Running Effective Retrospectives - <AUTHOR> http://werve.net/articles/running-effective-retrospectives/

<comment><USER2> If you're looking to spice up your retro, here is a site with a great selection of techniques: [http://www.funretrospectives.com/](http://www.funretrospectives.com/)

I've gone from dreading the retrospective to looking forward to it with enthusiasm; mostly because I had never seen them run properly.

The Scrum format (what worked well, what didn't work, etc) just didn't do it for me. The meetings felt forced and awkward. It wasn't until I was involved in a retros with _much_ more interactivity that it all clicked into place.

Teams that don't run regular retrospectives will suffer internal strife much more frequently than those that do. Even if every retro isn't 100% useful, just having it as a regular, un-skippable ceremony will go a long way toward team cohesion.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've repeated the same retrospective items sprint over sprint without them being addressed. At one point I put a sticky up saying "this sticky will not be addressed." It's kind of sad.</comment>


Students Settle with TurnItIn - <AUTHOR> http://a-non-a.blogspot.com/2009/08/students-settle-with-turnitin.html

<comment><USER2> Perhaps instead of submitting papers via TurnItIn, they should submit links to papers stored in Vanish[1].

1- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=719067></comment>


Show HN: Simple aggregator that scrapes hotels, hotwire, airbnb, jetsetter, etc. - <AUTHOR> http://AllTheRooms.com

<comment><USER2> Nice job! The UI reminds me of like hipmunk. Few observations On clicking the image thumbnail, nothing happens. The price slider on left is not returned any rows when I adjusted that to >40K, even after 3mins.

Would you mind sharing what framework you used for scraping?

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole thing is javascript, front and back (node + angular). It turned out to be a great choice.

The scrapers are hand written.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love any feedback, especially missing features or sites that you think we should include.

<comment><USER3> I think this is fantastic! A few things from a few minutes of poking around:

When you hover on the image for each place the cursor turns to a pointer hand and an image icon overlay appears, but it is not actually clickable.

What is the deal with the "amazing" tab? When looking at places in Louisville, KY two hostels from India are all that show up in that tab.

If you set a filter that has no results the "loading results…" spins forever rather than saying "no results, loosen your filters".

The address/landmark box automatically clears itself if you click back into it. So if I enter an address and nothing comes up and I want to click back in there to edit that address it clears and I have to start over. The search by name box doesn't behave that way so I'm guessing it has something to do with the live search.

When you click the "price on X other sites" link the styles need adjusting. When the line drops down and you are hovered on the block the box shadow cuts right through the newly visible links.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome feedback! Thanks!

Any suggestions on sites we should add?

The amazing tab will be a mix of curated extraordinary places plus particularly good deals like a groupon or jetsetter hit.

<comment><USER3> I thought I'd check back and see how it is going today and I noticed something else; after you hover over an image thumbnail the border-radius disappears so the image is square instead of rounded like it is when the page loads.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: We built a DApp, an Ethereum address book with private chat. No ICO :) - <AUTHOR> https://keymesh.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> We are a DApp team in China, and it took us about 3 months to build KeyMesh, an Ethereum address book with private chat. We are super excited to share it with the Ethereum community!

KeyMesh is a decentralized address book for Ethereum accounts. You can use it to prove on Twitter that you own an account, and search for other accounts using Twitter names.

Using KeyMesh you can send money and messages to verified Twitter names, instead of long addresses.

And we did it without funding or ICO

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

You'll need desktop Chrome & MetaMask. Mobile is not yet supported, sorry.

The BETA runs on the Rinkeby network, and you can get free test ether from the faucet.</comment>


Edward Snowden makes 'moral' case for presidential pardon - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/13/edward-snowden-why-barack-obama-should-grant-me-a-pardon <comment><USER3> I bet everyone's been digging for precedent. Found this:

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

Samuel Loring Morison (born October 30, 1944) is a former American intelligence professional, who was convicted of espionage and theft of government property in 1985, and pardoned in 2001. He was "the only [American] government official ever convicted for giving classified information to the press."

Seems pretty similar superficially. I wonder if he'll do it, Obama.

Also something quite odd is the number of pardons that seem a bit suspect. For instance Clinton pardoned his own brother. And Marc Rich. Think what you may of him (famous commodity trader, lots of shady deals rumoured), but his crime doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary.

Pardoning Snowden would be a comment on the surveillance state, something worthwhile to talk about. Pardoning some guy who smuggled some oil doesn't seem to have a purpose in regards to the state's role in society.

<comment><USER4> > Marc Rich [...] his crime doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary

One of the biggest US tax frauds ever, polluted and corrupted Zambia, fled to Switzerland to avoid prosecution (just the tax thing of course), hired lobbyists, sponsored congress library and some politicians, pardoned by Bill Clinton. An example of class justice, corruption and other things wrong in the US, but as you said: nothing out of the ordinary...

I'm afraid Snowden did not make enough money to pay off the right people, like Rich did.

<comment><USER5> I think he meant "nothing out of the ordinary" as in nothing to warrant a pardon.

Except, of course, he was rich and well connected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Out of curiosity - how powerful is a presidential pardon?

Can a US president basically compose an edict saying 'This man is a bleeding hero and no branch of the US government will ever hold any of his actions related to incident X against him, now or in the future or else they shall snuff it!' and have this respected by his successors?

Or may a presidential pardon be reversed by any successor?

Is it narrowly defined, eg. the pardonee (is that even a word) may not be prosecuted for his violation of US code such-and-such, section so-so committed on or before date DDMMYY? (Leaving any successor free to throw the book at him for anything not explicitly covered by the issued pardon?)

Hm. Off to Google I go; I find the concept somewhat intriguing.

<comment><USER7> > Out of curiosity - how powerful is a presidential pardon?

It is absolute.

> Can a US president basically compose an edict saying 'This man is a bleeding > hero and no branch of the US government will ever hold any of his actions > related to incident X against him, now or in the future or else they shall > snuff it!' and have this respected by his successors?

No, a pardon only affects criminal prosecutions and punishments -- to the extent covered by the text of the pardon, any future prosecution (or continuation of existing prosecution) is barred, and any criminal punishment (including and disabilities imposed by past conviction) is terminated. It doesn't affect any other action by the government, including any civil action that might be available in law.

> Is it narrowly defined, eg. the pardonee (is that even a word) may not be > prosecuted for his violation of US code such-and-such, section so-so > committed on or before date DDMMYY? (Leaving any successor free to throw the > book at him for anything not explicitly covered by the issued pardon?)

It can be as narrow or broad as the President chooses. About the only limit is that it is generally held (though this has never had occasion to be tested) that the Constitutional power of the pardon does not extend to _prospective_ pardons (that is, a pardon cannot apply to offenses that occur after the pardon is issued.)

<comment><USER8> One more limitation: a Presidential pardon doesn't affect state laws. If, for instance, Snowden had committed some crime against the state that he was residing in, the President would not forgive it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reasons it would be in the interests of the US govt to pardon Snowden:

\- It would decrease Snowden's celebrity for him to return from exile.

\- It would remove incentives for Snowden to constantly amplify inconsistent/ hypocritical behavior of the US govt.

\- It would improve the optics for the tech industry for working more closely with government.

Reasons it would be against Us govt interests.

\- It would make the intelligence community feel hurt/ sad.

<comment><USER10> Each of these points is up for serious disagreement.

1\. His celebrity could _increase exponentially_ when he returned home and was available to do a press junket and book tour. He would appear on every morning talk show and radio show and then a tour of the campuses, libraries and malls of America. This idea is absurd on its face.

2\. He had the resolve to make the initial release knowing he was destroying his life - it is clear this is a moral stance for him and the personal damage is done. If he came back to the U.S., expect him to be emboldened and wind up working for a lobby or a not for profit.

3\. Lobbying dollars >> optics.

RE: US Government interests:

1\. It would make the democrats look weak on terror and intelligence in the face of an upcoming and obscenely hotly contested election.

2\. It would be bad for morale of our intelligence agencies - by no means a 'soft' consideration.

3\. It would, in fact, set a precedent that whistleblowers will get pardoned.

This last point is the whole issue. Neither this administration, nor future administrations, is going to be particularly fond of intelligence whistleblowers. Financial and business whistleblowers is one thing - but in intelligence? That is another issue entirely. All politics aside, though we may, as citizens, want this to be precisely the case and hope that if we ever held political office we would feel the same way, it is just unlikely that this attitude is going to be found within the upper echelons of the intelligence or political community.

Unfortunately, the downsides are hugely substantial to those in power and the upsides are widely distributed among the general public. With a risk/reward- matrix like that, don't expect to see any pardons coming down for Snowden anytime soon.

<comment><USER9> I like these counter arguments

<comment><USER11> _slow clap_

<comment><USER12> Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all. We ban accounts that continue to post this way.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really hope he'll be able to leave Russia one day but if I were him, I wouldn't return to the US. Too many people with weird ideas in their heads.

<comment><USER14> Not a trait confined to the United States by any stretch.

<comment><USER15> The difference is that Russian state security is protecting him from deportation/abduction/assassination (while also surveilling him) to make sure they get to keep sticking their finger in America's eye.

If he leaves the Eastern bloc you can bet that the boys in Fort Meade will make contingency plans to sabotage his brakes/get him on trumped-up charges for something else a la Assange/otherwise ruin his day.

<comment><USER16> >The difference is that Russian state security is protecting him from deportation

that's a double edged sword; if the Russian leaders decide some day that they want to improve relations with the US by extraditing him then they might just do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I admire Snowden's sacrifice, but the US can't pardon him. Doing so would signify weakness and encourage subversive behaviour. Traditionalist countries – China, Russia, Iran – are especially perceptive to status signaling. No doubt they would exploit the event to foster Anti-American sentiments. Also, we don't know the info Russian Intelligence got out of his asylum in Moscow.

Side note: I hope GMT Games releases an expansion for Twlight Struggle: 1989 ~ 2015. Despite the fall of the USSR, the proxy war has never stopped. I'd love to re-enact the past 25 years. _Snowden flees to Moscow_ would be a Red Event, 2 ops: " _US reveals their hand of cards this turn. Remove up to a total of 2 US Influence from one or more countries to Western Europe_ ".

EDIT: to clarify, I do want the US to grant him pardon.

<comment><USER17> At some point I have to draw a line between the information that he leaked regarding questionable (and, ultimately, illegal) domestic US spying programs and the sizable remainder of the corpus detailing US tools, techniques, and strategy employed against foreign nations. The former is undoubtedly potentially patriotic, while the latter is a legitimate and legal function of the NSA and likely damaged its intelligence mission on a number of fronts (and is, ultimately, treasonous).

I have to ask myself: could he have leaked the former without the latter? In all available information, I have not seen a compelling reason to think that the two bodies of data were inseparable. A heroic Snowden with the best of intentions absolutely needed to invest the time and care into either not collecting the body of non-US data in the first place or, failing that, purging it from the body that he released to the world.

For me, his failure to do either inexorably poisons any heroic fallout with the treasonous side effects. One step further: _why_ did he neglect to do something as simple and important? I find the heroic Snowden to be a hard sell, since it seems like he was at best grossly irresponsible and, more likely, motivated by something other than patriotism.

<comment><USER18> > and the sizable remainder of the corpus detailing US tools, techniques, and > strategy employed against foreign nations.

Could you provide a reference to these? I've heard this referred to before, but still don't know what he did that could have done actual harm.

EDIT: Unless that harm is simply other nations thinking that the US isn't spying on them, and then learning that they _really_ , _really_ are?

<comment><USER19> I think it's government propaganda. The only foreign espionage stuff I remember hearing about was this[1], which turned out to be a false flag leak[2] (!!!).

[1][http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive- uk-s...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-uk-s-secret- mid-east-internet-surveillance-base-is-revealed-in-edward-snowden- leaks-8781082.html)

[2][https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk- gov...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk-government- independent-military-base)

<comment><USER19> Downvote away, but this has come up repeatedly and no one has managed to provide a source. Meanwhile the fake incident I just linked is strong evidence that the government is willing to go to lengths to construct that narrative. It's been repeated so often that even Snowden supporters are starting to leave it unchallenged, but I think we're witnessing revisionism right here. In fact, as far as I can tell Greenwald et al have exercised considerable restraint in only publishing activities with bearing on domestic surveillance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> His case should have been: "You pardoned many criminals that actually caused harm, I on the other hand, only caused awareness of the government's surveillance crimes"

<comment><USER21> He caused awareness of a lot more than that. If he just blew open the meta data bulk collection, I'd strongly support a pardon. But he disclosed much much more than that. Stuff that inarguably legal under US law.

<comment><USER20> What do you mean?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why would Obama suddenly stop whistleblower persecution? It's the one thing he will be famous for. And you can't ruin a bad reputation.

</comment><comment><USER23> He makes a good case for the pardon, but Obama won't give it.

Why?

Snowden doesn't have enough powerful forces in high places that will push for the pardon. If he has friends like Jonathan Jay Pollard has, chances are he'll get it, but he doesn't.

<comment><USER24> Obama has granted pardons or clemency to well over 100 people while in office. He has directed the DOJ to fill the pipeline of clemency cases for him to review before he leaves office, with a focus on people sentenced under harsher guidelines that were revised while he was in office.

Obama won't pardon Snowden not because Snowden doesn't have the right friends. He won't do it because it would be a politically unpopular move. Everyone can get behind pardoning someone sentenced to life for shoplifting under a three strikes law. Snowden is much more divisive.

<comment><USER23> > He won't do it because it would be a politically unpopular move.

If that were important in granting pardons, Clinton wouldn't have pardoned Mark Rich. Those politically-opposed to Obama will remain so regardless of what he does, so he couldn't care less.

<comment><USER24> Clinton later stated in public he regretted that decision and the damage it did to his legacy.

<comment><USER25> It is always amazing to me when politicians say they "regret" an action, or "take responsibility" for a vote (see Clinton's statements on Iraq since 2014).

What does it even mean, apart from lip service to those who disagree with their vote? Politicians don't hold personal responsibility for the fallout of their policies, so it is just rhetoric intended to neutralize your negative opinions of them.

<comment><USER26> > What does it even mean, apart from lip service to those who disagree with > their vote?

Just what you suspect it does: nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> At the very least he should get a David Petraeus deal (who was trading classified information for sex).

<comment><USER28> The scale of what Petraeus did vs what Snowden did is very different.

<comment><USER27> I don't think scale is written into the law.

<comment><USER28> While I can't speak to whether or not it is written into the law, there is historical precedent on the matter. Look up Clayton Lonetree for one where the scale was low. He was given a shorter sentence than is typical of espionage. Look up Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen for someone where the damage was estimated to be much greater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> He'll never get it. He lost any hope of whistle-blower status when he released information on foreign surveillance programs.

<comment><USER30> The government lost any hope of moral high-ground by performing illegal surveillance amongst many other things. It is not reasonable to expect Snowden to selectively only release information that was strictly illegal (due to sheer number of files to sort through) and it is reasonable for someone to whistle-blow through unofficial channels when official ones are not available (and they weren't despite many people trying to advocate that they were - <USER2> your breath).

Here's an idea - don't do horrifically illegal, amoral things alongside other legal but probably still amoral things, quash all possibilities of accountability, and expect that no one will call you out on it.

Snowden did the right thing, and the only thing that could have been done.

<comment><USER31> No. Whistleblowing on illegal government actions is totally different from treason. The fact that part of the government did something illegal in no way justifies undermining national security goals if those two are not related.

Snowden clearly did not do the only thing that could have been done. He did release documents selectively, therefore he could have chosen to not release the foreign surveillance information.

All governments do bad things. That justifies whistleblowing. It never justifies an attack on the country's international security by its own citizens. In case you handn't noticed, other powerful states have no qualms about cyberwarefare.

<comment><USER30> >The fact that part of the government did something illegal in no way justifies undermining national security goals if those two are not related.

If a government does something illegal and actively works to prevent itself from being held accountable, it is justified in my opinion to make them accountable even at the cost of intangible inconvenience. You're operating under the assumption that a government _should_ operate in secrecy, which in my opinion is bullshit - even for military and CIA activities, we should be transparent on non-granular scales. Obviously not releasing "hey we're going to mortar this coordinate at this time" but you probably get the idea.

>He did release documents selectively, therefore he could have chosen to not release the foreign surveillance information.

He released 200,000 documents. Millions of pages of information. I don't see how it can be argued he alone could have thoroughly vetted these documents to prevent unintentional leaks. And in his situation, I am sure he had to weigh the advantages of revealing illegal activities to the intangible and temporary inconvenience of only slightly less morally reprehensible spying programs.

>In case you handn't noticed, other powerful states have no qualms about cyberwarefare.

We shouldn't make our standards by comparing us to other countries. There are some pretty fucked up laws out there.

<comment><USER31> Thanks for clarifying.

Where we disagree is on your opinion that military and CIA activities should not be secret. Secrecy has been critical to maintaining strategic advantage in war and national security throughout history. Nothing has changed about that now. To suggest that we should blindly ignore this seems disconnected from the real world.

> We shouldn't make out standards by comparing us to other countries.

I can see how it might have looked as if that's what I was doing. I am not. To clarify - I don't think the illegal programs are justified at all, and Snowden was right to leak them. I do think the international intelligence programs are jusified. Not because we should do what others are doing, but because there are large and powerful countries who don't share ours interests and intend to undermine us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My guess is, his flight from the US is going to prevent his pardon. A pardon was a long shot no matter what, but a preemptive pardon of a fugitive would be without historical precedent.

<comment><USER23> Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Clinton pardon a guy who ran to another country to avoid prosecution here (USA)?

<comment><USER32> Yeah, Mark Rich. Ok, not without precedent. (Mark Rich cooperated and was pardoned conditionally, for whatever that's worth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just out of curiosity – does Snowden have material that hasn't yet been released to the press/public?

I imagine that a hurdle to pardoning him would be that there is potentially content that would be too egregious not to charge him, which has yet to be released.

If he were pardoned, and that material were released, would he be immune to prosecution? This sounds like a thorny thing to try to figure out, or maybe it's really obvious :)

<comment><USER34> > does Snowden have material that hasn't yet been released to the press/public

He has implied that he possesses such material, in great quantity. He is holding that possession up as deterrent against assassination, although if he received a pardon, presumably he wouldn't need that deterrent anymore?

Besides, I would think a deterrent such as I'm describing would be _motivation_ for russians to assassinate him and make it look like americans did it.

<comment><USER35> > He has implied that he possesses such material,

To the contrary, he has adamantly denied possessing _any_ such material. I dont have the source, but in several video interviews he's said to protect himself from being apprehended by foreign intel agencies for a copy of the material, he simply doesnt have it. He's turned it all over to journalists.

<comment><USER34> Pardon, I spoke imprecisely. But the effect is the same-

He does not possess the material, but he absolutely possesses the encryption keys to the material, and has distributed an encrypted version of a vast trove of material to many different persons, with a deadman switch.

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/snowdens_dead...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/snowdens_dead_m.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What is he looking at to his right? Did he receive the questions beforehand and is reading his speech from a paper?

</comment><comment><USER37> Wouldn't he have to be tried, convicted, and imprisoned before he could be pardoned? I think what Snowden wants here is amnesty.

</comment><comment><USER38> The problem lies with the assumption/argument of 'moral'.

The systems we live in are systemically corrupted by money (and/or power).

</comment><comment><USER39> I hope he gets it, but he'll probably have to donate $100 grand to the Clinton foundation like everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER40> I hope it happens!

I wonder what his life would be like upon his return. I suspect his life would still be in danger.

</comment><comment><USER41> Am I missing something here? Snowden was never convicted of anything, how can he be pardoned?

<comment><USER7> > Snowden was never convicted of anything, how can he be pardoned?

You don't need to be convicted, or even charged, to be pardoned; a pardon doesn't even have to be specific as to the crime(s) it covers, it can just cover any crimes you may or may not have committed during some time specified time period before the pardon was issued (as was the case with Ford's pardon of Nixon.)

It is true that the usual clemency petition process operates after conviction, but that's a discretionary administrative process, it does not reflect the scope of the Constitutional pardon power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Snowden blew any chance of this when he leaked tons of data about totally legitimate foreign intelligence activities, not just domestic spying. Regardless of whether you think leaking the domestic spying programs was justified, his leaks about our activities overseas are unforgivable.

<comment><USER43> As someone who lives overseas, I'll happily forgive him. I imagine I'm not alone in this.

<comment><USER42> His responsibility wasn't to your interests. If your interests conflict with America's interests, then yours lose out in the decisions that the United States makes. Just as if my interests as an American conflict with your government's interests, mine will lose out in their decisions.

<comment><USER44> Not everyone segments responsibility to only their own country. He did humanity a service. He certainly did not have a responsibility to intentionally withhold evidence of US surveillance in other countries. I believe he had a moral imperative to reveal that information.

<comment><USER42> When you have a government job and are entrusted with a security clearance, your country's interests must be your only concern. The people are entrusting you with their interests.

<comment><USER45> _your country 's interests must be your only concern_

And his country's interests were his concern. What he had a problem with was his government's interests.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I dropped static-site generators in favor of WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://ctrl.blog/entry/static-to-wordpress <comment><USER2> I totally get the appeal of using static-site generators, I just don't understand why anyone would want to use it for a blog. As a programmer I use tools that are very complex; however, for those tools, there is no simpler alternative. When it comes to things that are outside of my work, I try to keep things as simple as possible, because the simpler it is the less I have to worry about it and the less sleep I loose at night over it.

</comment><comment><USER3> You wont need post scheduling because nobody will bother to read your blog if you keep up that attitude! Problem solved</comment>


Fitts's law - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law <comment><USER2> Here's a great old Kevin Hale article that has been posted over the years but never got discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=62829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=62829).

I invited Kevin to repost it. If he does, we'll merge this discussion there.

Edit: comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16613903](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16613903).

</comment><comment><USER3> If someone can tell me how to convince 20-something developers that this law matters, I'd like to learn. "Why are your fonts so BIG?".</comment>


So, you want to provide an API for the world to use? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ivankamajic.com/?p=551 <comment><USER2> Same article, different site, different layout, submitted yesterday, some discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978709></comment>


Nuitka: A Python compiler - <AUTHOR> https://nuitka.net/pages/overview.html?repost1 <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15354613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15354613)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have to thank sametmax for mentioning this project in a separate thread ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978932)).

The project is indeed really astounding. 5000 clean commits, solid developer and user documentation, open source license, etc. And this solves, among other things, a very big and common problem for the Python community (packaging end- user apps).

Just look at that README: [https://github.com/kayhayen/Nuitka/blob/develop/README.rst](https://github.com/kayhayen/Nuitka/blob/develop/README.rst)

Just LOOK at that developer manual: [https://nuitka.net/doc/developer- manual.html](https://nuitka.net/doc/developer-manual.html)

Dang.

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks fantastic!

I wonder, does this make use of the new type annotations that were introduced with Python 3.5? I don't know much about compilers, but I guess those could be used (heavily) for performance optimization, like in Cython, no?

<comment><USER3> No it doesn't but it's planned i believe. Although the author really could use support. Personnaly i donate, my c skills being zero.</comment></comment>


Mob Software (2000) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dreamsongs.com/MobSoftware.html <comment><USER2> > Let me say it plainly: We know how to produce small portions of software > using small development teams—up to 10 or so—but we don't know how to make > software any larger except by accident or by rough trial and error.—Because > the software we're trying to build is too massive—it is simply too difficult > to plan it all out, and we have no idea how to coordinate the number of > people it takes. Every piece of software built requires tremendous attention > to detail and endless fiddling to get right.

I was faced with the same problem when I wrote my first program in assembler. I solved this by making blocks. At the begin and end of each block, I put the requirements and guarantees on the value in each register in a comment.

I work as a IT consultant and maybe my vision is skewed, but I never encountered that very basic level of specification before. At the companies where I have worked, requirements are usually specified verbally, in a loose way. Additionally, OOP concepts are (ab)used, so you there is a lot more state to keep track of.

I imagine that if you think about the structure of the project and specify interfaces of units very precisely (both in terms of what in- and output is allowed, what data types, etc.), this would work a lot better.

In terms of structured working for myself, my background in math and low-level programming has helped me a lot. In terms of working in a team, it has made me aware of how little concrete information is written down, and how much information is in peoples heads only.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Programming languages have hardly shown one scintilla of difference from the > designs made in the first few years of computing. All significant > programming languages are expressively, conceptually, and aesthetically > equivalent to Fortran and assembly language.

There's been a hidden (or perhaps not so hidden) war between the from first principles approach people and the hackers since we started writing software.

The from first principles approach people want to treat software as a mathematical discipline, and _prove_ software correctness. They want to tackle problems from the top down, and rely heavily on abstraction. The family of Lisp and ML languages follow this approach.

The hacker approach is to iterate until something works. This is the prevailing method. It treats writing software as a craft or trade over a scientific discipline. Correctness is impossible to reason about, but it's quick, dirty, and gets the job done.

In the early days, from first principles lost because it was slow and time consuming. Errors in correctness were less detrimental, the world had yet to become so reliant on software. Quick and dirty meant companies could hire from a broader pool of people than just trained computer scientists. It made software a commodity.

Now we're entering into a crossing, where the from first principles approach has narrowed the gap of efficiency, and quick and dirty is starting to cost us fortunes. Bugs are now a matter of national security, or cause companies to betray the privacy of billions of people.

Our languages do need to evolve to start looking at problems from a from first principles approach. Correctness is now something we can have alongside speed, and correctness has become more important than ever.

This is why I'm bullish on Rust, a language designed from a from first principles perspective, but as efficient as C++. But I think we have stop excepting the lowest common denominator languages. We have to wean ourselves off easy languages that stop us from reasoning about the correctness of our programs. It's not going to be easy, but the weekly breaches of our privacy and the ongoing cyberwarfare between nation states will push us in the right direction eventually.

<comment><AUTHOR> > iterate until something works... craft or trade over a scientific > discipline.

Huh? _Science_ is the quintessence of iterating "until something works", i.e. until you have a theory that appears to fit the observations, until it doesn't, and then you iterate again to find a new theory.

Science is exactly the turning away from a "first principles" approach, and only when we did turn away from that "first principles" approach did first the scientific and then the industrial revolution take off.

And of course in Software, the "first principles" approach was what we successfully overcame with agile approaches that stress quick feedback loops, and of course the same thing happened in manufacturing and other disciplines as well.

<comment><USER3> > Huh? Science is the quintessence of iterating "until something works"

It is not enough in science to prove that something works, you must also prove that it is correct. That is why in mathematics, even though we believe something to be true through intuition, it is still simply conjecture until we have a rigorous proof. We may even call it a theory if we can observe it with a high degree of certainty. Science is effective because we pay attention to correctness at every level, slowly building understanding in an iterative fashion. The only assumptions we make are at the level of axioms.

The current state of programming makes no claims about the overall correctness of a program. We may write tests about various subsystems, and increase our chances that a system will behave as we expect, but a rigorous proof of correctness, or even something close to a proof of correctness, is still a fantasy.

> Science is exactly the turning away from a "first principles" approach

Science is a from first principles approach. Invention is not necessarily scientific.

> And of course in Software, the "first principles" approach was what we > successfully overcame with agile approaches that stress quick feedback loops

Agile has nothing to do with software correctness. It's a methodology for gathering and executing on requirements and constraints. What I'm talking about is ensuring a program behaves in a way we can reason about mathmatically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Math ≠ Science. In fact, it is questionable whether math even is a science.

"There is disagreement,[16][17] however, on whether the formal sciences [ _these include mathematics_ ] actually constitute a science as they do not rely on empirical evidence."

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

 _Science_ can never, ever "prove" anything correct, all scientific knowledge is provisional.

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

"Thus we are led to ask: What is a proof? Heuristically, a proof is a rhetorical device for convincing someone else that a mathematical statement is true or valid."

[https://www.math.wustl.edu/~sk/eolss.pdf](https://www.math.wustl.edu/~sk/eolss.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We Aren't the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/ <comment><USER2> As a thought experiment, if this was done in the US with $10k, and the other subject offered me $3000 I would take it. I would not walk away from $3000 to punish him for being unfair. If he offered me $100 I would probably walk away. So I would be more tolerant of unfairness if I was getting a large enough payout.

This is precisely how contracting shops work in the IT industry in the US. They keep the bulk of the money and pay the contractor just enough that he does not walk away from the deal.

<comment><USER3> > If he offered me $100 I would probably walk away.

Why? Do you really consider it worth $100 to you just to _prevent_ someone else from getting $9900, or do you just value $100 so little that you are willing to round it down to $0?

I can imagine real-world scenarios in which I might spend $100 worth of my time to try to address a problem, especially if I think that problem might affect others. (Scenarios involving an actual $100 seem even less likely, but plausible for a sufficiently egregious wrong.)

However, as a game, I'd call it free money no matter the amount; neither player did anything in particular to earn the money other than taking their time to play the game, and I don't see it as even slightly unfair of the first player to offer less money to the second, so I don't see any value in "punishing" the first player. The first player happened to get the better opportunity, and the second player gets to choose between having something or having nothing. In the game version, I'd place zero value on how much the first player gets.

Now, if I thought I could bluff the first player via advance communication into believing that I'd reject the offer if less than a certain amount, I'd certainly do it; however, if they called the bluff, I'll take what I can get.

<comment><USER4> This is a favorite game of mine and I've given it some thought. I think an alternate formulation might give the typical HN reader new insight in the game.

Let's say I tell you I have an idea for a company. It's a really cool idea and if we realize it we will make boatloads of money. I need your help to realize it. If you agree, you will get 20% of the company. If you don't, we won't realize it and neither of us will make any money.

Do you accept? If not, why not?

<comment><USER5> > Do you accept? If not, why not?

Almost no one on HN will agree. (I predict.) Ideas are easy. Even I have ideas. Doing something with the idea is what counts. That starts with programming, but also involves selling product and running the company. So unless the idea-person has a great record of implementing great ideas and good exits people will be unwilling to lumber themselves with a lot of work for so little return.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Among the Machiguenga, word quickly spread of the young, square-jawed > visitor from America giving away money.

I get the sense they tested the game with (for the local economy) large amounts of money in small towns, where participants probably already knew each other.

That's a very different scenario than most American iterations I've known of the game, with college students who probably don't know each other playing for relatively small amounts of money.

Nickle-and-diming your random classmate out of 10 cents is very different from taking a week's pay that could have gone to your neighbor.

<comment><USER7> According to the article the participates remain anonymous to each other.

<comment><USER8> I believe part of GP's point is that, for some sizes of village, there may not be any chance that your counterpart is a stranger. If your counterpart is not a stranger, even if you don't know their exact identity, you might choose to play more generously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Full text of the paper that launched the investigation into whether psychological research relies too much on people from just one kind of cultural background:

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83.

[http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_fina...](http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_final02.pdf)

<comment><USER10> This paper, incidentally, has the greatest opening paragraph of all time:

"In the tropical forests of New Guinea the Etoro believe that for a boy to achieve manhood he must ingest the semen of his elders. This is accomplished through ritualized rites of passage that require young male initiates to fellate a senior member. In contrast, the nearby Kaluli maintain that male initiation is only properly done by ritually delivering the semen through the initiate's anus, not his mouth. The Etoro revile these Kaluli practices, finding them disgusting."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is amazing. I haven't finished reading it completely but as a person who spend significant parts of my childhood in multiple countries, there are parts of it which chime with me so well.

E.g. > Recent research has shown that people in "tight" cultures, those with strong norms and low tolerance for deviant behavior (think India, Malaysia, and Pakistan), develop higher impulse control and more self-monitoring abilities than those from other places.

I remember living in India as a teenager and being confused by how rarely if ever kids in my school would display emotion on the spot when something happened. The response would come up later and it was as immature as teenagers everywhere but on the spot responses were polite.

</comment><comment><USER12> If testing psych students was smelly - this experiment is smellier.

Large amounts of cash = take whatever is offered.

Repeat experiment with a billion dollars. I offer you say 50 million, leaving 950 million to myself. Your move. You honestly going to reject 50 million?

It's actually quite rational that they took the money. Now, what would actually be interesting is that if they rejected the large amounts of cash.

<comment><USER13> First, let's do the experiment with a billion dollars and see if you really just offer me 50 million.

<comment><USER12> That was just an example clearly illustrating my point.

I'd probably offer you a lot less if it were real - say 10-15 million.

<comment><USER14> I'm not real rich, but I'd turn you down. Someone so selfish running around with close to a billion dollars...no. The misery you could cause! Let the researcher keep their money, they will probably offer it to someone more deserving in the next round.

<comment><USER12> Doubt it. Quite sure you'd take it with both hands.

Seeing as you work in the oil industry - the above statement does strike one as being exceedingly odd. You are in the industry for the money aren't you?

That's some serious cognitive dissonance you've got there.

Furthermore, I thought you guys pumped misery out of the ground day in, day out?

<comment><USER14> >You are in the industry for the money aren't you?

Not really. In case you are interested, I am in the industry by accident.

>I thought you guys pumped misery out of the ground day in, day out?

No, we pump oil. And gas. By and large, these things are used to create a whole lot of happiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You see this pattern of over generalizing in business when expanding internationally service or product offerings. 'It works here so lets just sell it there' has caused a few blunders. Cultural differences can mean colour has different interpretations and that alone can make or break your sales. Some form of product modification is necessary so that you don't get lost in the trap of generalizing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's another ungated Henrich paper on ultimatum games across societies, if you're interested in the research: [http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/InSearchHomoEconomicus2001...](http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/InSearchHomoEconomicus2001.pdf)

His book "Why Humans Cooperate" is worth a trip to the library, too. It combines some formal models, experiments, and an interesting study on the Chaldean community in Detroit (a less-WEIRD ethnic group in the middle of our WEIRD society).

The implications of this research are even more radical (and controversial) than the article suggests. The idea that culture shapes the way we think and act is interesting enough, but then the big question becomes "where does culture come from?"

Henrich (and others[1]) suggest that culture evolves through Darwinian processes of transmission and replication, and that biological and cultural evolution are coupled. Social Darwinism and sociobiology gave this idea a bad reputation, and the idea that our social norms have evolved from kin selection all the way up to impersonal market exchange is still a hard sell for economists and anthropologists alike. But it's a fascinating idea, and it's completely changed the way I think about economic behavior and human cooperation.

[1] "Not By Genes Alone" by Boyd and Richerson is another great book on this subject: [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo361...](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo3615170.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder in A/B testing you might see different results for landing page conversions with different nationalities ...

it is said for example that the dutch are more price conscious and the french more relations/support minded ...

<comment><USER17> That's actually a great insight. If anyone has links to anything further exploring this, please post them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Compared to Yucatec Maya communities in Mexico, however, Western urban children appear to be developmentally delayed in this regard. Children who grow up constantly interacting with the natural world are much less likely to anthropomorphize other living things into late childhood."

I didn't find the word "anthropomorphize" in the other document; and the section I found in the original document didn't seem to go into what was said in the associated article. It's a rather long article, and I'll need to read it when I get home; however, the above section doesn't connect with me.

What does "anthropomorphize" mean in this context? I understand the term to mean "to give perceptually human characteristics to". There are only two routes I can follow with this:

1) they mean a human thinking that a smiling animal is a happy animal. And that animals laugh, and grin; and have all the same facial expressions as humans, like one would see in Disney movies.

2) they're suggesting that people in the United States believe that animals continue to have emotions that they can express and other sentient thought, have a sense of desire for certain outcomes to be had, and for genuine fear and happiness.

The second possibility isn't something that only people from the US do, at all. Long before the United States was the apparent urban environment with lost connection with nature (alluded to in the article in some places), Native Americans ascribed many emotions and intentions and ideas to the animals around them, even calling coyotes tricksters; and in Biblical times, calling someone a "fox" had a particular meaning.

In short, where is this article getting the idea that humans don't anthropomorphize animals at all stages of life? That word is VERY confusing to me in this sentence; and to claim that they're using a very limited definition of anthropomorphize, where it's just human facial expressions is to be unfair to the word itself.

<comment><USER19> In the original article, it's discussed in section 2.3, starting on page 13: [http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_fina...](http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_final02.pdf)

The claim seems to be, more or less, that western urban kids interpret animals by projection or analogization of human traits rather than forming categories for the animals, more than kids in (some) other societies do. I have no idea how true that is myself (have not read anything on the subject beyond this article).

<comment><USER20> I haven't read the paper, but this seems blatantly obvious to me. Outside of most western cities, people interact with animals as food. Western children are much more likely to interact with animals as pets or, at most, "those things at the zoo". When you aren't confronted with the regular death of animals as food, you are able to form more of an emotional bond with the concept of "animal".

<comment><USER21> My thought as well. My exposure to animals as a kid was almost exclusively through cartoons, and very occasionally through zoos or other people's pets. I had no strong opinion on vegetarianism in jr. high, though some of my friends did. But I immediately developed a strong opinion on the day I actually met a chicken and a cow.

Even as an adult, I find that real animals look strange to me. I've seen so many cartoon images of skunks and giraffes and elephants in my life, and even though I _know_ they're cartoons, when I do a google image search and photographs dominate the results, I usually find them quite alien.

Some subconscious part of my brain is totally convinced that a giraffe looks like this . . .

<http://www.moho.biz/oskar-the-giraffe/>

. . . and doesn't immediately recognize this . . .

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xRmReWpJeJE/T2QxTEZ95_I/AAAAAAAABw...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xRmReWpJeJE/T2QxTEZ95_I/AAAAAAAABwI/jjyqUXwrErU/s640/giraffe+21.jpg)

. . . as the same animal.

<comment><USER22> So as someone that grew up on a farm/ranch you are dead on. I honestly have a hugely hard time identifying with people that have only grown up in a city and have NO idea where food comes from.

I find it excruciatingly odd people hate on large scale cow lots, but seemingly find the mass murder of small animals that live in the same place as grains to be "meh". More rabbits and other cuddly creatures die from combines than all of the evil things we do to cows in feed lots.

I've had to help out cows after they've prolapsed, and also had to help out other cows that have fought each other to near death, animals are not disney cartoons. But I've dated vegetarians and vegans (no offense to anyone there) that seem to have this unnatural viewpoint of our use of animals as food.

I see cartoon cows and can't help but think its similar to lolcats. So far removed from reality that we've anthropomorphized things to the point of ridiculousness. I'll be a bit blunt, after living around cows for 18 years of my life, I really don't have much sympathy for them. They're just as evil as humans are to each other, and they are such herd creatures it isn't funny. The bulls however always seemed to be less skittish, the females, they never acted even remotely rational or consistent. Bring calves into the picture and throw even that out the window. The bulls just fought and wanted to get into the females areas.

Just to counter your city experience a bit, not trying to say feed lots are a good way to mass produce meat, but I grew up not dealing with any of that. I have zero qualms eating a cow or chicken, but free range is loads better to eat than mass produced. I just see them as no different than wheat or other plants to be honest.

<comment><USER21> Well, thanks -- that's good input. :)

I didn't mean to be misleading. I agree with you; the strong opinion I developed was that those animals are _clearly_ food. And that some of the excessive compassion spent on them would be better spent on people, who might actually appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The experiment is flawed. $100 means a lot more in Peru than in the US. If the experiment was conducted in Peru with $1 would the subjects there be more inclined to be fair? Another factor is that college students who are the usual subjects in the US are not as concerned about money as subsistence farmers.

<comment><AUTHOR> They did control for that by offering an incentive that was only a few days' wages. "The stakes Henrich used in the game with the Machiguenga were not insubstantial—roughly equivalent to the few days' wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies."

EDIT

$100 isn't necessarily a few days wages for those who are working in a well paying full time position but for a college student that could mean a few days of going out.

<comment><USER23> A minimum-wage ($7.25/hr) American worker would earn $100 in under 14 hours (before taxes.)

Imagine yourself playing the game but with $1,000 (or more) on offer. Would you refuse $300 to punish your partner for keeping $700? Now change the amount to $10. Would you refuse $3 to punish your partner for keeping $7? Now switch it around: how much of the money, $1,000 and $10 offers, would you give to your partner?

<comment><USER24> It's not just "refusing $300".

When the stakes go up, your partner is screwing you harder. He's not just screwing you out of $2 or $20, he's screwing you out of $200 or $2000.

Fuck him.

<comment><USER23> They're screwing you over more, but is it worth foregoing $200+ just to make a point to a stranger?

<comment><USER25> In densely connected societies it is usually worth more, since people interact frequently, so maintaining a "fair" game is very profitable in the long term, even at the cost of losing short-term. But in sparsely connected society, when interactions are rare, I'd expect it to be worth much less. I have no idea how to quantify it though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > urban children appear to be developmentally delayed in this regard. Children > who grow up constantly interacting with the natural world are much less > likely to anthropomorphize other living things into late childhood.

I can tell this is true from personal experience. I spent my early childhood (before starting school at 6) mostly in the countryside, interacting a lot with animals and nature and when I used to interact with other children who've spent all their life so far in the urban environment I experienced a lot the "are they retard or what?!" feeling about their anthropomorphizing interactions with animals, dolls and even plastic toys, that I distinctively remember even now. I imagine that they probably felt the corollary about my competitive-social skills because, as I child, I was never good at "playing for winning" and using winning at a game to establish a higher social status.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why these results are described as something shockingly unexpected? It is a natural outcome of short-term outlook on the game. Of course, most Americans, having been raised in Western culture with specific set of values and behaviors, have more long-term outlooks on interactions with fellow members of the society, since they know they'd have to live in this society for their whole life and our culture encourages such way of thinking. On the other hand, Machiguenga saw Henrich and the game for the first and probably last time in their lives, no wonder they took short-term approach to it. It is a long known idea that one-time game and many-time game have different strategies with such games.

</comment><comment><USER27> >"People are not "plug and play," as he puts it, and you cannot expect to drop a Western court system or form of government into another culture and expect it to work as it does back home"

This conclusion comes a decade or more too late, I suppose, to affect U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for the better. After doing my undergradate work in Near Eastern Culture (or, rather, about 3 credits in) it became apparent that the 'Western ideal' of justice does not translate whole-sale; that certain adaptations are necesssary to improve the human rights situation, as is a great deal of 'soul searching' to determine precisely what would constitute 'improvement.'

<comment><USER28> >>This conclusion comes a decade or more too late, I suppose, to affect U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for the better.

I don't want to politicize the discussion too much, but I feel compelled to ask: do you really believe Bush et al. would actually _care_ even if they had access to this research's findings?

<comment><USER27> >>I don't want to politicize the discussion too much, but I feel compelled to ask: do you really believe Bush et al. would actually care even if they had access to this research's findings?

I do believe they would. It is in the best interest of the United States to form stable, like-minded governments abroad. If this cannot be reasonably accomplished because of cultural differences, it would be beneficial to at least marginally adapt the strategy to achieve something close to it. Judging from the US installation of the Shah in Iran, the US is not above installing dictators to enrich its own interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _"If religion was necessary in the development of large-scale societies, can large-scale societies survive without religion? Norenzayan points to parts of Scandinavia with atheist majorities that seem to be doing just fine"_

For the moment.

The situation in Europe is very interesting. There is a strong atheist movement, yet catholics seem to be on a comeback lately, and the mostly muslim immigrant population growing too - and at an even faster pace.

If religion says "go forth and populate the earth", and if atheist have less than 2.1 children, how long until they get outnumber and forced to chance their allegiance by the religous - at gunpoint if necessary? [nobody expects the spanish inquisition :-)]

So I would not base any conclusion on a punctual observation when you have partial derivative pointing to different conclusion in a longer timeframe.

Counter example : if large-scale societies survive fine without religion, how come there are so few of them ? Why do they have a tendency disappear in history, and be replaced by religious societies?

Also, the method of the prisoner game is questionable. The article says the amount was not insubstantial - around several days of work, but does not explain how it was chosen or how it was tested.

I would be very interested to know about the price elasticity of the acceptance rate and the price elascticity of the percentage offered.

I mean, do people in this group have a constant acceptance (fully inelastic - they always accept) or can you get to a point where they refuse because they think it's unfair?

Here's a quick example - go to any fast food join, eat normally, then when you have to leave, prepare the exact amount of cash in one side, and the tip in the other side of the table, and say to server the food was not to your taste, therefore you are leaving only a one cent tip (or a dime)

See if they take the free money, or if they feel so insulted that they refuse. Rince and repeat until you figure the amount they will accept without feeling insulted.

So I really wonder if there could be a cash amount where the remote people from this tribe would react just the same as all of us - which would just point to a calibration problem.

<comment><USER30> The most populous nation on Earth is by Western standards non-religious -- China. I do not mean that everyone is an atheist as demanded by communism. Rather, the folk "religions" that are most common (there is a large portion of the population, mostly educated urbanites, who are not believers in these either) say very little in the way of the issues you mentioned. They have more to do with granting good luck and curing disease.

Obviously this has not hurt their population.

<comment><USER29> This has not hurt the population yet, but the one child policy will certainly wreak havoc the country if it is maintained for too long.

When it will be removed (it will have to), I wonder which group will take the most advantage of it and grow faster - the "non religious by western standard" or the various ethnic groups - say in the XianJiang.

Also, the fact that an authoritarian communist country where atheism is promoted still couldn't remove the religious allegiances is interesting. The former USSR tried the same - and failed.

<comment><USER30> The one child policy does not apply to ethnic minorities.

<comment><USER29> They are therefore already taking advantage of it, but I wonder when it will be removed it the growth differential will equalize.

My guess is that it won't, and the religious represent a very significant percentage of the population - until they become the majority.

Without willing to insult anyone, I wonder if a human group growth with religion, they reach decadence with atheism - then stats again, eventually with a different religion, in a loop.

EDIT: the point is not about "cultural group" but religion. Are these minorities becoming atheist, or do they keep some religious self identification? I guess they still identify as such, even if they don't practice. Culture is hard to bring back, but religion can grow back very quickly

<comment><USER31> Equating atheism to decadence is pretty funny when you're familiar with, say, the history of the Catholic Church, almost since its inception, or the history of the religious classes of the Muslim world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think my basic problem with this is economics. I'd be happy with a days pay, even if it meant the other guy got a weeks pay. But I might squabble about 10 cents when the guy got 90 cents.

I say squabble because I don't mean fight or be offended. I might argue for the fun of the argument, not the actual value of the money. I wouldn't accept the 10 cents, knowing that we both then got nothing because $1 doesn't mean that much to me.

</comment><comment><USER33> _Generous financial offers were turned down because people's minds had been shaped by a cultural norm that taught them that the acceptance of generous gifts brought burdensome obligations._

More on this from an English anthropologist in _Debt: The First 5000 Years_ , a history of money and currency that is exceedingly timely given the current emergence of Bitcoin and Ripple, and the strange survival of the Swiss WIR.

</comment><comment><USER34> If we look at the history of science, most things that we held as fact many years ago are now considered either totally false or at least marred by misunderstanding or lack of data.

Extrapolated that means that almost all of our current scientific beliefs will be "proven" false or at least considered marred by misunderstanding or lack of data at some point in the future.

Humans _can not_ understand everything, and they never will.

<comment><USER35> Please read this: <http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm>

<comment><USER34> Unfortunately, rationalism is needed to prove rationalism, and once science is "accepted fact" and we all accept things like "round", "sphere", and "Earth" then we assume we have made progress.

But, there is not a single fact that could not be disproved by more evidence. Even "the Earth is round" could be proven to be wrong and we consider it part amorphous-hyperconical-hypertubular in the future, or perhaps we prove scientifically that we live in a simulation/a game and the universe, shapes, Earth, etc. is a simple allusion, comparable to the blocky pixel graphics in old Atari 2600 games.

Please read this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis>

While it is certainly _possible_ that we understand one or more eternal truths that span all that exists in every dimension and every universe, considering the age, maturity, and abilities of the human race, it is extremely doubtful that we have made much progress or that we ever will. Science is great when approached from the standpoint of wonder and discovery, but it is terrible when it comes to "truth". Don't believe me? There is a whole religion devoted to the belief system that many are infected or affected by aliens (Scientology); many accept that this faith is based on a science fiction novel a.k.a. fiction, but many believe it is true. In the same way, many are convinced that science has elucidated truths, even though we don't know that it has or ever will. Yet, you accept science as truth in part. That is an irrational belief because the only way to accept it as rational is to have faith that it is rational. Rationalism is nothing without faith, but faith exists without rationalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It is an interesting experiment but I don't think that it necessarily implies there is a huge difference in human psychology - if you did the experiment with a poor (i.e. homeless) American, I am pretty sure they would accept any amount of money. To add to this, I think there was probably some confusion when explaining the rules of the game to the subjects.

<comment><USER37> Just because someone's homeless doesn't mean they've given up all dignity, and aren't offended by unfair treatment. I think you might be surprised what a lot of indigent folks would refuse because it was an inequitable transaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a western-born programmer who has spent much time in East Asia, I found the linked paper _Culture and Systems of Thought: Holistic vs. Analytic Cognition_ even more interesting. [http://www- personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/images/cultureThought...](http://www- personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/images/cultureThought.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER38> Slightly OT, but the second image in that article is bogus. It's a photo of Fijian women on a Fijian mat (woven pandanus leaves). It's not Peruvian as claimed by the caption.

</comment><comment><USER39> I find it weird that nobody questions the use of the word 'american' in the article. Would the Machiguenga not also be (at least South-) Americans?

<comment><USER40> Also, American and Western culture are used practically interchangeably. I find this quite ironic.

<comment><USER41> They aren't used interchangeably in the linked article. In the article, Americans are singled out as being particularly "weird" even compared to other "Western" nations.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: DesignR – Collection of really good articles, books, tools, and videos - <AUTHOR> https://coursebirdie.com/design/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN!

I'm co-founder of Coursebirdie, an ed tech company that teaches latest digital skills, both online and on-site.

I am really passionate about design and over the past few years referred to few good online resources when designing my own or client websites. These resources helped me figure out things when I couldn't quite get something to work.

I am sharing these resources on our website and will keep on adding more. I believe this collection of some really good articles, books, tools, podcast shows and videos would help creatives, designers, developers, marketers and startup founders build great websites and mobile apps.

I will be around to answer any of your questions. Looking forward to your feedback/suggestions!

</comment><comment><USER2> awesome, good collection :)</comment>


Scientists open the 'black box' of schizophrenia with dramatic genetic discovery - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/01/27/scientists-open-the-black-box-of-schizophrenia-with-dramatic-genetic-finding/?postshare=3091453948817165&tid=ss_tw-bottom <comment><USER2> As a person with a family member who suffers from this disorder, this makes me really happy. It is truly an awful disorder that has very unexpected and terrible effects on the whole family. I was thrilled to hear Ted Stanley donated $650M to the Broad institute in 2014. It looks like that donation could be paying off.

Edit: I'm glad to hear that he learned of this discovery before his death this month [0].

[0] - [http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/bioflash/2016/01/broa...](http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/bioflash/2016/01/broad- donor-ted-stanley-learned-of-schizophrenia.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Armchair hypothesis: This aggressive pruning may not have any affect on normal brain functioning in some cases. For example, it might prune a whole sub network off the normal day to day network, leaving a "dark" dysfunctional subnet disconnected from the regular day to day brain's network.

Then, if someone chooses to be under the influence of a drug that enables new pathways to form (pot, psychedelics etc), this "dark" network can potentially be reconnected. The emotional response to this connection (good or bad) strengthens this "bridge" connection, leaving it connected when the influence of the drug wears off. Now the person has a faulty pruned network as part of their normal day to day network. Crap.

The trick from here is to reinforce the normal network and ignore signals from the faulty network until the bridge path's significance subsides enough to not enter day to day functioning.

<comment><USER4> Similarly armchair: An alternative to reducing the bridge might be trying to actively increase it - the brain reconfigures (right?) so perhaps we can with careful drug use open up the dark area and allow the regular brain to use that sector again. The difference between cleaning a room in your house and nailing the door shut.

Maybe that is in part what is happening anyway? Or is there evidence to show that the section of the brain becomes under-utilised. (no I didn't RTFA; will get right on it!)

<comment><USER5> It's knowing how to manage a person or situation once you open up a 'dark' area; I'd prefer the terminology that an area is 'dark' is rather referred to as something you're simply conditioned to (or suppressed/repressed) - it's underneath your conscious level, as otherwise it would leave you less able to function in day-to-day life.

<comment><USER6> Practicing meditation is a kin to understanding oneself.

"I found it easier than many to accept the epistemological notions of the world internal and external as dependent concepts enforced by ignorance and perceptual challenges."

Source:[https://www.reddit.com/comments/1piku6/](https://www.reddit.com/comments/1piku6/)

<comment><USER5> Indeed. Great read, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> See also [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/health/schizophrenia- cause...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/health/schizophrenia-cause- synaptic-pruning-brain-psychiatry.html), via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10983176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10983176).

</comment><comment><USER8> How do we distinguish the body's reaction to mental illness from its cause? Wild unprofessional speculation of course, but what if this mass destruction of grey matter was just an attempt to "fix" improperly wired neurons causing schizophrenia in a drastic way? The "synaptic pruning" genes might have evolved as a solution in lineages where schizophrenia was frequently passed on/caused by parents' behavior. Too silly / crazy?

<comment><USER9> Ive also heard it said in seemingly respectable articles that no one is sure if the grey matter dies off because of the disease itself or because of the medication to treat the psychotic symptoms.

<comment><USER10> You'd think you could just look at some posthumous biopsied brains of untreated schitzophrenics for comparison.

<comment><USER11> Here's a somewhat relevant study:

"The Influence of Chronic Exposure to Antipsychotic Medications on Brain Size before and after Tissue Fixation: A Comparison of Haloperidol and Olanzapine in Macaque Monkeys"

[http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v30/n9/full/1300710a.html](http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v30/n9/full/1300710a.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Important caveat: this is a genetic association study, which means that a small but statistically significant fraction of those studied with schizophrenia have this variant compared to those who do not have schizophrenia; I.e., this variant is not responsible for schizophrenia in all individuals, it just might contribute in some. Even that is not clear yet, we just know the correlation exists.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am really interested to know if this allele (C4A) has been under selection or not. The fact that it is in the middle of locus of immunological genes could mean it has just been carried along with the actual selection being for immune function against infectious disease.

<comment><USER14> Well a lot of mental illness associates with "promiscuousness" (hate that moralistix word) so there is an easy argument for heritability especially for onset at peak fertility

<comment><USER13> Historically being promiscuous was associated with a low effective fertility. The reason why is if you are a peasant the resources required to raise a child to adulthood need both a mother and a father. The children of single mothers just starved to death.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The disordered thinking of schizophrenia invariably reflects the cultural biases of the individual. Pruning, if that is a cause, must affect the filter that allows most of us to reject the thousand crazy ideas that pop into our heads each day, while permitting the few reasonable ones.

This may be why there is an environmental component. If a potential schizophrenic with an overly-pruned filter is exposed to the idea that a magical god came to earth and sacrificed himself to give us eternal life, and if that idea is presented culturally as real, it may be impossible for the schizophrenic to filter that and place it in the DMZ of fantastical-but- culturally-prevalent notions that the rest of us use.

Imagine how disordered one's thinking might become if we had no ability to interpret the spew with "a grain of salt".

<comment><USER16> The odd thing is that 'disorder' might contribute to one's ability to think 'laterally'. Some schizophrenic tend to exhibit certain amounts of clanging. In extreme instances it turns into what's referred to as 'word salad' (presumably the desire to have the alliterative sounds overwhelms one to the point where one no longer cares about conveying meaning). At the same time, a 'normal' mind definitely appreciates clanging when used as a well executed literary component (say, exhibited by Larkin or Cummings).

Schizophrenia is a real interesting mental disorder because it touches on so many other disorders (e.g. speech impediments like echolalia often seen in those on the autistic spectrum) and it's tendency to exhibit itself relatively late in life (early to mid 20s is _very_ late for on-set as I understand it re: mental disorders).

The _Post_ did a pretty good job conveying a complicated concept in an approachable manner to those who aren't in the field, but as always the primary source is useful, so here's the pre-print: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26814963](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26814963)

n.b. My father is in the field and I sent this to him when I saw the mention of Eric Lander (they worked together at Whitehead before Lander left to direct Broad). He regards Lander as highly as I regard DJB. Often the media blows things up, I'd imagine these findings are fairly major within their field, if only because it survived the peer-review process into _Nature_.

<comment><USER17> What does your father think of the whole CRISPR fiasco?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > In patients with schizophrenia, a variation in a single position in the DNA > sequence marks too many synapses for removal and that pruning goes out of > control. The result is an abnormal loss of gray matter.

I find this to be a terrifying thought. Just the idea that I have some code inside me that's marking synapses for removal, and then they get removed. Those are my memories!

But I'm very excited about this. I'm not a geneticist by any means, but I hope the answer is as simple as replacing this gene with CRISPR.

<comment><USER12> CRISPR won't help for this, it is too imprecise for gene therapy.

<comment><USER19> That is incorrect: off-target activity is virtually non-existent in CRISPR- CAS9 mediated transformation. Targeting oligonucleotides can be deliberately designed to be less specific, thereby targeting a family of sequences, which is very desirable for e.g. knocking down a gene family. However, specificity is trivial to achieve when desired.

<comment><USER12> Precision has two components: specificity and sensitivity. While recent versions of CRISPR make it possible to avoid off-target sequences, its impossible to guarantee cutting. Also, while you can make a cut, engineering a specific substitution is still largely a crap shoot. Not suitable for gene therapy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd be curious to hear how we developed successful pharmaceutical treatments for schizophrenia without knowing how the disease works. Was it just luck?

<comment><USER21> I'd go careful with that "successful" label there. Anti-psychotic medications are good at some narrow range of stuff, but come with considerable side effects. People with schizophrenia die earlier (by about 20 years) than other people, and some of that is because of the damage done by medication.

The only reason the medication is used is because untreated psychosis is often catastrophic.

<comment><USER22> Just look at the effects the anti-psychotics have had on Daniel Johnston. That it's preferable to untreated schizophrenia shows just how awful schizophrenia is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As usual, the press releases and the stories based on those somewhat overstate how far the new study finding takes us on the way to an effective treatment. One of my mentors is a very eminent psychologist (Irving Gottesman) who has spent much of his lifetime (he is old enough to be my father, and I am middle- aged) studying schizophrenia from the genetic point of view.[1] His early paper with an older collaborator

Gottesman, I. I., and J. Shields. "Schizophrenia: geneticism and environmentalism." Human heredity 21.6 (1971): 517-522.

was controversial when it was published, because as Freudianism waned, there was still the supposition among most psychologists then living that parenting was the single biggest influence on the development of mental illness.

When a behavioral trait runs in families, the working assumption is that it is passed from parent to child, but the tricky issue to figure out is whether it is passed mostly by parenting practices (culturally) or by descent (genetically). Gottesman used to be almost alone among psychologists in proposing that the greater influence on development of schizophrenia is genetic, and it took many studies of twins and other close relatives and other study methodologies gradually to make genetic studies of schizophrenia the mainstream approach to research.

That said, there are known cases of identical (monozygotic) twins who are discordant for schizophrenia,[2] so everyone who is active in research on schizophrenia agrees that environmental influences after birth of some kind matter in the development of schizophrenia in an individual patient. Moreover, "the risk to schizophrenia is influenced by quite a large number of common variants, each with a very small effect on risk. How large is not yet clear, but Purcell's analyses suggest that hundreds and more likely thousands of individual genes contribute to the liability to schizophrenia."[3]

The current study, covered in many different popular press reports, indicates a likely gene locus for influence on one clinical finding found in many but not all cases of schizophrenia. Discordant identical twins make very clear that something else matters for the development of schizophrenia. To date, we are a long way from taking the recent genome analysis finding to a stage of testing out any kind of intervention in human patients. First we will have to be sure that the finding replicates in another human patient data set, and then characterize how often that finding occurs in schizophrenic patients, and how often it is missing in healthy controls. There will have to be careful work to find out if any treatment based on the new finding is both safe and effective. But it's a start, and finding out things like this is the research to support basic science research.

[1] [http://www.psych.umn.edu/people/profile.php?UID=gotte003](http://www.psych.umn.edu/people/profile.php?UID=gotte003)

[https://news.virginia.edu/content/irving-gottesman- retired-p...](https://news.virginia.edu/content/irving-gottesman-retired- psychology-professor-awarded-groundbreaking-research)

[2] [http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/textonlyarchive/March_1994/9...](http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/textonlyarchive/March_1994/94-03-10_Identical_Twins_Do_Not_Have_Identical_Risk_of_Mental_Illness,_New_Book_Shows.txt)

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

[3] [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-genes- influence-...](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-genes-influence- behavior-9780199559909?cc=us&lang=en&)

<comment><USER24> Do you know what the estimate is for the proportion of monozygotic twins that are discordant for schizophrenia?

<comment><USER23> I don't know that off-hand, but the book I cited may provide enough of the raw data to suggest a magnitude. By memory, I venture to say that more than 10 percent of monozygotic twins of schizophrenia cases (probands) do not have a schizophrenia diagnosis of their own--but I'll revise this figure if someone can find a good reference. What's clear in general about the research is that schizophrenia is a polygenic condition (influenced by many genes) and multifactorial (also influenced by factors other than genes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> IANAB (not a biologist), so I wonder if the same approach can be used to study other mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression.

<comment><USER19> This is a very general technique called quantitative trait association mapping (such a locus is called a QTL). It's a technique that has been used for decades, back when we used genetic markers and linkage maps (no genomes).

What's interesting about this work is simply the degree of difficulty finding QTLs for mental illness; it's not the only genetic factor, and not particularly strong, so the signal to noise is quite poor. It required assembling a high-quality data set to identify a locus.

It's good work, but nothing revolutionary. Once you can start to pin down the genetic factors, it can make future work easier, so it does bode well.

<comment><USER25> Interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Funny, nature's off-by-one/buffer overflow error...

</comment><comment><USER27> Oh, look, another genome-wide association study found a suggestive correlation. Didn't we learn our lesson about this kind of bullshit in the Zeros?

<comment><USER28> Can you elaborate on why you think this particular correlation is not significant?

<comment><USER29> In the zeroes, we didn't correct for multiple hypothesis testing in a very good manner. I don't know if that's changed; it's a hard problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wait, what? Does this means schizophrenia isn't caused by refrigerator moms, as psychiatry once claimed ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory))? And that endless therapy won't actually do any good, contrary to what psychiatrists and psychologists have held?

I expect to watch neuroscience nibble away at the territory now held by psychology, until (as Lewis Carroll wrote about the Cheshire Cat) there's nothing left but the smile.

<comment><USER21> Yes, 70 years ago psychiatry had some odd ideas. It's frustrating that you only make these comments about psychiatry - you don't pop up in geography threads to say "Wait, what? Does this mean geographers don't still believe in fixed immovable continents?".

Endless therapy is not recommended for anything, and certainly not for schizophrenia. There are recommended lifestyle interventions, but these are aimed to reduce or stop smoking, to control weight gain, to keep people out of hospital, or to help people gain and keep employment.

A therapy might be involved if a person is hearing voices, but isn't particularly bothered by them. In that situation it doesn't make much sense to medicate away those voices (because the medication has severe side effects) so the person might get a "therapy" that helps them cope with voices, and learn when and how to seek help if the voices become too much.

<comment><USER31> Fixed immovable continents is a theory that has reasonable prediction power: if you assume that, you can do lots of things without having results that are too inaccurate to be worth calculating. That is not true of the kinds of highly-specific theories that people seem to be more prone to come up with in some fields. The kinds of things that even fairly recent "science" in fields such as psychology and (sadly, all too often) medicine reads more like "the world is balanced on the back of a tortoise" or "there is an evil genie that makes things fall to the ground; his name is Fred and he wears a black cape" than "continents are fixed" or "physics is deterministic, particulate, and local".

<comment><USER32> Well to be fair, having parents be "warmer" to their children and engage with them more probably also has positive results, regardless of the flawed reasoning for it.

And yes, young scientific fields quickly disprove themselves, that's kinda the point of science. Hard sciences like physics and chemistry also had some very very flawed theories in their youth, like aethers, alchemy, etc. but have had a few hundred years to get past that.

<comment><USER33> > _Well to be fair, having parents be "warmer" to their children and engage > with them more probably also has positive results, regardless of the flawed > reasoning for it._

I agree, but imagine this:

You have a children with a bad illness. Then some moron comes and accuses you of being the cause of the illness. Let's hope he is right, otherwise he deserves to burn in hell for the eternity. (Or whatever infinite penalty is compatible with your beliefs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Fake and gay.

Founder of psychiatry drove around in a lobotomobile for 40 years giving lobotomies to haunted people for $25 each.

(With an icepick) (Check the movie/wikipedia lobotomobile)

the treatments since then have gotten only slightly less barbaric, like being tied down for 20 hours a day, or drugged and locked away.

still none of their bullshit has worked. and 75 - 150,000,000 cases of mental illness today (if you add the un-reported cases estimate) aka 1/4 the population (maybe 1/2).

<comment><USER35> Can everyone please stop downvoting this guy because he said a bad word? He appears to have a mental condition, but lots of people do. I found his posts interesting.

<comment><USER36> Aside from their fondness for PHP and lack of fondness for the shift key, I see no evidence for mental illness that can be gleaned from internet comments aside from a few curse words and minority opinions.

<comment><USER35> It's something about his pattern of writing that seems different to me. Maybe I'm just projecting.

<comment><USER36> I mean it's certainly possible I just meant it wasn't obvious to me, that's all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beauty and tragedy at a kindergarten Zoom dance party - <AUTHOR> https://team.video/blog/kindergarten <comment><AUTHOR> My son had another event this morning -- this time a treasure hunt over Google Meet. There were 16 wonderful, jubilant kids on the call, but only 9 would show on the screen at any given time, which seemed such a shame.

We should really expect to be able to see everyone on the call, in Kindergarten calls, and in meetings at work too. We humans are so well tuned to read each others' facial expressions that we have no problem recognizing reactions/sentiments in small video feeds of our friends and colleagues, even at avatar-size resolutions.

Internally, we've done some tests/prototyping where it's completely workable to have 100+ feeds on the screen all at once, even with some "hero" space reserved for the couple of most recent active speakers.</comment>


Perspectives on SeaMicro's Innovative Intel Atom Server - <AUTHOR> http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/06/14/SeaMicroReleasesInnovativeIntelAtomServer.aspx

<comment><USER2> Most important bit of insight in this article: no ECC (Atoms are consumer CPUs and as far as I can tell Intel is very rigorous about limiting ECC to official server chips).

ADDED: in his reference post ([http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/10/07/YouReallyDONeedE...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/10/07/YouReallyDONeedECCMemory.aspx)) he says " _All AMD processors whether server, embedded, or client have ECC. All ARMs have ECC._ " and makes some other very interesting comments,

<comment><USER3> That does limit the applicability of the Atom-based cluster to things like web applications. It would do nicely for running a memcached cluster, as well, as long as the interconnect latency is low enough.

<comment><USER2> How much CPU does memcached use? I.e. is this 1.6GHz Atom with 2GB of memory a good match; it's got 1TB for a fully populated $139K box,

<comment><USER3> It doesn't consume all that much CPU, though it is possible to saturate it. The trick is to take advantage of the smooth scaling model: you an add memcached nodes until you run out of nodes. The clients have a list of nodes as part of their configuration, and the client runs the hashing function, which includes mapping the entry into the proper node.

So the only real overhead that each node has to deal with is serialization.

It's very simple, so it works very well. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My #1 question in this case is how do the various virtualization technologies scale out. I suspect they don't very well, but if they did, this obviously would be a huge win.

<comment><USER2> Could you be more specific in what you mean by "the various virtualization technologies"; e.g. are you referring to the ASICs?

<comment><USER4> I was talking about Xen, OpenVZ and the like. I've been recently exposed to the market of VPS hosting and I wonder how much lower can the prices be driven with this type of technology.

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's an interesting question, although I wonder what you precisely mean by "scale out".

E.g. one thing that comes to mind is management, although it's pretty clear that VPS hosting providers have means of dealing with many many Xen instances.

With 2 GB max per core, space will be at a premium, the smallest practical Dom0 will be desired (I use Xen as an example because it the one I'm familiar with). VM load balancing will likely be required for good service, and the interconnect fabric ought to make that pretty cheap.

Compared to AWS, this particular SeaMicro solution will only provide something like a Small Instance which has 1.7 GB, the next step up is 7.5 GB.

This could prove interesting, I'm sure there are plenty of VPS niches it will service well, _if_ the no ECC issue is not a customer service showstopper as others have wondered on the main HN SeaMicro thread.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the detailed response. I mean "scale out" in the sense that the linked post means it: scaling from one giant CPU to a few smaller ones.

Yes there certainly are many niches: from small e-mail relays to DNS servers, there are plenty of applications where the RAM/storage requirements are low and most of the time the box would be IO bound waiting on a network resource.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>