like listening to someone in a conversation or going through the debugging process for a bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One crucial skill required to have a meaningful life is the ability to say no to most things. It took me a long time to learn this. There are many good tips mentioned here, but those are mostly tactics that work for a limited time. At least that's the case for me. I needed to understand the price I'm paying. The more I'm able to say no, the more freedom I gain.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you are looking for books about getting your attention back, I can only recommend Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [0] and Deep Work by Cal Newport [1] I wrote an extensive blog post about both books (which happened to be on HN too), because they are kinda life changing.

\- [0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow)

\- [1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep- work](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work)

\- [2] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-deep-work- flow/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-deep-work-flow/)

<comment><USER24> Read both and tried to follow the Deep work kind of model for a while, is harder than it looks. Specially being in a position where I don't a 100% control my time.

Fortunately, for the past year I been slowly setting up things in a way where I can defend my time better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is basically the goal of meditation (mindfulness meditation in particular). I'd give that a try. At first, it will probably feel like your lack of concentration makes meditation impossible, but that's actually completely normal and even sessions where your mind won't sit still can be productive in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would also love to head about some systematic (scientifically proven ? ), way to expand or restore my attention span.

</comment><comment><USER26> Remove your regular distractions. Minimize the things your attention can me moved from.

Though, you may be a 'hunter' type and it'll be a life long fight.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis)

</comment><comment><USER27> You may want to read Cal Newport blog (the guy that wrote the book "So good, they can't ignore you" \- he has some great insights. Also, he is starting an experiment in January - 'digital declutter' \- it may be a great opportunity for you.

</comment><comment><USER28> For me exercise, weightlifting, bike riding and basketball are great. I love playing basketball, no Facebook, Twitter, code, news feeds, fake news, just chase the damn ball.

After physical exercise I feel it's easier to concentrate.

</comment><comment><USER29> A lot of very good answers here. Here's my take on this:

I went through a similar stage in my life. I was recommended mediation, exercise, etc., and I did religiously follow those. However, I never saw much improvement. Nothing helped and I felt that I was loosing it - until one day when I said enough is enough, I'm going to fix this no matter what.

You see, the problem in recommending meditation is that it doesn't always connect to you the same way it connected to me or someone else. _That_ was my problem. I never had the interest and never even felt that meditation will fix my attention span. The more I tried it, the more frustrated I was. That is when I realized I had to do something different. To be clear, it's not that meditation won't work for me. It's just that I had to practice meditation in a different way.

I figured that meditation is just a way of practicing awareness and mindfulness. To do this, I first listed what makes me distracted most. The first reason I found was that I wasn't happy in my life. I listed whatever made me unhappy, and tried coming up with reasons to counter them. This is typically one of the main reasons why we loose our focus. Something else is bothering you more than what you want to do. Address that first, and rest of the tasks become easy. _Tip #0: Spend some time to introspect. Identify root causes for your discomfort and come up with whatever reason that helps you feel less stressed about those._

Next, I realized that I spent too much time on YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, etc. The first thing I did was to cut them off. Just check them less frequently (say, once a week) that you are used to before (say, once every few hours). You'll have some withdrawal symptoms in the first one week, but it gets way better after that. Trust me, you will do just as good without those - I'm a living example. _Tip # 1: Identify what distracts you most and try to cut it down._

Next, I wanted to _practice_ mindfulness. To do this, I picked something I used to enjoy before, but not anymore. Painting, sketching, reading, watching old movies, documentaries, reading history, listening to podcasts, listening to music, etc., were all the things I used to do before, but lost interest just because I was loosing my attention span. So I forced myself to start finishing what I started. Take listening to music, for example. I'd start a song, and skip it within a minute just because I used to get restless. I started forcing myself to listen to the whole song. I started forcing myself to finish the whole article, the entire book, the entire movie. The best part of doing these is that you'll know exactly when you're getting derailed. I'd take a break - pause the book, pause the movie - and reflect on why I want to skip, and why I want to re-focus. That helped me tremendously. I'd take a few minutes and get back to my goal. _Tip #2: Identify your hobbies and practice mindfulness so that you don't get stressed more than you currently are._

Then I moved on to my actual work. I'd pick a topic that I "sort of know" and focus on getting better at it. For me, it was selective topics in coding. Just because I practiced mindfulness with other tasks (i.e., hobbies), I was aware of when I was loosing track of my work. And every time I lost track, I'd pause, take a short break, and force myself to get back at it. _Tip #3: Practice mindfulness not just at some tasks, but at every task._

Overall, I'd say pay attention to your actions. You'll get better at this. Give it time, and be patient - nothing comes easy. I hope this helps!

</comment><comment><USER30> Listening to classical music really helps me. It took a while for it to make a difference but now it has become my way of signalling to my brain that its time to concentrate.

</comment><comment><USER31> Start reading books instead of consuming digital content piecemeal.

</comment><comment><USER32> Audio hypnotherapy, meditation, chanting aum

</comment><comment><USER33> Manage your phone better [https://hackernoon.com/@elango_11461](https://hackernoon.com/@elango_11461)

</comment><comment><USER34> meditation</comment>


Ask HN: What can I get away with at SXSW. - <AUTHOR>

This is a throw away account.
My startup is launching @ SXSW this year.  I am considering a purple cow marketing strategy to get noticed by some of the leading tech bloggers.  But some of it may be considered questionable, or 'too friendly'.
For example, leaving an Iphone 4G behind at a meeting, then text messaging him/her our pitch on said iphone, but never asking for the phone back.
Aside from leaving an envelope full of money, I'm considering all options.
I've never done anything like this.  So what can I get away with. <comment><USER2> Warning: I am not going to answer your question directly, but hopefully provide useful info..

I live here in Austin and I have been around SXSW a few times. I think before you do something like this, try to network and pitch your startup the casual way.. by saying "Hi" and introducing yourself. It sounds soooo lame, but people there are really friendly and are as excited as you are to see and hear about everything. You might actually make some very strategic partnerships (friendships?) in the process.

I will leave the "purple cow" tips to the experts though ;)</comment>


Show HN: Monitor your competition's content with Site Tap - <AUTHOR> https://sitetap.co <comment><USER2> I really like that animation graphic, it's really strong. but on mobile it's on the bottom, maybe it should go to the top?</comment>


The Risk of Discovery - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/disc.html <comment><USER2> If you're not taking risks you're wasting time, simple as that. I'm always on the look out for roads less traveled, chances to put my experience to the best collective use possible. Not very profitable so far, but I still prefer it to being yet another answering machine.</comment>


Why Mozilla is committed to Gecko as WebKit popularity grows - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/mozilla-committed-to-gecko.ars <comment><USER2> This article begs the question, is XUL worth it? I used to be a huge XUL fan years ago. It was a way to create great cross-platform interfaces and, heck, when you look at Firefox you can see that it looks more native than most toolkits. But, my hopes for an independent xulrunner have simply been dashed.

So, the question is, would it be easier to create native interfaces around WebKit and code on that than the combination of coding on Gecko and having "free" cross-platform interfaces. I'd say it probably is still worth it, but we'll see as open source programmers will generally flock to whatever is nice to program in - and with Google's interest, I wouldn't be surprised if an independent WebKit based browser project popped up from some enterprising individual.

Personally, both seem to fit web standards nicely (not perfect, but as someone who has been around a while, I'm happy by comparison to what used to be) and so the competition seems like a good thing - especially since open source can offer a cooperative competition insofar as any WebKit programmer can look at the Gecko code and vice-versa.

To an extent, I think a good bit of this is the "Java is crap and ugly", "Ruby is slow and unscalable" argument where people just like one and so they disparage the other.

<comment><USER3> <http://begthequestion.info/>

<comment><USER4> The new meaning is useful and makes more sense. I'm ok with it. Anyways, I think it's too late to go back.

<comment><USER5> It's better to just avoid it entirely, and use clearer phrasing:

* That raises the question

-or-

* That forms a circular argument

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is somewhat of an OT

But with all the development that is going on, MS are badly losing to the front runners.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like webkit a lot, but with my amazing marble mouse I am unable to middle- click scroll. That's pretty much a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned.

Same thing with Opera for the Mac, I just rely too much on the middle click (living without a scroll) that it makes sense that I continue to use Firefox.</comment>


Tesla to Cut 3,000 Jobs in Bid to Push Model 3 into the Mass Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/business/tesla-cutting-jobs.html <comment><USER2> Tesla to 3,000 workers: "Thanks for working long hours under often brutal conditions to help us ramp up Model 3 production. Sorry, we don't need you any more. Goodbye, good luck, and have a nice day."

</comment><comment><USER3> "Tesla to Cut 3,000 Jobs in Bid to Push Model 3 into the Mass Market" sounds a lot like Newspeak language.</comment>


Mobile is eating the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-an-excellent-presentation-about-the-rise-of-mobile-and-the-massive-implications-2013-5?op=1#ixzz2UWnE8BIR

<comment><USER2> This is a happy trend for anyone who is a technical person. It's taking the computers out of the hands of the incompetent and giving them a simple device of limited use and little programability they can use to do the simple things they want to do, leaving actual computers for the people who are willing to go to effort to know how to use them.

The large majority of the population does not need a computer, they need a device to allow them to prattle, take pictures, and buy things. Mobile phones cover those three bases beautifully, and hence, they are the most popular device, of course.

</comment><comment><USER3> The common strange off-waving of Firefox OS, seems to be missing the point of Firefox OS. Firefox OS cannot compete with Android and iOS, and Mozilla knows that. Instead, the intent for Firefox OS is to get the third world buying smartphones, because Firefox OS will be cheaper than its Android and iOS rivals.

I may be naïve or optimistic, but I have decent hopes in Firefox OS's ability to obtain this. And bringing the rest of the world onto smartphones, will surely be a help for Google and Apple.

Other than that, nice graphs, but I think I've seen the data before.</comment>


Show HN: ModelKit, Model Framework for Objective-C (iOS/Cocoa) - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN, wanted to share an open source project I'm working on:  https://github.com/jawngee/modelkit
It's a model/entity framework that allows you to write your model layer quickly and easily, managing persistence (local and network) for you as well as querying facilities.  It also can be tied into a BaaS like Parse (comes with a working implementation based on their REST api).  You could think of it as CoreData-lite or Github's Mantle on steroids.
It started out as Parse API wrapper because I was running into issues with their iOS SDK (I love Parse btw and rave about it to anyone that will listen - their iOS SDK not so much).  It's nearly finished and I'm incorporating it into a commercial product so I'd thought I'd share with fellow iOS HN'ers.  Enjoy! <comment><AUTHOR> Link: <https://github.com/jawngee/modelkit></comment>


AI Startups in Montreal - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/best-startups-montreal <comment><USER2> Funny enough, the national press is covering the other-side of this issue (in French). That is, the displacement of artists & creatives:

[https://ici.radio- canada.ca/nouvelle/1130346/305-bellechasse...](https://ici.radio- canada.ca/nouvelle/1130346/305-bellechasse-howard-shiff-marc-seguin-david- lafrance-ateliers-artistes)

What used to be the "creative bohemian area" of the city has been heavily invested in by Ubisoft (first), and then by a slew of other tech startups. The same thing happens in every city: the artists and the small community shops are being forced out to make space for poke bowl restaurants and tiki bars when the spaceship lands.

As a result, the local framing has become "artists vs AI". Grassroot action will paint this influx as a bad thing. To be fair, this whole situation has been mismanaged for decades. By private stakeholders, by the borough's mayors. Montreal as a whole has been historically bad at using alternative scenes to rehabilitate part of itself, then undercutting support to these alternatives scenes & smaller communities... See Griffintown, St-Laurent/Mile-End, St-Henri

<comment><USER3> > a slew of other tech startups. The same thing happens in every city: the > artists and the small community shops are being forced out to make space for > poke bowl restaurants and tiki bars when the spaceship lands.

You could say exactly the same about the Old Street / Shoreditch area of London UK in the last 20 years. Hardly changing a word, except for "poke bowl" and "tiki bar" \- that's just annual fashion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This presentation by David Bennahum, who moved his startup from NYC to Montreal is fascinating even for me a guy born and raised in Quebec.

He talks about personal compensation, taxes, subsidies & tax credits, insurance, visas, etc... and it's crazy.

Others might have different take of this... still fascinating to see how far your $ can go in Montreal VS NYC.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnaFt4v0ek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnaFt4v0ek)

</comment><comment><USER5> I lived for ~10 years in Montreal. From high school to post college, until I moved to SF. My family is still there, so get to go back about twice a year. I really love Montreal, and every time I'm back I think about the possibility to go back.

Montreal has evolved so much in the past 10-15 years it's incredible. The culture has opened a lot (it was always full of it, but before it was mostly internal culture), better food/coffees etc. Remove construction and winter, and it'd be really the perfect city.

I really like things like that evolving in Montreal, because despite being a great city, it doesn't have much great opportunities. You get stuck to a pretty low ceiling pretty easily (at least if you stay an employee).

Montreal's salaries are so low it's almost a disgrace. Yes the city is also cheaper, but it still doesn't compare. I made a quick analysis with a friend recently, comparing Montreal with SF. And even if you spend half your money in rent in SF, you'd still get out with more money, etc.

The government offers great deals on salaries to tech companies coming to Montreal, so I'd love to see some more regulations on those salaries and pushing to make them higher.

For a remote worker with a decent salary, going to Montreal is great tho. With the recent immigration issues with Trump, I've heard a lot of US-based workers moving to Vancouver or Toronto. I'd recommend greatly Montreal. You don't need to speak French.

<comment><USER6> > Montreal's salaries are so low it's almost a disgrace.

> Yes the city is also cheaper, but it still doesn't compare.

I cannot highlight this enough.

I got offered $90k/year (base salary, no stock options, one bonus capped at 10%)

For a Senior Engineering position at a company with big infrastructure and capital.

If that's an offer for a Senior Engineer, I cannot imagine what a Junior is getting.

<comment><USER7> 90k CAD or USD?

<comment><USER8> CAD would be pretty normal in my Montreal experience. Great city for studying, terrible for staying.

I still miss Montreal though.

<comment><USER5> Yeah this is too bad and a big issues. Good, cheap schools. People come study and then realise opportunities are not that great and go work somewhere else. Most of friends left after their studies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice promo piece, anyone have anecdata about experience living in Montreal and working in tech there? I've mostly heard about their electronic gaming scene. Why aren't more people going to there rather than Vancouver or Toronto?

<comment><USER10> Montreal is an extremely easy city to live in. Very inexpensive rent, good nightlife/events and arts/culture scene, and a pretty good transit system.

The Quebecois will disagree with me on this, but I don't think you even need to speak French if you're working in tech - you might just have a smaller friend circle of Anglos.

Taxes however are crazy high and salaries are low compared to cities like Vancouver or Toronto.

Small plug - we (AON3D) are looking for c++, python, and js developers right now. Find our careers page and send us an email if you're interested in 3d printing and industrial machines.

<comment><USER11> This is fairly accurate, I am in Montreal.

<comment><USER12> Except he missed one major selling point. Our food/restaurant scene is second to none. If you consider moving here then negotiate a couple of months remote work per year and work from Costa Rica in Jan-Feb.

<comment><USER13> That's a very important point. I moved from Montreal to NYC a couple of years back and one thing I definitively miss is the food scene. Not that NYC is bad by any metric but Montreal just has an amazing food scene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We're making our first hires in Montreal for JS Dev's if anyone is interested, get in touch

</comment><comment><USER15> I am looking for internships here if anyone wants someone that really wants to get into Robotics.

<comment><USER16> You didn't provide any means of contacting you, and your profile also doesn't list anything. Have an email/github?

<comment><USER15> I usually just go by babuloseo everywhere. I have a reddit account you can message me and github also, I recently started using keybase and it seems to be pretty cool. [https://keybase.io/babuloseo](https://keybase.io/babuloseo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone know of companies doing technically challenging stuff that pays well in Canada? I recently moved to Vancouver but am finding very few doing interesting stuff besides big tech like Amazon/Google etc.

<comment><USER11> We are in Montreal and looking for great people! [http://nimonik.com/jobs/](http://nimonik.com/jobs/)

<comment><USER15> alright I applied >.<</comment></comment></comment>


Scientists prepare to unleash millions of mosquitoes to kill their cousins - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mosquito-sex-experiment-brazil-millions-to-mate-kill-cousins-zika-dengue-a7388871.html <comment><USER2> This frightens me a bit. In Australia, the introduction of camels, toads and various other plants and animals has devastated the countries ecology. New Zealand struggles to keep foreign invasive species out of their country.

I know this is suppose to target only one species that spreads a variety of diseases, but misquotes do serve a purpose. For one thing, they fight overpopulation by spreading disease. :-P But they are also a food source to many animals.

Even with all the careful planning and debate that's gone into this, I have a feeling there will be noticeable blowback from this effort.</comment>


We Built a Bot That Trolls Twitter's Worst Anti-Semitic Trolls - <AUTHOR> http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/219117/we-built-a-bot-that-trolls-twitters-worst-anti-semitic-trolls <comment><USER2> Judging from the article, it seems that it is up to the programmer to manually find and update the bot's database of impersonator accounts...are there no means of automating this process or is the pool of impersonator accounts small enough to "police" manually..?</comment>


North Korea Fires Ballistic Missile Before Xi-Trump Meeting - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-04/north-korea-fires-unidentified-projectile-into-east-sea <comment><USER2> The Asian version of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick squeaks again.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared)</comment>


Esther Dyson: Can the Internet help bring about democracy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2295106/

<comment><USER2> "The Internet may have made this transition seem too easy. In Internet communities, it's fairly easy to build consensus. Membership is voluntary, and people who don't like the rules can leave (or they can be kicked out: there is no requirement for due process). Moreover, many resources are infinite on the Internet. People aren't fighting over scarce housing or lucrative jobs. They are befriending one another, sharing information, and accumulating status, points, and experiences."

housing and jobs are scarce because of shitty government, including shitty democracies (arguably mainly due to the monetary policies of the biggest shittiest democracies).

poverty is a solved problem. it persists because it is profitable for the people with guns and money printing presses for it to persist and no one will stand up to them. at least not without nukes.

the scarce resource argument is bullshit. humans are net wealth producers if you leave them alone. this is doubly true since we cracked the atom. the reason we have unsafe, waste producing nuclear reactors instead of thorium reactors is because governments wanted plants that could produce weapons grade material. <http://www.energyfromthorium.com/history.html>

<comment><USER3> Totally a solved problem. Even in wealthy countries, the poor are often poor because many governments discourage savings (by lower interest rates into the basement), discourage work (with high income taxes, welfare payments, unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid). All of this fosters a culture where work is not seen as the vital thing that it is and where giving up is the easiest thing to do.

Other policies are made to cater to the monied interests, at the expense of the non-monied, causing many things to be more expensive than they need to be. Housing, health care, education, transportation all fall into this category. All of these things should be getting cheaper over time, but once government establishes control, that control is inevitable hired out to the highest bidder and used to benefit them at the expense of the consumer.

Of course, where there is no rule of law, the thugs just take everything as soon as you produce it, which is worse, I guess. But at least people who escape it often still have the work ethic necessary to succeed in a free society. That is, unless the government "helps" them.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I'm sure if we let government step out of the way and give corporations a free hand, everything will get much better.

<comment><USER3> Government is more a tool of entrenched interests than you may realize.

Corporations are just mechanisms for individuals to cooperatively own assets. Not the source of all evil in the modern world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Social Media Is Ruining Your Life, And How To Fix It - <AUTHOR> http://www.regator.com/blog/?p=613

<comment><USER2> > At the risk of sounding like an old-fogey, when you [ignore people in favor > of your mobile], you are telling the other person that they are not > interesting enough to hold your attention[...]

Good. We are telling them this because this is the truth. Some people are boring. It's time that society learned this, stopped encouraging us to be patronizing of such people, and instead started encouraging _them_ to _be more interesting_.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if I'd put it like that, but I do tire of this statement as well. I agree that it's rude to hold an extended conversation in front of someone else, particularly if you two were alone and you've left the other physically present person to just twiddle their thumbs, but quickly answering a question of a friend over a cell phone during dinner is hardly something I'm going to apologize for.

I could just as easily say, "What makes you feel so self-important and selfish that you think anyone who spends time with you must shut out the rest of the world?"

<comment><USER4> I think the distinction is 'quickly'.

In your example, you're clearly still showing respect for the other person's time. In the article's example, he's clearly talking about the tarts who have prolonged trivial conversations that do -not- respect the other person's time.

Like most everything in life: there are right and wrong ways to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can see why this kind of article will annoy people, but I think there are some fair points. In particular, it is quite obvious to me that certain (by no means _all_ ) users are really over-immersed in social media, to the point where it is reasonable to start talk about addictive behaviours. I don't necessarily buy the neurological fears, but when you have people literally consumed by activities that are not truly productive, it is not unreasonable to ask them to see if they can take the odd day off.

It's like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the drinker can take a week off the booze and still be fine.

As the Greeks used to say: pan metron ariston: In all things, moderation is best.

</comment><comment><USER6> If social media is making you gullible, then why would you believe this? If you think a couple of tricks and some neat Web 2.0 tools are going to save you from becoming a social media outcast, then you are probably already a social media outcast. It drives me crazy all these people making totally unsubstantiated claims about how the internet makes people stupid. I suppose because we grew up with TV we're stupider than our parents. Does anyone really believe that?

Since citing some popular books and Times articles apparently means I've got a point, I'd like to refer you to this fascinating article by... a real doctor:

[http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/05/on_the_information_a.h...](http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/05/on_the_information_a.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have to agree with most of the facts. For nothing but the fact that "I too am starting to suffering from those."

</comment><comment><USER8> Quote: "If you're over, say, thirtyish, you grew up in a world where a good chunk of what you read was true."

What kind of moron writes this crap?

<comment><USER9> I agree that is a pretty silly statement, but your rebuttal doesn't add a lot.</comment></comment>


An Introduction to Reactive Programming - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/staltz/868e7e9bc2a7b8c1f754 <comment><USER2> I've struggled to grok FRP in the past - I hear lots of smart people trumpeting it, but I haven't been able to wrap my head around it. This tutorial was great and I was following along right until it got to the part about modeling the suggestions as streams ([https://gist.github.com/staltz/868e7e9bc2a7b8c1f754#modellin...](https://gist.github.com/staltz/868e7e9bc2a7b8c1f754#modelling- the-3-suggestions-with-streams)).

That was where everything went haywire for me - my brain doesn't want to think about those UI elements as streams and I instantly tune out and think "this doesn't make sense". I'm curious if anyone else also got stuck at that same part, as well as if anyone has suggestions/ideas for breaking past this mental barrier? Is there a different way of solving the same problem (that might make more sense to me)?

<comment><USER3> I was struggling with the way the operators are written:

      clickStream.map(f).scan(g);

Then I realised that map() and scan() are not doing much when that line of code is executed. They only add a new operation step to a list of operations for clickStream. Only when an event is received, the saved list of operations gets executed. So, I think a better naming would have been addMap() and addScan(), because they only add operators. They don't map/scan anything when they are called.

I think the best tutorial for me would have been an article explaining what is going on under the hood. This tutorial does mention this implementation detail but only very briefly.

Anyway, without the tutorial, I wouldn't have realized this, so it was actually helpful. :)

<comment><USER4> Streams are _lazy_. They work in the same manner as lazy collections in languages such as Scala and Haskell - if you have an infinite collection, say, the set of all prime numbers, and do a map operation on it, it does not try to eagerly execute an infinite loop. Instead, the mapping is only done when when you actually request any of the elements of the set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought this was a decent tutorial, but I'm a bit annoyed at the double- click bit. Yeah sure, you can implement some form of double-clicks in 4 lines of code, but it _behaves badly_. And since the tutorial glossed over it, I have no idea if this is just because the author doesn't realize they implemented a really bad click system, or because it takes a lot more than 4 lines of code to do it right and the author didn't like that so chose to ignore it.

Notably, the single-click stream has a built-in 250ms delay before the click is fired. That's bad. Similarly, the double-click has a built-in 250ms delay even if the user clicks twice within 100ms. In fact, it's not just a 250ms delay from the first click; it's a 250ms delay from the _last_ click before it finally emits the event.

That's a completely unusable way of doing clicks. If that's how you do clicks in FRP, then that's a serious issue with FRP. I have to assume there's a better way, and I'd really like to see it.

The correct behavior is to emit a click event _immediately_ upon a click, but to remember recent history and associate a click count with the event based on whether there are recent clicks. So if I click 7 times in a row at sufficient speed, I should get a click event for every single one, getting 1x through 6x clicks before finally getting the 7x click on the last one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, you can do that. If it's not how you want it to be, just tweak it. [http://jsfiddle.net/staltz/U2j4D/8/](http://jsfiddle.net/staltz/U2j4D/8/)

<comment><USER5> Thank you, that behaves a lot better. It seems a bit odd that the multiClickStream emits a `0` 200ms after the last click, but I guess you can add the filter to the multiClickStream directly and let the button clear its own text a different way.

[http://jsfiddle.net/U2j4D/17/](http://jsfiddle.net/U2j4D/17/)

So more than 4 lines of code, but I'm glad to see it's quite doable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am writing a game engine in Scheme that uses FRP. My implementation may not be robust since I'm the only user, but perhaps seeing what it can do will help someone. My implementation was heavily inspired by Elm.

Blog post with screencast to demonstrate:

[http://dthompson.us/functional-reactive-programming-in- schem...](http://dthompson.us/functional-reactive-programming-in-scheme-with- guile-2d.html)

Implementation details:

[https://gitorious.org/sly/sly/source/8cf0096791821c7711c9dc2...](https://gitorious.org/sly/sly/source/8cf0096791821c7711c9dc2431e4d920f0b678ba:sly/signal.scm)

2048 clone written in a reactive style:

[https://gitorious.org/sly/sly/source/8cf0096791821c7711c9dc2...](https://gitorious.org/sly/sly/source/8cf0096791821c7711c9dc2431e4d920f0b678ba:examples/2048/2048)

Reading the explanation from the Elm folks is what made things click for me:

[http://elm-lang.org/learn/What-is-FRP.elm](http://elm-lang.org/learn/What-is- FRP.elm)

Edit: Also, SICP has 2 sections that describe systems that are reminiscent of reactive programming systems.

A Simulator for Digital Circuits:

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-22.htm...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-22.html#%_sec_3.3.4)

Propagation of Constraints:

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-22.htm...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-22.html#%_sec_3.3.5)

<comment><USER7> Why not look at Gregory Cooper et. al.'s FrTime? Its the first FRP system I'm aware of for Scheme, and its quite well used in Racket. It is also a predecessor of Flapjax.

[http://docs.racket-lang.org/frtime/](http://docs.racket-lang.org/frtime/)

<comment><USER6> I've read some of this source, too. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Names can change over time but here is how i recall it:

FRP is a development based on the work of conal elliott: [http://conal.net/](http://conal.net/) It's main characteristic is that there is a continuous (pull)aspect. Since many interesting domains are not predominantly continuous he and many others had to add a discrete event based component.

Rx is a stream based technology (push). Basically it is a dataflow library with modern functional programming syntactic elements. It does not have a continuous aspect and as such it is not FRP.

By treating Rx as something new we are depriving our self of the dataflow and structured programming knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's an introduction to Bacon.js, implementing a game with eventstreams, if anyone is interested in more.

[http://philipnilsson.github.io/badness/](http://philipnilsson.github.io/badness/)

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot of people have reported that they grok Rx* much better once they watch this talk I gave at [http://vimeo.com/43659034](http://vimeo.com/43659034) \- if you understand map / reduce / filter as applied to lists (in C#, "Select / Aggregate / Where"), Reactive Programming isn't too hard to understand if properly explained.

<comment><USER7> Rx isn't really reactive programming so much as slinging event streams around, there is much more to reactive programming than that (e.g. ReactJS is based on something completely different).

<comment><USER11> Before we launched React we had a big discussion as whether we should change the name or not. React is completely different from everything that's called "reactive programming" and we were afraid to cause confusion.

<comment><USER12> I personally find it causes a lot of confusion. Generally the term "reactive" has become very buzzwordy and meaningless if late. I think Meijer's talk just touches on the beginnings of it.

<comment><USER8> I know the stream based RX and several continuous/events based FRP implementations and their associated problems.

Are there other interesting approaches?

<comment><USER7> Well, there is also managed time.

[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=2112...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=211297)

Constraint and logical systems like Bloom also qualify in dealing with change (the underlying meaning if "react"). The nice thing about FRP was that it went way beyond event streams, which is why Rx is so disappointing (which is just about event streams, react + Rx is sort of FRP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is super helpful. The example with the multi-click stream is pretty impressive as a demo. Is anyone familiar with the Elm[1] language/library that compiles to JS? Does it facilitate good FRP practice? Or are there any better libraries/languages out there? I've just seen a lot of Elm when I've google FRP in the past. (Followed closely by Haskell.)

[1] [http://elm-lang.org/](http://elm-lang.org/)

<comment><USER7> Neither Rx nor Elm are FRP. If you want FRP, look at Conal Elliott's work.

<comment><USER10> This pedantic distinction isn't useful to anyone, please stop Well Actually'ing people

<comment><USER14> It's not a pedantic distinction given how much the term has been overloaded to refer to dissimilar concepts.

<comment><USER15> We should just have separate terms for Discrete vs Continuous flavors instead of fighting over the one true "FRP"

<comment><USER7> It's not just that. Elm and Rx lack continuous value streams at all, they are completely discrete; also they are very much asynchronous, so they are more like the event stream manipulation done via data flow in the 70s rather than what Elliott and Hudak invented in the late 90s.

For something to be called FRP, they at least need both continuous and discrete abstractions; the simplest description of FRP involves re-evaluation A + B over time, which is not meaningful in Rx or Elm, really.

<comment><USER16> It's meaningful in Elm.

<comment><USER7> I would love to see an example. I've browsed Evans' thesis, and it seems like he explicitly avoids continuous abstractions (behaviors) for event processing.

<comment><USER16> Here is an example: [http://elm- lang.org/edit/examples/Reactive/Position.elm](http://elm- lang.org/edit/examples/Reactive/Position.elm)

In Elm behaviors and events are the same thing. Usually operations like filter and fold are only on events, and applicative functor and monadic operations are only on behaviors, but in Elm one type support filter and fold and the applicative functor operations, and monadic bind is not supported at all. I don't think that's good design, but it does mean that Elm has the functionality of both events and behaviors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With seemingly more emphasis being placed on complex pub-sub architectures, has there been any equivalent development of tooling to assist in visualizing/grokking an existing pub-sub application? In my experience at least, pub-sub architecture can be difficult to follow without good tooling (trying to keep all of these coexisting streams in your head when making changes, as asynchronous code is difficult to write a test suite for that could catch mistakes). This is somewhat just the nature of asynchronous programming, but there has been more and more emphasis on that as well with the popularity of highly responsive GUI applications and more computing capacity for background tasks.

Aside from using Visual Studio-esque "find references" to navigate to all of the locations in a codebase where a particular event stream is subscribed to, I've yet to come across much.

</comment><comment><USER18> It looks to me like Bacon.js is the community favorite and RxJS is the corporate framework when it comes to JavaScript libraries for FRP. I'm thinking about introducing an FRP library into the frontend stack where I work — does anyone have any experience with using either of these libraries (or another) for corporate work? What did you use and how did your coworkers deal with it?

<comment><USER19> As the primary author of RxJS, I take exception to that characterization. Anyways, you should look at the performance differences between RxJS and Bacon.js. They are quite significant! [https://github.com/pozadi/kefir/blob/master/test/perf/memory...](https://github.com/pozadi/kefir/blob/master/test/perf/memory- results.txt)

<comment><USER20> Hi Matt, fyi the codeplex page doesn't mention what appears to be the primary website: [http://reactive-extensions.github.io/RxJS/](http://reactive- extensions.github.io/RxJS/) so you might want to get a link added....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I also found Martin Odersky's Principles of Reactive Programming Coursera class [1] very helpful.

[1] [https://class.coursera.org/reactive-001](https://class.coursera.org/reactive-001)

<comment><USER22> I and a friend attended to the class and read several papers, but all you learn are concepts, tools, paradigms and implementations. There is no "formula" for creating FRP, it's very generic although highly specific on monads, (applicative) functors, monoids, etc. So definitively worth a shot, if you want to learn everything around FRP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great article but there's something I'd like to understand: the article talks about FRP yet writes _" (Functional) Reactive Programming"_ with "functional" between parentheses, why?

Is the 'F' in FRP the same 'F' as when people say that, for example, Haskell and Clojure are FP languages?

Does FRP use the notion of "functions" which are closer to the mathematical definition of a function? For example does FRP try to avoid state and mutable data as much as possible and do the same inputs always lead to the same output? Or is it called "functional" simply because it allows to use things like map/reduce/filter?

If it is "really" functional, I take it it's quite deterministic: can you then take all these streams of events and "replay" them at will, always ending up in the same intermediary state and, eventually, in the same final "state"?

If that's the case, then it's the next thing on my "to learn" list :)

<comment><AUTHOR> > There's something I'd like to understand: the article talks about FRP yet > writes "(Functional) Reactive Programming" with "functional" between > parentheses, why?

This comment [https://gist.github.com/staltz/868e7e9bc2a7b8c1f754#comment-...](https://gist.github.com/staltz/868e7e9bc2a7b8c1f754#comment-1255003) and this discussion [https://twitter.com/ReactiveX/status/483625917491970048](https://twitter.com/ReactiveX/status/483625917491970048)

> If it is "really" functional, I take it it's quite deterministic: can you > then take all these streams of events and "replay" them at will, always > ending up in the same intermediary state and, eventually, in the same final > "state"?

Yes. See this [http://debug.elm-lang.org/](http://debug.elm-lang.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lee Campbell's book/site is a good place to start - [http://introtorx.com/](http://introtorx.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Some additional overview of different reactive approaches:

[http://www.slideshare.net/deanwampler/reactive-design- langua...](http://www.slideshare.net/deanwampler/reactive-design-languages- and-paradigms) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L3cYhfSUZs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L3cYhfSUZs)

* responsive (somewhat hand-wavy - basically, don't block on IO)

* scalable (hard to be scalable - many different approaches)

* resilient (hard to be resilient - erlang is king here)

* event-driven (it's hard to not be event-driven these days)

<comment><USER19> The Reactive Extensions covers all of those particular topics quite well, in terms of responsive to failure, responsive to events, responsive to load etc.

We cover that a bit in our repository with the Reactive Manifesto: [https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/RxJS](https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS)

And I've even covered it at StrangeLoop 2013: video: [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/rx-event- processing](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/rx-event-processing) slides: [https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/StrangeLoop2013](https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/StrangeLoop2013)

As well as FutureJS: video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlERo_JMGCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlERo_JMGCw) slides: [https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/FutureJS](https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/FutureJS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We use ReactiveCocoa [0] extensively at work and can't recommend it highly enough [1]. (Although admittedly KVO makes Cocoa almost the ideal platform for reactive programming.)

[0]: [https://github.com/ReactiveCocoa/ReactiveCocoa](https://github.com/ReactiveCocoa/ReactiveCocoa) [1]: [http://ianthehenry.com/2014/5/4/kvo-101/](http://ianthehenry.com/2014/5/4/kvo-101/)

</comment><comment><USER26> If you're interested in FRP in terms of GUI programming, as described in the linked article, you should definitely checkout ReactFX [0], an FRP library for JavaFX, and also the author Tomas Mikula's blog [1] that contains very convincing examples of FRP's usefulness for real UI tasks [2].

[0]: [https://github.com/TomasMikula/ReactFX](https://github.com/TomasMikula/ReactFX)

[1]: [http://tomasmikula.github.io/blog/](http://tomasmikula.github.io/blog/)

[2]: [http://tomasmikula.github.io/blog/2014/04/25/combining- react...](http://tomasmikula.github.io/blog/2014/04/25/combining-reactfx-and- asynchronous-processing.html)

If you are confused by the term FRP and its different interpretations, I tried to summarize them in a stackoverflow answer: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22795062/is-it- possible-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22795062/is-it-possible-to- translate-the-mario-example-from-elm-to-either-pure-javafx- or/23909098#23909098)

</comment><comment><USER27> > FRP streams go beyond promises by allowing many returned values. This is > pretty nice, and shows how FRP is at least as powerful as Promises.

The fact that you can only return a single value from a promise is a feature, not a limitation. In synchronous code, you can only return once from a function. In asynchronous promise code, you can only fulfill the promise once. There's a parallel.

If you want to "allow many returned values" you can just use a callback. You hardly need a "stream" for that.

<comment><USER28> > In synchronous code, you can only return once from a function.

Erm, have you heard a term "continuation" or "call/cc" ("call-with-curent- continuation")? Or "delimited continuations"? Or maybe even "Cont monad"? You should read on them, if you haven't - they are one of the most fundamental and _fun_ concepts I encountered.

But even without those, what you wrote here is false in the presence of generators (which are coming to JS any day now!).

I'd say that returning more than once from function is actually a pretty basic technique which is widely used to implement quite a wide array of different things.

<comment><USER29> Or, over in C land, setjmp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> For those searching for Rx examples, I found these:

[https://github.com/fdecampredon/react-rxjs- todomvc](https://github.com/fdecampredon/react-rxjs-todomvc) (TodoMVC implementation built on top of React + RxJS)

[https://github.com/eliseumds/react- autocomplete](https://github.com/eliseumds/react-autocomplete) (React + RxJS Autocomplete)

<comment><USER19> Yep, there are plenty of examples to be found such as those listed here: [https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/NDC- Oslo-2014](https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/NDC-Oslo-2014)

In addition, we ship a good number of samples within our RxJS repository: [https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS/tree/master/exam...](https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS/tree/master/examples)

<comment><USER30> Cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you want to learn streams the hard way try to implement any non trivial build process with gulp.js

Just a warrning. Node.js had 3 versions of streams so far and some packages that implement stream functionality don't all work properly with latest version. Also two types bytestream and object stream.

<comment><USER19> Node.js streams are largely unicast, instead RxJS and related libraries can be multicast. RxJS, on the other hand has been fairly stable for quite some time now and the APIs largely haven't changed from when we first released in 2010.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> To add another resource to the list, I gave an introductory talk to bacon.js and FRP last year which has similar diagrams to these which I animated with d3 if anyone'a interested: [http://vimeo.com/m/68987289](http://vimeo.com/m/68987289)

</comment><comment><USER33> I wrote a little FRP library in Ruby: [https://github.com/steveklabnik/frappuccino](https://github.com/steveklabnik/frappuccino)

<comment><USER19> steveklabnik, still working on the Ruby port of Rx. It will get there but needs more community support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> RxJava's wiki is also pretty good: [https://github.com/Netflix/RxJava/wiki](https://github.com/Netflix/RxJava/wiki)

</comment><comment><USER34> How is this different from complex event processing (CEP)? High frequency trading has been using this from day 1.

The real trick is working with historical events and fetch them from disk, otherwise your reasoning time window is restricted to whatever fits in RAM.

<comment><USER19> Using Rx, you can certainly do CEP as we have buffer and window operators, and the ability to so groupBy and other complex operators. For example we have one that analyzes stock streams [https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/NDC- Oslo-2014/blob/ma...](https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/NDC- Oslo-2014/blob/master/demos/WinJS/client/pages/stocks/stocks.js)

<comment><USER34> So, are you saying Rx is the superset and CEP is a subset of Rx functionality? What can you do in Rx that you can't do in CEP?

<comment><USER19> I would certainly say that Rx has a superset of the operators in standard CEP which largely deals with buffers and windows, yes. In addition, we have time- based join and group join behavior, join calculus eg: Rx.Observable.when( stream1.and(stream2).then(...), stream3.and(stream4).then(...) );

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is one thing that really bothers me, I've not found a single a mathematical formula that defines FRP. The closest thing I've found was the "Denotational Semantics" showing the logic behind, which is quite lenghty and leaves a lot of room for variations. I hate descriptions full of buzzwords that, when you look at it closely have really nothing to do with FRP, but are mere tools that help realizing it.

Is there someone who can explain us scholars how FRP can be noted down formaly? Even a link to a page of a paper that shows the formula would be enormously useful. I'll put all the good papers that I've found in the footnoes.

\</comment><comment>-- _The following are a few of the good papers on FRP (ordered by subj. quality). I 've read the Elm paper, but it's vague despite having a lot of maths in it. What it really decribes is not FRP, but Elm (also it's not exactly FRP)._

[1] [https://blogs.janestreet.com/breaking-down- frp/](https://blogs.janestreet.com/breaking-down-frp/) [2] Higher-Order Functional Reactive Programming without Spacetime Leaks - [https://www.mpi- sws.org/~neelk/simple-frp.pdf](https://www.mpi-sws.org/~neelk/simple-frp.pdf) [3] An Axiomatic Semantics for Functional Reactive Programming - [http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-042908-133033/unre...](http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-042908-133033/unrestricted/cking.pdf) [4] Push-pull functional reactive programming - [http://conal.net/papers/push- pull-frp/](http://conal.net/papers/push-pull-frp/) [5] Categorical Semantics for Functional Reactive Programming with Temporal Recursion and Corecursion - [http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pbl/msfp2014/catsemfrp.pdf](http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pbl/msfp2014/catsemfrp.pdf) [6] Completeness of Conversion between Reactive Programs for Ultrametric Models - [http://www.cs.le.ac.uk/people/fdv1/fdv1/Distribution/SeveriD...](http://www.cs.le.ac.uk/people/fdv1/fdv1/Distribution/SeveriDeVriesTLCA2013.pdf) [7] Fair Reactive Programming - [http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~acave1/papers/fair- reactive.pdf](http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~acave1/papers/fair-reactive.pdf) [8] A Survey on Reactive Programming - [http://soft.vub.ac.be/Publications/2012/vub- soft-tr-12-13.pd...](http://soft.vub.ac.be/Publications/2012/vub-soft- tr-12-13.pdf) [9] Signals, Not Generators! - [http://www.ioc.ee/~wolfgang/research/tfp-2009-slides.pdf](http://www.ioc.ee/~wolfgang/research/tfp-2009-slides.pdf) [10] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5875929/specification- for...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5875929/specification-for-a- functional-reactive-programming-language#5878525) [11] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1028250/what-is- functiona...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1028250/what-is-functional- reactive-programming/1030631#1030631)

 _The bad thing about all those papers is that a) you need to know Category Theory, b) Temporal Logic, c) Denotational Semantics d) (and optionally Henkin and Ultrametric Models) Unfortunately I 'm not yet that smart :( hope someone can bring clarity into FRP_

Sorry for the ugly footnote, that's the best I got using HN's formatting capability.

Update: I used unicode spaces, that fixed it.

<comment><USER12> Push-pull is one of my favorites, but it's pretty "operational".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Javascript is the most familiar language out there at the moment"

Will people ever stop using this reasoning? Why not pick the best/better language instead?

<comment><USER36> Because the goal here is not to write the most efficient and most maintainable code, but to demonstrate a new concept. Familiarity and availability are more relevant in this case than "best language," however you'd measure that.

<comment><USER37> Hmm. Java might be known by more, if just from the fact that those who take an introductory CS course as an elective in another major will get their lessons in it. But, as a _lingua franca_ , it sucks even worse.

Mind that term, actually: while French itself was just an average European language, it was handy, for political reasons, for diplomats of all stripes to pick up—and somewhat easy, presuming you had studied texts in Latin. JS is much the same: a lot of us might not prefer it when writing our own code, but we can all certainly read it, given its ALGOL derivation, and it's certainly more pithy than, say, C, for communicating the kind of concepts we need to communicate (like FRP.)

<comment><USER38> > But, as a lingua franca, it sucks even worse. Mind that term, actually: > while French itself [...]

Mind that term even more, because despite the similar "fr--" sound, it does not actually denote the French language.

"Lingua franca" is actually an Italian term for "Frankish language", during a time (post-middle-ages) when "Franks" often referred to Western Europe in general.

While French is an example of a language which fit the definition for a period of time, it is not the source of its name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > So you're curious in learning this new thing called (Functional) Reactive > Programming (FRP).

Chaining is the new goto. Abused, it causes deeply anti-modular, temporally coupled code, which is really really ugly to maintain (good thing rockstar ninja programmers only need to think two weeks ahead).

<comment><USER40> You are confusing "chaining" with "composition". The two have fundamental differences. This confusion is understandable though because languages without a strong type system make _true composition_ very loose (the exception being stack based languages, I think).

Javascript is a poor language for composition; stream programming is uniquely suited to strongly typed languages with denotational semantics that make function composition natural and you'll probably be seeing much more of Elm and other Haskell to Javascript compilers taking the stage for this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions? - <AUTHOR> For example Uber in-app hacking challenge https://danonrockstar.com/uber-hacking-challenge-decf3276207a
Googles foo
https://thehustle.co/the-secret-google-interview-that-landed-me-a-job
I remember finding a really cool one all over network requests at one time but can't remember the company. What are other great hidden interview processes? <comment><USER2> Oh... I thought you talk about real hidden interview questions. Like the ones they use to figure out how you got the recommendation letter to this job (i.e. if it wasn't one of their faction who they must be careful about). Or when you get a referral at a competitor and in the interview they try to get your insider info without making you an offer (i.e. "tell me about the last interesting project you worked on"). Or when they try to figure out in your first tasks after hiring how far they can let you in to the actual decision making process without shocking you. Or when in the interview there are different factions present and each tries to see how much they can pull you to their side.

<comment> xkcd-sucks I'm really interested in this sort of thing. Can you point to any practical, illusion-free resources for navigating and understanding corporate politics? Bonus if it's tailored to, idk, a "startup" instead of "a big four"

<comment><USER3> See this comment and parent thread on management, with link to Manager Tools podcast episode on politics.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8881752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8881752)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The repl.it jobs page is literally just a shell, and you have to figure out how to apply:

[https://repl.it/site/jobs](https://repl.it/site/jobs)

<comment><USER5> I just did a fork bomb:

firstname.lastname@example.com:~$ :(){ :|: & };: [1] 26 email@example.com:~$ bash: fork: retry: Resource temporarily unavailable

<comment><USER6> this is why we can't have nice things

<comment><USER5> I don't think it will have any effect, probably some container/vm will go down and that's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like the pattern of "solve this puzzle, get an interview" has fallen out of fashion in the past few years.

In 2012 I got an interview at facebook by solving a puzzle that involved adding weights to a recursive arrangement of levers on top of levers. I remember both having a lot of fun with the puzzle and knowing that I would have never landed the interview any other way because I was coming from a non- traditional background and still relatively junior.

I think Google's foobar came out a few years later. I had some fun with them and got through the first rounds, but by that point I already had a job and never got around to finishing it.

I also remember doing some fun puzzles on codeeval, hoping their business model of linking people to companies would gain some steam, but the companies they signed up never seemed to be very interesting.

Is leetcode essentially the new codeeval?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya i remember doing them pretty often 5-6 years ago. When i went to remember some of the fun ones for my friends who like puzzles, i couldnt find any of them, so i posted this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bandcamp typically has a fun application process.

[https://bandcamp.com/jobs](https://bandcamp.com/jobs)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, these are exactly what I mean! Even if I don't attend to apply, they are usually really fun to do.

<comment><USER9> I wonder how many people get to the end and then don't bother to apply, either because they never intended to or because writing up with a resume is too time consuming.

<comment><USER8> I've gotten to the end of the fraud engineering application but am woefully unqualified for the work. It took me two weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://leetcode.com/](https://leetcode.com/) is pretty popular and has lots of actual questions. However, Google actively bans any question that ends up there.

<comment><USER11> google also actively recommends leetcode before their interviews

<comment><USER12> i also have plenty of friends who have been asked leetcode questions at google

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just signed up for [https://dailycodingproblems.com](https://dailycodingproblems.com), a daily email of company interview problems. I can't speak to the veracity of the claims that the problems are from actual interviews, but I have no reason to doubt their authenticity. The premium version shares the answers, too. I like it so far.

<comment><USER14> You wrote the wrong link: [https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/](https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/)

<comment><USER13> Ah, thanks. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I tried to design one of those for my company. We've typically just hired someone through my HN post about it recently, so I think it's working, but I'd still really like to get some feedbacks on it. I am very concerned about getting it right, having been through the shitty side of many interview processes.

omnistream-dot-co/job-opportunities/

</comment><comment><USER16> The Curbside challenge was pretty fun. It may be the one you're thinking of, lots of API calls to get the key.

[https://challenge.curbside.com/](https://challenge.curbside.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Many tech companies add a link to their careers page in browser consoles. I'm not sure if that's "secret" or "cool" enough. (Facebook puts in a warning to prevent "XSS" attacks.)

<comment><USER18> AirBnB did this at least 3-4 years ago? If you watched the network traffic their HTTP headers included the email address for an engineering manager there. I stumbled on this while debugging something I wanted to file a bug report for. I didn't end up interviewing, but I remember thinking it was really cool at the time. I wonder how many applicants they got through that.

<comment><USER12> usually one person who finds it then posts it on a reddit and it loses value as a filter

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bandcamp has a fun puzzle on their jobs page: [https://bandcamp.com/jobs](https://bandcamp.com/jobs)

"To apply, gather the crumbs (starting with your cookies)."

</comment><comment><USER12> i still remember SWIM googling for hours trying to force google foobar to pop up. when it eventually did, most of the answers were on github and it got me an interview.

<comment><USER20> Would you mind explaining this like I'm 5? I'm curious but have no idea what SWIM or foobar is, and those aren't exactly googleable terms!

<comment><USER12> The other poster explained what SWIM is, basically just an acronym to give onself plausible deniability when talking about an action they don't necessarily want to tie to themselves.

Foobar is google's hidden coding challenge which can let people get a job interview. see: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.geeksforgeeks.org/google- fo...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.geeksforgeeks.org/google-foo-bar- challenge/amp/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The uber one was pretty creepy. It was right after one of their scandals broke, and I said to my driver that I guess they somehow know I write code.

<comment><USER22> Maybe you just live in SF :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Try Interviewbit.com It has an reward based approach which is hard to shake off once the streaks build up.

</comment><comment><USER24> Red Balloon Security 'hidden interview' process was pretty interesting, and fun! Too bad I wasn't good enough to go past a couple of stages, but to me it was the epitome example of your question.

</comment><comment><USER25> Citymapper has a cool Colossal Cave Adventure game that pops up in DevTools console, and finishing it landed me an interview there.</comment>


Ask HN: Are your Google Calendar events older than ~2  months gone, too?  - <AUTHOR>

 Trying to figure out if I'm going crazy,  if this is isolated to my account, or if  the  rest of the  internet just hasn't noticed yet. <comment><USER2> I can see 5 year old events in google calendar.</comment>


World's Fastest Self-Made Billionaires - <AUTHOR> http://thehustle.co/fastest-self-made-billionaires <comment><USER2> If you ask me, Satoshi Nakamoto is the greatest self-made billionaire story. Creates a piece of software out of thin air which legally makes him a billionaire without revealing his/her identity to anyone. Perhaps not a single individual but still impressive as hell.

<comment><AUTHOR> True - but unfortunately he/she cannot be confirmed.</comment></comment>


Is Node.js.org Server Down? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There are routing problems at level3. Possibly related.</comment>


Ask YC: What should I use for front end GUI development? - <AUTHOR>

Though I have worked on compilers using C, I haven't done any GUI programming before. Currently I am working on a project that will require some nice looking front end GUI. I am looking for a tool to develop platform independent GUI. The project will also have some web interaction. What language and library will you suggest for this.
I have heard about python and tknter. <comment><USER2> Tcl/Tk get sneered at by people who have never used it, but it is an incredibly productive environment if you need a GUI to drive a C program, especially with the new style widgets (ttk). Check out www.tkdocs.com. The downside is that Tcl isn't to everyone's taste. It has improved a lot with version 8.5 (e.g. tcl::mathop is much nicer than expr). Tcl can be made to behave a lot like LISP - you can add new control structures to the language, eval code, etc etc. See wiki.tcl.tk for more details.

If you are set on using Python, you could do a lot worse than wxPython. It is much more like "traditional" GUI programming (e.g. if you have done Motif you will pick it up straight away). You can also get at wx from C++ if that's your bag.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it easy to learn Tcl/Tk as a C hacker? Also can I design beautiful looking widgets with it? I mean like things that can be done with DHTML for a browser ?

I liked Enso's interface ... can that type of interface be designed using Tcl/Tk ?

<comment><USER2> 1) Tcl/Tk is very very easy to learn (and to embed in C applications)

2) I've never implemented my own widgets but plenty of people have, check out BLT as an example

3) I don't know what Enso is I'm afraid.

<comment><AUTHOR> OOPS I forgot to give the link. It is a startup by Aza Raskin and his friends. The link is <http://www.humanized.com> Even if you don't use it do check out the demo. It's nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check PyQT.

If you're a C hacker Objective C may be the best option, but I don't know mature <http://www.gnustep.org/> is.</comment>


Geoff Hinton's "Neural Networks for Machine Learning" Is Being Offered Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/learn/neural-networks <comment><AUTHOR> I took this course when it was first offered in 2012 and I can't recommend it highly enough. It has had a big impact on my career.

The course focuses almost entirely on neural nets rather than taking detours through the rest of machine learning. I recently learned that the well-known optimization technique RMSProp, presented in the slides of this course[1], was not previously published and subsequent papers have been using the course notes as a citation for it. Despite this level of cutting edge knowledge being contained in the course, it was possible (though difficult) for me to follow with no previous machine learning experience and no prerequisites other than the math I learned in the course of getting a CS degree.

[1] [http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~tijmen/csc321/slides/lecture_slid...](http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~tijmen/csc321/slides/lecture_slides_lec6.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> Pretty frustrated about this course. I had registered for the 2012 version at the end of June 2016 and after I got a quarter of a way through the lessons they removed it. When I talked to the company they said it would be re- available in september. I'm skeptical it will contain new material and am extremely frustrated with the overall experience.

<comment><USER3> They seem to have done a purge on older courses recently, lost access to 2 courses recently as well. It's extremely frustrating to adapt to the particular style and flow a course and then have it ripped out for...? (I'm not actually sure what justification goes here)

Unless I can download all of the content at once, I'm staying away. (This works well for textbooks, but videos can be large. ~40GB/Semester/Class for 720p MIT OCW off youtube)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the syllabus and prerequisites for this course? There is not enough information about it</comment>


Leaked Email Shows HBO Negotiating with Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/news/a27730/leaked-email-hbo-negotiating-hackers/ <comment><USER2> It doesn't surprise me. This phenomenon has become an epidemic lately. The employees are usually the vulnerability that these guys look for and is why they need special training when it d comes to cyber attacks.

<comment><USER3> > The employees are usually the vulnerability

which makes it especially strange for the CEO to call it a "bug bounty". I'm not quite sure how a bug in humans can be resolved by a contract IT firm.</comment></comment>


U2 Spy Plane Fries Air Traffic Control Computers, Shuts Down LAX - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/spy-plane-fries-air-traffic-control-computers-shuts-down-lax-n95886

<comment> dj-wonk NBC News, you might want to reassign your headline writer to the celebrity gossip section. Headlines seem to be getting worse, or maybe I just have less patience for them.

This headline says the plane "fries" the computers, (1) leaving out any indication that the reports are unconfirmed, (2) suggesting permanent computer damage, and (3) implying some sort of active jamming. Interesting -- _if_ it is true.

The article is a bit more cautious -- it doesn't use the word "fries" \-- instead saying it "appears to have triggered a software glitch at a major air traffic control center in California".

IMO, truly frying a computer only happens when you blast it with a heavy dose of radiation (like putting it in the microwave!).

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder if this problem is related to unexpected elevations over 65,535 feet?

<comment><USER3> I like the conjecture, but believe that that alone shouldn't be enough. SpaceShipOne, after all, flew to 100 kilometers from Mojave, which is part of the airspace managed by the L.A. Air Route Traffic Control Center.

Oh! This is nice. SSO was in 2004, and the ERAM system they mention is newer than that, so my observation doesn't actually mean anything. Even better, the prime contractor for ERAM? Lockheed Martin. Manufacturer of the U-2? Lockheed Martin.

<comment><USER4> Vandenberg Air Force Base is, what, 150 miles to the NW? Would LAX's radars see polar orbit launches?

I also find it difficult to imagine a SR-71 didn't mosey on by its radars, especially since the Skunk Works were in Burbank during the Cold War.

<comment><USER3> It's not LAX, it's the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center.

Quoting from the link: "As a result, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had to stop accepting flights into airspace managed by the L.A. Center, issuing a nationwide ground stop..." including a stop at LAX.

According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Air_Route_Traffic_C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Air_Route_Traffic_Control_Center) \- "the Los Angeles ARTCC controls en route air traffic over southern and central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and western Arizona with the exception of military airspace and lower-level airspace controlled by local airport towers and TRACONs." This includes Vandenberg.

The last SR-71 flight was in 1999, which is well before the ERAM computer system which failed here was turned on.

Yes, there have been some launches from Vandenberg. What I don't know is if rockets are required to have a transponder. I did only a brief search, and what I found suggests a "no" answer, at least in 2007:

[https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/licenses_permits/sub_orbital_rockets/newregs/media/EP_FR.pdf)

It notes that commercial Mode C transponders have/had "cannot currently report an altitude greater than 62,000 feet."

That's suspiciously close to the 60,000 feet reported in the link.

<comment><AUTHOR> LA RTC / palmdale has alot of military air-traffic.

Within 100 miles of it are major military installations in ridgecrest, ca (China Lake Naval Air Station etc).

It would be very interesting (if unfortunate) if a recent SW upgrade could not handle things flying in and out of that part of the world.

While that did involve the SR71, the US maintains several airframes capable of 65K ceiling including the f15

[http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/mdc/eagle.page](http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/mdc/eagle.page)

This is a famous story, and almost surely was LA RTC.

 _" Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?" There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. "Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground."

I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: "Ah, Center, much thanks, we're showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money."_

[http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/favorite- sr-71-story-107912...](http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/favorite- sr-71-story-1079127041)

<comment><USER3> I fully confess to being almost ignorant on this topic. I am only conjecturing.

I'm curious though to know how often aircraft go above 62,000 feet. While the F-15 reached over 100,000 ft., the same page lists a service ceiling of 65,000 feet. And while the SR-71 easily flew at higher altitudes, it stopped flying before the affected computer system started running.

I can easily think of other problems; perhaps there was a problem with the U-2's transponder, or perhaps it's a combination of altitude and speed, ... or I'm sure you can conjecture scenarios as well as I.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google gets Bing'd in Sydney - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/soa/Video-Wide-Google-gets-Bing-d-Video/0,139023769,339297502,00.htm

<comment><USER2> Video of people passing out Bing stickers in front of a Google office?

Perhaps if there was audio of the Googlers' responses, this _might_ be interesting, but otherwise this is just a (fairly boring) commercial for Bing.

<comment><USER3> Am I the only one who thinks it was quite funny?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What does MS/Bing think it is, some hip cool new startup trying to be all yuppie and exciting?

Watching this video is like watching a dead horse beat it self up.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems like they didn't get any decent sound bites so they went for the silent movie look. There KDE/Win7 film wasn't bad but this was very boring.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who is underdog? Richest person on earth?

<comment><USER7> It's can be a good PR tactic though - polarize and conquer. Ask.com tried a similar approach when they rebranded, replete with guerilla marketing campaigns like this and fake graffiti. The problem is that Google's quite hard to hate....

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Silly rabbit, everybody knows the plural is "bung".</comment>


Enabling Cross Domain JS Communication - <AUTHOR> http://blog.igodigital.com/blog/notes-on-cyber-weekend-targeted-email-campaigns/enabling-cross-domain-js-with-iframes-the-fun-way

<comment><USER2> I think the Google Closure library does the same thing with goog.net.xpc.IframeRelayTransport. [http://closure- library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/class_goog_ne...](http://closure- library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/class_goog_net_xpc_IframeRelayTransport.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh nice, hadn't seen that before! Looks to be the exact same technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Uh... 404

<comment><AUTHOR> Temporary hiccup with our blogging platform... All better now.</comment></comment>


A guide to private alpha testing - <AUTHOR> https://www.startuprocket.com/articles/the-art-and-science-of-private-alpha-testing <comment><AUTHOR> I'd be curious to learn how others approach private alpha (how long to stay in it, who to include, what to test, how to think about feature additions/pivots, etc...)</comment>