Ten Likely Events in 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2007/db20071229_145447.htm

<comment><USER2> About the web crash 2.0: what does it have to do with advertising dollars? My thinking would be, either a service provides something worthwhile, or it doesn't. Wouldn't that be a better determinant for it's future success?

</comment><comment><USER3> Crude oil at $100 already happened yesterday. (Granted, there was only one trade done at that level).</comment>


The Statistics of Coin Tosses for Theater Geeks - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/statistics-of-coin-tosses-theater-geeks/ <comment><USER2> The article shies away from the fascinating question it hints: given the improbability of 92 consecutive tosses landing on heads, what are the odds that something else is at work here? (un-, sub- or super-natural forces, as they put it in the play). That is, at what point is the improbability so absurd that something else is more likely to be true? That the coin is biased. That Rosencrantz is lying. That laws of probability are actually not in effect. As it happens, this last is true. They're not. R&G are in a play, and the spin of the coin is controlled by Tom Stoppard, the playwright, and not probability. So how improbable does something have to become before you suspect that you're in, e.g., a simulated universe?

<comment><USER3> Now there's an interesting question - what's the prior probability that you're actually in a play? Is it even answerable, when all knowledge you're allowed to have is fully controlled? Is it even worth bothering to think about, when (under this hypothesis) all of your thoughts are controlled by an author? All of which dodges the principle issue - do you really think Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are actually sentient, in any sense?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some may be interested in Von Neumann's algorithm for getting fair results even from a biased coin: Toss it twice. If the results are the same, ignore. If they are different, use the first coin's result.

<comment><USER5> The coin tosser can make that unfair. [http://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf](http://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf):

 _" We prove that vigorously-flipped coins are biased to come up the same way they started. [...] For natural flips, the chance of coming up as started is about .51."_

So, start your first throw with the desired side up, and the second with the one you don't want.

I haven't calculated it, but I guesstimate that gives you about 52% probability to get the outcome you want (it certainly is more than the 51% of that paper)</comment></comment>


Ask YC:  Get paid to read your email?  Your attention is worth something right? - <AUTHOR>

The idea is not to get rid of traditional spam (spam filters already work well), but rather, to have an auction for your attention from email senders just as there is an auction for your attention from advertisers. <comment><USER2> A variation of this has been proposed before. However, it wasn't an auction. The idea was that people could include a micro-payment with their message. If their payment is below your threshold then the message would be bounced. If the payment is above your threshold then it is delivered to you. If you like the message then you refund the payment. If the message is spam then you keep the payment.

This system makes most spam uneconomic and financially compensates users for the remainder. It can be combined with whitelisting and it doesn't preclude legacy inputs.

It is certainly better than Microsoft's digital stamp which earns you nothing and Microsoft one cent for each of your messages - legitimate or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> BoxBe is a startup you should look at...they started with this idea, but according to a few friends of mine that use it no one has ever bothered to pay them for their attention. As a revenue generating business model, it seems thats spammers don't pay!

btw - Goodmail has signed up ISP customers to get mailers to pay a couple of cents per message to "guarantee" the delivery of the message. To me seems like a protection racket of corp. customers by the ISP and Goodmail.</comment>


Google to announce "new programming language for structured web programming"  - <AUTHOR> http://gotocon.com/aarhus-2011/presentation/Opening%20Keynote:%20Dart,%20a%20new%20programming%20language%20for%20structured%20web%20programming <comment><USER2> Wait a moment Lars Bak and Gilad Bracha? I really like Gilad Brachas newspeak language. I really like people who can make good Jits.

\- Gilad Bracha was working on a way to run Newspeak in the browser.

\- Newspeak is a bad name because Newspeak is a bad thing, when I read Newspeak I think "bad". The could mean that if google would want to support it they would maybe change the name.

So my guess is: Dart is Newspeak that runs on the browser and on the server and it gets support by google.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad that you like it, maybe you can explain to me: Newspeak is a Smalltalk variant, and, if I understand:

<http://bracha.org/newspeak-101.pdf>

it can currently work only in its own IDE, which, IMHO, immensely reduces the possibilities for its application.

Even if we get "a kind of smalltalk in a browser" who's going to use it? Imagine, all that goodness I have in my favorite editor, just goes away. I'm supposed to click around in some IDE modifying some classes with something, only to change something that works only in that same single IDE? What should be the real use of it all?

<comment><USER2> You have a missunderstanding of what Newspeak is. Sure its somewhat like Smalltalk but its not an image based system. It is perfectlly happy to run without the IDE.

Newspeak is somewhat tied to its IDE but that not inherent. Newspeak has the feature of not having a global namespace this means all the functions that a global namespace normaly provieds has to be tied to some tool outside of the language. At the moment I think theres only the IDE that can do this but I remember Gilda saying that it would be easy to do this in other tools (think something like make).

Im no expert on newspeak but that how I understand it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First take: Oh, Google, what are you doing this time? Second take: Wait, the guy behind V8 is working on this... Hm, I'll have to take a look.

It sounds like Lars himself may not have tons of expertise creating a language, but teaming up with someone who does and throwing in his own expertise getting it to run fast in a browser... might be interesting.

However, is there a concern here that only Chrome will support it for a while? Then anything you write in it will be Chrome only. Isn't that kind of like the bad old days when each browser had its own tags and whatnot?

<comment><USER5> If it's good and the spec is open, I don't see anything wrong with that. If it's really that great and becomes popular, other browsers will be able to add support easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always felt the problem with web programming was not so much the expressiveness of existing languages, but rather the hacked nature of the web and more generally the Internet. We try to patch the stateless nature of the original HTTP protocol with cookies, AJAX, Flash player, Java applets, ActiveX, etc. We scale the net with ugly technologies like NAT and BGP. We hack some security on top with things like SSL. Heck, we can't even get simple web pages to render identically in two different web browsers. Though not practical, there's a lot to be said for a clean slate. I don't think any programming language out there is going to be make web programming easier...you gotta rethink the infrastructure on which your web apps run. Once that happens, writing web apps in a language should be no more difficult than writing a native app with said language.

<comment><USER7> I agree a new infrastructure is needed, and a clean slate might not be such a bad idea, especially if it would handle some of the infrastructure-related security and spanning issues for programmers. Such an infrastructure could make it practical to start from a clean slate especially if it could allow us to unravel and discard much of the tangle of complexities that make web programing so much different from native programming. We need to focus on how we use the internet and what we need from it and then revise the current web achitecture to see what's really needed, what's fluff, and what just plain idiocy. Right now, I think we'd find too much fluff and idiocy and not much of what's really needed. This could pave the way for a simplified and more unified architecture that could do what we want and could make it easier to deliver applications across the web. Simplifying that delivery would make it possible to simplify web programming, making it more intuitive and less burdened by security considerations. An altogether different infrastructure would spark new innovations in programming (as others in HN have posted that such innovation has 'stalled').

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Based on the authors, my guess is a Smalltalk-ish interpreted lang for Web programming, which runs on V8? So a higher-level compliment to Go.

Sounds promising - will be interesting to compare to Io/Ioke/Seph...

<comment><USER9> > a Smalltalk-ish interpreted lang for Web programming

In what practical sense would that differ from JS?

<comment><USER10> It would be something other than JS... ;-)

Your point is well taken; I know some who hate JS because, well, it's JS. I doubt Google is trying to cater to THAT crowd as such, but if Gilad Bracha is involved in it I think it will at least be worth looking at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is an excellent podcast with Gilad Bracha on Newspeak at se-radio:

[http://www.se-radio.net/2009/07/episode-140-newspeak-and- plu...](http://www.se-radio.net/2009/07/episode-140-newspeak-and-pluggable- types-with-gilad-bracha/)

It was one of the most memorable and interesting podcasts that I have ever heard. Newspeak will likely remain one of those languages that I really want to learn, but won't find the time for.

Considering the speakers, I'm actually very interested in what Dart is like.

</comment><comment><USER12> The primary problem with web development is not that javascript, css, DOM and dynamic HTML make for painful application development, even though that is the case. The main problem is having divergent implementations of HTML/DOM etc.. that results in having to test and maintain code for a dozen different browsers/versions. Google adding yet another language to the pool just adds to this problem.

<comment><USER13> Web programming is certainly fragmented by divergent implementations, but the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. Adding another language doesn't automatically add browser compatibility problems.

Who knows what "structured web programming" is, as Google defines it? For all we know, Dart could be a unification framework that compiles to browser- independent JS/CSS/DOM. In which case, the Dart would be very good for reducing implementation fragmentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been reading Gilad Bracha's blog for a while. He believes the future belongs to languages that compile to javascript.

</comment><comment><USER15> This will be interesting. Given Google's love for Python, I'm excited to see how they feel they could improve on that.

Although, I wonder if the language may be more suited to Google's needs (which are pretty specific) than the general web programming world.

<comment><USER16> > This will be interesting. Given Google's love for Python

Since they also love Java a lot, I am not that optimistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Google has had a horrible track record in seeing things through. So there are two issues here. One, there are already too many programming languages out there. Two, you just can't trust google to make it into a mature and viable language that you would invest time in learning. As of now, I'm hoping javascript and Node.js become the dominate language of choice.

<comment><USER18> Go seems to be doing alright. And that came from Google. And you can't get better languages without developing more...

<comment><USER19> I would classify Python and C# as languages that have improved considerably over time. So I would say that it is, in fact, possible to get better languages without developing more.

<comment><USER20> C# hasn't just improved itself considerably, C# put pressure on Java to improve as well.

That's why I welcome the creation of any and all new languages. I don't need to be on the cutting edge and try to learn all of them, I can wait until the early adopters see value in them and then learn from the things that work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this what Steve Yegge recently alluded to? ([http://steve- yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-st...](http://steve- yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-steve-yegge.html))

<comment><USER22> I'm hoping so. Well, here's how I interpret it: A structural (non-textual) environment that hosts code in a distributed graph. Less string schlepping and more semantic manipulation of data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google should probably start coordinating these product names: <http://www.google.com/doubleclick/publishers/dart.html>

<comment><USER24> Yeah, Busted! I was about to make a comment on the same topic! Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The fact that we can use a hammer doesn't mean everything is a nail. Languages and programming paradigms profoundly influence the way we think about solving problems. How can it be wrong to explore new paradigms? My concern is not them introducing a new language, but whether it is radical and innovative enough.

</comment><comment><USER26> Looks like the repo will be here: <https://code.google.com/p/dart/>

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm dreaming of something that runs on V8 that intelligently compiles to server-side and client-side JS as well as HTML and CSS from better higher level languages (something like, say, CoffeeScript + LESS + HAML).

<comment><USER28> Something like that already exists :-) SocketStream; coffeescript, node.js, jade (a better haml), stylus (sass-like) <http://goo.gl/ynJkM>

<comment><USER29> No need for a short url; we're not limited to 140 characters here.

<https://github.com/socketstream/socketstream#readme>

It's nice to see where a link goes before you click on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Perhaps there is some good reason for developing a whole new language. However my gut tells me that they should instead put their weight behind a new promising language that's still evolving.

<comment><USER19> I would say that it depends entirely on what aspect(s) of the problem of web programming Dart is trying to solve. It may be that the decision to make a new language stemmed from new ideas about type systems or new semantics that didn't really fit with any existing language.

Obviously I'm speculating here, but since we don't know what Dart is, we're all speculating here.

<comment><USER30> Agreed :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would really like to see a typed programming language to build web apps on App Engine. Most of the bugs I track down could be caught at compile-time.

<comment><USER32> Go does that.

<http://golang.org>

[http://blog.golang.org/2011/07/go-for-app-engine-is-now- gene...](http://blog.golang.org/2011/07/go-for-app-engine-is-now- generally.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if structured web programming is to conventional web programming as structured programming is to GOTO-style programming.

If this is the case, it is more or less like Hacker News, or Seaside using continuations in web programming.

If so, I'm interested to know how they overcome the mismatch between the statelessness of the web and stateful continuations. How are we going to permalink, for example?

</comment><comment><USER34> Is this going to be streamed anywhere?

</comment><comment><USER35> The web needs this. To those that say "I don't need another programming language"; I say "polyglot."

</comment><comment><USER36> Anxious to see how it compares to Opa (www.opalang.org)

<comment><USER37> Neat. This is the first time I have seen this.

First impression: I'm not really sure what this is solving - the syntax is a bit ugly and the projects seem unstructured. Seems like the ability to customize the stack is minimal. I couldn't find any solid examples of this being used in production.

It looks fairly young so hopefully these concerns will be addressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> And in 5 years perhaps it will be usable. It will take that amount of time before it will attract a large enough audience. It will also take some time to port necessary libraries. It also could end up like D and stagnant.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder how much of the speed gain can be achieved by subsetting JavaScript instead of creating a new language? Something like PyPy's RPython. This way they wouldn't need to reeducate people.

<comment><USER2> This is allread beeing done its called JS strict mode.

RPython is not really the same because RPython has to be staticlly compiled and that takes a long time.

Both of these things have nothing to do with Dart however because we do not know if Dart is about speed. Its probebly about having a better language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think Google could be interested in creating something that would make web app development on client side easier. Ie something to replace Javascript and maybe more closely tie in DOM, CSS and client-server communication.

Right now this problem seems to be usually solved by writing the software with some other language and the preprosesing or compiling it to Javascript.

Obviously a new language alone does not solve the problems but maybe a good combination of a language and framework would.

</comment><comment><USER41> What I would like to see is an ultra-high level programming web-focused language used mainly for prototyping and MVPing. Something where all the grubby details like authentication, form creation, routing, etc. And I mean, get a working application up and running, ready for users, that looks and works really well in a matter of hours.

</comment><comment><USER42> Instead of making new languages to run in the browser, why not make an assembly language for the browser and then we can use what ever language we like and compile to that?

It's a pain to develop in one language and then have to use JS. Of course you can use coffee script and such things but if it breaks you're going to have to debug JS code.

</comment><comment><USER43> Unless they're doing anything significantly novel, there probably isn't any need for yet another programming language.

</comment><comment><USER44> Blame a combination of an American education and poor web design, but it took me 5 minutes browsing around on this site before I figured out that Aarhus is a city in Denmark. The first clue when was I couldn't load maps.google.dk. The location page should have some kind of clue that Aarhus is a city.

</comment><comment><USER45> No more web languages, I can't keep up!

</comment><comment><USER46> Can't wait to get my hands on it.

At the same time I'm a bit afraid to be disappointed. All programming languages suck.

</comment><comment><USER47> For some reason I seem to Cio new programming language will be locked up not only under the WEB but under a large-scale development of all kinds of goodies for Android and Chrome

Perhaps this language in the near future will be a key to all projects Google

</comment><comment><USER48> I'd be very interested in a content authoring language that included the ability to assemble and create webm container files. Something that takes direction from a source file and "compiles" to webm (mkv+vorbis).

</comment><comment><USER47> I think that a new programming language to be used under the WEB for large- scale development of all sorts of goodies for Android and Chrome

Perhaps this language in the near future will be a key to all projects Google

</comment><comment><USER37> I think the languages that are out there are fine, Python, Ruby, JS, Java, Go, etc...

An innovative framework that utilizes an established language for web development would be more beneficial, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER22> This sounds a lot like my side project of three years and counting. I'm half- hoping it hasn't been in vain, and half-hoping they've done all the hard work for me. Steeeeeve!

</comment><comment><USER49> Wait what was GO suppose to be used for?

<comment><USER50> Systems programming, very explicitly. Go is basically aiming at C, whereas it sounds like this is going to be aiming at trendier languages like Python and JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment> buff-a It could cause magical creatures to appear and fellate me while I work, I still wont be locking myself into anything from Google.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2972108> \- "What's better: Pricier Google App Engine, or nothing?" or, more honestly: "Tough shit. What you gonna do about it?"

<comment><USER51> A language would almost certainly include an open-source implementation. Thus it'd be nothing like the kind of vendor lock-in characterizing AppEngine, an excludable/non-forkable service.

<comment> buff-a If the community picks it up and starts developing it (in addition to developing with it) great. But if all the code is written by Google employees, and they then get reassigned, you'll be left either learning how to write compilers or hoping that someone else, not at google, already has. You wont be completely, and immediately fucked, like we are on GAE. But you'll be adding "rewriting all our code within the next two years" to your to-do list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I know this sounds a little coarse, but I really don't care about yet another new programming language. There are too many already with so many distinct use cases and niches.

I think a simple, general purpose programming language is good enough(1) for the web and I'd rather have one tool for all jobs versus another edge case language. In fact I'd rather have someone concentrate on one good "multi-tool" than provide me with a hundreds of cheap short-lived screwdrivers with different shaped heads.

Innovation should be about making the status-quo better, not introducing a new status-quo every 5 minutes with new promises.

(1) - "Good enough" is an under-used term these days.

<comment><USER53> What's worse is this is fragmentation of the programming economy. I've found awesome bits of code written in Python that I can't use in PHP/Ruby/C++/etc, and various other combinations. There are great programmers working on great projects, but if they're not using the language of choice for my particular project, they are essentially useless to me.

It also makes it difficult to find new talent because there is less of a chance they'll be able to work in the language we've chosen. And yes, a good programmer should be a polyglot, but it's an attraction issue. If I'm advertising a Ruby job and looking for skills with Ruby-specific tools, there may be a great Python programmer that could switch over but who doesn't apply because they don't want to deal with switching gears to another language.

Let's keep it to 3 or 4 major languages. I think that's all I can take right now...

<comment><USER54> Library support is a big deal, and obviously a new programming language won't have a whole lot of that. That issue gets a lot smaller, if the language allows an easy way to abstract away a lot of those issues, making it quick and easy to deal with whatever you'd look for a library for. If your main goal is to find lots of library support, this new language won't appeal to you.

I'm reserving judgement until I actually see it. Maybe it's a great, fun to use language that gives significant performance advantages over other high level languages. If I need half the servers, that could be a big win. If threading and concurrency are abstracted away in a way that's performant and I don't have to worry about it, that's a big win. I don't know what it will be, but if it's useful it's useful. Seems a bit silly to judge it before it's out, especially criticizing it simply for being a "new" language.

<comment><USER55> Obvioulsy not, there are a few good good solutions to that, like running on the JVM or some other similar platform. It is not all about performance, languages can introduce new abstractions that can make a lot of difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I got all excited that this was the "Spot" we've been hearing about... but alas, something even newer. I have dreams of a Go-like language that could be used for both web server and web client programming.

<comment><USER57> What's Spot??

<comment><USER58> [http://9to5google.com/2011/08/29/google-files-trademark- for-...](http://9to5google.com/2011/08/29/google-files-trademark-for-new-spot- coding-language/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Go is not gaining enough traction, while Scala takes off. GAE is losing steam, while AWS takes off. I guess it was about time for Google to make yet another attempt to remain relevant.

<comment><USER60> I'm not too familiar with the Go ecosystem, but does Google really have anything to gain if Go becomes wildly popular?

<comment><USER61> A non-crappy language to build internal systems? There's a strong culture of NIH at Google, so I doubt there is any sneaky hidden strategy in their opening Go: they get widespread peer review and the chance to prime candidates on the language before they ever reach the hiring process. I guess even that is justification enough.

<comment><USER62> I have a hard time attributing a new language coming out of Google as NIH syndrome. If you take a look at some of the people employed at the big G (Gosling, Kernighan, Pike, Guido, Thompson, etc.) who were responsible for creating and nurturing some very big languages being used today, I would be surprised if new languages weren't being created.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> If this goes anything like AppEngine they will wait until it gets popular, then start charging $0.25 per line of code you write with it.

<comment><USER57> I remember Curl, an "web Lisp" programming language startup spun out from MIT in the late 1990s, had intended to charge users for the number of bytes served by Curl's web server! Surprisingly, the Curl company is still around and just released Curl 8.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Are they going to call it D flat?

</comment><comment><USER65> Gimme a mix of harmony and coffeescript on the server and I'm sold. Btw, no static typing please, the web is definitely dynamic, oh one last thing, remember the hobbyists.

<comment><USER66> > Btw, no static typing please, the web is definitely dynamic

Could you explain what you mean with that?

<comment><USER67> http is a text protocol. Best to deal with values as text, and dynamically as other types when needed.

<comment><USER68> Since there is already a very nice, albeit quirky, dynamically typed langauge for the web, I think there is room for something different. If you want to build robust applications with larger teams - as is increasingly the case with JavaScript - it would be really nice to have features of a statically typed language. Same goes with the performance overhead for processor-intensive apps, which we are also seeing more of with JavaScript. We are learning enough about the potential for powerful browser-based apps that we could conceivably start to come up with something better.

On the other hand, and to your point, nobody wants to reinvent SOAP.

<comment><USER69> Surprised nobody's mentioned Ur yet: <http://www.impredicative.com/ur/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> PLEASE BE A PURE FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE!!!

<comment><USER71> Ain't no such thing.

Javascript programs can be relatively pure now, and even Haskell isn't truly "pure."

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> New language couldn't solve our problem even its inventor comes from Google or not. Take for example go language, what the go language achives to us, just nothing. Same rule could be applied to this unknown super start language. Startups and freelance developer could use that toy language to implement their worthless and crap 'todo web app' but real world dont have free time to play with these toy languages. Technology is not consist with web apps, we need scalable, easy to learn, easy to read, easy to maintain languages. And finally look from broad perspective, all of the new web languages doesnt have a mature ide like Eclipse or Visual Studio, dont suggest me to use vim or emacs, i dont have enough time, i am not an idiot to fuck my brain with those useless shortcut keys.

<comment><USER73> > _hat the go language achives to us, just nothing._

Maybe for you, but not for the hundreds-thousands of people using it.

> _Technology is not consist with web apps_

What?

> _all of the new web languages doesnt have a mature ide like Eclipse or > Visual Studio_

I'm going to assume be "web languages" you are talking about Python, Ruby, Javascript (on nodejs), and Perl. Most people get along fine with the existing tools. Many people don't even like ides like VS.

> _me to use vim or emacs, i dont have enough time, i am not an idiot to fuck > my brain with those useless shortcut keys._

Not sure how learning fast, easy shortcut keys would 'fuck your brain'.

> _but real world dont have free time to play with these toy languages._

False. Developers in the 'real world' work with cool new languages, frameworks and tools every day. If you're not willing to learn them that's your own problem.</comment></comment>


Quotes from the NATO Software Engineering Conference in 1968 - <AUTHOR> http://www.peterkrantz.com/2011/software-engineering-in-1968/

<comment><USER2> I've done some diving down into other 50s/60s papers, and after a while you get a sense of "New Software Methods, Same As The Old". Fundamentals of software engineering have not changed since the 60s, but languages and problem contexts have.

It's a great experience reading on the old hackers, really gives you a sense of context.

<comment><USER3> Any links you can share please? I love coming up with new ideas, only to find out that it has all been done well before my time.

<comment><USER2> My research is in debuggers, so the refs are debuggery.

The Diagnosis of Mistakes in Programmes on the EDSAC, in my opinion, _the_ classic software engineering paper. It was written in '51 or so. Pretty much every major technique in debugging was invented then except for the proof checking that started to come out in the '80s. <http://sal.cs.bris.ac.uk/~dave/gill.pdf>

The history of early PDP debuggers is fascinating. Look up FLIT and DDT for the TX-0/1 and the PDP-1.

Also take a look at Balzer's EXDAMS paper from AFIPS '69.

Evans and Darley had an interesting survey as well in AFIPS '66.

Production of Large Computer Programs by Benington describes a really nice simulator (early 50s).

Backus invented an interpreter and described it in "The IBM 701 Speedcoding system". [http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/backus- speedcoding...](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/backus- speedcoding.pdf)

The guy over at Bitsavers has some old works there: <http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/tx-0/memos/_MemoIndex.txt>

A few gems that I've found and I think these references will supply: Lisp had amazing debugging capabilities in the mid-60s. Fully comparable to Visual Studio 2005 IMO. In the same timeframe, Fortran had an interpreter (aka QUIKTRAN iirc) that would provide analysis and code coverage stats.

I have had enormous issues digging up any information about the 50s corporate computer capabilities; most of the information I have been able to find is related to MIT computer work. As sort of a personal commentary, I've slewed hard towards open-source because of lack of decent corporate records from this period. If we don't open source our work, how will later generations build on it?

If you want my bibliography, send me an email and I'll give you a copy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As somebody (Jon Bentley? Gerald Weinberg?) says he was corrected, this was in fact very much not the way the Wright brothers worked. They had no degrees but they were very careful engineers.

</comment><comment><USER5> The main point to me is we still insist on this being engineering as opposed to creative writing.

No-one sets out the specifications for a novel, or even a marketing report.

<comment><USER6> Marketing reports and novels have specifications just as real as any physical engineering project, you're just required to guess at what exactly they are.

Whatever you're making, there's going to be some set of things that it must accomplish. It's much easier to make the correct thing if you know what those are in advance. The fact that acquiring specifications is hard, or that users don't actually know what they want doesn't change the fact that you want as precise a spec as you can get.

<comment><USER7> Often there are multiple options for what the thing you are making must accomplish (though some may be more valuable than others). I have found this fact liberating with regards to novel writing in particular, a case in which I personally would abhor a precise spec.

I do generally prefer very precise specs for engineering projects, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The quotes under "On the production of software" remind me of Unix, which came soon after.</comment>


Build your first iOS Game: Simple space invaders on github - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/richy486/InvaderR#readme <comment><USER2> Nice, seems really smooth.

As someone who is just getting in iOS development, would you have any recommendations for branching into game development? I see both this, and franzus's game are in C++. Is that common? I just spent a month leanring the basics of the iOS SDK and Obj-C so I was hoping to stay in that realm.

<comment><USER3> I converted a game I had originally written in Java to iOS. In part because I wanted to learn Objective-C. With hindsight, and with the emergence of Android, I probably should have converted the game to C++.

With the games base code (engine) in C++, I could have written thin wrappers for iOS and Android and I would doubled my market share.

For this reason I would recommend C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for posting. I hope someone can do something awesome with the code

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing, and Space Invaders it's a classic!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, and richy486 did a great job!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great share. I open-sourced some of my iOS games (and the component based framework), too. You can check it out here: <https://github.com/jsz/hellstorm>

(Sorry for the shameless plug.)</comment>


Ask HN: Any recommendations for local social media marketing? - <AUTHOR> I have started a local site in my city and I would like to get a social media marketer expert to help me get traction to the site.
It is quite possible that the site is just a waste of my time (and won't attract users), but I'd like to do my best to prove that before putting my efforts elsewhere.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> As a follow up question, given the corona virus impact on proximity based business services & products, what local SEO niches & strategies are working best right now?</comment>


Looking for feedback We're building qiscus. It's like whatsapp for work. - <AUTHOR> http://www.qisc.us/

<comment><USER2> (1) the name sucks. i have no idea how to pronounce it, and it is hard to remember. (2) the green is far too bright for business purposes. (3) i don't get what it does from the frontpage. do NOT begin with "x is not just y, but z". starting everything with "imagine..." is also a problem. i want to see, want to do, not imagine. re-think your phrasing, create better explanation, and make a (if only screencast) intro video.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I love you man. Love the honest feedback. Seems like we got a lot to work on. we'll get to it.

Thanks Simbolit!</comment>


B-rollStock sets new standards for the stock footage industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.b-rollstock.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We are B-rollStock.com, the first b-roll specialized stock footage agency in the market. Right now we are on our early stage and would really love it you could find the time to review our product!

We offer curated B-roll packages as opposed to the classic money and time- consuming "clip-by-clip" model.

One B-roll package contains 4 to 7 clips that cover one subject or topic from different angles and types of shots.</comment>


The self-help book Bill Clinton used  - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Control-Your-Time-Life-Signet/dp/0451167724

<comment><AUTHOR> Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who started his new autobiography, My Life, with a reference to the book:

 _When I was a young man just out of law school and eager to get on with my life, on a whim I briefly put aside my reading preference for fiction and history and bought one of those how-to books: How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, by Alan Lakein. The book's main point was the necessity of listing short-, medium-, and long-term life goals, then categorizing them in order of their importance, with the A group being the most important, the B group next, and the C the last, then listing under each goal specific activities designed to achieve them. I still have that paperback book, now almost thirty years old. And I'm sure I have that old list somewhere buried in my papers, though I can't find it. However, I do remember the A list. I wanted to be a good man, have a good marriage and children, have good friends, make a successful political life, and write a great book._

<comment><USER2> One out of five for your bigtime life goals isn't bad.

<comment><USER3> i know you're a troll... but which one? 1\. still married in spite of everything, I'm pretty sure that puts him in the good 50% of all marriages. 2\. kids seem fine. (i don't remember bill's kids on robot chicken) 3\. friends. no idea. i bet he's fun at parties. 4\. pretty sure u.s. president is the best possible politically. 5\. nyt bestseller. [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/bestseller/0923besth...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/bestseller/0923besthardnonfiction.html?_r=1)

I understand you don't like the guy, but wtf?

<comment><USER4> _still married in spite of everything, I'm pretty sure that puts him in the good 50% of all marriages._

Statistical quibble: MORE than 50 percent of marriages stay together and never end in divorce.

<http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/d/divorce.htm>

<http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html>

<http://www.divorcereform.org/nyt05.html>

But, yes, your specific point is correct that former President Clinton is still married to the only wife he has ever had.

<comment><USER5> Just because you've stayed married that doesn't mean you have a good marriage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "just out of law school": following, that is, graduation from Georgetown University, a Rhodes scholarship, and graduation from Yale Law School. There is an old gibe that a Rhodes Scholar is a young man with a great future behind him, but I suspect that most persons with those credentials do pretty well. Achieving the presidency of the US has so many chance factors in it--would we have heard of GWB had Ronald Reagan picked (say) Richard Lugar to run with him in 1980?--that it makes a tricky argument for political acuity.

</comment><comment><USER7> 7 bucks, 2 hour read, helped someone go from a poor, rural, single parent upbringing to the top of his field. Sounds like a no-brainer. Ordered it.

<comment><USER8> > helped someone go... to the top of his field

Did it really? I seriously doubt it. Bill might be mistaken. To me it looks like just one of the cognitive biases: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases>

Unfortunately we cannot conduct an experiment of having two identical Bill Clinton, one of them read this book while another did not, then see they results.

But among more than 3 million of book readers, how many of them have something as close to Bill Clinton's achievements?

<comment><USER9> Politics is one of those fields where being a little better at it makes you better at a lot of things (e.g. making friends, making compromises, making deals). That's unlike being, e.g., a slightly better programmer (if you're not a programmer already) or being a slightly better lock-picker.

<comment><USER10> Marginal increases in political aptitude yield benefits crossing many domains in life, unlike most skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a couple of questions.

1\. I couldn't find biography of Alan Lakein, the author of the book. Did he achieve something as extraordinary as Bill Clinton did?

2\. Could Bill Clinton achieve the same life goals without help from this book?

<comment><USER11> According to Wikipedia[1], he "sold over 3 million copies" of the book. That is certainly an achievement, whether or not it was one of his primary life goals.

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

<comment><USER8> > he "sold over 3 million copies" of the book

Then we have 3 million of Bills Clinton?

<comment><USER12> There's a big difference between knowledge, and knowledge applied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have goals sorted out like this but my A-goals just don't seem do-able...it just seems, though, that they're not obtainable.

<comment><USER14> Have you broken out more achievable goals in the mid and short term? Have you outlined actions to achieve these stepping stones? If you do that, maybe those long term goals aren't unobtainable anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> No kindle version? You're killing me!

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been looking for a good self-help book -- particularly one for public speaking / conversing with people. Anybody have a good one (besides this)?

<comment><USER17> Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people"

It's a classic for helping you to converse and connect better with people (its contents are much more sincere and wholesome than the semi-cheesy title suggests)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will it help me get fellatio?

</comment><comment><USER19> Only thieves, crooks, and whores (political and otherwise) would want to emulate Bill Clinton.</comment>


MongoDB's random exception handling - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mongodb/mongo-java-driver/blob/1d2e6faa80aeb5287a26d0348f18f4b51d566759/src/main/com/mongodb/ConnectionStatus.java#L213

<comment><USER2> What an odd thing! What's the purpose of that? This looks one case where a comment explaining the intention would add value.

Update: It seems that what it does is to only log 10% of errors... on average. Of course that also seems to make logs non-deterministic.

<comment><USER3> Yes a hack to stop someone spamming the same error from bringing the server down. Not the worst of Mongo hacks by far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is in the Java client, not core.</comment>


Will Facebook be the Next Yahoo? - <AUTHOR> http://robgo.org/2012/01/29/will-facebook-be-the-next-yahoo/

<comment><USER2> No matter the challenges, Facebook still has one thing going for it that will keep it solid for years to come: switching costs. Rebuilding a social network, from the ground up, is hard and annoying work (sorry, G+, but it's true).

Back in the day, switching from Yahoo to Google was as simple as entering a new URL into one's browser. Switching from AOL to a different ISP was slightly more difficult, but not much more difficult than cancelling one subscription and signing up for another.

But if you look at the landscape of interest-based or activity-based social networking utilities today -- Pinterest, Tumblr, and so forth -- they really don't look like Facebook killers. In fact, many of them have integrated Facebook credentialing. In aggregate, they may take user eyeballs off of the Facebook homepage -- but they aren't taking user accounts away from Facebook.

Facebook seems to realize that the key to its longevity will be as a de facto social and identity credential, and not necessarily as a destination website (although that's nice, too). People may not want to spend as much time on Facebook.com as they once did, but it will take a _lot_ to get them to abandon the Facebook ecosystem altogether.

Accordingly, I submit that the real challenge Facebook faces isn't monetizing display ad space on Facebook.com; it's monetizing the rest of the internet as credentialed by Facebook. (To your point, the "off-Facebook" ad platform). This challenge isn't insurmountable, either. In fact, it doesn't strain the imagination to think of an AdSense-competitor product that could serve up contextually relevant advertising to FB-credentialed users as they surfed the rest of the web.</comment>


Ask HN: Setting up a cluster to learn Hadoop (using Amazon EC2)? - <AUTHOR>

I've heard from various people that a good way to learn Hadoop is to set up a cluster on Amazon EC2. Do any other HNers have experience with this, or tutorials/resources available to learn more about this before I commit resources to Amazon?<p>Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Are you looking to learn the ops side or just want to play with Hadoop to learn how it works and how to use create jobs?

If you want to learn the "ops" side, EC2 is great for building clusters, tearing them down, testing different configurations, etc.

If you just want to learn how to start using Hadoop, writing jobs - don't even bother setting up a cluster. You can use it directly with Eclipse to run a single-node setup on your machine. Way less complexity and much easier to start learning with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely not looking to learn the ops side--wanting hands on with Hadoop. Is working with Hadoop just an Eclipse plugin then, like with Python? Can I run it outside of Eclipse (I tend to stick to vim or geany for coding)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Echoing the previous comment somewhat-- what about hadoop do you want to learn?

If you want to get practice with map-reduce patterns themselves, but not spend much time worrying about the ops associated with setting up hadoop clusters, you can play with Elastic-Map-Reduce (EMR) on AWS.

There is even a great python-based open source tool called mrjob (<http://packages.python.org/mrjob/index.html>) made by some folks at Yelp that makes using EMR really easy. There are a bunch of great tutorials already out there.</comment>


What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> My favorite isn't there.

Back in the 1920s Hubble did photographic surveys of the sky with long exposures. Here is what he found. Pick a random spot in the sky. Take a long exposure. Count the stars you can see. Take a magnifying glass. Count the galaxies you can find. With a few obvious exceptions, there will be more galaxies than stars. A lot more. (Obvious exceptions would include things like nebulae that you can't see through to see galaxies behind them.)

<comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_ultra_deep_field_hi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_ultra_deep_field_high_rez_edit1.jpg)

Every light there is a galaxy (okay Like and 7 stars).

I remember seeing that photo when it came out and sort of brushing it off because it wasn't some sweeping nebula. Four years of an astrophysics degree later it nearly brought me to tears just thinking about looking at 10000 galaxies and the full weight of that sight. It's one of those things thats more powerful the more you understand it.

Yeah... it kind of blows my mind.

<comment><USER4> Is that photo, by any chance, the background of the COSMOS intro? [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/21/Cosmos_a_speci...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/21/Cosmos_a_special_edition3.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Cosmos predates the deep field image by about 20 years... but it really captures the essence of the show pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I was nine I was playing with BASIC and wrote a simple program that would enumerate all colors of all pixels on the screen. I wanted to see all possible images "fly by" so to speak. First I got frustrated because it was running so slowly, only then I started to think...

If I can display a picture of a car on this monitor, then that picture would eventually also show up 'by chance' with my program! Mind blown. Then I realized it would have to show every picture in the world eventually, because every picture in the world could be displayed on my monitor. Mind blown again. Then I realized it would display every book in the world also, because a picture of a page of text is just another picture. Whoa. Then I realized the monitor would also eventually display all things that happened in the past that we had no records of and everything that was going to happen in the future!

Of course I couldn't grasp exactly how long the program was going to take, but I realized that if it had to go through infinitely many pictures it would have to take infinitely long to run.

But now I can do the real math. Should be fun:

Display 60 frames per second. 3600 seconds in an hour, 85000 in a day, 31 million seconds in a year. So 1860 million images per year.

How many possible pictures are there?

640 x 480 x 16 bits = 0.5 MB frame buffer. Kilobyte is 10 bits, megabyte is 20 bits. So there are 2 ^ 20 bits and each bit we have to toggle so there are 2 ^ (2 ^ 20) combinations.

1860 million combinations ~ 30 bits. Since we have 2 ^ 20 bits worth of statespace those 30 bits are completely insignificant. So let's assume there are a billion people with a billion computers each who work on the problem in parallel. Then there are 2 ^ (30 * 3) = 2 ^ 100 images processed each year. This still doesn't make any difference! 2 ^ 30 - 100 bits = 2 ^ 30 bits.

It would take over 10 ^ 300000 years for a billion people with a billion computers each that process 60 frames per second to enumerate the different values of a 640 x 480 monitor.

And that's just for a single megabyte. Mind blown.

<comment><USER7> Wow, you too, I came across this while meditating at 22. But I was thinking about how there can't be a new color of light. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum_algorithm>

Other implications:

1\. Knowledge is finite(a big number but finite, only 10^100 atoms in the universe so even if your screen was big as the universe there is only so much it could show)

2\. Solving a problem can be interpreted as a search through linear space of all possible permutation. So, lets say that the drug to cure cancer could be in the form of an equation, it would show up on the screen eventually.

3\. Oh, if there is a God, his pic will eventually come up on your computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The top for me would be boltzmann brains - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain> Better to read the wiki article, since I might not do it justice. A self conscious being might pop into existence based on random fluctuation.

Other Top contenders for me are: 1\. Zeno's Paradox - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes>

2\. Birthday Paradox - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_Paradox>

3\. Twin's Paradox- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox>

4\. Monty Hall Problem - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_hall_problem>

5\. Stanford Prison Experiment - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison>

6\. Asch Conformity Experiment - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments>

7\. Milgram Experiment on obedience to authority figures - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment>

8\. Placebo and Nocebo - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo>

9\. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)

</comment><comment><USER8> "Michigan's forests yielded more money and created more millionaires than did all the gold mined during California's Gold Rush."

It may not be the most mind-blowing fact I've heard in my life, but it's one of my favorites. It shows how much a good story can change perceptions.

<comment><USER9> And those trees can grow back. The gold underground won't.

(Yes it takes much longer for a new tree to grow to replace a chopped down one, but still. It's much more renewable than gold.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My boss was doing an internship at Intel, and didn't have time to verify the floating point unit because he had to go back to school.

</comment><comment><USER11> besides "you and everyone you know are going to die" at age 3, or "there is no santa claus" which logically led to "God is an imaginary friend for grown ups" at age 10.

The fact that we're all akin to lumbering flesh robots designed to help our genetic material persist. That was kind of humbling.

[http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary---- Introducti...](http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary---- Introduction/dp/0199291152/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286843250&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER12> I considered the stories of Santa Clause and God to be pretty mind-blowing when they were presented as fact. So the realization that both were made up was kind of a return to sanity.

<comment><USER13> You might have been the smartest kid I have ever heard of.

<comment><USER11> the santa claus/god realization could have been like 12 or 13, I don't remember exactly when I was told there was no santa, I'm estimating. I know I was three with the death thing, my parents remember me crying myself to sleep repeatedly moaning about it. of course they could be mistaken.

anyway, the ages were only there because I hadn't seen anyone referencing anything other than facts they heard recently. in reality nothing you've heard recently could be as earth shattering as the facts you learn when you're a kid that pull the veneer off your rosy fantasy world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am made of parts.

Close runner-up: There are zillions of slightly different versions of me. <http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0302/0302131v1.pdf>

Third place: There are only around one and a half thousand people signed up for cryonics worldwide.

<comment><USER15> "Third place: There are only around one and a half thousand people signed up for cryonics worldwide."

This is a lot more surprising once you learn that because you can pay for cryonics with your life insurance, it literally costs only a few bucks a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That the Minecraft creator was at one point making $250k a day.

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember clearly in elementary school when I suddenly understood that gravity is just a constant acceleration; if I were in a box in space accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2, it would feel exactly the same. For some reason, I found that absolutely mindblowing at the time. I spent all day trying to explain it to everyone else, and I don't think I've ever been so excited about knowing something again.

<comment><USER15> Do you also find it weird to think about how without gravity we couldn't walk? That one gets me especially hard because it's a such a tangible example of how we've evolved to take advantage of laws of the laws of physics, and how if these laws were even slightly different then we wouldn't be here, or at least not the same as we're here now.

<comment><USER18> The first day of a robotics class, my teacher explained that we don't really walk. Each step is graceful falling. Place one foot forward, tilt and fall till the foot hits and repeat.

<comment><USER19> I hate to be the one to break to this to you, but your robotics teacher was off his or her rocker or was trying to make a much larger point with a bad example.

If walking was simply graceful falling, it would imply that once we begin the process of "falling" onto the next foot, we couldn't significantly affect the outcome. However, because I can start walking and then stop with a single leg half way between it's highest point and the ground, this explanation of walking as falling becomes very problematic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Strange- This used to be linked to a Reddit story at [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dlrjs/whats_the_m...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dlrjs/whats_the_most_mindblowing_fact_you_heardread_in/)

Now it appears to be a [self] post.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure if this is the most, but Cantor's Diagonal Argument[1] is the first that comes to mind, probably even more as an example of a creative approach than for its implications (although those are pretty huge too).

Charles Petzold's "Annotated Turing" has a great run down of this and a bunch of the other mind-blowing things that came out of math in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

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

<comment><USER22> Your URL is missing the apostrophe: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Erazing faith in the verb "to be" by reading up on Alfred Korzybski and the philosophy of when abstractions fail. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski>

</comment><comment><USER24> Everything that makes up my physical body has existed and always will exist, in some form or another. Whoa!

Another one: Assuming peak efficiency, the turbines in the Grand Coulee Dam generates 1 gram of heat and light every 3.7 hours. All that water for one measly gram of something! Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence>

<comment><USER25> "Everything that makes up my physical body has existed and always will exist, in some form or another." The physicist richard feynman in the first lecture of "the feynman lectures on physics" says that the most important fact, that would convey the most information would be the atom hypothesis or fact. Which is essentially what you said except with the additional bit of information that "... all matter is made of indivisible particles that both repel and attract each other depending on the distance between them"

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The point when I realized that most things I hear are probably bs and I need to think for myself, regardless of the source.

What naturally followed was the realization that there are an infinite amount of things not yet solved or understood and I have the power to try to discover any bit of it.

</comment><comment><USER27> "It is from the mind that all happiness comes, just as it is the mind that causes the experience of suffering."

It seems a pretty obvious statement, but it took me 24 years to really became aware. Now I know how important is to meditate on a daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER28> Vacuum energy is an underlying background energy that exists in space even when the space is devoid of matter (free space).

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

</comment><comment><USER29> You can represent any book, any image or any sound with a large number.

You can set up a cipher where anyone can write you messages using publicly available information, but only you can read them.

Human DNA is essentially a digital code, has a finite number of bits, and is smaller than data sets which we routinely manipulate today.

Every known way of making meaningful computations can be represented in a formal system which you can write down on the palm of your hand.

You can also write a recipe for producing the entirety of an infinitely detailed image, that keeps being visually interesting as you zoom in, on the palm of your hand.

<comment><USER30> One can also represent any book, any image or any sound with a small number.

<comment><USER31> I think he meant lossless-ly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cantor's diagonal argument -- proof that the Real numbers are more infinite than the Integers (or Naturals). Slightly more mind-blowing than the algebraics are no bigger than the naturals.

</comment><comment><USER33> Euler's identity blew me away when I first learned it a year ago:

e^iπ + 1 = 0

<comment><USER34> This is mine too. How is it possible that

       * the ratio between the a circle's circumference and diameter
       * the number such that the derivative of e^x = e^x
       * the square root of negative 1

Have anything to relate them to one another?? That last one isn't even a number!

Mind. Blown. The universe is one crazy place.

<comment><USER35> which also means that ln(-1) = i*pi

o, and another cool one is (1/2)! = sqrt(pi)

<comment><USER36> appropriate username!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> For me, it was the EPR/double slit experiment.

<comment><USER38> For me it was the delayed choice quantum eraser. Simply mind blowing!

<comment><USER39> I just read about it yesterday and can't help thinking that the universe is just messing with our heads

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The second time I read Cryptonomicon, the implications of evolution finally dawned on me -- I have an unbroken line of ancestry stretching back _4 billion years_. Most of my ancestors weren't even human...

([http://www.sffworld.com/authors/s/stephenson_neal/excerpts/c...](http://www.sffworld.com/authors/s/stephenson_neal/excerpts/cryptonomicon1.html), bottom of page)

</comment><comment><USER41> I was brought up thinking that everyone flosses their teeth, until only recently when I asked my peers, finding out that it isn't the case.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's not the facts themselves, but the way they are expressed:

1) Cleopatra lived closer in time to the moon landings, than the building of the pyramids.

2) The Comparison of Moores Law to A Series paper at the start of this talk: <http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/11-steven-ac-declarative/>

</comment><comment><USER43> Some more contenders:

1\. Benford's Law - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law>

2\. Two envelopes problem - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_envelopes_problem>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A word of caution - many of the items in the reddit story come without sources and there will certainly be a number of factually incorrect comments.

</comment><comment><USER44> The most mind-blowing things in my life have mostly not been facts.

<comment><USER45> Ok, I'll bite. What have they been?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm Italian, born and raise there. I moved here in Florida 5 years ago. My ex- girlfriend is American, born and raise here. One day I met her best friend from college (he lives here in Florida as well), and he told me that his father was Italian. When he told me his lastname, I told him that I know people with the same last name from my grandfather's hometown, so I asked him to ask his father where he is from. We ended up finding out that he was from the same place and that he was friend with the only family member (a very far one, my grandfather's cousin) I have here in the States, in Connecticut.

<comment><USER47> Along those lines:

* I bumped into a girl that I went to South Eugene High School with at the train station here in Padova, Italy. We were even on the same train. I was quite literally speechless for a moment or two.

* I worked with a person in San Francisco whose dad had known my dad and uncle in the same small town in Montana.

<comment><USER45> I accidentally alt tabbed to a tail of a kernel log where a packet hit the wire at the exact moment that I accidentally alt tabbed. The IP address looked weird to me for some reason so I reverse resolved it and traced it, it belonged to the first ISP I'd ever used, I ran an nmblookup on the machine name and it was my first girlfriend's computer name.

Utterly freaked out I contacted her via IM, not having actually known how to do that and not having spoken to her for a very long time and verified that it was indeed her ip address and she was indeed at that computer, but she had absolutely no idea how I had managed to ascertain that fact and was about as freaked out as I was by the episode.

We talked for many hours before it finally dawned on me exactly what had happened.

On the exact day that I had been checking firewall rules on my laptop with kernel packet logging enabled, at the exact second that I had accidentally alt tabbed to a terminal window that was tailing said packet log, she had done a search on napster for a song that I happened to have.

This is very much the weirdest coincidence I've ever experienced in my life thus far.

<comment><USER48> That is also, quite possibly, the nerdiest coincidence in the history of mankind. My hat is off to you, sir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Using the length of a basketball court as the radius of the Earth, a pencil mark on one end represents the Earths crust.

<comment><USER49> that is amazing. Also, consider most of all rocks on the planet are in a liquid state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The first time I saw Quantum Corrals-

<http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/images/stm15.jpg>

Watching an Open University TV programme about James Lovelock and the Gaia Hypothesis-

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yvQVD7sgn0>

Stumbling upon cybernetics and Metasystem Transition theory-

<http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/mstt.html>

The first time watching each of The Matrix films and picking it apart in realtime, and yes, the ending of Revolutions is a Metasystem transition.

Lots of synchronicity in my life, a few examples, when I first heard about tuple spaces and Linda, and pulling out Mirror Worlds by Gelernter from my bookshelf as I had bought it a couple of years before and not read it yet, then again that has happened a few times since, the last time was when I was getting interested in classification and found I had Sorting Things Out by Bowker and Star, I keep buying books I don't know I'll need, until that time in the future that I do. Someone else mentioned the Asch conformity experiments, which I came across on YouTube and then within the week I was reading the book Poker Without Cards and the experiments were mentioned in the book, even though I hade no idea before hand, there were other instances of synchronicity with that book, but I don't want this post to end up as tr;dr.

</comment><comment><USER51> The one that I just read ten minutes ago, that my childhood hero Wade Boggs once drank 64 Miller Lites on a cross-country flight (without dying) has to be up there.

<comment><USER52> Related: Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter while on LSD [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock_Ellis#June_12.2C_1970_no-h...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock_Ellis#June_12.2C_1970_no- hitter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I am powered by nuclear fusion. Indirectly, of course. I eat food, which gets its energy from either eating other food or from sunlight.

This really blew my mind when I was six.

</comment><comment><USER54> Parallel Universes, I literally fell of my chair when I heard a scientist telling, "There are infinite versions of our universe, all slightly different".

Many-worlds interpretation:

 _Many-worlds is a postulate of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction, but denies the reality of wavefunction collapse, which implies that all possible alternative histories and futures are real —each representing an actual "world" (or "universe"). It is also referred to as MWI, the relative state formulation, the Everett interpretation, the theory of the universal wavefunction, many-universes interpretation, or just many worlds.

Many-worlds claims to reconcile how we can perceive non-deterministic events, such as the random decay of a radioactive atom, with the deterministic equations of quantum physics. Prior to many-worlds, reality had been viewed as a single unfolding history. Many-worlds, rather, views reality as a many- branched tree, wherein every possible quantum outcome is realised._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation>

<comment><USER55> If you're interested in this theory there is a novel worth reading that covers this ground, almost from first principles.

It is Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

Great book. Like most Stephenson books it gets a little weird at the end but is nonetheless well worth reading.

<comment><USER56> so THATS what it was all about!!!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> My uncle was smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table near the cookie jar at Grandma's house during Thanksgiving.

He showed me how small our sun is by showing me the tip of his cigarette and comparing it to the top of his coffee cup i.e. the size of larger stars in the universe.

I was about six years old and the universe suddenly became a drastically larger place.

</comment><comment><USER58> Not so much I heard, but I told my Mum that all the stars in the sky were suns a long long way away - she never new

</comment><comment><USER59> For me it is the fact that all life appears to have originated from one common ancestor and that life appeared fairly quickly after the earth formed and that there is an unbroken chain of life between me and that first molecule that replicated and transformed itself using energy from its environment.

</comment><comment><USER60> That half the worlds population lives on less than $2 a day...

<comment><USER61> From wikipedia: Since 1980, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has increased 67%, while median household income has only increased by 15%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> A computer and an innovative mind were the only tools necessary to sustain myself economically and make the world a better place. I'm still working on the mind, but the MBP was a good investment towards that end :)

</comment><comment><USER63> It was pointed out [1] that this thread was the source of a controversy that lead to a Florida law student and political candidate losing his position writing for the student paper:

[http://chalkboard.blogs.gainesville.com/2010/10/candidate- lo...](http://chalkboard.blogs.gainesville.com/2010/10/candidate-loses- alligator-column-over-plagiarism/)

[1][http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dlrjs/whats_the_m...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dlrjs/whats_the_most_mindblowing_fact_you_heardread_in/c120lzk)

</comment><comment><USER64> Hmmm, "heard/read" limits it a bit, as "self realization" is more memorable.

However, in the 7th grade (age 13-14), my math teacher explained to me that education was a "privilege, not a punishment". I don't remember how it changed my thought processes, but I remember the moment. Previously, I was what you might call a "slacker". After that, I was "nerd slacker" - at least I paid attention, even if I was still lazy.

A decade late, I graduated university with a degree in Mathematics and went into software engineering. Smart + lazy = good software.

</comment><comment><USER25> 2nd Law of Thermodynamics... Things flow from hot to cold, from simplicity to complexity. It is the only asymmetrical physical law! Does it have anything to do with time? We don't know!

<comment><USER25> Oh, I must say, someone mentioned Godels Incompleteness Theorem, and this comes pretty close. But I think the 2nd law if you think about it, can explain so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Not the most mind-blowing facts, just recent ones that come to mind:

1\. The volume of water and air on Earth, compared to the Earth:

[http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/download_lo_res.html?id=6...](http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/download_lo_res.html?id=690550330)

2\. The relative sizes of Earth, Sun and the biggest known stars, and the fact that a passenger airplane would take 11,000 years to circle the biggest known star:

<http://www.vplay.ro/watch/qtg8z7kg/>

</comment><comment><USER66> That we have all evolved from some very simple single-cellular ancestor that lived billions years ago and everything that happens to us on a biological level is encoded in the DNA.

<comment><USER67> Have you heard of epigenetics? This blew my mind recently.

"study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence"

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> That the universe, apparently, is nonlocal.

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

(This article is quite complex; there was a superb article in Scientific American that described Bell's experiments and conclusions simply and clearly; it's here:

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=was- einstei...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=was-einstein- wrong-about-relativity)

but unfortunately it's behind a paywall).

</comment><comment><USER69> Take a moment, and look around you. All the elements that are combined to make you and everything you see was once inside a star. A star!

*Hydrogen, helium and a bit of lithium aside.

</comment><comment><USER45> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_argument#Bostrom.27s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_argument#Bostrom.27s_hypothesis)

</comment><comment><USER70> Logic paradoxes always did (and still do) blow my mind:

1: The farther out in space you look, the farther back in time you are seeing. If you could look back all the way to the big bang, you would be looking (billions of miles away) at the _inside_ of a universe about the size of a grape fruit (or whenever super-inflation was supposed to start).

2\. You cannot move. In order to move between A and B, you must first move half way between the two. etc.

3\. Some people "invest" in the lotto.

<comment><USER71> Forgive me but how is moving half way between two points not moving? Did you mean "You cannot arrive"?

<comment><USER72> I believe the idea is that the problem of moving is atomic. To move, you must know how to move (assuming the world is not discrete).

It is the same as "you cannot arrive", except in reverse. Or that "you cannot rotate one of two parallel lines", because the jump from parallel to intersecting is elusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Over half of people in the U.S. don't believe in evolution.

<comment><USER15> It depends how you define "don't believe". They might say they don't believe in evolution, but that doesn't mean they act in ways that are logically congruent with evolution being false.

<comment><USER74> Most people don't act in ways that are logically congruent with all their beliefs. You're lucky if their beliefs are consistent with each other.

<comment><USER15> "Most people don't act in ways that are logically congruent with all their beliefs."

Do they really believe them then? Is there any reason not to say that a belief, by definition, is something (among other things) that you act logically consistently with.

<comment><USER74> I'm sure there's a word you _can_ define as something that you act logically consistent with, but I think it's closer to the word "motivation" than the word "belief".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I've no idea if this is true or not (probably not due to where i heard it) but a poll was taken in the US about foreign aid.

68% said that too much was spent on foreign aid, 59% said they thought it should be cut.

Thus 9% think foreign aid is too high but shouldn't be cut. It isnt so much this specific example, but i bet pollsters get this kind of thing all the time, which i find fascinating.

Bonus points if you know where its from.

<comment><USER76> I think it's from The West Wing episode "Guns Not Butter":

[http://www.tvloop.com/the-west-wing/show/quotes/joshua- lyman...](http://www.tvloop.com/the-west-wing/show/quotes/joshua-lyman- josh-68-percent-think-were-giving-too-322784)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> 1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set>

2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem>

3\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)

</comment><comment><USER78> That knowing things with the mind is as limiting as it is empowering. In other words, your mind can be blown and you'd still be alright.

</comment><comment><USER79> I couldn't see how anything could possibly stay in orbit when gravity pulled everything together until I wrote a computer program to simulate orbits in 2d: <http://ln-s.net/7oFZ>

It was really enlightening to fiddle with the constants and to create events that show how kinetic and potential energy interact in space.

</comment><comment><USER80> When a primary school teacher told me that planes fly because the faster moving air on top of the wing creates a low pressure zone and sucks up the wing.

It was obviously wrong, because some planes can fly upside down, and that was when I realized that just because an adult speaks with authority about something they believe to be true doesn't mean it is true.

</comment><comment><USER81> Listing few that stayed 'on my mind' for multiple days

\- E=mc2

\- Genocide in Darfur <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Darfur> and

\- Wealth controlled by top 1 percent of population in US <http://www.slate.com/id/2268872/>

</comment><comment><USER82> 1\. That humans kill each other because of differing opinions. 2\. That I see only my own point of view till I live - at every moment, there are billions of folks who are living a different life and experience. 3\. When we gaze at a star, we are gazing into the past.

</comment><comment><USER83> RSA algorithm for asymmetrical encryption/decryption and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol.

</comment><comment><USER84> Probably not the MOST mind-blowing, but dual-photography rocked my world. Here's the video demo: <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8237361566146405294>

</comment><comment><USER85> Most recently I found out that the Russian Salyut 3 space station (whos missions were to take 3" resolution pictures of the US) had a cannon mounted on the bottom of it. Not only was there a machine gun in space, but it was fired too.

<comment><USER74> How did the space station keep its position?

<comment><USER86> This article I found while pondering the same question states that it was de- orbited a day after the test firing ([http://maikelnai.elcomerciodigital.com/2009/12/30/salyut-3-d...](http://maikelnai.elcomerciodigital.com/2009/12/30/salyut-3-disparando- desde-el-espacio/)), granted it doesn't provide sources for that specific claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> For me, when I finally grasped Einstein's theory of special relativity, that was a pretty mind blowing experience. It's not as easy to fully _get_ as you might think but when you do it's an almost zen-like experience.

</comment><comment><USER88> The almost casual mention in Umberto Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum' that ancient civilisations had electric lights and batteries. Not sure how well this theory holds up nowadays, but I was pretty amazed...

</comment><comment><USER89> This doesn't answer you're question, but I'm really impressed that someone was clever enough to invent hash tables. Lagrange interpolation is also something I'm not sure I could have invented.

</comment><comment><USER90> that fast food hamburgers are only 2.1% to 14.8% Meat (B. Prayson et al. Fast food hamburgers: what are we really eating?, Annals of Diagnostic Pathology 12 (2008) 406–409

</comment><comment><USER91> This comes to mind:

[http://www.tvkim.com/watch/357/kims-picks-mute-autistic- girl...](http://www.tvkim.com/watch/357/kims-picks-mute-autistic-girl-finds-a- voice)

</comment><comment><USER92> entangled particles and quantum mechanics in general. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lOWZ0Wv218>

</comment><comment><USER93> Carl Sagan's reflections on _star stuff_ still blows my mind.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UR2L_4ic6Y>

</comment><comment><USER94> That we are star dust.

<comment><USER15> We are golden. We are billion year old carbon. And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2hL6iCSFxk>

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Not so much mind-blowing as shocking -- when I first heard that the Europeans brought horses to America. There were none here before Columbus.

</comment><comment><USER96> That "Manic Monday" by the Bangles was written by Prince.

Oh also that "Monopoly" is an American invention (I assumed it was as British as the Queen).

<comment><USER97> +1 for Manic Monday

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin> in Japan

</comment><comment><USER99> The atoms I consisted of a few months ago have been replaced by different ones. It's the pattern that makes me.

</comment><comment><USER48> Fairly mind blowing to me at the time I heard it: Reno, NV is farther West than Los Angeles, CA.

</comment><comment><USER100> about 90% of my misery, unhappiness, frustration in life are due to one word: expectation. Once I understood that my sufferings are caused by unmet expectation of myself and/or others, my sufferings ease.

ps. still have high expectations, just not suffering.

</comment><comment><USER101> That I can boil water in an origami paper cup kept directly over flame.

</comment><comment><USER102> That we differ only 2.5 percent in our DNA from mice.

It _still_ blows my mind.

<comment><USER103> Along the same lines... we share 50% of our DNA with bananas :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> that most people in the world do not use bidets <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet>

</comment><comment><USER105> We landed on the moon!

<comment><USER106> That we haven't landed man on Mars yet!

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> f\left ( x \right )=e^{x} \to {f}'\left ( x \right )=e^{x}

<comment><USER52> For those that prefer not to read TeX, that's saying that

d/dx (e^x) = e^x

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> this place is so becoming reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dlrjs/whats_the_m...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dlrjs/whats_the_most_mindblowing_fact_you_heardread_in/)

lame.

<comment><USER109> It was originally a link to the reddit thread.

<comment><USER110> I assume you're the one that edited it?

With the link we're ostensibly talking about them, without it we're reduced to their level, and just having the same adolescent discussion again. Editing out the link makes HN _more like reddit_.

<comment><USER109> I really don't think it's that big a deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> e^(i*pi) = -1

</comment><comment><USER112> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY> really demonstrates the elegance of bolo ties.

</comment><comment><USER113> (1) All life on Earth is based on DNA. There is no alternative, no second choice, no runner up.

(2) While there are millions of species on Earth that have long been stable and successful and still are, humans have by some astronomically wide margin the most powerful capabilities with, again, no alternative, no second choice, no runner up.

(3) For all we have done with working with information, computing, human physiology and psychology, we still have hardly a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue how to program a computer to be as _smart_ as a human, dog, kitty cat, dolphin, or ... many more.

(4) On the one hand, humans, both individually and collectively, commonly make serious, disastrous mistakes for even just silly reasons. On the other hand, humans have made shockingly good progress even at understanding the universe. How could the same species have both such big disasters and bit successes?

(5) As we try to understand the universe in greater detail, we get in effect 'throttled': We can't go faster than the speed of light; we can't look in detail at a scale much smaller than an atom; we can't have energy enough to explore all the possible particles. In each case, we are throttled, and essentially blocked, not by hard barriers but just by increasing costs.

(6) As mentioned by others, the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen (EPR) _spooky action at a distance_ paradox.

(7) There is a naughty boy in his room with his relatively large computer. He types in candidate laws of physics and then clicks on the button Big Bang. Mostly all he gets is a fast poof but occasionally he gets something interesting. How do we tell our universe from something in this boy's computer? More generally, how are the laws of physics _enforced_?

(7) Suppose n is a positive integer, R is the set of real numbers, R^n is Euclidean n-dimensional space, and C is a closed subset of R^n. Then there exists a function f: R^n --> R so that f is zero on C, positive otherwise, and infinitely differentiable.

It is fair to say that the Mandelbrot set is _bizarre_ , but it is a closed subset of R^2. So, the Mandelbrot set is the level set of an infinitely differentiable function. So, a very smooth function can have a bizarre level set.

Also, the graph in the plane of one dimensional Brownian motion is closed and almost surely differentiable nowhere. So, a curve differentiable nowhere can be the level set of an infinitely differentiable function.

So, could have a landscape given by an infinitely differentiable function, in a valley pour in water, form a lake, and, as in Mandelbrot, have the boundary of the lake be as irregular as the Mandelbrot set or Brownian motion. So, a very smooth landscape can have lakes with very irregular boundaries.

<comment><USER114> While it's debatable whether viruses count as a form of life, RNA viruses do exist. It's also generally believed that there were RNA-based forms of life before the advent of DNA.

You are spot on about #4. The more we learn about our world, the more creative ways we come up with to destroy it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> That 50% of step daughters will have some sort of unwanted sexual relationship with their step fathers. I don't know if this means actual sex or just unwanted advances. Either way is just mind boggling.

It's so gross on so many levels. I don't recall where I read it, and I hope it's false.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like one of those "college feminist club" kinds of statistics that get tossed around. Sounds way too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> That in 1933 the United States declared bankruptcy and has been so ever since. Also, the original 13th amendment of the Constitution was simply deleted and replaced. And the 16th amendment was never ratified.

<comment><USER49> sad :( i don't understand why people are downvoting my post... Is this just to sad for people to believe?

<comment><USER90> The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment

The several state legislatures ratified the Sixteenth Amendment on the following dates: Alabama, August 10, 1909; Kentucky, February 8, 1910; South Carolina, February 19, 1910; Illinois, March 1, 1910; Mississippi, March 7, 1910; Oklahoma, March 10, 1910; Maryland, April 8, 1910; Georgia, August 3, 1910; Texas, August 16, 1910; Ohio, January 19, 1911; Idaho, January 20, 1911; Oregon, January 23, 1911; Washington, January 26, 1911; Montana, January 27, 1911; Indiana, January 30, 1911; California, January 31, 1911; Nevada, January 31, 1911; South Dakota, February 1, 1911; Nebraska, February 9, 1911; North Carolina, February 11, 1911; Colorado, February 15, 1911; North Dakota, February 17, 1911; Michigan, February 23, 1911; Iowa, February 24, 1911; Kansas, March 2, 1911; Missouri, March 16, 1911; Maine, March 31, 1911; Tennessee, April 7, 1911; Arkansas, April 22, 1911 (after having rejected the amendment at the session begun January 9, 1911); Wisconsin, May 16, 1911; New York, July 12, 1911; Arizona, April 3, 1912; Minnesota, June 11, 1912; Louisiana, June 28, 1912; West Virginia, January 31, 1913; Delaware, February 3, 1913; Wyoming, February 3, 1913; New Mexico, February 3, 1913; New Jersey, February 4, 1913; Vermont, February 19, 1913; Massachusetts, March 4, 1913; New Hampshire, March 7, 1913 (after having rejected the amendment on March 2, 1911). The amendment was rejected (and not subsequently ratified) by Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah.

<http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/html/conamt.html></comment></comment></comment>