Statistics Done Wrong: Inferential statistics and how scientists screw it up - <AUTHOR> http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/

<comment><USER2> Nice article.

I'm a little disappointed that Bayes never gets mentioned here, however, since Bayesian methods are a systematic way to deal with all the problems in classical statistics that are talked about in this article (ie. stopping rules, "base rate")

Also there's no mention at all of the widespread abuse of parametric statstics -- that all the time people take some test out of a book that has 5 or 6 conditions that need to be true to use it and those conditions don't apply. There are many nonparametric techniques that are simple and foolproof and sacrifice a small amount of power.

It's 2012 and we can make short work of tough problems in a Bayesian framework with MCMC. There are good textbooks in Bayesian methods today, unlike the 1970s. It's time to send classical statistics packing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was tempted to introduce Bayes' theorem to explain the base rate fallacy; however, I couldn't devise a way to very quickly introduce it without just making it a magical formula I pulled out of my rear. It deserves more discussion than that. When I take a course on Bayesian statistics I may write a follow-up on alternatives to the flawed frequentist methods in the article.

Thanks for the tip about parametric statistics. I'll do some research.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pdf.to – Do Things to PDF's - <AUTHOR> https://pdf.to <comment><USER2> Next thing should be done, to provide a command-line interface, such as:

      curl -F email@example.com 'https://pdf.to/png' > stuff.png

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea</comment></comment>


Convert Markdown to PDF only using browser - <AUTHOR> https://md2pdf.netlify.com/ <comment><USER2> Similar topics are coming up often on HN recently. I think it's time Markdown should be supported natively by browsers. Until then, there are things like:

TeXMe ([https://github.com/susam/texme](https://github.com/susam/texme)): This is my personal favorite because it supports the CommonMark standard of Markdown and also LaTeX via MathJax. I like standards so that I know that the Markdown I write (especially nested lists, code within nested lists, etc.) get rendered the same way everywhere. I write some math too, so MathJax support is useful. If you are looking for something where you can just slap together Markdown and LaTeX and turn the document instantly into a paper-like finish, this is a good choice. The output can be saved as PDF or printed too just like you would print any paper.

MdMe ([https://github.com/susam/mdme](https://github.com/susam/mdme)): This is pretty much TeXMe without MathJax support.

Markdeep ([https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/](https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/)): This is like TeXMe but it supports a lot of features like diagrams, tables, etc. But it comes at the cost of standard conformance. Markdeep does not conform to CommonMark. I don't need these additional features for most of my writing but I care about standard conformance, so I go with TeXMe but if you need these features then Markdeep is a good choice.

Comparison of TeXMe vs. Markdeep by the author: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18314175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18314175)

<comment><USER3> > I think it's time Markdown should be supported natively by browsers.

I'd rather have AsciiDoc become the default lightweight documentation format. Markdown suffers from competing standards regarding extensibility beyond basic formating, whereas AsciiDoc is a quite direct translation of the solid standard Docbook.

Extending Markdown to anything more complex than bold, italic or headers requires deciding among a number of competing tools with different syntax and installing them as extensions. AsciiDoc has features as tables, references, images or metadata integrated in the standard, and it has been designed for extensibility, while Markdown was not.

There _is_ an advantage of using Markdown over AsciiDoc, which is that it is currently supported by a larger variety of tools. But that advantage is somewhat negated by its different and slightly incompatible flavors.

[https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-vs- markdown/](https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-vs-markdown/)

[https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/mar/15/dont-use- markd...](https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/mar/15/dont-use-markdown-for- technical-docs/)

<comment><USER2> Does AsciiDoc have a nice way to ignore all LaTeX code enclosed within $...$ (inline math), $$...$$ (displayed math), \\(...\\) (inline math), and \\[...\\] (displayed math)?

I think one of the problems of Markdown is that it does not provide a way for the Markdown parser to ignore any text within certain delimiters (I especially care about ignoring text within Latex math delimiters). This is the most crucial reason why I am using tools like TexMe or Markdeep.

Is AsciiDoc better in this area? If yes, it would definitely solve a big problem for me that Markdown does not solve.

<comment><USER3> AFAIK there are several ways to embed LaTeX and mathematical formulas in AsciiDoc such as asciidoctor-latex [1] or ASCIIMathML and LaTeXMathML [2].

AsciiDoc also allows embedding literal paragraphs or blocks of text [3]. I think the mechanism of passthrough macros [4] can be used to copy raw text to the output and allow further processing down the pipeline, though I'm not sure how it's used.

[1] [https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor- latex](https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-latex)

[2] [http://asciidoc.org/#X3](http://asciidoc.org/#X3)

[3] [http://asciidoc.org/userguide.html#X76](http://asciidoc.org/userguide.html#X76)

[4] [http://asciidoc.org/userguide.html#X77](http://asciidoc.org/userguide.html#X77)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also markdeep[1] (extension of markdown) and remarkable[2] (desktop app)

Personally, I use pandoc and customize using xelatex [3] to generate beautiful pdfs for self publishing

[1] [https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/](https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/)

[2] [https://remarkableapp.github.io/linux.html](https://remarkableapp.github.io/linux.html)

[3] [https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook- generation/c...](https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook- generation/customizing-pandoc/)

<comment><USER5> Pandoc is definitely the way to go. Very easy to automate, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seriously, this is just `window.print()`...

<comment><USER7> You weren't kidding!

Inspect->Events->onClick

         function() {
             return window.print()
         }

Though the codemirror stuff is probably a bit more work.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the project is basically a React app that implements the plumbing for the editor vs preview panes, file selection, and the drag-n-drop file handler.

Nothing wrong with that, but a project named "md2pdf" juxtaposed with onClick={window.print} is unexpected.

<comment><AUTHOR> The first problem I want to solve was that convert MD file to PDF.

And I found the powerful way was browser print. It allows you zoom rate/choose page range.

So, I dig in CSS media query and try to compatible cross browser(Chrome&FF).

I made an editor in left side just cause sometimes we want edit some typo or something before convert...haha, codemirror makes a good user experience than textarea.

<comment><USER9> do you know if there is a way to remove the datetime stamp header that is inserted into the pdf when printing?

<comment><USER8> Once Chrome's print dialog pops up, you can expand "More settings" and then uncheck "Headers and footers".

<comment><USER9> thanks, worth noting that the print dialog does not support that option when using Firefox on Windows

<comment> frosted-flakes I think you need to open it in Print Preview to change those settings, which is accessible in the main menu (there's not a keyboard shortcut, unfortunately).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have the same thing as dirty Python script[1]. Handy to send notes or reports to clients as "nice" PDF.

One could customize it to support additional markdown features, like footnotes, tables. To run:

$ md2pdf some-markdown.md # gives some-markdown.pdf

You can also pass a CSS sheet with some custom fonts and colors. (sample included with GIST)

$ export MD2PDF_CSS=style.css md2pdf myfile.md

1: [https://gist.github.com/m3nu/616c0d59246d0554ed599daeec44e64...](https://gist.github.com/m3nu/616c0d59246d0554ed599daeec44e646#file- md2pdf-py)

<comment><USER11> I also prefer local solutions, try e.g.

        aptitude show python-markdown

It might feel cool just maximize use of your browser, but I shy from putting this kind of (possibly confidential) content via internet based solutions/services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish there would be an open source alternative to PrinceXML.

<comment><USER13> I did find this today:

[https://weasyprint.org/](https://weasyprint.org/)

Seems like the closest open source alternative to PrinceXML.

<comment><USER12> Thanks will take a look, up to now everything else I've tried had subpar print CSS support and created not the best output. Didn't know weasyprint !

[Edit] Tried out Weasyprint, sadly doesn't support a lot of stuff which I need (Javascript, could hack phantomjs, and CSS leader() for TOCs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Visual Studio Code "Markdown PDF" addon is perfect for this type of job.

[https://github.com/yzane/vscode-markdown- pdf](https://github.com/yzane/vscode-markdown-pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been using the Markdown Reader Chrome extension and using the browser print function to do this kind of conversion.

What would be really useful (to me personally) is a tool that renders plantUML/mermaid embedded into markdown to a PDF. I haven't been able to find a simple solution that doesn't require writing code to integrate the libraries together, or rendering the images separately and bringing them into the markdown document (which is tedious).

<comment><USER4> check out markdeep[1] which allows diagrams (but I don't think it is comprehensive like plantUML/mermaid)

[1] [https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/](https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I too can "print to PDF."

</comment><comment><USER17> Just FYI, this is being blocked by Cisco Umbrella</comment>


Seeking Junior Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/nas5w/status/1104897180811345922 <comment><USER2> I've gotten into the habit of applying to positions even if I don't meet the "required" skills. Just put your best foot forward for the jobs you want--you don't have to help the company whittle down the applicant pool out of some sort of modesty. That's their job.</comment>


IceCat 31.8.0 release - <AUTHOR> https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=8314

<comment><USER2> I hope IceCat gets more attention and resources, since it currently seems slow to update - FF ESR 31.8 was released 12 days ago.</comment>


Peter Thiel's dangerous blueprint for perverting philanthropy - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/306927/peter-thiel-gawker-dangerous-blueprint/ <comment><USER2> Gawker are scum. They disobeyed a court order. They deserved the lawsuit. If you want freedom of speech to out people and attack everyone, expect people with money to use said money to fight back legally. It's their freedom too.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree and don't get why so many people are so grossly upset.

Peter Thiel didn't use his money to bribe anyone, he didn't do anything illegal for Hulk. The court made a decision and Gawker needs to live with the consequences...

<comment><USER4> It's all about one word. Tribalism.

A lot of people feel Gawker was a member of their tribe. It's the old "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard" thing.

<comment><USER3> I guess. Until Gawker finds something juicy on them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have no idea why everyone thinks this is doing something unusual. Using lawsuits to stifle free speech is commonplace.

For example, using lawsuits to stifle climate skepticism: [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/subpoenae...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/subpoenaed- into-silence-on-global-warming)

Hillary Clinton was famous for shutting down free speech - her critics had to go all the way to the supreme Court to protect their right to criticize politicians (see citizens united).

Or see SPLC vs Aryan Nation, which is exactly some wealthy philanthropists funding a lawsuit by a third party: [https://www.splcenter.org/fighting- hate/extremist-files/grou...](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting- hate/extremist-files/group/aryan-nations)

The only thing new about this is that the mainstream media suddenly notices this stuff hitting closer to home.

<comment><USER6> The thing that makes it unusual is that he's acting in secret and actively soliciting lawsuits he has no interest in, and structures the lawsuits to remove incurable claims because he has a personal vendetta against a media outlet that he doesn't like.

If you can't see the difference between working in public against a violent racist organization and a petulant billionaire waiting 7 years to throw a bunch of middle class people out of work, and send a message to the media at large to play nice with him, because he got his feelings hurt, I can't help you.

<comment><USER5> I can clearly see the difference. Aryan nations is on the other team while gawker is on your team.

Incidentally, middle class people worked for Aryan Nation also.

<comment><USER6> Go back to 8chan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are so many things wrong with this article that I don't even know where to start.

* Gawker does not deal in journalism any more than Keeping up with the Kardashians does. It's an entertainment company that makes a profit by exposing details of people's lives which other people have no business knowing. There's an argument to be made that the world be better off with that type of gutter "journalism". It's not giving people "news" which they "have a right to know" (the kind of thing for which journalism needs to be protected).

* But if we accept that Gawker has the right to its thing - and it does - then Gawker has to accept the consequences of pissing people off - which is usually solves through litigation insurance. If it gets sued out of existence, it's its own fault, no one else's.

* Thiel did not "take down" or "punish" Gawker. A court of law punished Gawker for breaking the law. The fact that Thiel paid the defendants attorneys is irrelevant. If we have a problem with that, then we could pass laws to disallow third parties from funding other people's law suits which would have terrible consequences (no more ACLU, for example).

* If the argument is that "the person with the most money wins lawsuits", I don't disagree. But that is a problem with the justice system, not Thiel.

* We can't have "freedom of speech" without "freedom to sue", otherwise these entertainment "news" outlets can easily ruin the lives of people for profit (as they do).

</comment><comment><USER8> "Later asked by an attorney for Hogan if there was a situation in which a celebrity sex tape might not be newsworthy, Delaurio responded: "If they were a child."

The attorney then asked him to specify: a child under what age? Daulerio responded: "Four.""

This was the Gawker editor who came up with the sex tape and story. This sums up the the anything goes interpretation of free speech these people have. (Although he later said he was being flippant, that's even worse in exposing his infantile psychology).

OTOH, Thiel's ruthless use of the suing machine also leaves a bitter taste. This is a case where it's hard to totally root for either side.

<comment><USER9> Yeah ,There are no good guys here.

Criticizing Thiel shouldn't be confused with supporting Gawker , because we don't know who Thiel might choose to punish next

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it scares me that people are accepting this as "philanthropy" uncritically.

<comment><USER11> FWIW I would never have considered Thiel's actions to be philanthropy. Which is why I was so confused when reading the headline "Peter Thiel's dangerous blueprint for perverting philanthropy."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gh-lfneu28 From the article: "Historically, news publications have treated certain subjects very carefully: if you're rich and [...] litigious, then [...] organizations will have lawyers do a careful review of anything they write about you [...]"

Well, if they would now have to "do a careful review" of __everything __they write for the fear of vengeful billionaire going after them, nobody would shed a tear.

But obviously that wont be a solution.

<comment><USER12> He seems to be saying that vetting info about people who are not known to have enough resources to pursue legal remedy themselves is too large a hardship for journalists to endure. In all of the voluminous writing about this topic this week, I have yet to encounter a single good objection to what Thiel is doing. I'm honestly mystified by why so many people are objecting to this.

<comment><USER4> There are no good logical or legal arguments that I've heard so far. It's all hand waving furiously.

<comment><USER13> It's scummy journalists all circling the wagons as they feel one of their own is under attack.

that's why you won't find logical or reasonable arguments from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have to admit, I've always been conflicted about this. On the one hand, yes it is a dangerous precedent to let the rich destroy publications they don't like by funding any possible lawsuit against them.

But on the other hand, there seems to be an assumption that journalists and the media should be immune to punishment for when they do stuff that potentially destroys people lives, careers and reputation. Gawker didn't have the right to post this content and didn't care that the courts found against them.

And when you consider that millionaires and billionaires often own media outlets as well, that can be worrying as well. What about a Murdoch esque figure trying to push their own views on society (and discredit opponents) through their newspapers and publications?

What Thiel did here is potentially worrying, but so are the other possibilities from the media site.

<comment><USER15> The issue to me seems that it is just accepted that you need lots of money to use the law properly. If it was just some rando who had his sex tape published by gawker shouldn't he be able to sue them and materially affect them? That he can't or there is the widely accepted belief that he can't is the problem.

Rich guys have extracted revenge on others since there has been wealth, there is nothing new here except the belief that maybe Hogan somehow wouldn't have had a case without Thiel's help? Or maybe gawker could have delayed and played games to price Hogan out of a law suit or something? How isn't that messed up? Sure I get the fear of tons of frivolous law suits but what about serious ones? The poor can't take part.

The Internet has brought on an entire generation of "journalists" without limits, the pendulum will swing back, that's how things tend to work. Gawker and the others were going to continue to push boundaries in the name of profit, not news, until somebody fought back and it should have been long before a celebrity sex tape. It shouldn't take a billionaire backed lawsuit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So the point of the article is complaining that instead of reviewing if publishing some dirt about a few billionaires is within the legal boundaries, Gawker and others might have to do the same if they want to simply throw some dirt about ordinary plebeians as well? (Unpossible! Why would they deserve that?)

And that their plan to continue performing illegal actions because, well, they have bought insurance and can settle their claims with their money has been foiled - well, what has happened to the concept why these laws were made in the first place, that such claims should be an effective deterrent to actually change their behavior?

Gawker made their own bed there. Actions that result in such behavior becoming impractical not only for Gawker, but also for all other publications are (contrary to the OP viewpoint) not only permissible, but even necessary.

</comment><comment><USER17> Such as a terrible article. Trying to paint Gawker as David. Gawker needs to be shut down, I hope Thiel never stops funding.

</comment><comment><USER18> Because you need a team of lawyers to know that you shouldn't leak a sextape on your site? Thiel didn't need a team of lawyers to scrutinize every article too, the sextape case was big enough he could know it by himself. The press shouldn't have a free pass to publish every salacious article, and should face the consequences of its actions. Great to see the press establishment defending its cast with such fallacious arguments.

</comment><comment><USER11> _> Gawker is a fast-moving site; it can't (and doesn't) carefully lawyer every single thing it publishes._

Maybe it should move slower then. And report, you know, responsibly.

<comment><USER14> This is a great point. If media outlets stopped being so obsessed with publishing anything and everything for clicks (without checking if it was newsworthy, legal or moral to do so), then cases like this would be much fewer and far between.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Related opinion on the legal aspect of funding the legal fees of other people: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2016/05/26/peter-thiels-funding-of-hulk-hogan-gawker-litigation- should-not-raise-concerns/)

Like most things in adversarial law, it looks to me like an atom-blaster that can point both ways.

</comment><comment><USER20> Philanthropy = funding projects to make the world a better place, without making a financial profit. This legal campaign is clearly philanthropic, whether or not you like the outcome.

</comment><comment><USER21> 'The news that (Peter Thiel) just gave the world a master class in how a billionaire can achieve enormous ends with a relatively modest investment'

Off topic but this case is nothing compared to the master class run by Geoge Soros in showing how a billionaire can pervert democracy by funding massive social engineering in all the countries of the European Union.

As Viktor Orban has said "George Soros has published a comprehensive six-point plan promoting the movement of migrants into Europe, in which he has declared that at least one million Muslims should be let into Europe every year. According to this they must be given safe passage, and Europe should be pleased to receive such an opportunity, rather than try to resist it. He also said that this will cost a lot of money, and he will provide the credit needed".</comment>


Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/directx/2018/03/19/announcing-microsoft-directx-raytracing/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620423), since it had the original source and was posted earlier.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can we swap in [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/directx/2018/03/19/announci...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/directx/2018/03/19/announcing- microsoft-directx-raytracing/) which is the official announcement and a more detailed post to begin with?

<comment><USER2> Sure. Changed from [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/microsoft- announces-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/microsoft-announces- the-next-step-in-gaming-graphics-directx-raytracing/). Thanks!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Impact the world by volunteering your skills to neighbors - <AUTHOR> http://www.DeedLion.com <comment><USER2> > I will review your resume for $50 to stop Zika.

wut

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey exolymph, hope all is well.

DeedLion allows you to volunteer your skills to neighbors and have the proceeds benefit a cause important to you. So, for the resume example, you could offer to review a resume in return for the buyer sending $50 to a charity fighting Zika.

How it works -> When you volunteer a service, you set the price and a charity to receive the proceeds. DeedLion works to connect you with buyers (in this case, people who need a resume review) and you can accept or deny their purchase requests. Once accepted, you complete the resume review and the proceeds go to the charity you selected (in this case, $50 to a charity fighting Zika).

<comment><USER2> The way it read to me was "Give me $50 to review your resume and somehow that will stop Zika." No idea how common my interpretation is, but it's something to consider.</comment></comment></comment>


GNU Octave 5.1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/NEWS-5.1.html <comment><USER2> Great job to the Octave team!

Octave is a great tool, and it addresses a very real need - breaking MATLAB's stranglehold on academic computing.

Every programming course I took as an EE undergrad (other than Intro to Programming) was in MATLAB. 14 years later, and it's still the standard tool in my alma mater's EE department. Having a FOSS equivalent is huge.

So raise a glass to the Octave dev team. They work hard to provide a FOSS tool that can run MATLAB code, which gives you the software you need for self- guided learning from university materials. Or for your all your computational needs.

And Octave is a great tool even if you don't need MATLAB compatibility. Try it out the next time you've got some numerical computing to do.

Not an Octave dev, just a fan of the project.

<comment><USER3> Agreed that: A) it and Scilab are great projects B) these would suffice fine for pretty much any undergraduate course in linear algebra, but many courses need Simulink and I'm not sure Scilab's Xcos is good enough. Since Matlab is like $20 for students, it is basically free and makes sense especially when you consider the IDE. Sure, Python and Julia are great options once you can code. There are many students who honestly just aren't very good coders by their sophomore and junior years. Engineering students have to code here and there in various projects, but often don't have a full class just for programming. Long story short, inverting a matrix in Matlab/Octave/Scilab is more straightforward than in Python. I think Julia's syntax has enough similarities with Matlab and is similar, but the tooling would be confusing to students.

<comment><USER4> You hook 'em young, they become users for life. MS does the same thing, offering a steep academic discount for Office, VS, etc..

<comment><USER5> Apple also has academic discounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> GNU/Octave has a great strength and weakness that it uses the Matlab language. This is great for many who are educated with Matlab but don't know much else. After some time I found Python and the ecosystem around numpy/scipy/matplotlib fit my problems much better. Python just much more flexible and better suited for general programming tasks than that weird matrix oriented language.

Why should anyone use Octave over Matlab?

\- Licensing cost.

\- Freedom.

Why should anyone learn Octave instead of Python?

\- It's a bit easier to get started for scientists who are not programmers.

\- If you mostly do vector/matrix math, the language is nice.

\- Otherwise I don't know any good point.

All in all I like a free alternative to Matlab but have the feeling that most people are just better served by joining the much bigger Python ecosystem. (Or maybe R/Julia/Rust which I don't know so much about in this context.)

<comment><USER7> In an engineering setting, MatLab has more mindshare, but that may be changing.

The related product Simulink is not uncommon in larger engineering firms also.

Back in the day, the community around MatLab was quite large, but likely has declined in size in the last few years with the rise of Python in this area.

<comment><USER8> > In an engineering setting, MatLab has more mindshare, but that may be > changing.

This has definitely been changing for a while. All engineering studies of my old university except for computer science and mathematics have switched from Java+Matlab to Python over the last years. I've already seen this have an effect on workplaces, where new students prefer to use Python and are generally allowed to.

<comment><USER9> > All engineering studies of my old university except for computer science and > mathematics have switched from Java+Matlab to Python over the last years

I'd love to witness this. I used Matlab heavily as an engineering student, and now mostly work in Python. Python is definitely better for complex programming, but where the program is simple and the math is hard, Matlab seems like a great tool.

I'm curious what tools/libraries python users now use that brings Python up to the usability of matlab?

<comment><USER8> > I'm curious what tools/libraries python users now use that brings Python up > to the usability of matlab?

95% SciPy, NumPy and Spyder. I'm sure the massive savings on license costs also make it attractive.

<comment><USER9> > I'm sure the massive savings on license costs also make it attractive.

I remember shelling out $60 for a true license of Matlab while in college. I remember thinking, "well you're an engineer now, and this cost is part of that", even thugh it felt like a small fortune. But official licensed version required you to insert the CD into the computer every time you used it, so I gave up a got the pirated version instead.

<comment><USER3> Lol $60

If you get the commercial version out of college it is thousands of dollars for base and thousands for each "toolbox". Want to have database functionality? Thousands of dollars, optimization functions? Thousands of dollars.

That might be worth it for national labs that like how the native IDE, plotting, GUI, widgets, ability to put into commercial projects (they've secured licensing for the math solvers for you)...etc. It is all better integrated than Python even with it's nice Spyder IDE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sage has an Octave interface: [http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/interfaces/sage/in...](http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/interfaces/sage/interfaces/octave.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Octave is just great if you do a spot of computational maths for a living and need to smash stuff out quickly.

It's interactive, really well suited for matrix operations, has all the packages you'd expect for analysis, optimisation, etc.

Like others have said, once you nail it in Octave, move it to C++ for production and then wrap it in R, Python, etc to your hearts content.

<comment><USER3> The optimization functionality for linear programming, mixed integer linear programming...etc is pretty much non-existent in Octave. At least the kind of optimization common in Operations Research and used in production in thousands of companies world-wide. Python and Julia have libraries to call out to dedicated solvers like CPLEX, GUROBI, GLPK, and CBC/CLP that are written in C/C++. I'm not sure if Octave has a decent interface.

<comment><USER11> Here's the whole non existent category:

[https://octave.org/doc/v4.2.0/Optimization.html](https://octave.org/doc/v4.2.0/Optimization.html)

<comment><USER3> Good to see it has some support. Still pretty minimum in comparison to Julia's JuMP library though. I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use Python for most of my general programming needs, but in an engineering environment MATLAB (unfortunately) still has an edge. As a programming language it's quite sh*tty, but it's strength is in the high quality toolboxes. I work quite a lot with constraint non-linear optimisation and I still have to find a Python or Julia library as flexible and robust as the MATLAB toolbox. I think Octave is a good FOSS compatibly solution, but the main strength of MATLAB (the set of toolboxes) is unfortunately missing.

<comment><USER13> [https://cvxopt.org](https://cvxopt.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> To all contributors, thank you for Octave!

I used it successfully in my EE degree in 2010 for all my Digital Signal Processing assignments, instead of MATLAB.

</comment><comment><USER15> MATLAB can charge for the software but making it opensource would be really ethical considering the software is used heavily in research. More eyeballs to view the correctness of the software is crucial.

</comment><comment><USER16> This looks awesome to help me take some old matlab projects and just them off. I wish I knew about Octave before.

The docs don't mention this but can it create candlestick charts or can I extend using C++?

<comment><USER17> You can create candlestick charts using the "candle" function from the Octave Financial package, function reference is at [https://octave.sourceforge.io/financial/function/candle.html](https://octave.sourceforge.io/financial/function/candle.html)

Also, extending with C++ is easy, see [https://octave.org/doc/v4.0.1/Getting- Started-with-Oct_002dF...](https://octave.org/doc/v4.0.1/Getting-Started-with- Oct_002dFiles.html#Getting-Started-with-Oct_002dFiles)

<comment><USER16> This is awesome. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can anyone comment on how Octave compares specifically to Mathematica, in terms of features and ease of use?

<comment><USER19> Mathematica does so much more than Octave that it's not even remotely comparable. In terms of features, Octave inherited Matlab's matrix-centric mindset by having the \ operator solve linear systems whereas in Mathematica it's slightly longer (LinearSolve[m,b] or just Inverse[m].b for non-numeric ones). But Mathematica offers symbolic computing as well, and you can very easily go from "solving this equation with machine-precision numbers" to "solve this equation with arbitrary precision algebraic numbers" to "solving this equation with an unknown parameter with conditions" in a seamless way. There are whole areas of mathematics, pure and applied, that can be done in Mathematica but not in Octave. In terms of ease of use, Mathematica also excels here; both data and code share a uniform notation that is very similar to lisp, and functional programming ideas carry over very seamlessly.

I'd say if you are someone who's even remotely mathematically minded, learning to use Mathematica is an extremely useful experience. As an example that recently happened to me, while doing front end work I needed to construct certain geometric figures as an SVG polygon; I used Mathematica's built in graphics primitives combined with its plotting capabilities to find the polygon in no time. Even though the end result is a piece of JavaScript, Mathematica gives me a way to prototype the whole thing in an environment that's "batteries included" and well-polished.

<comment><USER20> Both Octave and MATLAB have had a symbolic toolbox for ages, and can export to many vector graphics formats, from .ps to .svg.

Mathematica is way more targeted to the "general public" though. It's fairly obvious that MATLAB started its life as fronted to FORTRAN.

<comment><USER21> >Mathematica is way more targeted to the "general public" though.

Actually, it's way more targeted to _mathematicians_. The level of symbolic computation it can do is way ahead of any symbolic toolbox you'll find. When I was in grad school, I used NumPy and my group mate used Mathematica. One day I was looking up identities in Gradshteyn and Ryzhik (a bible for identities), and he asked why I bother as Mathematica had it all. He challenged me to find any identity that Mathematica couldn't handle. I thought this would be easy as G&R has more stuff than any other identity handbook out there, but I lost the challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there a story behind why the version numbers went from 4.4 to 5.1?

</comment><comment><USER23> part of one of my previous jobs involved converting code from MatLab to Scala. Needless to say, it wasn't very fun.

Languages like Matlab, Stata, SAS, or R don't seem to be designed for professional developers. They tend to break all the assumptions that every other languages have (like array indices beginning with 0). I also feel this way about Pandas, it seems like it was designed by a data scientist and not a developer.

Because the people using these particular languages don't care about elegance (they usually just want the graphs or papers or whatever) and that no one is writing commercial systems that need to be maintained, there's no real incentive for them to design a language that makes any sense.

Making things ad-hoc and less axiomatic does have its benefits however, these kinds of languages can be surprisingly expressive and powerful.</comment>


Chinese booklet scanned at 1800 pages per hour - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sehBf2266PI

<comment><USER2> This is a fascinating demonstration on how to scan fragile books.

However, it did leave unanswered how they scanned the folded (double-width) pages.

<comment><USER3> The folded pages seem to be painted (calligraphed) only on the exterior. Otherwise, they would be unreadable, right ?</comment></comment>


Peter Thiel Backs Start-up Making 3D Printed Meat - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/48705341

<comment><USER2> I don't understand where the "3D Printing" comes from. I assume it's one of the many research groups that are developing in vitro meat[1], right?

The alternative of eating protein-food made from insects sounds plausible too [2]

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

[2] <http://www.geekosystem.com/ento-is-food-from-bugs/></comment>


Is Y Combinator biased towards young founders? - <AUTHOR>

A recent post by HBR addressed the biased towards young founders in the SV but according to their "quick and dirty" research:
22% of billion USD SV founders were 20-24 at age of founding.
19% 25-29;
22% 30-34,
35% older than 35 2% younger than 20 <comment><USER2> The better (and more accurate) correlation to examine is: are young founders biased towards YC? I am willing to bet that the majority of applications to YC are from young founders. This is reflected in the people who get accepted.

Not to mention I'm surprised you thought you'd ever be able to get a clear answer to such a loaded question on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually a very good point. Also, what is a young founder? Under 25, under 35?

This is the article I was talking about: [http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/how- old-are-silicon-valleys-top...](http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/how-old-are- silicon-valleys-top-founders-heres-the-data/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Include High School Experience on My Resume? - <AUTHOR>

I haven't included any high school work, educational or volunteer experience on my resume for quite a long time.  Recently I read that this is recommended by "the experts", so as to avoid age discrimination.
However, in the US federally, as well as all the states I know about, it is illegal to discriminate for reasons of age against those over forty.  I myself am fifty years old.
In my actual experience, as well as that of many others, age discrimination is in reality quite widespread in the US.  While I do not wish to denigrate the experience of my female colleagues with sexual discrimination, I regard age discrimination in our industry as far more pervasive then gender discrimination.
I did lots of good stuff in high school - president of the science club, I was elected to the student senate, I was the director of the drama club's set crew, I was awarded a merit scholarship &c.
HOWEVER:
I also consult.  I'm not just looking for a perm job; I do consulting as a 1099 sole proprietor.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no law against discriminating against private businesses.
Do you list your own high school experience on your resume?  If so, do you experience age discrimination as a result? <comment><AUTHOR> Would it be off-topic to flog my consulting services here at HN?

I can't recall anyone ever doing that. I don't want to be rude.

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't. I'm almost 33 years old and feel like the jobs I don't get are completely on me. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I went to Stuyvesant High School. Whenever I list it, it's usually a plus.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point.

No one has ever heard of Armijo High School. But strictly speaking, I graduated when I was sixteen by taking the California High School Proficiency Examination so I could attend Solano Community College during the summer, and in the evenings during the school year. I continued on at Armijo until I graduated with the rest of my class.</comment></comment>


"My TiVo thinks I'm gay" - the perils of over-eager personalization - <AUTHOR> http://www.planetdan.net/blog/tivo.html

<comment><USER2> Saw this post on "new", thought "welcome to 10 years ago".

Loaded the page. Article date: November 26, 2002. Close!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, it actually predates YCombinator :) Found it via a mention in a more recent post discussing mobile personalization and found it fairly interesting. These problems are definitely still around, and sometimes peoples' perception of what personalization knows and is doing is more interesting than the actual personalization algorithms themselves!</comment></comment>


Startup 101: Tools for the Job (What do you use?) - <AUTHOR> http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/03/03/startup-101-tools-for-the-job

<comment><USER2> I have come to realize that in the last 2 years, and well into the next 5, Mozilla Firefox has been by far the most important piece of software that I use. I donated $100 back when Mozilla Foundation started up and despite them not even needing the money I still bought plenty of gear from the store. <3 Mozilla.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the same with me. I donated when I was a freshman in college and was in that New York Times ad that ran Dec 16th 2004.

<http://www.mozilla.org/press/nytimes-firefox-final.pdf></comment></comment>


Lockheed's Skunk Works Building Bigger Fusion Reactor - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29074/skunk-works-exotic-fusion-reactor-program-moves-forward-with-larger-more-powerful-design <comment><USER2> > Containing the reaction, the same one that occurs in our sun and other > stars...

Not really. Our sun is fueled mainly by the proton-proton chain reaction, which produces no neutrons. This reaction is very very slow and happens at comparatively low temperatures. The large power output of the sun is because the sun is _huge_.

Useful fusion reactors need to use much faster reactions and require temperatures several times higher than the sun's core.

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

<comment><USER3> To add to that, the sun's average power density barely rivals a compost heap.

<comment><USER4> That's awfully simplistic. Having spent most of today day wrestling with permutations of the various radiometric flux and power formulas. It's pretty clear that depending on what you count as the "edge" you can get some very disingenuous results when it comes to anything related to the sun's density. What's the math behind the compost heap estimate there?

(Genuinely curious since I've spent the day doing math adjacent to this one)

<comment><USER5> That was my reaction too. Indeed, among the many possible ways to think about it, the sun can warm the compost heap, but not vice versa.

On the other hand, the sun _is_ a cosmic compost heap. ;-)

<comment><USER6> Remember the square-cube law; for two things of different sizes, the difference in surface area is proportional to the square and the difference in volume is proportional to the _cube_ of the difference in sizes.

So, compared to any Earth-bound compost heap, each bit of the sun's surface (wherever you draw the boundary) has more heat-generating interior backing it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lockheed enlarged their original concept, reducing the power density (counting the volume of the reactor, not just the plasma) by a factor of 100. It's now about 0.5 MW/m^3, about the same as MIT's ARC concept.

In contrast, the power density of a PWR primary reactor vessel is 20 MW/m^3 (and of the core alone, 100 MW/m^3). How exactly is fusion supposed to be cheaper than this, when the reactors are both so much larger and so much more complex? Saving on fuel is irrelevant, as fuel is only a small part of the cost of running a fission reactor.

<comment><USER8> You're not just saving on fuel, you're saving on waste

<comment><USER9> And safety. Fusion has the enormous advantage that you can just switch it off, without the core continuing to generate heat and causing a meltdown if the cooling system fails.

0.5 MW capacity costs around $1M with solar, so if 0.5 MW of fusion power takes up a cubic meter that doesn't seem like a deal breaker.

<comment><USER7> The argument involves the comparison with fission. The low power density means it's going to be more expensive than fission, and fission already fails economically.

The difference between fission and solar is that solar lacks many systems (like, turbines and generators) that fission and fusion would need.

More fundamentally, solar is distributed (even on a large solar farm), so there's a lack of coupling between elements that makes everything easy to assemble and very fault tolerant. In fission and fusion plants, the intricate dependencies mean everything has to be highly reliable. Safety (for fission) and the extreme difficulty of repair of activated structures (for fusion) also drive this very expensive reliability.

<comment><USER10> _The argument involves the comparison with fission._

With the current LWR/HWR fission reactors, where core is solid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The biggest hurdle for fusion power is, ultimately, how to deal with the neutrons. These particles are electrically neutral and their trajectories are unaffected by electromagnetic fields. The approach so far is to put a «blanket» around the fusion core to slow them down, but this fails to mention that the blanket will be slowly (or not so slowly) damaged by neutron induced transmutation. Since a lot of the energy released in fusion power comes in the form of kinetic energy of neutrons, it's also essential to convert that energy into eg steam, for power generation.

<comment><USER12> The blanket also has to have a high cross section for elastic collision with neutrons to efficiently capture their energy as heat. ITER is planned to have liquid lithium as this blanket because it has a high cross section and the odd neutron capture will result in helium and much desired tritium that can be extracted for use as the main fuel in the reactor. Unfortunatey, elementary lithium is a very temperamental material.

<comment><USER13> I heard a story a while ago about a facility working with a lot of molten sodium. The whole building had no running water at all, no bathrooms even, because water and sodium mixing is a problem.

Lithium doesn't seem a whole lot safer.. but I don't think a fusion power plant could be water free. As far as I'm aware there is no more efficient method of using heat to spin a generator than a steam turbine. A lithium/water heat exchanger seems pretty frightening. Do they have a better plan for that?

<comment><USER14> Haven't looked at the proposal, and not commenting either way on the risk of using water in this context, but the water/reactive-metal issues have been widely investigated in other liquid metal reactor designs and generally intermediate cooling loops with some benign medium are used.

Edit to expand; having now looked it seems some of the intermediate loop designs have the SAME material (e.g. sodium). This at least means the loop at risk of mixing with water is isolated from the core (where an explosion is difficult to manage). I thought I'd seen other designs, just can't find them now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fusion is hard. Neutrons are a concern, yes, but none of this matters without ignition, without break-even (choose your definition). Until break-even is achieved, it's all premature optimization to me.

Compact or not, clever neutron handling or not, integrated tritium-breeding or not, break-even is the minimum bar to cross, and no one has crossed it outside of fission-triggered bombs. That must be the focus. Once that is achieved, there will be plenty of resources to solve the myriad of other problems, but until break-even is achieved (by ANY means other than fission trigger), solving those other problems just doesn't matter.

<comment><USER7> The focus on ignition is strange. If the engineering and economics look hopeless, then why focus on ignition? The only reason I can think of is that the people working on it want to keep their jobs and defer the likely practical showstoppers until after the ultimately irrelevant plasma physics problems are solved.

<comment><USER16> Well it's a step in the direction. If you can get that to work then maybe you can then figure out the other stuff afterwards.

<comment><USER7> In the same sense that climbing a tree is a step in the direction of getting to the moon.

<comment><USER12> Climbing a tree is useful for going to the moon. Having access to heights from which to drop things is a prerequisite step for the first experiments that lead to an understanding of gravity and acceleration ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://julien.hillairet.free.fr/wiki/doku.php?id=list_of_fus...](http://julien.hillairet.free.fr/wiki/doku.php?id=list_of_fusion_startups) is the most complete list I've seen, of private fusion efforts

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe also interesting in this context:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X)

<comment><USER19> If you understand German I can only recommend you give this interview a listen: [https://alternativlos.org/36/](https://alternativlos.org/36/)

Edit: I should mention that it is about Wendelstein 7-X.

<comment><USER20> For those who don't understand German, this is an interview in English, also from someone at Max Planck about Wendelstein 7-X:

[https://omegataupodcast.net/312-the- wendelstein-7-x-fusion-e...](https://omegataupodcast.net/312-the- wendelstein-7-x-fusion-experiment/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Despite slower than expected progress"

I mean on the one hand this is the story of fusion. On the other they should have preempted that by being extra pessimistic, so was extra pessimism built in? Did they guess they were going to be perennially 5 years away when in fact they're 10 years away. Or did they think the project would be done in 18 months, and is still 10 years away? Any bets on what the predicted timeframe will be in 10 years time?

<comment><USER22> Five years:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323504)

The original article is gone, but the click-bait title of that HN post was "Lockheed's Skunk Works: fusion power in four years?"

It _did_ end in a question mark, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >"How do you scale it up to generate power for a city or an entire town? That's all ahead of us,"

If they think they can get a working fusion reactor capable of powering 80,000 homes into a shipping container, I'd suggest not building them any bigger. Being able to scale in container sized units over time via the existing transport links sounds just peachy. Is quite a big 'if' there.

<comment><USER24> Why was this downvoted? I had the same idea. If you can power 80000 homes with a container sized reactor, why not start deployment? Easy to transport, you could power small neighbourhoods. No more wide spread black outs.

Not sure how much maintenance will factor in, but a reactor that size sounds already practical.

<comment><USER25> It's still a nuclear reactor... You don't just put them into containers and ship them around, or turn them on or off by pressing a switch. They require specialized staff to operate, maintenance, handling of materials, safety and protection precautions and so on. Either you built them big or they are not worth it to operate.

<comment><USER26> OK but why can't we have just one of them running somewhere as a demonstration?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There is not much substance in this article. The most interesting part seems to be the slide with the milestones. They seem to be three or four prototypes away from ignition. How many years is that? How many years from the ignition prototype to something that actually produces more energy than it consumes?

<comment><USER28> Well, based on the last 50 years of fusion research, the time from 'now' to 'net positive energy production' is quite consistently between 20 and 50 years.

<comment><USER29> Even if it takes another 50 or 70 years to get there,people should still be pushing for it.I wonder how this would change the political situation across the world when oil,gas and coal wouldn't be required so much anymore...

<comment><USER30> Yes, it will mark the end of world war 3 because humanity will be able to survive by traveling to a new planet in a different solar system. Deep space exploration becomes viable because we are no longer dependent on solar panels, instead we carry our own mini sun within our spacecraft and simply sail forth!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The amazing thing is that Lockheed is doing this with their own money. Not for PR; they seldom say much about the project.

</comment><comment><USER32> People running this project (Tom McGuire) are aerospace engineers who are familiar with plasma in hypersonic speeds and computational fluid simulation. It seems that they don't have experienced particle or plasma physicists in the project.

Can anyone correct me on this?

</comment><comment><USER33> So, it's a design using magnetic mirrors? I was asking what happend with this way of building a fusion reactor. The last that I know is that was used on the 60's.

<comment><USER12> Tokamaks are the direct evolutionary step up from magnetic mirrors because these had problems with with electron containment at the mirrors. A circular design removes the mirrors and therefore this problem. Unless these guys have completely novel mirror configuration, they must run intonth same issue because electron and proton trajectories are quite different at these energies.

</comment></comment><comment> kalium-xyz "we have a fusion reactor, she is real. You just never met her because she goes to a different school"

</comment><comment><USER34> I tip my hat to them. We need some boldness to move forward.</comment>


On Not Being A Problem - <AUTHOR> http://shadow.cat/blog/matt-s-trout/on-not-being-a-problem/

<comment><USER2> So, in other words: Be constructive. Be assertive.

Okay!</comment>


What algorithms are used to control NPCs on First Person Shooter games? - <AUTHOR> I was wondering if Reinforcement Learning has been used for this purpose in any commercial FPS games so far. <comment><USER2> I work at a small AI startup, and our CEO worked on the AI for the NPCs in F.E.A.R. [0]. He has written about developing the goal-oriented action planning [1] approach in the game. Great to see how it was done!

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.E.A.R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.E.A.R). [1]: [http://web.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/gdc2006_orkin_jeff_fear.pdf](http://web.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/gdc2006_orkin_jeff_fear.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Historically its been mostly hardcoded waypoints with simple state machines.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Talks of 2019? - <AUTHOR> 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18740939
2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16045859
2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637239
Ever: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18217762
Bonus: https://link.medium.com/GYN66jgmD2
Thanks. <comment><USER2> The Soul of Erlang and Elixir, by Sasa Juric

video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE)

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20942767](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20942767)

Preventing the Collapse of Civilization, by Jonathan Blow

video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW- SOdj4Kkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk)

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452)

<comment><USER3> Jonathan Blow's talk was the first one I thought of.

<comment><USER4> Shit talk. I find it's funny to look at dude that say 1 hour 1 sentence but can't say clear about alternative / solving this.

<comment><USER3> Ok

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> huy-nguyen "Why isn't functional programming the norm?" by Richard Feldman. Spoiler: not on the basis of merits. [https://youtu.be/QyJZzq0v7Z4](https://youtu.be/QyJZzq0v7Z4)

"React to the future" by Jordan Walke. Why ReasonML is a logical extension of ReactJS' programming paradigm. [https://youtu.be/5fG_lyNuEAw](https://youtu.be/5fG_lyNuEAw)

"Typing the untyped: soundness in gradual type systems" by Ben Weissmann. The trade offs that various gradual type systems make based on their language constraints. [https://youtu.be/uJHD2xyv7xo](https://youtu.be/uJHD2xyv7xo)

"Let's program like it's 1999" by Lee Byron. How the mutual feedback loop of abstraction, syntax and mental model drives the evolution of web technologies. [https://youtu.be/vG8WpLr6y_U](https://youtu.be/vG8WpLr6y_U)

<comment><USER5> Maybe I'm missing something but I'm more than halfway through the "Why isn't functional programming the norm?" and it just seems to be a kind of haphazard recollection of programming language history. A lot of which isn't what I'd call entirely correct. Python's killer app was arguably first CGI scripts then data science. Java succeeded due to offering GC in a non scripting language, the JVM and possibly lots of marketing. PHP is having a mild renaissance with Laravel (not that I'd advocate for PHP, but people do seem to love Laravel).

There was quite a bit of time in between the invention of implementation inheritance and the whole "prefer composition to inheritance". It's quite possible OOP became popular due to implementation inheritance then realized it was dumb.

This info is still useful, but what I'd really love from a talk with that title is an analysis of functional programming languages and how they each missed the boat through either syntax, lack of tooling, or purity. And compare it to functional-ish languages like Rust, JavaScript, Swift and Kotlin. Then chart a way forward for function programming language adoption. Maybe that happens at the end of the talk.

<comment><USER6> A complete digress, but OOPS still shines in the domain of GUI widgets programming where there are a limited number of interfaces and a huge number of widgets (implementations) working with that interface. FP works conversely, on a limited data and a huge set of functions. Maybe in the context of now with limited gui programming, FL is more suitable?

<comment><USER7> Functional ui is arguably saner, as react is slowly proving to junior programmers worldwide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most people in this thread are posting a link and a title of the talk. I think it would be useful to hear why you thought the talk was the best.

</comment><comment><USER9> A bunch of the best talks of the year may still be to come when 36C3 takes place from the 27th to 30th. The schedule is already up [1]. Speakers include David Graeber, Edward Snowden, Daniel J. Bernstein, Moxie Marlinspike, and over a hundred others.

All talks will be livestreamed (and usually become available for download one day later) at [2].

[1] [https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/](https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/)

[2] [https://media.ccc.de/](https://media.ccc.de/)

<comment><USER10> They'll also be live-translated from German to English (and vice versa) by volunteers – and often into a third language too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Performance matters" by Emery Berger on StrangeLoop'19 is a great talk - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TLSBdHe1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TLSBdHe1A)

Also, rest of his talks are also fascinating:

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRAP3lBivYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRAP3lBivYM)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyWKxFxyyrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyWKxFxyyrQ)

<comment><USER12> Love Emery.

Took 2 courses under him @UMass. An extremely demanding professor, but each of his classes are an absolute delight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Rich Harris - Rethinking Reactivity

Talk about Svelte v3 and the (possible) future of frontend frameworks

Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdNJ3fydeao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdNJ3fydeao)

HN discussion regarding Svelte 3: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19719118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19719118)

<comment><USER14> I quite enjoyed this talk. I've seen Svelte with an eye of skepticism but this helped me understand some bits better. That hairstyle tho!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For me, personally, it was David Beazley's Keynote ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUT386_GKI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUT386_GKI8)) at PyCon India this year.

<comment><USER16> I also liked this talk! Impressive live coding. For people who want (mild) SPOILERS, here's a quick summary:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/djx2h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/djx2hk/a_talk_near_the_future_of_python/f49jw1j/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not a talk from 2019, but discovered it this year: "1177 BC, the year civilization collapsed (Eric Cline, PhD)" [https://youtu.be/bRcu- ysocX4](https://youtu.be/bRcu-ysocX4)

Excellent informative and hilarious talk about his (at-the-time) new scientific hypothesis to explain the end of the Bronze Age ca. 1200 BC.

Multiple civilizations collapsed within a few decades of each other with the ability to read, write and make high buildings being lost all across the Eastern Mediterranean _simultaneously_. The Bronze Age is magical and interesting of itself, the talk gives a great introduction as to why we know much more about it than we think.. definitely recommended.

Duration ~1 hour (feels like 20 minutes)

<comment><USER18> The book is great too:

[https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed- Turni...](https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed- Turning/dp/0691168385)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> David Rusenko - How To Find Product Market Fit - YC Startup School

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LNQxT9LvM0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LNQxT9LvM0)

I learned so much for this talk. I had a much different idea of the point of iterating rapidly and what product-market fit meant before this video.

<comment><USER20> Yes, this talk is very good.

</comment></comment><comment> rsln-s Scott Aaronson's three Paul Bernays Lectures on computation

1\. The Church-Turing Thesis and Physics 2\. The Limits of Efficient Computation 3\. The Quest for Quantum Computational Supremacy

[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4301](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4301)

</comment><comment><USER21> <fangirl>

I don't know if Bryan Cantrill has done any speeches this year, whenever i see some speech featuring him on youtube I watch it regardless of the year.

That man is a gold mine. And I always learn something interesting.

</fangirl>

<comment><USER22> you might enjoy their new podcast [https://oxide.computer/blog/categories/on- the-metal/](https://oxide.computer/blog/categories/on-the-metal/)

new startup with Brian, jess frazzle and Steve tuck.

<comment><USER23> I'm pretty excited about that company. I'd like apply for a gig there myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> AWS re:Invent 2019: BPF performance analysis at Netflix (OPN303-R1)

Youtube video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16slh29iN1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16slh29iN1g)

Blog post: [http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2019-12-22/bpf- theremin.htm...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2019-12-22/bpf- theremin.html)

Why?

Brendan presents news tools and new flows that can be used to analyse performance bottlenecks.

He get you in the demo and you stay to receive more and more information. It seems to be a talk that he has been improving over the years. Totally worth your time seen it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Rust, WebAssembly, and the future of Serverless by Steve Klabnik video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMB6AlE1QuI&t=1854s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMB6AlE1QuI&t=1854s)

<comment><USER26> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Append only development: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXuvCMG21Ss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXuvCMG21Ss)

Shameless plug since I'm the speaker. The reason I'm posting this in "best talks of 2019" is not because I think it was a good talk (my ego isn't that big yet) but because I think very few talks exist on the subject of Behavioral Programming, and it's a subject I'm hoping can get more attention.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought this was a pretty good one

[https://youtu.be/jyNqHsN3pEc](https://youtu.be/jyNqHsN3pEc)

Composing music functionally, aka functional composition :)

<comment><USER29> Same here. I started watching because I misinterpreted the title and stayed for the wow effect :)

Also, after seeing what kind of magic he can do with the right representation, I wondered how many "business domain" models I know could be expressed with models that "click" in the same way (i.e. are expressed by simple concepts and compose as well).

I feel as if many of us often give up way too early in the search for good models for our data. Myself included, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The main thread is overworked & underpaid

[https://developer.chrome.com/devsummit/sessions/the-main- thr...](https://developer.chrome.com/devsummit/sessions/the-main-thread-is- overworked-and-underpaid/)

<comment><USER31> Great talk, thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A [1] video essay about modern art by Jacob Geller. For me, it completely reversed my opinion on modern art and it's worth.

This [2] talk about building worlds in Blender by Ian Hubert.

[1] [https://youtu.be/v5DqmTtCPiQ](https://youtu.be/v5DqmTtCPiQ)

[2] [https://youtu.be/whPWKecazgM](https://youtu.be/whPWKecazgM)

<comment><USER33> I just watched [2]. Can thoroughly recommend, very watchable presenter & I feel like although I had no idea what he was doing half the time it was very cool. Technological Magic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My favorite talk of this year is Raymond Hettinger talking about mental gymnastics which helps you to structure your problems into ones that which you can solve. The mental game of Python: youtu.be/UANN2Eu6ZnM

</comment><comment><USER35> For the Unix history fans, BWK's interview of Ken Thompson: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o)

</comment><comment><USER36> Caltech Guest Lecture: Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor - Professor John Martinis, Chief Scientist Google Quantum Computing Division

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

</comment><comment><USER37> "Solving Problems the Clojure Way" by Rafal Dittwald at Clojure/north. Comparing a simple JS cardgame the imperative, OOP and functional way.

<comment><USER38> Here's the link, FWIW: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK1DazRK_a0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK1DazRK_a0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> ZFS for newbies [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oG-1U5AI9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oG-1U5AI9A) main ideas behind ZFS and why it blows out the competition in many scenarios

Making C Less Dangerous in the Linux Kernel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY9SbqTO5GQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY9SbqTO5GQ)

NUMA optimizations in the FreeBSD stack (Netflix) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSzkYSX5nY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSzkYSX5nY)

How we fit a NES game in 40KiB [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM)

</comment><comment><USER40> NLNOG 2019 - DNS over HTTPS considerations - Bert Hubert

[https://youtu.be/pjin3nv8jAo](https://youtu.be/pjin3nv8jAo)

</comment><comment><USER41> Paul Stamets 2019:

not, the survival of the fittest. it is:

the extension of generosity of surplus

to other members in the ecological community

to build biodiversity

not the individual that survives but the community that survives

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBkg70fhV2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBkg70fhV2A)

</comment><comment><USER42> Kyle Kotowick - The 737 MAX: Human Factors in Complex Systems

[https://2019.webcampzg.org/talks/the-737-max-human- factors-i...](https://2019.webcampzg.org/talks/the-737-max-human-factors-in- complex-systems/)

</comment><comment><USER43> The closing Keynote of Meeting C++2019

Crazy Code, Crazy Coders

[https://youtu.be/OAmWHmwlMwI](https://youtu.be/OAmWHmwlMwI)

<comment><USER44> I closed the tab when he says people who write code like this "for (int k=0; k < N; k++)" are stupid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I thought this talk about Async in Rust was pretty cool (RustLatam 2019 - Without Boats: Zero-Cost Async IO): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skos4B5x7qE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skos4B5x7qE)

<comment><USER45> Why I thought it was cool: Gives a good overview of Async implementations without getting too deep in the weeds. Talks about "greenthreads" in other languages vs a zero-cost abstraction in Rust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Future of mathematics [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp- mQ3HxgDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp-mQ3HxgDE)

</comment><comment><USER47> I've got a few in the queue I haven't gotten to, but I immediately thought of Alice Goldfuss's recent talk at LISA19 "The Container Operator's Manual"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm2tDgf40ss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm2tDgf40ss)

</comment><comment><USER48> Pretty great talk about Kafka at Tesla: [https://www.confluent.io/kafka- summit-san-francisco-2019/0-6...](https://www.confluent.io/kafka-summit-san- francisco-2019/0-60-teslas-streaming-data-platform)

</comment><comment><USER49> Professor Mark Blythe: Gobal Trumpism and the Future of the Global Economy

[https://youtu.be/KGuaoARJYU0](https://youtu.be/KGuaoARJYU0)

<comment><USER50> I love anything by Professor Blythe. If you enjoy his lectures you should check out Adam Tooze

<comment><USER51> > _check out Adam Tooze_

I purchased his book, _Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World_ without really knowing much about it (or him) and found it to be a great, semi-technical story about the financial crisis (and its politics) from the _global_ perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Behind the scenes of iOS and Mac Security: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3byNNUReyvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3byNNUReyvE)

Good talk behind the reason for the T2 chip and some other Apple security stuff

</comment><comment><USER53> This video by Mark Dalgeish got me really thinking about design systems from a developer of view.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnV1u67_yVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnV1u67_yVg)

</comment><comment><USER54> Depression Memes for Devops Teens: Self-Care for Server Janitors and Other Humans: [https://youtu.be/TcvWEbaOg-Q](https://youtu.be/TcvWEbaOg-Q)

</comment><comment><USER55> EuroBSDcon 2019 Keynote by Patricia Aas: Embedded Ethics ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfNIiitVFtc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfNIiitVFtc) / slides: [https://www.slideshare.net/PatriciaAas/embedded-ethics- eurob...](https://www.slideshare.net/PatriciaAas/embedded-ethics- eurobsdcon-2019))

Because, sometimes you need to worry less about the gritty details of the tech and take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

</comment><comment><USER56> Objectionable Content (Python Object Model) by James Powell

James Powell never disappoints :)

[https://youtu.be/AmHE0kZhLIQ](https://youtu.be/AmHE0kZhLIQ)

</comment><comment><USER57> Building Distributed Systems with Node.js - James Simpson (Nordic.js 2019)

Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUtd- zEDgjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUtd-zEDgjQ)

Slides/Code: [https://github.com/goldfire/Building-Distributed-Systems- Nod...](https://github.com/goldfire/Building-Distributed-Systems-Node.js)

</comment><comment><USER58> Ask the Ecosystem: Lessons from 200+ FOSS Applications - Mahmoud Hashemi

Basically made an awesome list of applications written in Python(now is 380+), then answered the frequently asked questions by the community about how to develops applications using Python.

The data is also available.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1lvsmcPEcE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1lvsmcPEcE)

</comment><comment><USER59> Chairman Bruce at SXSW2019 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV1XMAP- Uh8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV1XMAP-Uh8)

Bruce Sterling has been around in the intersection of art and technology since the dawn of the internet. His gothic, villain, medival high tech scifi world are a hilarious inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER60> Big Business Hates Your Family, by Tucker Carlson: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXGoWtK1NnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXGoWtK1NnY)

Most interesting development for me in 2019 were the ongoing political realignments - the right no longer sees the free market as compatible with their social values.

</comment><comment><USER61> Build Impossible Programs - Julia Evans: [https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/09/18/build-impossible- programs/](https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/09/18/build-impossible-programs/)

<comment><USER62> Good talk and thanks for sharing but it's from 2018 though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Related thread (computing related videos): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21737922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21737922)

</comment><comment><USER64> Richard Wolf's Global Economic Update from November 2019 changed how I perceive the US tax system, US political candidates and their proposals on how to fund various solutions. He also speaks about political parties and their purpose in the context of capitalism, and separately, libertarianism.

Lastly, covers the US/China "trade war".

Fascinating and very well structured talk, revealing the hidden (to me) forces behind economic structures and decisions.

[https://youtu.be/THwqz5dTzkA](https://youtu.be/THwqz5dTzkA)

<comment><USER65> For those who were curious, this is a lecture by Richard Wolff, who Wikipedia describes as an "american Marxist economist"

His recent Twitter posts suggest that economic inequality in the US can be achieved through taxing the rich, which while not an original thought, seems sensible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> This one is pretty good : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otoCxbZel1o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otoCxbZel1o)</comment>


Big and secret : way to go, AOL - that's the way to do it ;-) - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10381597-36.html

<comment><USER2> From what little this article gives away, it seems to me like AOL are getting ready to further upset the newspaper industry online.

Employing lots of journalists ( and their communities ) seems a pretty smart move.

I wonder out loud, if communities are behind their favourite journalist, do you think that would make the members of the communities happier about paying for the news content?

I guess it depends on how much you believe communities are important to the journalist and equally how valuable the communities feel the journalists contribution to their daily lives are.

That said, I love reading the news but don't pay too much attention to who writes the news. ( Perhaps I should )

Anyone else got any ideas of what AOL might be upto with their army of journalists?

</comment><comment><USER3> Adding your opinion to the headlines of submitted links is discouraged.

<comment><AUTHOR> didn't know this. thanks.</comment></comment>


The Debate on Whether America's Best Days Are Past, or Ahead - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/business/economy/a-somber-view-of-americas-pace-of-progress.html <comment><USER2> We can still get the best days back. If we can help those who can't afford an education to get a free or discounted education in order to get the good paying jobs. In the old days a college degree was not required for a lot of jobs, and all a person had to do was show up for work and get trained to do it. These days a bachelors is required for entry level work and they screen people out by education and where they went to college.

As websites, AI programs, robots automate jobs there grows a demand for technology workers, while less skilled jobs vanish because they are now automated. Technology changes so fast that what I knew in 2002 is outdated in 2016 and keeps on changing so there is a constant learning cycle to keep up with technology.

The cost of a college education has gone up over time as well. Many find themselves with a high student loan and if they can't find work they struggle to try and pay it off with a minimum wage job. Even worse in order to live on campus they must have saved up money by working before going to college and student loans cover tuition and not books and room and board and meals.</comment>


Show HN: Web security for developers, track hackers and prevent threats - <AUTHOR> https://shieldfy.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Everyone, I'm one of the co-founders of Shieldfy. We're really excited to show you Shieldfy. We've been working on it for the last couple of months, and we'd love to hear your feedback.</comment>


Evolutionary algorithms now surpass human designers - <AUTHOR> http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19526146.000-evolutionary-algorithms-now-surpass-human-designers.html <comment><USER2> I came up with the idea of evolutionary algorithms when I was 15 or 16, and was quite annoyed to find out the idea already existed. Of course, if it hadn't existed, if wouldn't have mattered, because I sure as hell wasn't going to implement it.

</comment><comment><USER3> These claims about where evolutionary methods are useful need to be qualified.

1\. They need to have a domain where a given candidate solution can be quantitatively measured, or alternatively where you can induce a relative ordering. This could possibly require human input ("rank these three pictures from best to worst"), but you need to at least have the ability to say that one solution is more fit than another.

2\. A candidate solution's fitness needs to be at least somewhat continuous. Ideally there needs to be a gradient of success and opportunities for incremental quality improvement with corresponding incremental fitness improvements. Evolutionary methods cannot solve needle-in-a-haystack problems.

3\. They're of greatest utility where human ingenuity is of the littlest value: i.e., where the problem domain is little understood. For example, finance, and, apparently, things like radar design: black arts where no one really knows what the fuck. Ths should help mullify claims about human verification and the human element of design: these things work best where a lifetime of experience doesn't buy you much and you kind of have no other choice.

4\. As with any search heuristic, you face an eternal battle between exploration of the search space and exploitation of it: you can exhaustively explore one part of the space, but that will generally come at the cost of ignoring alternative solutions. This manifests itself as a struggle against premature convergence. Depending on how much domain knowledge (an often- overlooked component) you can incorporate in, this may not be a problem (you can modify your fitness criteria to automatically avoid settling upon certain undesirable parts of the search space).

5\. Finally, always keep in mind that this is not "AI". This is not trying to model human cognition. The stuff about being inspired by natural selection is true at first, but when you get more sophisticated you'll deviate more and more from this. Hybrid solutions are common; for instance, you may have a normal stochastic evolution scheme at first, but then at the end greatly slow down the rate of learning and at the end when you've settled upon a satisfactory solution you may wish to incorporate traditional local search methods, which really have no biological inspiration, it's just that they just freakin' work, so you use it because you care more about _solving your problem_ than constantly aping nature.

Biological or natural inspiration can be useful, but only in the context of practical problem solving, which is what evolutionary methods have always been about. The first widely read book on genetic algorithms was written by an oilfield roughneck with a PhD in civil engineering and the field is still kind of a pariah in academia because of its relative lack of formal foundations. All this is disregarded in the name of practicality, which is an attitude, flawed or not, much closer to what prevails in the real world.</comment>


Symbian Blog : S^3 PDK 3.0.0 now available for download - <AUTHOR> http://blog.symbian.org/2010/07/07/s3-pdk-3-0-0-now-available-for-download/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+symbian%2FgmTa+%28Symbian+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> Are there actually devices (phones!) that use S^3?</comment>


Ask HN: Startups, what are your most pressing needs? - <AUTHOR>

I am working on a startup, and it seems that I could use all kinds of help, e.g. honest feedback, introductions, testings, beta testers, and the list goes on.
I know there are services that specifically target these needs, but I wonder if there are more opportunities out there.
So, startups, what are some of your frequently occurring needs, and how do you usually solve them? <comment><USER2> Time. I saw something recently that made the point that "founder bandwidth is the most precious resource at startups," and I believe it. There's a nearly infinite amount of work to be done, and a fairly limited amount of bandwidth to go around between the founders, as we're doing the self-funded / bootstrap / still-working-day-jobs route right now.

That said, beyond time, then feedback and introductions are definitely huge. Of course that all ties together, as the time I spend networking trying to meet people I need to build relationships with, is time I'm not writing code, and vice-versa. It's a non-stop battle of priorities and a never-ending stream of trade-offs and judgment calls.

 _I know there are services that specifically target these needs, but I wonder if there are more opportunities out there._

Not sure... I'd guess there are quite a few free/low-cost SaaS apps that many (most?) startups could gain some value from using. Steve Blank keeps a list like that on his blog somewhere, FWIW.

Personally, something I took a flyer on recently was building a simple web- based tool for managing competitive intelligence. We'll be entering an established market when we ship, and there are plenty of competitors out there. Of course we think we have a unique spin that will give us an advantage, but I've just recently decide to sit down and do some serious competitive analysis and start paying a little bit of attention to "the other guys." I needed a way to keep all that data organized, so I built a one-off tool for it. I'm actually toying with making it open-source and/or launching it as it's own SaaS offering, but I want to play with it a little more first, and maybe do a "Ask HN" to see if anybody is interested in that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Focus. Both from my own ventures now and from start-ups I've worked with previously in the past, I see focus as one of the largest needs of a start-up.

Without focus, successful start-ups move on to too many fields, dividing their resources amongst too many projects. Early start-ups can distract themselves by losing sight of the primary issue they're aiming to solve and losing traction on those core concepts can be a death knell.

Sadly there's no easy way to outsource focus :)

<comment><AUTHOR> But there are ways to outsource the chores, right? What would be some of the chores that you could potentially outsource? I'd say this would count as a need.

<comment><USER4> Most startups in the earliest stages can't afford to outsource anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are three essential things that are important in running a startup: Focus, Focus and Focus. ;-)

At a startup, the entrepreneurs could do build a million different things and I found it sometimes hard to curtail both my ideas and those of the other founders. For instance, in one of the months we toyed with 20 different technologies as each day some developer would come and say "why not we use platform Y & API from X to do Z?" then everybody would just start chasing all the APIs and build a simple prototype (that will get forgotten after the next day's idea). That is an extreme case, but you get the point.

Once you have focus and determination, the rest usually falls into place.

</comment><comment><USER6> Getting the word out on my product. Working on adding some killer features to take out some established players in that feature market.

Hopefully, it will go viral within the niche community.

</comment><comment><USER7> Distribution at a low cost.

</comment><comment><USER8> users. product/market fit.

<comment><USER9> Users here too.</comment></comment>


Chicago HN'ers: I made an iPhone/Android version of Metra's train schedules - <AUTHOR> http://metra.jcs.org/

<comment><USER2> Awesome.

Just this posted this to Windy Citizen. Vote it up: [http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/technology/2009/10/13/ip...](http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/technology/2009/10/13/iphoneandroid- version-of-metras-train-schedules)

Next time you or anyone else builds something cool and local, share it over there, please.

On a related note, yesterday the WC hosted a discussion thread about Metra's new $3.9 M site. Our commenters sussed out that the shop that won the bidding process employs the son of a former Metra board member.

[http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/business/2009/10/12/chic...](http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/business/2009/10/12/chicago- web-designer-american-eagle-says-politics-cost-them-metra-gig-me)

<comment><USER3> I just cited your first link on Facebook (where I keep in touch with a number of Chicagoland friends). Doing so, I noticed that Facebook did not pick up a "Windy City" graphic suitable for use as a thumbnail. Maybe an opportunity for a branding optimization?

<comment><USER2> Awesome, thanks for the tip. Will look into that. And thanks for sharing the link. We're building the smartest, sharpest conversation about Chicago on the web over on the WC. Discussions like that are happening more and more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stellar.

OT: How many of us Chicago HN'ers are here? We should do a meetup sometime.

<comment><USER2> I tried a few months back. Enjoyed a tasty 312 by myself at Hopleaf for my troubles. Perhaps someone with more clout needs to convene?

<comment><USER4> Going all the way up to Hopleaf for a 312 that you can buy anywhere in the city is a big fail, Brad.

<comment><USER2> That's where people wanted to meet up! It's ok. I brought my trusty WSJ with me to pass the hour in case anyone showed up.

We should meet at Saluki.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Umm either Metra has shut down the Southwest Service and Rock Island lines or there's something wrong with your script because neither of them are showing any trains from any of the stations or days that I checked. What works looks great though. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> Seconded. Clicking on numerous train lines/stations simply state there are no available trains for almost the entire week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This rocks - was so upset at the new Metra site and its inablity to be used on any mobile phone platform! Thank you so much! So sad to see they spent 3.9m on a site that you really cant use unless your home on your computer.

<comment><USER2> Read link #2 in my comment up top for some insight into why Metra's new site sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Works great on my b-berry tour. I especially like the grayed-out stations when the train skips the stop--nice touch. On another note, a while back I started building an app for tracking the street cleaning schedule w/ respect to the location you parked your car (including SMS message reminders to move your car). Would any of you find use in that kind of app?

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome!!!

Just sent this link to quite a few people I know and posted to Facebook. Lots of people I know will be thankful you made this.

Much appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome. This is so much better than Metra's own site.

A nice addition would be cross reference their service updates for any delay information.

<comment><USER11> Metra's site is much improved, but is a total pain on anything but a desktop.

<comment><USER10> It's visually improved, but functionally, it's not much better and in some ways, worse.

Besides the lack of mobile support, looking at train schedules is not more difficult. My preferred stop is only in service on certain routes. Therefore, depending on the time, I may need to use a different station. Determining my options requires two tabs and mental comparing the departure times.

A coworker who rides the express trains out of the city noted that there is no indication of which departures are express, leaving one to do the math to see if their ride will be 20 minutes or an hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mind if I ask how you got the data? Was it just screen scraping of the Metra site or do they actually have an API?

<comment><AUTHOR> i extracted all of the station information by screen scraping the website, and then all of the per-station stop times and routes by writing some code to parse the pdf2html output from the tables in each of the pdf files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Works very nicely on my ancient blackberry. Thanks much.

Later, will try it on my hp200lx.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for saving me the trouble. Metra's new site is truly a disaster on mobile devices.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice work. I take the El myself, but passed this along to everyone at my company.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice... makes we want to spring for a smartphone just so I can see it in action!

</comment><comment><USER16> Great Site, even looks good on my Blackberry Curve!

</comment><comment><USER17> Excellent. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER19> Thanks.</comment>


Leaked "RSA dump" appears authentic - <AUTHOR> http://risky.biz/RSADump

<comment><USER2> When did HB Gary Federal become a credible source?

</comment><comment><USER3> The last line of the article, _Risky.Biz has no reason to believe Pastebin data was actually leaked by an RSA employee_ , appears to contradict the article's own headline.

<comment><USER4> It could have been leaked by a contractor, or by an external operator that has gained access to the accounts or an employee or a contractor.

While they are obviously covering their backsides against defamation accusations, the disclaimer does not necessarily contradict the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, because a recently dumped list of IPs contains some subset of a publicly posted list of known compromised IPs, that's proof it wasn't faked?

Is there something I'm missing, or is that meaningless?</comment>


Ask HN: How can I transition Data Scientist – Engineer? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Data Scientist from an academic background in AI with 4 years experience, working mainly in geospatial analytics, with some basic DL (and a lot more cookie-cutter import sklearn style ML). Lots of spark & bigger datasets. However recently I've started to feel limited by my future options in DS, and have realised I actually enjoy building things more than I enjoy tuning models and playing around with data. I want to transition to more of a dev role perhaps via some kind of ML Engineer position, but I'm not quite sure how.<p>I think it's definitely doable- i wouldn't want to claim my engineering skills are up to a fully professional standard but they are definitely better than 90% of the other DS people I've worked with. In past roles in small companies I've had more of a wide ranging role and have written APIs to serve model predictions, written tests, worked with CI/CD etc. I think given a couple of months in a dev role I could get myself up to scratch. It's just getting that role that could be difficult. I think there may potentially be opportunities in my current company to transition to a more Data Engineer style position but it would probably mean a big salary cut and the projects in the pipeline don't sound that thrilling. Anyone made a similar transition or wants to share their thoughts? <comment><USER2> I have just made this move in my current workplace.

I wanted to do it for the same reasons as you, I enjoy building stuff, and I am of the opinion that data science without engineering is pretty useless as nothing written has the trust of dev teams which is needed for them to plug things into your ML models/pipelines. Some will argue that DS's can do this with dashboards etc, but in my experience they always seem to be made and not used.

In my case, having sat with software eng teams throughout my (short) career, I ended up picking up conversations and challenges they faced as asked questions about technologies and methods they used. I'd go home and look stuff up - enough to understand benefits and disadvantages of things.

Like you, getting to grips with CI/CD, APIs etc etc I had done in past DS projects.

On the money side, I have stayed exactly the same as I was before changing, but obviously ymmv</comment>


Ask HN: Are VMWare / VSphere products any good at what they do? - <AUTHOR> I've been tasked with developing a system with some reasonably high initial requirements for infrastructure/hosting. It will be an all Linux system.
As I'm not an infrastructure person the first thing I did was hire someone who is. I've a lot of confidence in and liking for this individual.
What they have told me, is that if they use vSphere to deploy the required infrastructure then we will much more quickly and easily have:
*  Failover
*  Redundant Storage
*  An Out-of-the-box solution for scaleability
He mentioned a host of other things in terms of monitoring and tooling that I wasn't too concerned about.
Now I'm a bit of "can't we just do it with a text file" guy and my natural reaction is: do we really need a product? But even overcoming that natural bias, my real uncertainty is whether VMWare products really work as advertised?
I'm concerned that the individual may feel, due to time pressure and perhaps safety concerns, that VMWare will take a lot of the responsbility away...but that in the medium term we will fall foul of performance problems and/or hidden licensing costs.
I'd love to hear from people that use these products heavily and have a view. <comment><USER2> My vmware experience is a couple of years mostly as an internal user of a cluster totalling about 1000 VMs, not using any advanced features like FT/vSAN/NSX. I've also developed a KVM-based IaaS platform.

I think your concerns are justified (and is it possible they are just applying existing knowledge and experience without considering your requirements properly?)

The vSphere Web Interface drives me insane. It is slow, does not do background polling for updates and ends your session after 2 hours (by default). ESXi is fine as a hypervisor but not having a Linux host (as with Xen/KVM) to do things like advanced networking/firewalling/hardware troubleshooting/stat scraping is quite frustrating. You're mostly limited by the vSphere(/NSX/etc) APIs. DevOps tooling (e.g. packer, terraform, ansible) treat it like a second or third class citizen, if at all.

I think you need to look at the applications' architectures and work backwards from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the insight. Hard to get real feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> AFAIK the main difference between vSphere & something free like ProxmoxVE is the latter lacking automatic guest VM migration for load balancing. But I've never worked with any VMWare product aside from tinkering with ESXi years ago.

My (limited) understanding is that a well thought out DRBD configuration would be just as effective, & quite possibly a better use of finances.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want to take advantage of all the bells and whistles of VMware vSphere that makes it worth using (e.g. failover/vMotion) you will need shared storage (hardware or software), decent networking and shell out for at least the cheapest licenses (as well as the support they force you to buy)which give you some of the tools/benefits but not all.

The first question I have is, do you really need it, is there a need for all these bells and whistles?

</comment><comment><USER5> We use vSphere to manage 1k + vms and it works well. The ansible plugin to manage it makes most of the pain go away.

I am seeing this from a dev perspective who has stuff running in those vms, spawn vms and kill vms. We have a systems team who manage the more systems part of it.

cheers</comment>