New engine prototype could potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90 percent - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42460541/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/t/new-engine-sends-shock-waves-through-auto-industry/#.UUNxPNE6V-g

<comment><USER2> Previously:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2704614>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2425762>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2337237>

<comment><USER3>
       https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2704614 - 626 days ago
       https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2425762 - 706 days ago
       https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2337237 - 729 days ago

One feature I wish HN had was a merge tool. Merge these threads together, and possibly multiple links per story. Then we can just merge these links/comments into the older thread. Useful for emerging stories about the inevitable "Apple i*" that get posted 50x the day of a release. Kind of like techmeme.com "More:" option.

<comment><USER2> Yes, and...?

<comment><USER3> Just wanted to give added context that this was from 2011. I've also updated my comment with my thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is from 2011 and mentions a 25-kilowatt version by the end of the year. Anyone know of any updates?

<comment><USER5> I was going to add the same thing. I was following this when the news broke in 2011 (both Popular Mechanics and Science News had mentions) but nothing since. Since it hasn't gone black (aka 'secret') and has fallen off the "projects" page [1] of Mueller's lab, I'm guessing it doesn't actually work.

[1] <http://www.egr.msu.edu/mueller/>

EDIT: Found another article [2] that suggested late last year there was supposed to be a 25KW exemplar. Since its now close to the end of the first quarter of 2013 and there isn't a press release, I'm further convinced that their ended up not being anything to talk about.

[2] [http://beforeitsnews.com/science-and- technology/2012/08/wait...](http://beforeitsnews.com/science-and- technology/2012/08/waiting-on-the-25-kilowatt-wave-disk-engine-2455872.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's basically a low RPM centrifugal turbine engine. which is actually perfect for recharging batteries since it's not as dangerous to have in the car a as an axially vented turbine, which runs at much higher RPM and temperature.

</comment><comment><USER7> It always irks me how those news of ground-breaking improvements in this and that actually never translate into improvements in greenhouse gases emissions or cleaner air (or do 10 years later in another form without my being aware of it maybe).

There's already a few companies (one of them is Tesla Motors, an American company) working on cars that actually cut emissions dramatically and do in fact put a dent into the polluting, gas-guzzling model of the "modern" car paradigm.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here is one with a company behind it <http://www.liquidpiston.com/default.html>

But they don't have an animation

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/auto- blog/liquidpi...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/auto- blog/liquidpistons-hyper-efficient-engine-turning-the-rotary-inside- out-13817971)

This is a picture of all the steps: <http://www.gizmag.com/liquidpistol- rotary/24623/pictures#7>

But I cannot understand from that.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it sounds like a normal rotary (Wankel) engine you can buy from Mazda right now. They have some benefits, but they're not a magical cure-all - everyone except Mazda dropped development of them. Wikipedia for the lazy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine>

<comment><USER10> From what little I've read [1], it does not look anything like a Wankel engine. While they both confer similar engineering benefits (though not claimed fuel benefits) compared to a reciprocating engine, the Wave Disk Generator/Engine,

1\. uses compression of air/fuel mixture for ignition (like a diesel engine), not a separate ignition system

2\. has an exhaust system that is both radial and circumferential using centrifugal/centripetal forces to clear the gases. Essentially exhausting all the time.

3\. has an intake central and orthogonal to the plane of the rotor. Essentially continuous intake.

4\. has no "hot spot" fixed housing locations for different parts of the thermodynamic cycle like in a Wankel engine, so, there is no need for a separate cooling or heat distribution system.

[1] [http://sites.psu.edu/mitanshshah/2012/12/03/wave-disk- genera...](http://sites.psu.edu/mitanshshah/2012/12/03/wave-disk-generator/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard > car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times > more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines.

" ... oh, did I mention that I flunked math?"

60 / 15 = 4, not 3.5.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand the point of this. I can decrease auto emission 100% by buying from Tesla.

<comment><USER13> You can decrease tailpipe emissions 100%, but you can't decrease net emissions that much. It's impossible.

<comment><USER14> Not true.

Even when the source-energy is coal, Tesla reduces net emissions a lot by eliminating the inefficiency of the IC engine.

And when the source-energy is solar, net emissions are even better. :-)

<comment><USER15> If you factor in the emissions of extracting and refining raw materials to produce the car, I wonder if the net for a Tesla is markedly better than a standard car.

I don't know the answer to that, just wondering.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Booted out of Bootup Labs - <AUTHOR> http://livejamie.com/post/522093261/booted-out-of-bootup-labs <comment><USER2> When I saw this title, my immediate thought was "hmm, I wonder if this is about Bootup Labs?"

I've met the people behind Bootup Labs, and I like them. They're smart. They're enthusiastic about what they're doing. But I was never really convinced that they were able to make things work financially. I've seen enough startups that I can usually tell when a startup is running on fumes and spending all their energy on trying to raise more funding... and that's the vibe I've been getting from Bootup Labs for a while. Not really a good vibe to have coming from a group with the raison d'etre of _providing_ funding.

On behalf of Canadians in general and Vancouverites especially: We're really sorry about this. Nobody should have to go through what happened to you. We hope you'll come back some day under better circumstances.

<comment><USER3> I second this, Vancouver is really sorry and we hope you will come back and visit.

<comment><USER4> What I learned from this blog post is that I need to visit Vancouver someday.

<comment><USER5> I grew up there, and please do, because after living in a bunch of other cities nothing quite measures up.

You have _no_ idea how depressing it is to live a stone's throw away in Seattle - it's like wallowing in a pit of mud right outside the gates to Eden. No offense to Seattleites, but your city blows in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Danny, one of the bootuplabs founders just posted this comment on the post.

/////////////

This is not how it went down Jamie. After everything that we did for you and Steven, I'm shocked at how you have twisted the truth for PR reasons.

\- you were in our office for 2 months, not 3.

\- you program is 5%-15% for $150k over 8 months

\- you received $6k over that 2 months

\- we received nothing in return.

\- we paid your legal fees.

\- we introduced you to many people who you can still call on today.

We are not out of money, we just closed a round. It was a condition of their investment that we let you go.

Yes, it wasn't an ideal situation, and we didn't plan on it working out this way. But in the end, I made sure that you got the better end the deal

/////////////

Sad to see them trying to argue over facts when these guys moved across the country and gave up everything to be there, then they act like they should be happy to have even had the chance. Wow.

<comment><AUTHOR> My response which I posted:

Hey Danny.

I apologize that you feel like I'm twisting the truth.

It was the last week in January until the end of last Month. While we were there 3 months of the year, you are correct 2 months would be more accurate,

I was just getting the $100k off of the Bootup website, I understood that we got $150k, but that $50k went back to Bootup, is that not what the original terms were?

You did pay our rent and our legal fees to get incorporated. I mentioned the rent, but I didn't mention the legal fees. I apologize.

I didn't suggest that Bootup was closing down or was out of money.

I wouldn't suggest that I got the better end of the deal as it was extremely expensive to move to and live in Vancouver.

I wish you all well.

<comment><USER7> >I didn't suggest that Bootup was closing down or was out of money.

The title of this posting is "Moved to Canada to participate in a startup incubator that had no money"...

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://i.imgur.com/cXxdv.png>

<comment><USER8> Can we please not do that, at least here on HN? A direct link[1] to the comment in question would be better for a number of reasons.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266864>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From [http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2010/04/14/wertz-joins-board- firs...](http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2010/04/14/wertz-joins-board-first- funding-completed-portfolio-reduced/)

"We supplied a great deal of support and value to the 7 companies over the first 2 months of our 2010 cohort, and we received nothing in return for the 4 companies that were cut"

It seems like they are implying that the 4 companies somehow owe them something.

<comment><USER10> The more of these kinds of comments I read, the more I feel sick. The first time I met one of the founders of Bootup Labs, this was when I was fairly new to Vancouver, I got a deep upsetting feeling in my stomach. I felt the same kind of energy from others involved in meetups they put together. They used to hang around workspace as well.

Someone introduced me to a bootup labs person and within just a few sentences I knew these characters were to be avoided. It is difficult for me to rationalize these feelings in ways that can help stop the bad future I see that makes me have these feelings. I don't want to share the feelings, because they are just feelings. I try to only share opinions I can rationalize, because I don't want to be wrong about a negative feeling if the person is actually good and I'm wrong in my assessment.

It's like when I interacted with them, I saw how the compounding negativity of their influence was going to affect the startup community in Vancouver. My feeling made me want to stay far, far away from anyone involved in bootup labs or involved with them or their "groups". I want a _good_ group to be seen as the leader in Vancouver, but it's almost like the stage has been set there and it was designed by bootup labs.

I don't know where the impressions like these come from. I don't know why I have them or how exactly I knew bootup labs was going to turn out badly.

In Texas, there is a saying, "All hat and no cattle." I don't know if there is a similar expression in BC or not, but it's like I can tell that what they were saying was intended to "sell" those who simply didn't know enough to steer clear of them. The bootup labs people are great at sales and giving the impression of power, certainty, and success -- but I never saw any of it.

I want to help people steer clear of individuals like this, but people who say negative stuff about others are often themselves looked down upon. Moms say, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." Well, sometimes, keeping your mouth shut can itself have negative repercussions.

As someone who is still struggling with how to properly behave in social situations, how am I to react when I am confronted by a situation like this?

<comment><USER11> I feel your pain, man.

I was involved years ago with a group of individuals in a different industry. We were working on some advanced machine learning stuff. It was really cool, and the tech was going somewhere. We were getting market interest too from some big players.

I ended up cutting and walking away. Basically I burned several years of work in the process (I designed almost all the tech), and was left with debts that I'm just now getting rid of.

Getting away from the folks I was working with was worth more to me than any of the possibilities that were on the horizon. I also had a strong feeling that if it was a success that I would see none of it, so there was a bit of plain old self-interest too.

"All hat and no cattle" is pretty good. The one guy running the whole thing was, I think, a pure psychopath. I was actually afraid of him for a while, thinking that he might come some night and kill me and my family.

He was charismatic as hell and really, really good at projecting an aura of limitless success and at getting people interested, but nothing ever panned out. He was surrounded by slimy opportunists and clueless followers. I was one of the latter for a while. He had a way of stroking your ego and making you feel powerful, when really you were just being used.

Since then, I now have a real sense for such people and such arrangements and can sort of smell them. Like you, I can't really describe it. It's a bit of too-good-to-be-true and a bit of too-slick and a bit of... some ancient animal threat response.

I've never been to Vancouver or met any of the principals involved in this story, so I really can't comment directly. But your "sense" may indeed be accurate. I sure know that smell now.

Unfortunately, the startup world and the larger tech industry is absolutely crawling with these reptiles.

My advice? Just steer clear. You can't really do much else. You can't go around badmouthing people, as it just makes you sound like a jerk and could also attract legal harassment. Surround yourself with people who aren't slimy, and avoid even those who are unfortunate enough to be in the orbit of slimeballs. All you can really do for people like them (and like I was years ago!) is to wait and hope they come to their senses. If they are your friends, you might be able to tell them or hint at them... but it's really just as bad as when someone you know is dating someone awful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2010/04/14/wertz-joins-board- firs...](http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2010/04/14/wertz-joins-board-first- funding-completed-portfolio-reduced)

I'm not really sure how I feel about this. It seems like they behaved pretty reasonably for a regular company, but as a fiduciary, they probably should have held off and not funded anyone without funds in the bank, vs. relying on a mid-term capital call. (I wonder who bailed on the capital call and why)

After this, I would probably be reluctant to move to Vancouver based on their line of credit promise unless I could see the funds in escrow; a LoC of $100k should mean $100k in an account I control, with equity going to them based on how much I withdraw. If they were Sequoia I'd be willing to accept a promise, but clearly how they have demonstrated they have pretty limited resources.

They at least seem fairly transparent about everything, so it's not dishonesty, merely bad judgment.

<comment><USER12> I'm also curious why 4/7 were cut -- was it that they were mediocre teams/products that Wertz didn't want to fund, or was it just that you ran out of money in the bridge period? It seems unlikely to me the latter, or you would have tried to structure some kind of bridge (or asked the teams to do this themselves by not drawing on the line of credit, which seems to be your only marginal cash expense per team). How else would you pick which companies to keep vs. eject?

I'm not trying to be a dick, but when you burn people (even unintentionally or with the best of intentions), it makes it harder for everyone else to do deals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What a horror story. What sort of program offers $100k to that many groups and doesn't follow through? "Whoops, we were $500k short."

That goes beyond just being embarrassing.

<comment><USER2> _What sort of program offers $100k to that many groups and doesn't follow through?_

Not to be facetious, but: A program which doesn't have as much money as they're offering people.

The founders of Bootup Labs put some of their own money in, but they're raising money (or trying, at least) from VCs for the rest. They're paying themselves [EDIT: or not -- see reply from dannyrobinson below] from the $50k/startup management fee, not just from expected future profits.

Are there any other startup accelerators which do things this way? I'm not aware of any.

<comment><USER14> As a manager of Bootup, I can assure you that we haven't been personally paid anything. The $50k is funnelled through the company to maximize canadian tax credits, which can amount to a meaningful amount of money. And it's used to pay for rent, legal, accounting, and other services that are for the benefit of the startup.

<comment><USER4> You shouldn't have accepted companies that you couldn't afford to pay. You shouldn't have asked them to move to a different country. Very reckless and irresponsible and to then attack the poster as "twisting the truth" about tiny details seems even worse to me. You should be sorry. You should show some humility.

<comment><USER15> I agree completely with apphacker. Being evil or unfair on the Internet is anathema to a (web) startup-related enterprise. 3 out of 7 startups funded is ridiculous. With this hitting the HN community, your best hope is that all three of those startups make it big, or you've just lost whatever credibility you have (with startups that count).

Good luck.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps in the interests of total transparency on this, Bootup should come clean and reveal precisely how the so-called "Management Fee" is disbursed going forward?

$50K for 8 months is a lot of rent and accounting services.

If the Management Fee pays for the managers' salaries, like Danny and Boris Wertz, then they are not necessarily incentivized to have quality startups in each cohort... more important to Bootup in that circumstance is having enough startups to cover their overhead in each 8 month cycle.

<comment><USER3> Boris Wertz is a Vancouver VC who now invests in Bootup, Boris Mann is a founder of Bootup Labs. Just wanted to clear that up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I shouldn't have said that Bootup Labs had "no money" - I should have put "no money for us."

I'm not trying to suggest that Bootup Labs is bankrupt or anything, I apologize.

<comment><USER17> That makes it so much worse. If they were bankrupt, they would have had no choice but to send you packing. To break their promise to you to raise additional capital is a super-dick move and I hope that future startup founders don't make the mistake you did. Thank you for warning the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Jamie, I have a friend at Digg who is trying to contact you. They're looking for designers, if you're interested in a job.

<comment><AUTHOR> I responded to their DM, thank you very much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Boo the VC's in this one!

The investors of BootupLabs did not have confidence in 57% of their latest pool of startups. i wonder why they invested at all if they dont fully back their judgement?

Here's what probably happened, I bet the investors squeezed Boris and Danny with the alternative option being closing their doors early on all 7 companies. Sometimes VC's do evil things to extract more ownership in last minute negotiations (knowing very well that BuL was out of cash). I bet Boris and Danny would have wanted to follow through.

<comment><USER19> I can't speak for every investor in this incubator but Boris Wertz of W Media Ventures has money in my own startup and I've always found him to be an upstanding, helpful guy - First Round Capital introduced him to me and I've always been grateful for that. I wouldn't particularly call Boris a VC, though - more of a large angel, investing the money he made from the startup he founded himself.

It's a bad idea to slight individuals you don't know anything about just because you think they belong to a generic 'VC' category.

<comment><USER18> A lower tide sinks all boats.

I hear you when you say it's bad to slight individuals you don't know anything about. I am very familiar with Boris Wertz (through multiple friends of friends) and the good he has done for the small Vancouver tech scene. However, this is a massive blow in the effort to encourage tech companies to establish a presence in Vancouver (effecting the Vancouver VC recruiting pool). Some other city will be drinking Vancouver's Milkshake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bootup Labs has posted their side of the story on their blog:

[http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2010/04/14/wertz-joins-board- firs...](http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2010/04/14/wertz-joins-board-first- funding-completed-portfolio-reduced/)

<comment><USER20> "Bootup is back on solid ground and ready to continue it's role as a leading North American Seed Accelerator."

VERY bold statement.

<comment><USER21> Solid ground? Give us a break... they're turning on the reality distortion field, again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can I just say that the fact that either party here is duking this out in a public forum is just..... unprofessional? Especially from the VC firm itself?

I suppose I'm a newcomer to this "VC/incubator/startup" community - but in any other life situation, when I decide to pack up and move somewhere far away, I make sure I have stuff in writing, and cash in the bank, and all my i's dotted and t's crossed before I quit my old job and jump on a plane. I also make sure, as best I can, that expectations are the same on both sides. I don't see why this is any different whether it's VC capital for some wild idea or a serious business proposal or just a plain old job somewhere else... what ever happened to common sense?

<comment><USER2> _Can I just say that the fact that either party here is duking this out in a public forum is just..... unprofessional?_

Perhaps a bit unprofessional, but I'm personally glad it happens. The startup/VC world is all about reputation, and anything which moves the world from "talk to your friends at other startups and find out if they know anything about X" to "google for X and find out what people are saying about it" is a good thing for startups who are less than fully connected in the gossip network. Think of this as the natural continuation of what thefunded started.

Of course, as a Vancouverite I'm sad that it's Bootup Labs which is getting a bad reputation like this. :-/

<comment><USER23> Quite honestly YC is the only one of these kinds of ventures that I trust. And even in the case of YC, if I were to advise a budding pair of young entrepreneurs, I'd tell them to move back in with their parents for a year, get a low skill but high paying job to give them sustenance money (e.g., bartend or barista), and focus on implementing their idea. There are nice YC value adds like being introduced to influential folks. But part of being a business person is finding a way to get to these folks anyway. Why pay for this service when you can get them for free?

So many startup folks are attracted to these kinds of programs because I think they mimic the illusion of safety that school offered. You have to be "accepted" and it's not a venture but a "program". Everything is geared towards creating this sense of safety without pointing out you are giving up a lot for it. Know why these programs want to save you the hassle of doing your own incorporation paperwork that took me a day to figure out when I was a teenager? Because they have to put clauses in that will help them, not you.

Again, I'm not saying these ventures are sinister. But you can get by without them and in fact may become a better business person for it.

<comment><USER21> The differences is that the YC founders are successful entrepreneurs who made money for their investors before YC and since.

Google the history of Spinway, bankruptcy, then sold, Peerflix-a VC fire sale, Bryght-private sale for loss then shut down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One would thing that it would be standard practice that they give you a term sheet on acceptance. As soon as you sign the term sheet, money should be transfered. At the end of the day they are investing in your company, and term sheets are typical. This is how YC works.

Sorry to hear about your experience.

</comment><comment><USER25> The fact that the Managing Director of Bootup would confront allegations in a public forum does not bode well for his organization.

I would hope day to day business decisions at Bootup are not done in the same manner. It is ,at best, completely unprofessional.

<comment><USER26> Why do you say that? It might open them up to some sort of liability (I don't know either way), but as long as they watch their tongue, I think it reflects well on the company to be so transparent.

<comment><USER25> I couldn't disagree with you more. Discussions of this sort should be done at the very least on the phone. The airing of dirty laundry, if that may be the case, is best not done on a message board. Comments are taken out of context, misquoted etc ... It is at best ill advised. While transparency is paramount that is not what this is --- banter about such matters on an open forum is to say the least petty and completely unprofessional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Acquisition, investment or acceptance into an incubator are all great things but don't build your startup in such a way that success is dependant upon them.

Ultimately, your success will depend on one thing - you. Build your business for profitably and don't count on money until it's safely cleared in your account.

<comment><USER28> i wish I could upvote this sentiment more. I've also been accepted into an incubator, but had I been declined, I still would of moved forward with release, and marketing plan. After being accepted, I've adjusted my schedule some, but still on track regardless. To me it seems that Jamie is giving up on something that if he truly believed in it, he should continue even now after finding a real job and getting back on his feet. For this reason, it makes me feel that maybe Bootup made the right decision. Regardless its a terrible situation for everyone involved.

<comment><USER29> Sad, but I agree. Be curious to hear why the investors wanted to invest In the first place if the idea isn't good enough to keep the founders committed when they hit this sort of minor setback. And weren't they working on the business for two-plus months in Vancouver? No demo? No prototype? No sense of next steps?

<comment><USER21> likely little meaningful assistance when the fund manager is in panic mode scrambling to raise money...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This has been written about on RWW now:

How to Burn Bridges with Bootup Labs and Other Investors

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/04/how-to-burn- bridge...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/04/how-to-burn-bridges.php)

<comment><USER30> This is one of the most one-sided articles I've seen on RWW. Of all the comments here, they choose this one?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266864>

And they mentioned Robinson's "This is not how it went down" comment without the main substance of his post (which consisted only of small quibbles) -- or the responses to it.

And does the fact that there was a "a heavy hitting roster" backing Bootup make what was done any more excusable?

<comment><USER21> Makes it worse! Think about it... would you let your name be used this way, and/or associate with a company that you wouldn't put your own money in when it was badly needed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It sounds like Bootup Labs wasn't able to draw down on some of their LPs. So, it's not nefarious, but it would make me think twice before accepting (the promise of) money from Bootup Labs.

It ain't real 'till the money's in the bank.

<comment><USER21> There are no lPs. Bootup is/was a VCC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> That really sucks! But dude, why give up on the idea? you're selling the domain and moving on? Incubators aren't necessary.. keep plugging away and launch anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Brad,

I'm just in survival mode at the moment, living on my parent's couch at the moment with negative money in my bank account. I need to sell some things to try to get back on my feet again - that's why I'm seeing if I can sell these domains.

<comment><USER33> With all due respect Jamie, if you're in it, you're in it.

My suggestion (for what it's worth) is that you put this behind you and find a way to make it happen. If you choose not to, you probably weren't going to make a go of it anyway.

You got a raw deal, and that's clear to anyone. Now get back to work on your startup. This can be a roadblock or a speedbump; you choose.

<comment><USER33> I'm curious--why the downvote?

Isn't this just the sort of test we've all faced at some point in our startup efforts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why did bootup labs offer funding that is almost 7 to 10 times the 'industry' standard? It's disappointing that an incubator close to home really wasn't.

<comment><USER21> well this is most likely because they have no experience in how to finance or run a venture fund of any size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> More on Vancouver's Techvibes.com...

[http://www.techvibes.com/blog/bootup-labs-20-now-with- more-m...](http://www.techvibes.com/blog/bootup-labs-20-now-with-more-money- and-less-startups)

<comment><USER30> _But now with Boris Wertz on board, new funding secured, and the spotlight of this story, there is no doubt that due diligence on all sides will improve and the next cohort of startups will be better than ever._

Hmm, ok.

 _Disclosure: Boris Wertz is an investor in Techvibes Media Inc._

Surprise, surprise.

<comment><USER2> _Surprise, surprise._

I doubt Boris Wertz pulled any strings to get the positive spin from Techvibes -- my impression is that Techvibes would find a way to give a positive spin to "meteor headed for Vancouver, is expected to destroy city".

<comment><USER30> Sure, I didn't mean to imply any particular chain of causality -- just the fact that there is virtually no value in a positive article from Techvibes given their financial conflict-of-interest in this story.

<comment><USER21> A one-sided, unresearched, fluff article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> From @bootuplabs on twitter:

> HI all: we're moving up the blog post we were going to put up tomorrow to > this eve - please stand by

<comment><USER37> All Canadian startup hopefuls are/will be watching for an official response closely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I find the weird part about this is you are selling your domains. I vote no for this move. Find another way to make that cash but keep your domain and your co-founder.

If these guys at bootlab accepted you, there is a high probability that someone else would too.

[who knows post a donation page and see where it goes. I think most of us here knows what survival mode is like, so would be sympathetic to your cause]

</comment><comment><USER12> How hard is it to set up a Vancouver startup independently, if you have 2-3 US citizens who want to relocate? Assume you have $100-200k of your own funding.

Gaming the tax credits seems like it takes a bit of effort, but lowers the effective tax rate substantially below even Nevada.

<comment><USER23> Starting a company in Canada among 2 or 3 people is easy. I should know because I did it when I was a teenager. It cost me $15 for some incorporation templates, $150 for a name search report showing potentially similar company names to the one I wanted to start, and $350 or so in government fees. This got me a company incorporated provincially. You can do it federally too but it's a bit more complex. If you have as much money as you claim you could probably emigrate to Canada in a special business class meant specifically for people starting businesses here.

Starting businesses is easy as pie. If you have enough money to sustain the business before it brings in revenue then I'm not sure what the attraction is to these sort of ventures. If your execution is good then VCs will hear you out regardless of whether you've been "accepted" into a program like this. They may facilitate introductions but there are also government funded programs here in Canada that do not charge money which will do the same.

Tax rates for people smart enough to start businesses in Canada are fairly attractive. It is especially so when you factor in healthcare costs or lack- there-of. However one thing to bear in mind is that it is often a severe hassle an American company to exit an investment in a Canadian company. In some cases it would require 900 signatures of limited partners in the American company and for each to file Canadian income taxes. Google "Section 116 foreign investment". It is something the government here is tackling in a bid to spur VC investment in Canada. But there are still some gotchas (and benefits) to starting a company here.

<comment><USER12> I like accelerators for two reasons: 1) Having a same-time-founded cohort of companies. Moral support, entertainment, and when ~80% of them fail, you can pick and choose assets (great developers) having great visibility into them.

2) I like the idea of accelerators for people with $0 and just out of college or high school, or who need structure. If I could give 5% of my company to give an accelerator a win (both in money upside and reputation), I'd do it, especially if I were in a third-tier city like Vancouver which deserves a second tier startup population.

<comment><USER12> (I saw I got voted down and should explain)

I think the odds of failure at 50-80%, including my own company, and having a bunch of ready ways to re-deploy those people into other projects is good for EVERYONE -- the engineers can move to the most successful projects. If I worked on something for a year or two and it flopped, I'd love to go work at a startup I'd been following the whole time, rather than trying to find a regular job.

I think SFBA in general is basically an incubator/accelerator, if you've been involved in one startup even as an engineer. Formal accelerators help a lot more in places where most of the people who want to do a startup have NOT yet worked for one. College would be the best example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Was it ever mentioned that this could be an outcome of coming to Vancouver? Either side hasn't said.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow that story really sucks.

</comment><comment><USER41> everything happens for a reason, I am sure you will create something create after this.

<comment><USER42> Not sure why this was downvoted. It's a little negative, but I do agree from this experience and you blogging about Jamie something better will come along!

Good luck and is the weather in Phoenix still "100 and above it's a scorcher out there" :) ? You emailed me this summer re: my start-up. Good luck!

<comment><USER43> I downvoted it, because I see it as a stupid comment for situations where something (partly) out of your control happens and you lose. "It's going to be ok" from a friend is nice then, but a comment that "Everything happens for a reason" from a stranger is just weird. Not only he agrees that the bad thing was supposed to happen, he implies that he knows there was "a greater plan" and that he has some knowledge about the whole situation that allows him to predict your future. I hate this phrase, because it's complete BS.

So yeah - downvoted for personal reasons ;)

Good luck to the guys.

<comment><USER44> Above livejamie has found himself a potential opportunity with Digg.

Bad situations always leave room for learning, growth and positive outcomes, so long as you are willing to look at it from a positive perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why this has not been bumped up more I have no idea... Fuck man... that is fucking horrible. When I first got into DreamIt Ventures, all of my attorneys and family and friends said the same thing... are you sure? What is the paperwork like?

The Paperwork was 2 PAGES! I was in law school at the time, I was looking at paper work of contracts that were a minimum of 26 pages!!! And 2 get 2 pages?! Unreal... and quite scary. We took a gamble... we signed the documents.

Left MORE questions thn answers... by far. Fortunately, my god, I never realized how lucky we were.

I'll keep my eye out for something that will pay.

Do you have any contracts from them? I'd like to see. Post them on DocStoc.

I do not know Canadian Law, but I know someone who might. Not that I could represent... but I'm curious to see if you might have some legal action!

Embarrassed or not - that is bull shit.

-P</comment>


Hacking how we see [video] - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9370-hacking_how_we_see <comment><USER2> I wonder if it is possible to treat myopia by wearing e.g. +1.0 reading glasses over normal correcting (negative) contact lenses during computer use (i.e. provide a challenge to your eyes so focus mechanism stays in shape).

<comment><USER3> A lot of people have researched this ([http://gettingstronger.org/2010/07/improve-eyesight-and- thro...](http://gettingstronger.org/2010/07/improve-eyesight-and-throw-away- your-glasses/)). I've personally experienced it, slowing reversing my myopia over the course of many years. It took me a decade to develop so it seems fair to me that it also takes a long time to reverse.

<comment><USER4> Nah, your original myopia was probably just overcorrected (it is easy, overcorrecting myopia in a subjective acuity test results in a smaller and so seemingly darker and sharper percepted image). Your result of ten years of training in probably just onset of presbyopia and a less skewed measurement. And the talk has got nothing to do with myopia reversal training.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The project's website: [https://www.eyeskills.org/](https://www.eyeskills.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I know a few people with strabismus (and in the last 3 or 4 years started to develop mild strabismus myself, due unequal far-sightedness and a strong astigmatism in my left eye, without wearing glasses at all). Even before I was developing strabismus, I occasionally entertained the idea of using a head's up display, or a tablemount contraption to slowly realign the supressed eye over multiple sessions. I am really amazed to hear now that the realigning can happen in a single session and lasts a (longer than I expected) short while until the brain relapses into the Plan B suppression.

One of the reasons I did not actually try to build this was that I had a hard time imagining participants would be willing to spend large amounts of time over a long period of time to slowly re-align the lazy eye, especially if it's a boring focusing task etc...

I am positively amazed that the re-aligning can happen on such short notice (even if it doesn't last very long) and is relatively robust (I would have guessed blinking the eye after re-alignment would immediately revert to the unaligned state)

The relative brightness trick is brilliant!

Consider daily life glasses with which to attenuate in a controlled fashion the light for the dominant eye. This could be glasses with a fixed polarizer for the supressed eye, and both a fixed and rotatable polarizer for the dominant eye such that relative intensity can be set in the interval [0,1] this is batteryless but may look less appealing. Alternatively hack one of those LCD shutter glasses, and dim the dominant eye (battery powered circuit). Then every day or hour first measure the minimum and maximum relative transparency for fusion, and then set the device at say 4/5 the way between this minimum and maximum, until eventually someday approaching 1.

With such glasses you wouldn't need a game, and the user can use it in part of her daily life (taking a walk, shopping, ...) if the assymetrically transparent eye-patch glasses still look to disturbing for work or whatever...</comment>


Nutjob finds proof of the existence of God in Pi - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/07/numeric_pareidolia_and_god_in.php

<comment><USER2> Someone revered, respected and disciplined needs to compose a treatise so I'll understand the point in which it became acceptable to call someone with beliefs a "nutjob".

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't call him a nutjob for believing in God, I'd call him a nutjob for trying to prove God's existance in the manner that he did, because it's wacko.</comment></comment>


Livescribe Smartpens - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/ <comment><USER2> This James Fallows post: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/07/my- new...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/07/my-new-favorite- gadget-livescribe-pulse-pen/22468/) gives some more context to the pen and explains why it can be so good.</comment>


Why Echo Chambers Are Useful [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/jm_papers/921/echochambers.pdf <comment><USER2> The problem with echo chambers isn't so much verification (is the information accurate?) but rather validation (is the process of acceptance rational or qualified?).

Echo chambers tend to be hyper-subjective, which means new information is accepted or rejected on the basis of content-oriented rules opposed to whether decisions upon the information are valid, qualified, or balanced. That suggests the injection of precisely targeted information focusing on group acceptance is the only criteria of success, which makes the group dangerously susceptible to manipulation.

Counter-intuitively echo chambers are primarily desirable for a number of irrational reasons not related to subject matter. People tend to find security in conforming group dynamics, generally fear originality, and strongly enjoy commitment even in opposition to strong evidence.

Contrarily, in echo chamber opposed groups the primary qualifier of information acceptance is process of argumentation. The idea or information that survives a brutal, but process-approved, argument is the most worthy. That form of objectivity can be emotionally disruptive for persons not prepared or understanding of the group process.

<comment><USER3> > Contrarily, in echo chamber opposed groups the primary qualifier of > information acceptance is process of argumentation.

Ostensibly, but there's a lot of people notionally opposed to echo chambers who are very happy in their own.

<comment><USER4> Lots of people are hypocrites or just completely oblivious to the cocoons they've built.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found this an interesting read, and it certainly makes a good point. Echo chambers are definitely going to have a greater net throughput of information compared to a network in which members aren't keen to share with one another due to perceived differences. So overall, members of an echo chamber can end up more informed than if they hadn't been. However, I think it's important to note that modern discourse isn't critical solely of echo chambers, but also of their effects when false information is introduced into one. The same trust that allows more informed members also facilitates misinformation.

That being said, it's probably more effective to use that lack of verification to police misinformation within the echo chamber than to introduce members that could offer contradictory - but also potentially false - information. It would just require some added diligence from members of the echo chamber.

<comment><USER6> _it 's probably more effective to use that lack of verification to police misinformation within the echo chamber than to introduce members that could offer contradictory - but also potentially false - information._

Putting aside the verification problem for a minute, doesn't the echo chamber problem lead almost automatically to group think?

I do machine learning, and I see a strong analogy here with overfitting. If all the data is from a subset of of population and it is never validated outside that subset then the model will become strong on that subset data but much weaker outside.

In machine learning we use a variety of regularization techniques to combat this. One thing that actually works pretty well to build _robust_ models is (a small amount of) mislabeled data: the model learns not to depend on any single feature.

<comment><USER7> What do people actually mean by "groupthink" here and why precisely is it bad? Everyone drives on the same side of the road and (mostly) follows the same traffic rules and we don't call it "groupdrive".

Surely having everyone believe the same _true_ thing isn't actually bad - nobody calls Maxwell's equations "groupthink" unless they're trying to sell you a perpetual motion machine.

<comment><USER6> _Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences_

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

The most commonly used example is the Bay of Pigs invasion, where no one advising Kennedy raised any possible negative consequences. That's seen in contrast to the Cuban Missile crisis a few years later where Kennedy actively sort contrary advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On a related note, I have recently been wondering if the large scale swings in society from being outgoing to being insular and back, might be evolutionarily beneficial due to the speed of genetic drift varying for different sizes of breeding populations.

Small populations get the fast drift for adaptation, but mixing those with other adaptations from other small populations gets strength in depth, so you have two opposing evolutionary strategies, one which prefers isolation of groups and one that prefers mixing.

Over evolutionary timescales, oscillating between these two behaviours could presumably get baked into the genes, so leading our politics to swing between isolation and gregariousness as part of a natural evolutionary cycle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting. I have had this feeling watching political news/gamergate/comicgate/damore etc.

Too much energy gets expended trying to convince/shame/punish the other side. None of it imho has produced outcomes or increased understanding.

When dealing with unknown unknowns/ambiguity etc why not just split the groups, let them go do their thing on two separate islands, like running two parallel jobs based on contradictory assumptions and let the best job win.

How do we split without causing a mess is the big question? We maybe in an overly connected state atm or certain issues require disconnection and echo chambers.

Thought experiment (slightly ridiculous and loaded but use your imagination here) - there is a lot of talk about splitting up Google for example. What if Google is split on an issue like unconscious bias training. Those who support it produce one search engine and those who don't (damore camp) produce another. Don't we get better information over all?

Right now when I read a "this is how you need to think" article on CNN, I shake my head and go look at what Fox has to say. And when Fox is fawning over Trump I go the other way.

<comment><USER10> I've had a similar thought experiment before, where basically you let people of different political leanings go to their own countries with their like minded ilk. Two problems arise:

1\. People tend to hold complex combinations of views which may not completely align with everyone else. How many partitions do you need in order to make this work?

2\. Mobility remains an issue. People simply don't have the resources to get up and go to something they actually support and build it up.

<comment><USER11> I've also had similar thought experiments here. But take it a step further. It's probably safe to say that the current biggest divide in society is in political ideology. Let's just call this left/right, though that's far from precise. Imagine we placed all 'left' individuals in one US, and all 'right' individuals in another completely identical (in terms of physical resources, preexisting infrastructure, etc) US. And migration between these two nations was freely and instantly allowed, but only if you absolutely abided the initial ideological split. How long would it take before these two nations then had their own internal splits with people dividing themselves among some new subissue?

Of course you hit on this with #1, but I think the answer is that there is no limit to the number of partitions. In other words that division is itself inevitable. So rather than trying to ideologically homogenize ourselves, I think it's more important to for people to embrace diversity of views as opposed to attack everything that doesn't conform to, what to them, seems self evident. Because for 'the other side', their views are likely seen as identically self evident. When sides remain incapable of doing anything except working to antagonize the other, in the end the only way things would be resolved is by force of arms which is certainly something almost nobody wants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an interesting idea (that echo chambers may be objectively useful in certain ways), but to me the bigger question is, even if that is true, how much of a factor is it compared to more mundane causes like plain old cognitive dissonance?

</comment><comment><USER13> Disappointed to discover this isn't about acoustics.

<comment><USER14> You shouldn't be surprised, "echo chamber" has taken a new meaning ever since social media became influential.</comment></comment>


Idea dump, December edition - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/idea+dump%2C+December+edition <comment><USER2> (69) The Never Ending Story

I came up with and specced out something like this for a school which never got passed the planning stage. The idea was more simple in that there was a seed story, and then the kids took a word or phrase from the seed story and that was the title of their story, with the chosen word/phrase becoming a link (it was a user-friendly wiki in effect). This could be repeated to infinite depth and words/phrases could link to more than one story (or partially overlap etc).

I still have it in perpetual inactive development.

<comment><USER3> I watched a Never Ending Story play out long ago (possibly it was on a Lulu.com forum?). Absolutely horrible. You mix in bad writers with worse writers, and just when you come across a half-decent page some other author whisks the story off in a totally different direction.

<comment><USER4> What if people could continue the story tree horizontally, and continue on the part they found most interesting? Then the parts with the most "continuations" could get a higher ranking and therefore shape the best story at the (never)end.

<comment><USER3> That does sound like it could result in an improvement, but the tree would grow quite large I imagine! :) Each writer would have to read each horizontal version to decide where to continue, and I'm betting there would be multiple continuation points, too, so it would start to look like the exponential story, especially with a virtually endless supply of writers. Crowd-sourced writing is a fun idea, but I think at best it might be an activity writers do to stay creatively loose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (64) ABtimise - see also genetify, snapads

Not saying that it's a problem that "the simpsons did it", just that it might be interesting to see what their approach is and what can be learned from it.

</comment><comment><USER6> (66) Unbrainwash

Isn't this Fox News... Fair and Unbalanced :)

On a more serious note... I wonder if it is possible to measure bias of each news source and use some sort of language processing to combine bias.

Google is certainly thinking about a similar topic... see yesterday's article about sentiment analysis: [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad- to-your-cus...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your- customers-is-bad-for.html) (it was on HN too somewhere...)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have an idea: Take Facebook's approach to groups (the auto-add feature), and apply it to a dating website.

It might turn out that this approach could replace siloed dating websites (e.g. Christian, Jewish, BBW) into organically formed dating groups all on the same website.

It's like taking the idea of <http://thread.com/> one step further.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, I don't see how 66 is ever gonna work as long as it's done by humans.

<comment><USER9> Sure, so long as you're willing to accept that "unbiased" will only mean "pointing out when _everyone else's_ biases come into play*. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> (67) ClickApp

I built something similar at a previous job. I never really thought that anyone outside the domain it was built for would use it.

Now this has got me thinking about it again...

I wonder if it could be marketed to the same sorts of folks who use SurveyMonkey and whatever that contact form builder company is called (it pisses me off that I can't remember the name of it at the moment).

<comment><USER11> maybe wufoo?

<comment><USER10> That's it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always thought it would be interesting to take the genetic algorithm approach on Facebook ads. But instead keep the ad display the same, and do an A/B on customer demographics and interests.

The surprising and amusing patterns you find would alone make it worth it.

</comment><comment><USER12> (63) Chattical reminds me of my own project a while back: <http://askcue.com> feel free to try it. As a sidenote: if I remember correctly I had the idea around december in 2009.

</comment><comment><USER13> Should just make an app for facebook for dating :) have all the people you need.

</comment><comment><USER14> These ideas are intended to be fun little weekend hacks and not serious businesses right?

Figured I'd ask because I clicked hoping for something else and wondered if I was the only one that did so.

<comment><USER5> I wrote up ten of my ideas with some more detail, if that's what you're looking for: <http://www.puremango.co.uk/2010/10/ten-ideas/>

<comment><USER15> In response to your imCaptcha idea, have you ever seen <http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/> ?

<comment><USER5> yeah I played with that a while ago; a clever way to experiment with crowdsourced image labelling. It would be interesting to see their results.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


JRuby+Truffle: Why it's important to optimise the tricky parts [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://ia801503.us.archive.org/32/items/vmss16/seaton.pdf <comment><USER2> Anyone know when's this going to be ready for prime time?

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems quite mature already, runs Rails and passes 100% of the Ruby specs.

I think it's going to become the default in JRuby, but probably not before Java9 comes out, which includes a crucial component that enables Graal to sit on top of HotSpot (currently you need a modified VM).</comment></comment>


Is the F-35 a Trillion-Dollar Mistake? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-04/is-the-f-35-a-trillion-dollar-mistake?cmpid=BBD040417_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=170404&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily <comment><USER2> In a lot of ways yes.

It was likely a mistake to base a multi role fighter on a design aimed primarily the first strike role that were the first of the airfoces roles to be handed over to robots(cruise missiles), and it was most definitely a mistake to pick the one role where manned planes are least likely to be replaced by drones as the lowest priority roles.

The problem with the F-35 is that it's good at low level first strike missions and bad at visual range fighting weather it's dogfighting or close air support as it's what had to be sacrificed to make radar stealth possible, despite the fact that those are the primary roles where you cannot replace the pilot with a smart missile or drone.

And all of this in a plane that have the same crucial weakness that got the F-22 canceled, in that it's too expensive to build in number and requires way to much maintenance to fly as often as some of the less sophisticated airframes that can be pressed into service and do as good a job as the F-35 in the primary roles where you need to keep pilots in the battle space for prolonged periods, at a far lower pr hour cost.

In a lot of ways the US air-force is setting itself off for the same kind of failure as the luftwaffe had doing WWII where their advanced planes was bombed out of existence without ever getting in the air because, cost and maintenance issues prevented them from being in a constant state of in-air rotation.

<comment><USER3> In a lot of ways no as well. Take for example F-35B. That would've never happened on its own. Too few customers for a separate development project. Whereas now combined with amphibious assault ships it will be a quantum leap for USMC capabilities. Otherwise they'd have to retire Harrier for just V-22, AH-1Z and CH-53K.

It already costs less than its contemporaries Rafale and Typhoon. Remotely operated planes are not cheaper. Take for example MQ-4C Triton, which can only be used for intelligence and recon. That costs around 190 million apiece. Quite the sticker shock when you can get almost two F-35As for the same cost. Basically even if you could get similar capabilities (there are no air to air UCAVs atm), it will cost at least as much for quite some time.

According to pilots flying it, it's equal to clean F-16 within visual range.

F-35 program is also invaluable in utility. Nine countries became partners. Eventually most Nato-members and even some affiliates will adopt it. That's standardization of capability across the board on an unprecedented level.

Quick overview of test results: [https://youtu.be/zgLjNsB_hyM?t=4m17s](https://youtu.be/zgLjNsB_hyM?t=4m17s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The previous article linked had about 20,000 words. It spoke a lot about various problems.

Let's look at the gun for example.

There's a small door that opens so the gun can fire. Apparently for stealth reasons. The opening door creates an aerodynamic disturbance and the plane yaws or does something else and the aim is off. So that has to be corrected in the flight software - the plane must countersteer with the tail surfaces when the door is opened. And for some reason it's been very slow to create these rules.

Now, let's assume the F-35 program is canceled. There's a few scenarios after that.

Maybe some non-stealthy aircraft can be created for ground support missions. They don't need such pesky doors. On the other end of the spectrum, maybe some stealthy pure air superiority fighters or strike craft can also be created that don't need guns at all.

Or then you decide that you need a gun on a stealthy aircraft and you need a door again (or then you design it differently, AFAIK the F-22 doesn't have such problems). Will it be easier this time? If you think it will, what will be different? Why does it take years and years to develop software for F-35? Why wouldn't it take years and years, and actually longer for these new aircraft?

The gun problems are probably not caused by the "commonality between different versions", that's always trotted out as "the fatal flaw in the program", as it only exists in one version of the aircraft.

There might be some underlying reasons why progress is slow and expensive. But I don't think many of them would be fixed by procuring just a new aircraft. Maybe the department of defense could buy from Northrop or Boeing... but I doubt the results would be that different with a roughly similar process.

I would likely look at radical software development methods (would still have to be safety conscious). There are things like Skunk Works, Faster Better Cheaper, Agile Manifesto... two out of these three are from the aerospace world.

They don't last forever because the small group of competent people will always turn into a huge mass of mediocre people governed by a mass of bureaucrats. That's just nature.

<comment><USER5> For what it's worth, the F-22 has a similar system. Perhaps it's not such a problem because the aircraft is significantly larger.

I don't know why the cannon door issue is taking so long to rectify but I can guess: Whoever is responsible for the weapons systems can't fix this themselves, it requires a modification to the flight control law, which is handled by a different team and any modification to that system requires extensive testing. That team is likely to prioritize work items that actually impact systems they're responsible for, so the cannon languishes at the bottom of the queue, doing nothing but attracting a storm of blog commentary.

One ought to keep in mind when reading the DOT&E report that it's their job to tear the fighter limb from limb and take the program administration to task for every problem. Of course the general tone is going to be negative, we know the program is behind schedule and over budget. They still seem to be on track to build a multirole fighter that is at least tolerably competent at all of its assigned tasks (even CAS) and that's a win. Maybe it's not the best possible solution but it's what the Pentagon wanted.

I'll never understand the impulse to cancel programs when they're just turning the final corner to completion. I guess that's when they start to gain the highest public profile. There is no magical second system that will solve every problem, and at this point the thing to do is apply lessons learned from the procurement and R&D processes going forward, maybe plan a Block II to smooth out the rough edges. We're about a decade too late to flip the table in a fit of rage and start over.

<comment><USER6> But the program was massively delayed and technology has progressed dramatically. Why bring a jet to a drone fight? Or to a laser fight? Seems obsolete.

<comment><USER5> There are essential comms problems that will face any unmanned system that tries to take over the F-35's role. In the absence of a solution that is extremely low latency, immune to interference, and undetectable as radiated emission, you'd have to lean on computer AI to run the bulk of the mission autonomously. Nobody is ready to throw the switch on that.

A possible solution is to augment flights of manned fighters with unmanned drones as missile/bomb trucks. This gets you the force multiplier while keeping all communication short range and within line-of-sight. But you still need a stealthy, survivable manned fighter.

Overall it's a bit like saying why bother with a new generation of conventional cars when universal self-driving is right around the corner. Maybe it is, or maybe it isn't quite as close as you think. These are questions that are more appropriately asked of the N+1 generation fighter that may or may not be on the drawing boards at this time.

P.S. I've noticed the F-35 takes flak from both the extreme technological pessimists (drones/fighters can't take over the A10's role, low & slow manned flight is the only way to do CAS) and the extreme optimists (drones will make all manned flight obsolete next year). Seems to me neither faction has a very strong grasp of the state of military tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is a really great write-up on the F-35 from Quora: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-thoughts-on- the-F-35-Lig...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-thoughts-on- the-F-35-Lightning-II/answer/Dan-Rosenthal-6)

<comment><USER8> Great read...you should consider submitting this link as an article

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How useful are fighter jets? Shouldn't we be building swarms of unmanned drones instead?

<comment><USER10> Yes. I expect manned fighter jets will become obsolete within 20 years. A few thoughts on the subject:

1\. Drones can handle much higher G-forces than manned fighter jets. This is a huge advantage.

2\. AI technology is progressing very rapidly so there will soon be no benefit to having a human in the aircraft. Even today the US military probably has AI that can beat any human in a simulated dogfight.

3\. Pilots are very expensive. Not just to train but also in terms of the political cost of having pilots killed or captured by the enemy.

4\. Eliminating the pilot opens up a range of options. For example, instead of a $200 million fighter jet it may be more effective to build 10 drones for $20 million each, or even 100 drones for $2 million each. Maybe half the drones will have stealth capabilities and half will have AWCS-like communication and control features.

5\. During WWII German and Russian tanks were roughly equivalent. But the Russians could build tanks at a far greater rate than the Germans, making the German loss almost inevitable. Similarly, in future the country that can produce many drones quickly and cheaply may dominate air warfare. In this regard China will likely have an advantage over the US.

6\. The military-industrial complex is a huge bureaucracy in which many people have a financial and psychological incentive to continue development of manned fighter jets. For this reason I expect such development to continue well beyond its use-by date, probably until there is a real-world battle where a large, previously dominant air force is soundly beaten by a small power using new drone technology.

<comment><USER11> 3\. Pilots are very expensive. Not just to train but also in terms of the political cost of having pilots killed or captured by the enemy.

In terms of ethics, there is a need to ensure that war has a human cost or there is very little to stop countries doing it all the time. If the cost of war is purely financial, then I think perhaps that might be the beginning of the end to the world as we know it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As long as the US defense budget is bigger than the next 10 nations combined, might as well throw money around.

Just imagine if NASA's budget was that big what we could be doing instead.

</comment><comment><USER13> Question: many people prefer the A-10 Warthog for ground support, and argue that the F-35 is both overpriced and insufficiently capable for the task. A big part of the reason is the A-10 cannon, which can be used to great effect on enemy targets very near friendly forces, and in a timely manner.

During the Iraq War I remember reports about about AC-130 loitering in circles above a battleground, presumably just out of the effective range of shoulder fired ground-to-air missiles. More importantly, a gunner would use a side mounted cannon on ground targets.

My question is: could be we replace the A-10's (and even the F-35's) ground support role with a similar gunship, but with much a much more accurate cannon; one that could reliably and consistently hit with, say, 1 meter accuracy. Do the existing cannon mounts on the AC-130 utilize accelerometers and mechanisms to compensate for the movement of the plane? Is there existing technology to use, say, lasers to measure wind and air turbulence to improve projectile accuracy? How high could a gunship theoretically loiter with improved technology? (I assume ground-to-air missiles will only get better, and cheaper, and more portable with time.)

Theoretically, such gunships could be flown fully autonomously, with a remote human doing targeting.

<comment><USER3> A-10 has been known to be a MANPADS magnet since the Desert Storm. If you have air superiority, you can keep them, use UCAVs or buy new Super Tucanos. But in contested environment they are useless. Multiroles or bombers with precision weapons are better suited for CAS. Cannons are legacy, which is why you haven't seen a uav concept matching your description. In the future targeting platform and the one doing the shooting might not even be the same.

"Part of the reason the A-10 has enjoyed the amount of success and notoriety it has is because there has been unopposed use of the airspace over Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria. It is not a contested environment. It is not a degraded environment. It's not an operationally-limited environment–save for bad weather and some really big, nasty mountains in Afghanistan. All of that means our air assets have an ability to fly and operate unmolested in those AORs.

Tomorrow's fight will NOT be that." [https://fightersweep.com/2038/the-a-10-warthog-debate-a- fate...](https://fightersweep.com/2038/the-a-10-warthog-debate-a-fate-worse- than-death/)

<comment><USER13>
      Tomorrow's fight will NOT be that.

All of our wars since Vietnam (after, but arguably during) have benefitted from largely uncontested airspace. That's been the case for over 40 years, and through many conflicts.

Why should we expect otherwise? The only conflict the U.S. might be engaged where that wouldn't be the case is an an all-out war with Russia or China, either on their territory or, like in Korea, an awkward proxy war where we're unable or unwilling to control airspace. (Hopefully we don't ever repeat the mistake of Vietnam, where we refused to control either the ground or airspace in North Vietnam for flimsy political reasons.)

It seems pretty dumb to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on such a theoretical conflict, especially given that so far the nuclear powers have managed to avoid such direct conflict.

In every last one of our conflicts with substantial American ground troops in the past half century, we've always controlled the airspace in short order. If it's ever the case where we won't be able to control the airspace, we'd have bigger problems than bike shedding this sort of technology. Any difference between the F-35 and the cheaper alternative (Super Hornet, A-10, etc) would be negligible.

I just don't understand wasting the money. I understand the principle is to plan for the next war, not the previous war. But after a half dozen previous wars with identical circumstances, and several similar on the horizon, at some point not taking _reality_ into account seems grossly short-sighted.

Yes, MANPADS may be getting better, but there are more effective and cheaper solutions to maintaining effective control of the airspace (excepting the above exception) than the F-35 or similar platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> See also previous discussion about this topic from 3 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14013203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14013203) (232 comments)

Story: "F-35 Continues to Stumble"

[http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2017/f35-continues...](http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2017/f35-continues- to-stumble.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> The underlying problem seems to be that they tried to satisfy too many requirements, and are now ending up with a mediocre product that does nothing well. At this point I would seriously be considering reducing the requirements. Tell the Marines to go find another plane. Maybe the Navy too. Focus on the big customer, the Air Force. Do whatever it takes to make it work for them. (Although I kind of suspect the Air Force would rather have the F-22.)

The Navy would probably go with the Advanced Super Hornet. God knows what the Marines would do.

<comment><USER16> Maybe the Marines should take the A-10 from the Air Force since they don't give a rat's ass about infantry support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is surprisingly complex. I expected more points to clearly lean towards it or away from it. There are cost overruns and delays, but renegotiations happened and corrected at least some of that. The plane is real and works, but has weaknesses. It has tentative bipartisan support.

We built another Jack of all trades for Veitnam, the F4 phantom. Largely it was regard as a failure because it wasn't good at anything. Is the F35 advanced enough that not being the best still leaves the USA with better than everyone else and therefor less than the best is good enough?

<comment><USER18> Is the F-4 really regarded as a failure? I thought it was a pretty big success. It certainly wasn't trouble-free. Infamously, the missile-only design ended up being _way_ premature, but that was ultimately solved with a gun pod, and then a redesign to integrate a gun. Its combat record was good, it served in the US military for three decades, and it _still_ serves in several foreign militaries today.

However, I'm far from an expert, and would love to know more if I got it wrong!

<comment><USER19> No, you're right. I suspect the plane squeaky was really thinking of was the F-111. The F-35's development process was reminiscent of the F-111, with features incorporated to create something for everyone, along with the concomitant weight and cost increases.

<comment><USER18> Yes, the F-111 would fit much better! Seems like the F-4 and F-111 occupy opposite extremes of the potential outcomes for a jack-of-all-trades aircraft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does the world need F35...by the sounds of it f22 was good enough

</comment><comment><USER21> This article violates Betteridge's law of headlines.

<comment><USER22> Actually it doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think we need to compare the benefit the USA's population gets from this Trillion-Dollar spending with other possible program like free college tuition[1] who would around 70 billion/year.

I think democracies need a tool that help explore and explain what we gain from a law/program and what are the cost associated. But consequence and indirect cost is difficult to foresee: Obamacare (ACA) increased the number of people going freelance (author, artist, start-up ... ) because they were able to get insurance without a part-time job.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/heres-e...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/heres- exactly-how-much-the-government-would-have-to-spend-to-make-public-college- tuition-free/282803/)</comment>


Data hint at 'five God particles' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10313875.stm

<comment><USER2> The hunt for the higg's boson reminds me of the attempts to measure the speed of the earth using light beams. Everything we thought we knew about physics told us that we should be able to measure the speed the earth was orbiting by measuring the difference in speed between two beams of light. When the experiments failed, the response was develop more precise measuring techniques, and more perfect mirrors. It wasn't until Einstein that people realized these failed experiments were not failures at all, but evidence that the universe doesn't work quite how we thought. The hunt for the Higg's Boson, and the "failure" to find it after all these years just seems like a reminder that empirical evidence > theoretical models. Just because the math seems elegant doesn't mean it necessarily applies to the universe we are living in.

Of course, they may find the Higg's boson tomorrow, and then my little theory about them being wrong would be proved wrong, but that's science for you.

<comment><USER3> The two aren't really comparable. With Newtonian physics there were clear signs decades before Einstein that something wasn't right, the clearest example being the perihelion precession of Mercury: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_problem_in_general_relat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_problem_in_general_relativity#Historical_context_and_intuitive_understanding)

In modern particle physics the main limitation is lack of experimental data. To get that data we have to build giant and expensive experiments like the LHC. Even if the LHC is completely successful we're still going to need bigger colliders to test other things at even higher energies.

Another problem is that the current theories make predictions about things that we probably won't ever be able to measure directly due to the microscopic scales involved.

To name an example. We think that gluons exist inside atomic nuclei, but we can't observe them unless we break the nuclei apart, thus destroying the gluon's habitat. We think it's there because we see what looks like the energy of a gluon falling apart, and because mathematical models back it up.

<comment><USER4> At the time, no one (not even Einstein) thought the precession of Mercury had anything to do with the lack of experimental detection of the Ether. Einstein figured out special relativity, solving the Ether problem, almost a decade before doing general relativity and thereby solving the precession or Mercury.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> """The Higgs boson's nickname comes from its importance to the Standard Model; it is the sub-atomic particle which explains why all other particles have mass."""

That's not the story I heard: Leon Lederman named the hypothesized Higgs boson the "God particle" as a joke, because its effects were everywhere yet nobody had ever seen it in the flesh--not because it was in any way powerful or dangerous or numinous or terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER6> The growing number of elementary particles reminds me of the epicycles-upon- epicycles in the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. The question is when are we going to have our "Newton moment" and figure out that they're all just manifestations of one elementary particle or string or something else?

<comment><USER7> That would be nice, but isn't that metaphysics? The thought that there is something simple underneath it all appeals to our aesthetics, but it needn't be that way...

<comment><USER4> If that's metaphysics, then every famous physicist--Newton to Einstein to Feynmann--has been a strong believer in the power of metaphysics.

<comment><USER8> Fine, but that doesn't make the "power " any more or less valid, only that it seems to be useful thus far.

<comment><USER4> Well, then this just basically becomes a philosophical argument about the justification for empiricism/inductive-reasoning. Can we axiomatically prove that just because the sun has risen in the morning for the last 10,000 mornings that it will do so tomorrow? No. Neither can be sure that just because _every_ single major advance in physics has come because of simplification/beauty that the next one will come the same way.

But you'd be a fool to bet otherwise.

<comment><USER7> Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be a fool. I might be of course, especially compared to the many people I know who are smarter than myself.

I think though that your argument is basically an 'appeal to ridicule' fallacy. You are making it sound like my statement is the philosophical equivalent of 'we can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow'. It isn't, it is simple the statement that the current zoo of particles may well all be fundamental, with no 'simpler' theory underlying them.

Secondly, I think your statement that 'every single major advance in physics' has been a simplification is debatable.

Thirdly, extrapolating from that that every new advance will be found using the same heuristic is also debatable. If there really is to be a scientific breakthrough of the magnitude of a Newton, it seems likely (almost by definition) that it will be from an unexpected avenue of thought - seeing that the expected ones have been well researched and haven't been all that productive.

I guess it makes sense to bet on a unifying theory if you are a career particle physicist. There's a Nobel prize in it. It doesn't make sense to bet on the opposite notion, since there are probably no breakthroughs that way.

<comment><USER4> I _do_ think your statement is the philosophical equivalent of 'we can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow', except that it differs by _degree_. (The sun has risen thousands of times in my personal experience, and bazillions of times in the experience of humans, while only a handful of fundamental physics discoveries have been made.) In either case, it's a question of justifying the claim that "In situations of type A, X has always been true in the past. Therefore, in situations of type A in the future, X will be true".

Likewise your simple statement that "the current zoo of particles may well all be fundamental, with no 'simpler' theory underlying them." is analogous to "the sun will collapse into a black hole tomorrow". Again, just a difference of degree.

[I should stress here that the justification for empiricism is an age-old philosophical problem which isn't easy to understand, much less solve. However, I think that a proper understanding of the history of physics gives very convincing (though maybe not the-sun-will-rise convincing) evidence that simplicity and beauty will be found at the bottom of the particle zoo.]

I don't understand what the true statement

>If there really is to be a scientific breakthrough of the magnitude of a Newton, it seems likely (almost by definition) that it will be from an unexpected avenue of thought - seeing that the expected ones have been well researched and haven't been all that productive.

has to do with our current discussion.

Lastly, (basically) no career particle physicist think that any Nobel prizes will be awarded for a unifying theory in their lifetime. (See, for instance, <http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2998>). Perhaps, if we're lucky, there will be a somewhat _simplifying_ theory (which gets a Nobel prize) but that certainly couldn't come from the dominant research avenue, string theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can anybody explain how they get the number of _five_ Higgs particles?

If they count one doublet as 4 particles, two doublets would be 8 particles, right?

<comment><USER10> From the news story:

 _Bogdan Dobrescu, Adam Martin and Patrick J Fox from Fermilab say this large asymmetry effect can be accounted for by the existence of multiple Higgs bosons.

They say the data points to five Higgs bosons with similar masses but different electric charges.

Three would have a neutral charge and one each would have a negative and positive electric charge. This is known as the two-Higgs doublet model._

And:

 _The Standard Model only has one Higgs "doublet". Although we tend to think of the Higgs boson as one particle, it actually comes in a package of four, explained Dr Martin.

"In the Standard Model, you only see one of them because the other three are absorbed into [other parts of the scheme] such as the W and the Z bosons. There's only one left," he told BBC News.

"So if you want to add another Higgs doublet - you actually have to add four more particles."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This theory would tend to suggest that there are indeed several undiscovered particles

[http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/11/how-a-surfer-- 1...](http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/11/how-a-surfer--1.html)</comment>


The KSplice Pointer Challenge (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/the_ksplice_pointer_challenge

<comment><USER2> Having to interview a number of people for development jobs at various points of my life, I found that one of the most valuable questions I asked was "What is a pointer?".

My best guess is that at least 60-70% of the people I interviewed who listed C or C++ experience on their resume were completely unable to give a coherent answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Considering that after Ksplice acquired Oracle, Waseem founded another startup that got acquired and now works for Dropbox, I wonder if that email address at the bottom still works.

</comment><comment><USER4> Huh. So what's the value of _x_ before it's "decayed" into a pointer?</comment>


Trying to learn Ruby - <AUTHOR> Any seasoned ruby devs want to recommend the best way to learn Ruby...  I've done codecademy but I don't feel it instilled the Knowledge I was hoping it would if it helps Ive done vb6 some c#,java (android) but I'm really struggling with Ruby it just doesn't seem to click with Mr if that makes sense....  Thank you for you time anyone that reads this <comment><USER2> (I learned Ruby from the pick-ax book while on a ship for a week with no internet. This was in the days before Rails.)

Ruby is far simpler than java or C# - make sure you don't overcomplicate it.

Do you have some simple problems you can solve with it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can do some simple ruby on account of It being almost English but I'm not writing ruby code I'm writing vb code in ruby if that makes sense

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> With me...</comment>


What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us? - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/152111/oldest-books-say-us <comment><USER2> Just for interest, of the set of mutually intelligible Germanic dialects we lump into 'Old English', it was the West Saxon flavor that most of the works referenced in the article are written in.

</comment><comment><USER3> It must be pointed out that the title is misleading as the article's subject matter is restricted to several books from western Europe.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thought they meant ancient books from the whole world from all the old civilizations like Egyptians, Roman etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've read Beowulf for a university class and I thought it was boring and unrelatable. I know it's supposed to be some kind of cornerstone of English literature, but I personally feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say to a modern audience.

Maybe it sounds better in the Old English.

<comment><USER6> There are two opportunities that arise from reading literature from outside of your own culture and time.

One is to have that revelation of "oh, wow, these folks are just like me!"

The other is to have the revelation, "wow, these folks are _nothing_ like me, and here's what _they_ felt was important, beautiful, terrifying, etc"

Both are pretty important, even if the latter doesn't come as naturally. You'll never be completely empathetic to it, but at least you can learn to be sympathetic.

<comment><USER7> This is what I find fascinating about the annals of Lü Buwei (239bc Qin Dynasty), in that he brought together the best philosophers of the time to create a book of all the knowledge, arts, sciences, food, almanacs and state leadership for future generations. Some of his leadership advice I actually haven't seen elsewhere and learned from. So exactly what he had in mind after over 2200 years ago.

I think the other thing one realizes with history is how much makes up the present, it's part of our cultures today. We didn't invent ideas of equality, women and animal rights, Aristotle references ancient states with these ideals — notably he mentions them as vulnerable to demagogues. Almond milk was used as a milk substitute in medieval French cooking since it's easier to use. I feel we're dismisive of previous generations and think of our selves as better when really nothing has changed outside of technology and our physical sciences.

<comment><USER8> > Some of his leadership advice I actually haven't seen elsewhere and learned > from.

Intriguing, could you give us a flavour?

<comment><USER7> One example, the leader of a state shouldn't be doing anything since this biases their judgment, instead they should always rely on their ministers to be experts, and the fewer decisions one makes the more ideal the leader. It's not just simple delegation that they're talking about, it's that at least on person has to have a clear view of the whole picture to make subtle adjustments, and if the leader is wrapped up in doing the work himself then it's no longer possible. They have very strong words for leaders who do work themselves as being unfit and bluntly stupid. It certainly resonated for me as being completely correct, and adjusted my management style.

<comment><USER9> Ah that sounds pretty much the same type of management philosophy as espoused in "Clouds Above The Hill" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saka_no_Ue_no_Kumo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saka_no_Ue_no_Kumo)

The author attributes the successes of early Imperial Japanese Navy to the men in leadership roles being wise enough to focus on enabling their competent subordinates do their jobs and nothing more. At least a lot early 2nd volume is spent on organization and management structure. Japan spent a lot of time studying Chinese culture so it would make sense that they would addopt similar ideas.

This article [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent- myt...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myth) claims this "loose tight" for of leadership is responsible for collapse of Enron.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title of article was more interesting than it's contents.

<comment><USER10> I was also expecting it to be about much older texts, but I guess that was a reading comprehension failure on my part since it did say "books" and not, for example, "stone tablets". As someone who has been (very, very slowly) reading the translations of ancient Sumerian texts, I was kinda hoping this would be about those. But Sumerians didn't write "books".

<comment><USER11> You got any suggestions for the Sumerian works? I've read _The Literature of Ancient Sumer_ , and made it through, but didn't enjoy it at all and nothing stuck. Attempted _From Distant Days_ (Akkadian literature) but just couldn't do it. Book was poorly put together and it was pretty much the same stuff as the Sumerian book I'd just finished, which wasn't a huge surprise but _man_ that book is bad.

I read all three volumes of Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature first, though, so that may have spoiled me. It's dry as hell but way better than either of those other volumes. Was good enough that I remember quite a few details and individual works from it years later, unlike those.

I've got about seven volumes of ultra-early literature (the last 1.5 or so of Lichtheim aren't _that_ early), six of which I've read or attempted (haven't made it to the Indian philosophy sourcebook yet, some of which is quite old) and of them the only one I'd recommend to the general reader is Stephen Mitchell's _Gilgamesh_ , which was entirely excellent and so wildly better than any of the other Mesopotamian work from that time that I suspect Mitchell embellished heavily (IIRC reviews indicate he didn't, but still) or the modern version of the work was much improved by the time any of the copies or large fragments we have were written/chiseled. It's crazy good. A couple later Egyptian tales were of similar (though definitely lesser) quality but absolutely nothing else Sumerian or Akkadian's even got a hint of anything like that, from what I've seen.

I'm not sure I'd recommend the Sumerian or Akkadian collections to anyone, really, unless that's their specialty in which case they don't need me to recommend things to them. It's possible I just chose poor collections, though. Certainly the Akkadian one was no good, though I'm not sure there's any better in English.

<comment><USER10> I've listed the books I have below. I haven't read much of them yet (its slow going). The one that I'm currently in the process of reading is _" Myths from Mesopotamia"_ by _Stephanie Dalley_. I like it so far, but its not an easy read. It gives you a relatively direct translation of the Sumerian texts, so there are many missing fragments (tablets found in different cities tended to have slightly different versions of the same stories, so you couldn't use them to complete missing bits from tablets from another city). This makes it time consuming to read, but does give you an accurate picture.

The books I have and am slowly trying to get through are:

      "Myths from Mesopotamia" by Stephanie Dalley
      "History Begins At Sumer" by Samuel Noah Kramer
      "Guide To Understanding Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Cananite And Phoenician Tablets, Slabs, Symbols And Cuneiform Inscriptions" by Maximiliien de Lafayette
      "Cuneiform" by Irving Fincel and Jonathan Taylor
      "Sumerian Mythology" by Samuel Noah Kramer
      "Introduction to Sumerian Grammar" by Daniel Foxvog

I'm not far enough through all of them to be able to properly compare and haven't read any other books, so I'm not sure if I would recommend them or not.

The Cuneiform book was fun (if you're interested in Cuneiform) as cuneiform is easy to write and I was able to write my name phonetically :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Carte Blanche – isolated development space with integrated fuzz testing - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/carteb/carte-blanche <comment><USER2> The UI looks very similar to the Cosmos project ([https://github.com/skidding/cosmos](https://github.com/skidding/cosmos)).

Could you outline the main differences and the motivation behind creating a different project in favor of contributing to an existing one?

<comment> nik-graf I have met skidding last February when this was project was in its early stages. We walked through Cosmos and it definitely was an inspiration to Carte blanche. Skidding even helped us to design the initial props form: [https://github.com/carteb/carte- blanche/issues/47](https://github.com/carteb/carte-blanche/issues/47)

Cosmos in my opinion is a fantastic tool and covers even some areas we haven't touch yet, but planning to do soon like injecting/manipulating the internal state of a component.

While there a many more differences these are probably the most interesting ones:

\- The core of Carte blanche is a Webpack plugin. By hooking into the main compilation of Webpack Carte blanche can identify your components and list them in an application living within your running server on different URL path. The coolest part from my perspective is that we inherit all your webpack settings by default. No need to configure your loaders. Cosmos in comparison is a separate app.

\- In Cosmos your need to write your examples by hand. Carte blanche reads out your propTypes/Flow types and allows us to generate a form input for each of your properties including nested structures like a person object containing an avatarUrl, firstName & lastName. This approach allowed us to create some kind of UI fuzz-testing feature in the interface. While I believe that it's important to focus your efforts designing/developing for the most likely cases it's also relevant to cover edge-cases. Fuzz-testing is a great way to discover them.

I hope this help. Let me know if you any other questions :)

<comment><USER3> Do you only support autogenerated inputs? Is there also a way to create scenario-like examples?

I say this because I'm working on an app with a large drawing canvas component at the moment, and being able to produce hand crafted examples of specific drawing scenarios is really powerful.

I'm doing with this devboard[1] and I've created a mini-DSL within my cards to describe a series of mouse interactions, which can either be played back immediately or one-at-a-time to display the interaction and animations.

Being able to combine this with fuzz-testing would be really cool!

[1] Shameless plug :) [https://github.com/glenjamin/devboard](https://github.com/glenjamin/devboard)

<comment><USER4> This is not yet implemented, but since the core of CarteBlanche is a plugin system[0] making this happen is definitely possible!

We're happy to provide any support you need to create this, we'd love to see the ecosystem around CarteBlanche thrive to all sorts of different use cases.

[0]: [https://github.com/carteb/carte- blanche/tree/master/WRITING-...](https://github.com/carteb/carte- blanche/tree/master/WRITING-PLUGINS.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome project :)</comment>