How to do with probabilities what people say you can't (1985) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/r49.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> For the context, this was written at the time when there was still a lot of confusion on how to represent uncertainty. There were at least 3 different ideas besides using probabilities and in fact the probabilities were considered not good enough.

Judea Pearl pioneered erasing this view by inventing Bayesian Networks. More here: [https://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/r476.pdf](https://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/r476.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Ah, references "fuzzy logic". That was one system that really needed to go away. I actually took a course in multivalued logic at UCB in the 80s. Fuzzy logic was "kinda like probability but with no logical basis, just a cute name".

That said, I think "quantitative measures of likelihood that we can't easily reduce to probabilities" deserve study.

I mean, it seems like, in rough, "fuzzy" sort of way, neural network activations are such measures of likelihood and certain they are used.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by no logical basis?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic) discusses axiomitizations.

<comment><USER2> I don't mean to be negative here but you can axiomatize anything if "axiomatize" one just means "describe what you do".

It took quite a while but Kolmogorov and company actually formalized what is really meant by a "random sequence". But now you have a strong description of the real world behaviors are expected asymptotically if a probability is assigned to a behavior. As far as I can tell, all that's being axiomatized here is how the arbitrary quantities people make up for the fuzzy logic of things get manipulated. IE, there's not description of the relation of fuzzy logic and "reality" (because if there were, it would map to either regular logic or probability).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Judea Pearl has added considerably to this line of thinking (Bayesian Networks), by annotating them with causality. This allows us to explicitly model the traditional notion of "hidden variables", or "confounders", and make sound inferences in many (most?) practical cases even when one can't directly observe -- but merely suspect the existence of -- some hidden cause.

I _thoroughly_ enjoyed his "The Book of Why", a lay introduction to this subject.

</comment><comment><USER2> Good stuff,

It is worth saying that there are still situations where any use of quantitative probabilities becomes something of an abuse. The most extreme example is Pascal's Wager[1]; if you can assign a "small but meaingful" probability to any X you happen to mention in the discussion, you can assign a probability to the existence of the Great Old Ones or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever implausible entity is going to create a hypothetical action of negative utility sufficient to counter it's unlikeliness.

And, of course, acknowledging some stuff outside of the domain of probability means you need a fuzzy border between two realms, which also can't be determined by probability.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager)

<comment><USER5> The problem with Pascal's Wager is the infinities in the loss function, not the use of probability to represent uncertainty.

<comment><USER6> This is not the only problem - there is also the small problem of worshiping the wrong god if the real god is jealous and vengeful. Will this god be more angry if you worship the wrong god or no god?

<comment><USER7> That's not much of a problem for Pascal, because he made his wager in an environment where the cultural bias regarding god was that there was either the Christian god or no god.

<comment><USER6> I would be pretty certain that Pascal knew there were other gods worshiped in the world. He might have thought all the other gods were false gods, but he would have been aware of the concept of different gods.

Still doesn't change the problem of worshiping the wrong god. Is it better to worship no god than worship the wrong god?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Detecting manuscripts and publications from paper mills - <AUTHOR> https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/1873-3468.13747 <comment><USER2> _> Paper mills are believed to be fueled by unrealistic publication requirements or quotas, combined with monetary publication rewards to authors [2-5]. Where unrealistic publication requirements are widely applied over long periods of time, this could create a broad and growing base of paper mill clients. To both meet client demand and their capacity to pay, paper mills will likely aim to generate large numbers of manuscripts at minimum cost. This will likely require at least some falsified or fabricated data, as performing genuine experiments could render manuscripts unaffordable.

> At the same time, externally supplied manuscripts should resemble genuine > manuscripts if they are to be accepted for publication, so paper mills need > to balance their requirements for efficiency and volume with the requirement > that their manuscripts also appear to be genuine._

^^

the paper doesn't say too much about the state of research around CS / BigTech related topics. I have been browsing arxiv (and arxiv-sanity.com) for more than a decade and doing so on at least a weekly basis for work and to satisfy my private curiosity. My interest are mostly classic CompSci topics and Security. The genre seems increasingly polluted by papers which can only be described as BS research.

You can usually smell the bad with a few simple rules that help to know what to look for[1]. It increasingly feels like dumpster diving in the domains around AI/ML. My partner who is in healthcare tells me that medicine is even worse whenever I complain (though I have no evidence for it other than anecdotal).

[1] _Hanson 1999: Efficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology_ : [https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/netbib/efficientReading.pdf](https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/netbib/efficientReading.pdf)

recent (published in the past month) random examples of what falls IMO into the category of BS papers (these aren't outliers but are becoming the norm!):

 _P4-to-blockchain: A secure blockchain-enabled packet parser for software defined networking:_ [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016740481...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404819301762)

 _Security & Privacy in IoT Using Machine Learning & Blockchain: Threats & Countermeasures_ [https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.03488v1](https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.03488v1)

 _REST: A thread embedding approach for identifying and classifying user- specified information in security forums_ [https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02660v1](https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02660v1)

 _Artificial Design: Modeling Artificial Super Intelligence with Extended General Relativity and Universal Darwinism via Geometrization for Universal Design Automation_ [https://openreview.net/forum?id=SyxQ_TEFwS](https://openreview.net/forum?id=SyxQ_TEFwS)

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised it's taken this long. There is no peer review to arXiv. If you've ever reviewed for a conference or a journal (10-30% acceptance rates) you've seen the "raw feed" of submitted papers and you realize the average isn't very good. Many get rejected because they simply have a few flaws, but some are badly flawed (or just plain wrong) and shouldn't be published anywhere. ArXiv has no peer review so it's virtually the raw feed. I cringe whenever I see arXiv papers cited as if they were published work --- doing an end-run around peer review can't be good for science.</comment></comment>


PGA limits total volume of grooves allowed per square inch of a golf club - <AUTHOR> http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=4976481

<comment><USER2> Groves? I think that should be "grooves"; I thought this was about limitations in the amount of trees on a golf course, which seemed cool. :)

I was a bit surprised about the unit though, "volume per square inch" is weird.

<comment><USER3> I take it that you can buy extremely grooved illegal iron clubs with super- bitey faces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That video was more extreme than 42 libraries of congress.

</comment><comment><USER5> hackers fixing sports with numerical analysis. I love it.

fine tuning game design is a fascinating subject. Sirlin's long articles on the subject are great. [http://www.sirlin.net/articles/super-balance-articles- ii-tur...](http://www.sirlin.net/articles/super-balance-articles-ii- turbo.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this off topic?</comment>


Amazon CloudFront now supports default root objects - <AUTHOR> http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ann.jspa?annID=732

<comment><USER2> Big news – this has been a request for S3 from Day 1. What this means is that you can now put your whole website on S3/Cloudfront by setting up an index.html file as your root object, and pointing a CNAME at your Cloudfront domain.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Google I/O worth $300 and two days off? - <AUTHOR>

http://code.google.com/events/io/about.html<p>$300 if register by 5/1/2009<p>$400 after... <comment><USER2> Last year they put all the videos and slides up for free: <http://sites.google.com/site/io/> (Thanks Google! ).

I'd imagine they'll do the same this year.

They seem like good sessions. Both this year and last year, I've kind of pined for more Google Apps-related stuff, but I admit that's due to an "enterprise IT" focus I have for my job, and Google in general is totally reasonably, more of a web company.

This year the Chrome sessions seem really interesting.

As with all events, you can get most of the content without going, via blogs, tweets, media coverage, and videos. It's the "hallway sessions," networking, and general inspiration and manic vibe that's unique.

I guess if you're going for API references, it's probably not worth it. If you want to corner a product manager, then it probably is worth it :D

</comment><comment><USER3> I heard good things about it from the people who attended last year.

I just registered. I think it's one of the cheapest conferences there is.</comment>


Introducing Tweet-a-Program - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/09/18/introducing-tweet-a-program/ <comment><USER2> Whenever I see Wolfram/Mathematica stuff like this, I'm not entirely sure if it's incredibly brilliant and will replace all computing as we know it, or completely batshit insane and impenetrable unless you've spent 20 years learning it. Usually I lean towards the latter though, and this is supported by the fact that I've never seen anybody not employed by Wolfram do this kind of thing.

See also: [http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/08/19/which-is-closer-local- bee...](http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/08/19/which-is-closer-local-beer-or- local-whiskey)

<comment><USER3> Partly this is because we're so niche still that there just there just isn't a huge audience of developers to write large programs in WL yet, barring exceptions like [0]. I have no doubt that HN readers could do some amazing things in WL if they invested a modest amount of time in learning it.

[0] Emerald Therapeutics: [http://emeraldcloudlab.com/](http://emeraldcloudlab.com/)

<comment><USER4> Time isn't the only investment required though is it? How much is even a single-seat licence?

<comment><USER5> 300$ for just the software. Access to their data api's cost ~1k$ to start now with the desktop software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ahh! I went to his SXSW talk this year and was absolutely entranced with the Wolfram language. It seemed like a real step forward in innovative thinking and actual "natural language" programming, but I was sad it's proprietary.

I think the power of it is really undervalued - using all the knowledge of the wolfram-alpha engine to create objects? Such a neat idea! Imagine if Google built a similar language based on their search engine data - the kinds of programs people could build and might accidentally build just playing around boggle the mind.

<comment><USER3> In some sense it is surprising that Google hasn't done this already. After all, Mozilla has seen fit to work on Rust, which will soon replace C++ (god willing). But if you're organizing the world's information, don't you need a programming language that can work with that information in a first-class way?

<comment><USER7> > which will soon replace C++

In what sense? If you mean traditional business software, maybe.

If you mean real systems programming, OS drivers and such, only when an OS vendor integrates it into their SDK.

That is how C and later on C++, pushed away all the other alternatives for systems programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love the work this company produces (especially Wolfram Alpha), but jeez, can't this guy give his employees some credit? People thought Jobs had an ego...

<comment><USER3> When he says "I" I mentally substitute "we". :-)

<comment><USER9> Thats like when Obama or Bush use the word Freedom....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just did a WL equivalent of those Pi shirts you sometimes see: [https://twitter.com/wolframtap/status/512754733476352000](https://twitter.com/wolframtap/status/512754733476352000)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd really like an explanation of what's so amazing about this language. I saw the closing keynote today at Strangeloop and I can't understand why people are so excited. The language is proprietary and I don't feel like it's something I would actually use myself.

The impression I got was that this project is an inventor's dream, which he has obviously obsessed over for some time, and it is an impressive feat, it just comes across as self centered and I have trouble understanding who might use the language and why..

<comment><USER11> From what I can tell, it seems like a quirky lisp with a great set of libraries, and a very integrated IDE. Is there more to it?

<comment><USER3> It also has knowledge about the world... So here for example we're training a image classifier to distinguish paintings by different artists:

[https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/051a4cda-5c0e-423b-8872...](https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/051a4cda-5c0e-423b-8872-533b4af46469)

I don't think there's another language you could use to do that in ~5 minutes.

<comment><USER3> Another example, to show off:

By running this code:

        CloudDeploy[
          FormFunction[
            "text" -> "String",
            Classify["FacebookTopic", #text, "TopProbabilities"] &,
            "JSON"
          ],
          Permissions -> "Public"
        ]

I get a web form that can be used to enter arbitrary text and have social media topic inferred on it:

[https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/0cda973b-8e12-43d7-a9d3...](https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/0cda973b-8e12-43d7-a9d3-e32b94a58b74)

Try something like "I just had the most amazing meal at Four Burgers today".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Their twitter bot seems to have gone crazy. It keeps sending the results for my program again and again. Think there is a bug in the bot, and it is picking up old tweets again from the timeline.

</comment><comment><USER13> Some ideas and hacks to use to get a lot of Wolfram language into a tweet: [http://blog.wolfram.com/2010/12/17/the-mathematica-one- liner...](http://blog.wolfram.com/2010/12/17/the-mathematica-one-liner- competition/)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a little amusing to observe Twitter being used as a sort of "transport layer" for services because of how easy it is for people to use it; a few decades ago, to interact with a service you would probably open a TCP connection to it and communicate in a service-specific protocol. Later, that was largely replaced by the ubiquitous HTTP "web API", and now we see services built on services like Twitter which are already using a HTTP-based API.

Earlier, someone tried doing similar things with another calculator: [http://www.hilarymason.com/blog/a-quick-twitter-bot- bc_l/](http://www.hilarymason.com/blog/a-quick-twitter-bot-bc_l/)

<comment><USER15> I've seen IRC used the same way - and at least there you can move to your own server if the operator changes their ToS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I want to get excited about Wolfram and Mathematica again. All of their blog posts are rather informative great reads. But then I head over to the pricing page and am reminded of why I love open source tools.

<comment><USER3> The Wolfram Programming Cloud even has a free tier. The online IDE does not have quite as smooth an experience as the desktop IDE, however. [https://programming.wolframcloud.com/](https://programming.wolframcloud.com/)

<comment><USER17> Is your CDF format ever going to be publicly specified?

<comment><USER18> I don't know about that, but more and more things can be done in CloudCDF, which is standard open web technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pretty good marketing move on their part. Though it could also be useful when you need an math/data image generated.

</comment><comment><USER20> using twitter as a compiler(as a service) is pretty cool

<comment><USER21> I think it would be more interesting if you could dynamically create twitter bots. Then you could create a functional language in which tweets were expressions. Then you build the functional tree for your program and then tweet to its root node to execute it.

<comment><USER22> I've got code working for both Twitter and Jabber bots ... Would anyone be interested in working on this for fun?

<comment><USER23> I would, but how would you dynamically create twitter bots? Just create a swarm a make them reprogramable?

<comment><USER22> I was thinking that we could run completely independent twitter bots that performed some function, (a low-level programming language function or some higher-level library function), then collaborate on a service that provided a function catalog. New functions could then be built using the lower-level building blocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Check out 411 for Twitter in this connection. Your own code behind tweets: [http://t411.linkstore.ru](http://t411.linkstore.ru)

</comment><comment><USER25> Hm, I (@circular) am 1-2 against the monolith. Could be more helpful but I can see the showing-off-on-twitter potential.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hm. I thought running a bot on Twitter was against their TOS? Anyone know any better on this one? I'd love to run a chatbot on Twitter =)

<comment><USER27> Nah not forbidden AFAIK. They even provide ean API you can use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I tried fib(100000) and it works!

</comment><comment><USER29> Tweetgram?

</comment><comment><USER30> Clever</comment>


Email SMTP server recommendations? - <AUTHOR>

We want to send biweekly emails + user registration emails, etc. for our web startup. Any other startups have experience in what kind of smtp service to use (if any), or set up our own email server? It seems that even if the SPF settings are correct, there is a problem of other popular email services (gmail, hotmail, etc.) recognizing our emails as spam, and we want to get away from that. Any feedback will be welcome. <comment><USER2> I've run across this problem several times. I now recommend to my clients (and use in my own projects) AuthSMTP: <http://www.authsmtp.com>. I've been using them for a few years and I have never had a single outage or problem with their service. I also use them for all of my personal and work email.

Their FAQ states their system is configured to allow a maximum of 50 recipients per message, though they recommend you keep it to 10:

<http://authsmtp.com/faqs/faq-20.html>

If you contact their support team, they can answer any questions regarding limits. The few times I've had to interact with them they were very knowledgeable and helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. it's a pain in setting up mail server to get emails delivered to users from applications.

SPF is not enough. You need to set up domainkeys as well. see my post at <http://www.kai-mai.com/node/156> for details.

You absolutely need to stop any open relay on your server. Once your server gets onto a black list, it's hard to get off it.

The other solution is to pay some provider to outsource your email delivery. Check <http://www.emaildiscussions.com/>

You shouldn't rely on gmail's IMAP server to deliver emails because it has daily limits.

</comment><comment><USER4> My experience is slightly dated (2 years), but I've always had the best luck running my own sendmail setup on a box I own/maintain.

SPAM flagging will have a lot to do with content, and some to do with your source IP (IME). Sharing a server (and source IP) with a bunch of other people doesn't help your odds.

Owning and controlling the server, the DNS records (forward AND reverse), plus sending a few test messages to test accounts, has always seemed to work best for me personally.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the comments. I read about AuthSMTP, but their plans seem very expensive. We will soon hit more than 200K emails per month, and as per their pricing plans, that's pretty expensive. I am trying to figure out what else I need to do on my own server so that I dont get blacklisted.

</comment><comment><USER5> What about using gmail? I'm using that for a project of mine and it's working pretty well.

You can only send so many with a free account, but I believe you can send a lot more with their apps for domains product (or whatever it's called)... just a thought.</comment>


IndieWeb - <AUTHOR> http://indiewebify.me/ <comment><USER4> > _What is the IndieWeb?_

> _We should all own the content we 're creating, rather than just posting to > third-party content silos. Publish on your own domain, and syndicate out to > silos. This is the basis of the "Indie Web" movement. ~IndieWebCamp_

So... what is "the IndieWeb"? This didn't answer the question.

<comment><USER5> The indieweb is a social web where everyone runs their own profile, on their own (sub)domain, potentially on their own servers - while being able to talk to their friends as easily as they could on Facebook or Twitter.

All based on open technologies, rough consensus, user-centered design and running code, rather than endless mailing lists and technical debate.

<comment><USER6> That sounds like (GNU Social) + (Diaspora) - (Distributed Content)

Sounds great until your (sub)domain(s) gets censored or targeted.

<comment><USER5> If a profile gets censored / targeted, it's one profile, vs an entire social network. But, eg, content being replied to is typically duplicated across profiles, so there actually is distribution of content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like blog + XFN + pingbacks with a new name..? I would love it if everyone could have their own domain name + server - but this isn't practical at this point in time.

Why not work on making running a server + website easier?

\- [https://github.com/Xeoncross/lowendscript](https://github.com/Xeoncross/lowendscript)

\- [https://gist.github.com/Xeoncross/3b8ed1d094707bc0dff8](https://gist.github.com/Xeoncross/3b8ed1d094707bc0dff8)

\- [https://github.com/Xeoncross/simpleserversetup](https://github.com/Xeoncross/simpleserversetup)

<comment><USER8> > I would love it if everyone could have their own domain name + server - <USER2> > this isn't practical at this point in time.

You don't need to run your own server. Point the domain name you own at Squarespace (or Wordpress.org, or hosted Wordpress, or any service you like...) for a low-tech, free or low-cost website where you decide what happens.

Move when you change your mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Am I completely misunderstanding what this is supposed to be, or am I really so old that I remember what everyone else has forgotten? What you're calling the 'IndieWeb', where everyone has their own website and domain, and hosts their own content on it, we had a name for that.

We called it the World Wide Web.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it's an attempt to revive the federated model of the WWW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The main point about IndieWeb is to create authorship over published content. Silos (other social networks and startups) are only tools to syndicate it. IndieWebCamp is a bunch of people developing tools to support this endeavour. There is an IRC channel in freenode: #IndieWebCamp & #IndieChat

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea of the IndieWeb, but I'm also a big believer in discretion- oriented sharing. People don't just walk out on the street and start yelling facts and opinions at each other. They target their message for the audience. And if the audience is everyone, then the message tends to suffer.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really see myself participating much until I can control who sees what information. I'd like sharing photos of my family with family and friends. I don't care to post them publicly. I like discussing politics... with people who can handle a political discussion without hurt feelings or pointless bickering.

The IndieWeb makes a lot of sense for public conversation, though. If I were into blogging, writing, or otherwise producing content as a job or serious hobby, I'd be all over it.

<comment><USER5> We're working on that. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is something that helps explain the who, what, why a bit more.

[https://indiewebcamp.com/](https://indiewebcamp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Arrgh! I'm very intrigued, but have read that page 3 times and have no idea what it's about - is it just "add microformats to your website and presto: the internet was the indieweb all along!" or am I missing something?!

<comment><USER14> It's a little deeper than that. For short the end goal would be for everyone to have their own domain - a website - and that domain should be the centrum & origin of their activity on the intenet.

This means that the website would be the tool to send and receive interactions; it would be the storage for all one's content.

This is to avoid those situations when content is removed, censored, etc. on a silo/social network; to have control over your own data and to have a mesh- network-like layout of individual sites that are more not single point of failures in opposition of gigantic monoculture that currently rule the internet.

The reference for the 'like it was all along' is a reminder that a very long time ago the internet was a network of individual websites and you were not bound to use centralized services from corporations.

<comment><USER15> How does this differ from how Diaspora works?

<comment><USER14> diaspora is an open source social network. It's not a site for an individual, unlike, for example, [http://withknown.com/](http://withknown.com/), WordPress, and the rest.

My personal opinion behind the indieweb is here, in case it makes more sense like this: [https://petermolnar.eu/journal/indieweb-decentralize-web- cen...](https://petermolnar.eu/journal/indieweb-decentralize-web-centralizing- ourselves/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think more people should be self-hosting. You are probably already paying for a 24/7 Internet access. And your router is probably more then capable of hosting a web server.

<comment><USER17> Many ISPs (at least in the US, or Wisconsin) don't allow you to do this, and block incoming HTTP/HTTPS traffic.

<comment><USER18> I imagine there is some Cloudflare magic that could take care of this problem (whilst your home webserver running on an alternate port) ?

<comment><USER17> Yes, using alternative ports does sometimes work. In the past, I had used NoIP or whatever the name was at that point to route incoming from 80 to a non- standard port. CloudFlare could probably do the same, but then have you defeated the goal of self hosting, since you have a provider in front of your site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looking forward to implementing these on my personal domain. The dream is alive! These are great steps in the right direction, but the major draw that will take IndieWeb concepts mainstream still seems elusive.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the IndieWeb movement. I don't know if you guys have meet-ups, but if you're in SF, I'd love to meet you.

I'm one of the founders of Servant – [https://www.servant.co](https://www.servant.co) – It's a personal database which you can give apps permission to read and write to. The goal is to allow people to bring their own database to the apps they use and disconnect it whenever they're done with an app.

We're in the centralization camp, but we share many goal/themes with the IndieWeb movement.

\- Austen austen [at] servant.co

<comment><USER21> There are the actual Indie Web Camps that occur several times throughout the year. And each month there is the Homebrew Website Club Meetup ([http://indiewebcamp.com/next-hwc](http://indiewebcamp.com/next-hwc), named after the Homebrew Computer Club).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I get this, it just seems like a battle sometimes. If you're just looking for somewhere to post some content/share an article/thought..... Also, and this is particularly relevant here on HN - what if you want to post some content that might be of interest on HN but you don't want to overload your personal site with traffic? Let one of the so called 'content silos' worry about the uptime.

Also, why not just come out and say who this is about - <USER3> facebooks/mediums/tumblrs etc

<comment><USER5> If you're just looking for somewhere to post some content, we run an indieweb- compatible service: [https://withknown.com](https://withknown.com) ;)

It's about not having control over your representation online. For me, it's also about freedom of identity, and freedom to dictate your own content standards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do I need to have this WebReply crap? I have my own domain, and I don't have comments, because I want to own every pixel of the thing.

</comment><comment><USER24> "We should all own the content we're creating, rather than just posting to third-party content silos."

Isn't this just centralizing and stream-lining the same process they claim you should be avoiding?

<comment><USER25> What makes you say that? It's about posting your own content on your own domain, very much not about centralizing nor streamlining.

<comment><USER26> It is definitely about centralizing, on your own domain. Nothing wrong with that but the distinction is to have total control and not rely on a third- party silo. This takes some extra effort but is totally worth it.

<comment><USER27> I think that value proposition is very different for different people. For technical people, maybe it's a good idea. For non-technical people, I fear the indie web is very much out of reach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This seems like a great platform for spam, so if it's to succeed long-term there will need to be good antispam tools. Seems like a cool development, though, and I hope it works out.

<comment><USER5> There are some pretty good proposals about spam. So far it hasn't been a problem, but it's good to have tools in place.</comment></comment>


Putting the "crow" in necrophilia - <AUTHOR> https://corvidresearch.blog/2018/07/16/putting-the-crow-in-necrophilia/ <comment><USER2> An overly active sexual response occurs in many species, like a small dog humping your leg. Hell, there are plenty bizarre examples of what human males might resort to when the urge overpowers them. I don't see why researchers would be so shocked by this. Unless maybe for the attention garnering.

</comment><comment><USER3> > This may be because the crow is less experienced, or more aggressive, or has > some neurological issue with suppressing inappropriate responses.

in case of for example seals having sex with penguins [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141117-why-seals-have- sex-w...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141117-why-seals-have-sex-with- penguins) :

"young male seals sexually coercing what appeared to be healthy penguins of unknown gender.

...

The seals were not yet old or large enough to defend harems of female seals, explained de Bruyn."

</comment><comment><USER4> Also, two _male ducks_ , one of them _dead_ , a scientific paper, 2001:

"Moeliker, C.W., 2001 – The first case of _homosexual necrophilia_ in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae) – DEINSEA 8: 243-247 [ISSN 0932-9308]. Published 9 November 2001"

[http://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/docu...](http://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/documents- nmr/Publicaties/Deinsea/Deinsea_08/Deinsea_8_15_Moeliker_.pdf)

The talk about it:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/kees_moeliker_how_a_dead_duck_chan...](https://www.ted.com/talks/kees_moeliker_how_a_dead_duck_changed_my_life/transcript?language=en)

"Kees Moeliker: How a dead duck changed my life"

</comment><comment><USER5> >>That said, in nearly a quarter of cases, crows did make some kind of contact with dead crows. Like with mammals, we saw that these behavior could be exploratory, aggressive and in rare cases even sexual (about 4% of crow presentations resulted in attempted copulations), with the latter two behaviors being biased towards the beginning of the breeding season. Importantly, the latter two categories of interactions were rarely expressed independently, and it was often a mixture of the first two; in rare cases, all three. In the most dramatic examples, a crow would approach the dead crow while alarm calling, copulate with it, be joined in the sexual frenzy by its presumed mate, and then rip it into absolute shreds.

</comment><comment><USER6> Truly nature's goths! (referring to the gothic subculture that has a fascination for the macabre and dark :) )

</comment><comment><USER7> Ah, more material for my "nature is garbage" bucket.

<comment><USER4> More like "the garbage is when some humans claim that this or that is _unnatural_ (without ever checking what happens in the nature)." All kinds of for us surprising behavior could be really found in the nature.

Edit: See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17636963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17636963) It's not "garbage" it's all nature. Including humans.

<comment><USER7> That, too, but I reserve the right to call things garbage when that's what they look like, as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Becoming a Software Developer in Utah - <AUTHOR> Currently I am in a field not related to software development, working in Salt Lake City. As of right now I am doing ok, but there are some circumstances where I may need to leave the company or barring that, after a few years I would like to go into software development. I plan to get a software development certificate from SLCC, then go to UVU for Computer Science. I currently have a BA in business development. I am wondering what are the best ways to network and find jobs in the Valley? I used to go to a certain Meetup, but I work till 6 and most Meetups seem to be on the weekends. I mostly code in Python and have a decent amount of projects in Github, but not enough IMO. <comment><USER2> Make sure you like programming as a profession 1st. I would take a few online courses on software engineering 1st and try to get a few contract projects before you decide what career moves you want to make. Programming as a career vs hobby is very different. Hobbyist don't have to deal with the time pressure that professionals have to deal with all the time. Also, you, mostly, don't get to pick what you program as a professional. It makes a huge difference.

Regarding networking, the best way is to extend your current social contacts. Ask them about people they know that might help you. Always carry and hand out business cards and ask them to pass it along. It's a bit uncomfortable at first but it gets easier the more you do it.

Also, visit your local university and see if you can join or attend their CS- related clubs. You don't have to tell them you don't attend the university. Don't lie but keep it to yourself.

<comment><USER3> The other thing hobbyist vs career is you can solve problems the way you want and take the path of least resistance at times. "Man I'm a bit overwhelmed, I'll learn that later, let's do this for now." And you're done and that's probabbly ok for a one man show / dude just playing with a hobby.

Career you're going to have to jump those hurdles... doesn't matter if you're in the mood or do or don't want to. Sometimes for really dumb reasons too. It's great for growth and learning, but it is a very different experience.

I did a bootcamp with some folks who had been doing web development as a hobby for fun for a while. Many of them really didn't adapt well to suddenly HAVING to do things new ways. They were comfortable with what they knew and were surprisingly resistant to other things. Granted that happens in every job / career but a comfortable happy hobby suddenly can become something else. We had a lot of "No man I get that worked for your javascript game but we're not hard coding all that every time ...."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know there used to be several .net groups in the area. Consider learning an environment that has local exposure. That may be the case with python, but I don't python.

Also, if you're going in to CS, why bother with the cert from SLCC? you already have a BA - just jump in to CS.

If your time table is a few years, jump on that second degree in the meantime.

I also disagree with one2know - almost any cs degree is enough to get a job these days, and UVU is has a decent program.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm sure those are good schools, but I would get a BSCS from a nationally known school, Utah State, BYU. In a tech hub like Seattle, San Jose, etc you can go to 2-3 meetups per week at major tech companies. Options are kind of limited in SLC. If you go through a BS program, usually you can find a job through your school's job fair, or ask your advisor or another prof if they have any contacts.</comment>


Announcing $268 million in Series E funding - sahin-boydas https://about.gitlab.com/2019/09/17/gitlab-series-e-funding/ <comment><AUTHOR> See discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995200)

<comment> sahin-boydas can you check which post was earlier?</comment></comment>


Edit Wars Reveal The Most Controversial Topics on Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/517101/edit-wars-reveal-the-10-most-controversial-topics-on-wikipedia/

<comment><USER2> Or consider this list of the _lamest_ edit wars:

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

Everything from edit wars over fictional waterfowl to the correct size of the Death Star in Star Wars. Read at your own risk.

<comment><USER3> I actually find lame edit wars kinda heartening. It suggests that the people running wikipedia have _principles_ regardless of the topic; that it doesn't matter if it's silly; that if you want to talk about it, it should be done right.

<comment><USER4> _people running wikipedia have principles_

Sure, if you want to call _ego_ a principle. Or whatever you want to call the emotion that leads to tunnel-vision; to thinking about what you're going to say next without even hearing the other side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mostly not surprising other than the list of WWE employees...?

There was a "famous" flame and revert war in Wikipedia's early days over the city of Gdansk/Danzig. A Wikipedia archive page: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/20...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-03-07/Gdansk_or_Danzig)

<comment><USER6> Yes. One of these things is not like the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd really like to see this kind of analysis in the non-western wikipedia sites. From the little I know, some languages have very different focuses on wikipedia compared to the west.

IIRC Japan has massive info and edits into pop culture, celebrities and manga/anime, and comparatively little in areas like politics, history and science.

(one of the longest lasting edit wars there is with respect to the lead singer of the band *l'arc en ciel's (hyde) height, which by urban legend is said to be 156cm, which in netslang is now a unit of measurement where 1 hyde = 156cm)

</comment><comment><USER8> Link to the PDF being referenced: [http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.5566.pdf](http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.5566.pdf)

My favorite is the top result in Hungary: _Gypsy Crime_.

<comment><USER9> I thought it was bizarre to even have a page called "Gypsy Crime," but then I checked and discovered that this page exists:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_crime](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_crime)

It's a redirect showing the article "Race and crime in the United States," but "Black_crime" is sitting right there in the address bar.

<comment><USER10> Its nice that you're feeling PC, but do you really want to contend that there's no link between skin colour and crime in the US? I thought that was a fairly massive social issue over there, well-deserving of a wikipedia page.

<comment><USER11> I think the link is socioeconomic status and crime. If there was a connection between skin color and crime in the US why would this genetic predisposition stop at the border?

<comment><USER12> Does it?

[http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/01/police-routinely- sup...](http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/01/police-routinely-suppress- racial-data-in-canada-study-says/)

<comment><USER11> The way I read that article the whitewashing means that it is not possible for researchers to assess wether the LEOs are engaging in racial profiling. Did you interpret the article to mean that some minorioties are genetically predisposed to crime?

<comment><USER12> The article did not discuss genetics. Your question makes no sense.

<comment><USER11> Just to make sure we are on the same page: You don't think that increased levels of melanin means that an individual is more likely to be a criminal?

With that out of the way. The conversation went like this:

dsuth: _" I thought that [the link between skin colour and crime in the US] was a fairly massive social issue over there, well-deserving of a wikipedia page."_

me: _" If there was a connection between skin color and crime in the US why would this genetic predisposition stop at the border?"_

you: _" Does it? [http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/01/police-routinely- sup...](http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/01/police-routinely-suppress- racial-data-in-canada-study-says/) "_

I am not sure where we got our signals crossed.

* What were you questioning when you asked "does it?"

* What did you expect I was going to get out of the article you linked to?

* You do not think that a person's race is a matter of genetics?

<comment><USER12> Didn't you mean to imply that blacks in countries bordering the US had substantially lower crime rates than blacks in the US? If you didn't, then I have no idea what you were getting at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The German list is a bit odd, particularly #1. I guess there's some edit war over the war since there are quite a few German speaking folks from all over the Balkan living in Germany, Austria etc....

* Croatia

* Scientology

* 9/11 conspir acy theories

* Fraternities

* Homeopathy

* Adolf Hitler

* Jesus

* Hugo Chávez

* Minimum wage

* Rudolf Steiner

Interesting that Chile is #1 for es, Opus Dei #3

</comment><comment><USER14> This isn't about the most controversial topics, it's about which ones are tactically up for grabs. Many very controversial topics have a well-ensconced dogmatic view on Wikipedia (just not outside).

</comment><comment><USER15> I am not sure that the edit wars reveal correctly the controversial topics. Edit wars also show pages where contributors are more beginners, like perhaps 'List of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. employees'. Lots of new contributors don't understand the rules and try to push their edits by editing a few time a page.

The paper takes into account the weight of an editor – "The weight of an editor x is defined as the number of edits N performed by him or her" – without distinction between small and large edits for instance. Is it really a relevant metric?

<comment><USER16> If you read the methods, they discount things like senior editors removing changes made by junior editors. The "controversy" they define as when editors repeatedly undo _each other 's_ additions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here is the list for all the languages: [http://i.imgur.com/fMGvxHJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/fMGvxHJ.png)

Source Article: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14472718/wikipedia%20con...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14472718/wikipedia%20controversial.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> I would really like to so a correlation between the quality of a article, and how much edit warring that been done. Looking at the list, some of the corresponding articles have even been marked as GA (like #1 with most edit wars).

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. George W Bush

2\. Anarchism

3\. Muhammad

4\. List of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. employees

<record scratch/>

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm disappointed in Scientology.</comment>


Google's Outsourcing to You - <AUTHOR> http://dynamictyping.org/post/31152364

<comment><USER2> Isn't this just a rephrasing of the startup acquisition cycle? Only now, Google provides tools to help... Seems fairly win-win to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you're absolutely right with this article.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm paranoid, if my deprived server[1] goes down, the post can also be read here: <http://dynamictyping.tumblr.com/post/31152364>

__

[1] It'll get more love when I get more time.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps you'd enjoy this following article, then:

[http://bret.appspot.com/entry/experimenting-google-app- engin...](http://bret.appspot.com/entry/experimenting-google-app-engine)

;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, laughed after reading that this morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I write a witty phrase would I get any points in New YC?

<comment><USER6> Sure. We had this discussion some time ago. The secret is: Work your hard-worn knowledge into a smartass form.

(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97388>)</comment></comment>


Recommendation Letters Cost Women Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-letters-women-jobs.html

<comment><USER2> There's a tacit assumption that the discrepancy in emphasis and word choice is based on gender stereotypes, completely ignoring the possibility that men actually tend to be more aggressive and women actually tend to be more communal.

The statement "Subtle gender discrimination continues to be rampant," is completely unsupported by the evidence.

If we accept the common claim that women are discouraged from being assertive and behaving in "male" ways, then wouldn't we expect to see an behavioral difference? If there is a behavioral difference, wouldn't we expect that to be reflected in letters of recommendation?

This is shoddy science (failure to control for confounding factors) and implies shoddy social policy (maybe we shouldn't use letters of recommendation). What makes it worse is that it ignores what would be actual useful questions like the study that asked people to describe a video taped baby's behavior with some told the baby was a boy and some told it was a girl.

<comment><USER3> Of course, you then have to take into account what attributes people value when hiring, and if (as seems probable) employers prefer the 'agentic' attributes to the 'communal' ones, then you still have a problem.

<comment><USER4> Your problem is then either a) people should be dishonest when describing communal people or b) communal people don't have useful skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or, you know, women _might_ on average actually be more kind, communal and tactful hence why their recommendation include these terms...

Men might on average also be more ambitious and outspoken.

This could be attributed to research suggesting women value interpersonal relationships more than men and that men take greater risks than women (hence terms like outspoken, assertive and daring).

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a good record on recommendation letters for grad school candidates always centered on stories of how a candidate has an insatiable thirst for the truth and challenges the status quo to satisfy it. I also make it a point on how this improves debate and understanding within their team improving on overall dynamics. Of course this is in the realm of high-tech engineering.

I think that probably does translate to assertive qualities, but in a sense this is what grad school is about, the search for truth and how a candidate will improve the experience for their fellow students and the faculty...

The important thing in effective recommendation letters and applications in general is to know what the evaluators are looking for and speak to it. If they are looking for communal cultural fit, by all means speak to it, but if not, it is a wasted opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's telling that I knew subconsciously the instant I saw the 'communal' list that I would never, ever want a colleague or superior to describe me that way, while I'd be _happy_ to have any of the 'agentic' list applied to me.

<comment><USER4> Teamplayer sounds a better description than assertive (euphemism for "hard to get along with")

<comment><USER6> 'assertive' may be a euphemism, but 'team player' feels like you're scrounging and scraping the bottom of the metaphorical bucket. Not that it's a bad trait.</comment></comment></comment>


Libspng – C library for reading and writing PNG files - <AUTHOR> https://libspng.org/ <comment><USER2> I gotta say, it's great that someone is making this attempt, however it turns out. PNG has been in a uniquely bad position re: "monoculture", with libpng being not just the "reference implementation", but the _only_ implementation anyone bothers to use.

But libpng was intended as _only_ a reference implementation—a rigid adherent to the PNG standard, for the sake of having a "runnable version" of the PNG standard—and was never particularly optimized for production use-cases, or code readability/maintainability/low attack surface, or any other criteria you might like to have. Libpng is optimized for one thing only: allowing other PNG implementations to build spec-compatibility test suites by testing against libpng behaviour.

Because of this rigid adherence, libpng doesn't implement—and will never implement—any features that _aren't_ in the base PNG spec, like APNG.

And since everyone _uses_ libpng as their PNG implementation (for _some_ reason), nobody ends up adopting these extra features. (Sure, all the major browsers except Edge support APNG, but does your image editor? Does your IoT thermostat whose OS uses PNG image assets? Does your game console? Nah. Because these all just compile in libpng. And _this_ is what kills support for features like APNG in the crib.)

That was never the PNG Working Group's intent, of course. They don't want to restrict the development of extra PNG features (yes, even though they developed MNG and might see features like APNG as "competing" with MNG, they don't really care.) They keep libpng the way it is, not for ideological reasons, but simply because they don't care about doing anything with libpng that moves it away from "reference implementation of the base PNG spec" territory. (And why would they? Their job as the PNG Working Group is to produce the PNG base spec. It's supposed to be everyone _else's_ job, in the ecosystem, to produce conformant implementations. They even gave you libpng to make that easier!)

So, like I said, I'm glad someone is finally writing an alternative implementation (in C), such that the projects that currently use libpng could reasonably choose to switch to libspng. It's the same feeling I get from seeing LibreSSL and BoringSSL: that an ecosystem that was essentially "dead" and stuck in a set of bad choices due to everyone sticking with one unchanging reference impl, is now coming alive again.

<comment> Const-me > the only implementation anyone bothers to use.

I don't think that's accurate. I use LibPNG but I also use other things too.

When I write for Linux or cross platform, my only requirement "decode bytes in RAM to texture in VRAM", I prefer stb_image for usability.

When I write Windows software, I prefer OS provided codecs. In modern world that's WIC for C++ code, previously OleLoadPicture API. This way I don't have to patch image codecs in my software for security bugs, MS does that in windows updates. Also helps with binary size.

<comment><USER2> I guess what I meant was that libpng is (currently) the only implementation that attempts to fit a libpng-shaped hole. Not in the sense of being API or ABI compatible, but in the sense of being a free-floating multiplatform library _solely_ dedicated to PNGs, rather than a higher-level multiformat library or OS API.

Because of this, libpng gets linked in by a lot of the higher-level multiformat libraries (like SDL) or graphics toolkits (like WxWidgets) when their aim is _also_ to be "portable" free-floating multiplatform libraries, rather than libraries that have special per-OS code-paths for everything. (Which becomes especially important in things like embedded OSes/unikernels, or sandboxes like Emscripten, where there _aren't_ any OS image APIs.) And these portable libraries and toolkits then get used by _runtimes_ that want portability, like Erlang or Love2D; or by software that can't access the OS's SDK to link to system libraries, like game-console homebrew.

In these cases, the feature-set of libpng determines the PNG features that these higher-level libraries support. SDL supports loading animated images—but not from APNG, because libpng doesn't provide SDL with that capability. SDL isn't going to do the work of adding their own APNG support; they've got enough on their plate just making sure all their components stay glued together. But if there was a "better" PNG library than libpng, that ticked all the same portability boxes? They'd switch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Some performance tests decoding PNGs:

Platform: Windows 10, Visual Studio 2019, RelWithDebInfo config, Intel Core i7-8700K. Compiled with -DSPNG_SSE=3.

      testing loading image: D:\art\cryptovoxels\ortho overview.png (32-bit, large)
      libSPNG decode took 0.2221 s
      libPNG decode took  0.2373 s

      libSPNG decode took 0.2215 s
      libPNG decode took  0.2364 s

      testing loading image: D:\art\dof_test_output.png (32-bit)
      libSPNG decode took 0.01101 s
      libPNG decode took  0.01225 s

      libSPNG decode took 0.01096 s
      libPNG decode took  0.01205 s

      testing loading image: D:\art\skymodel2_test3\top2 CPU.png (24-bit)
      libSPNG decode took 0.008874 s
      libPNG decode took  0.009399 s

So Libspng seems slightly faster, but certainly not 35% faster, in these tests.

<comment> Ono-Sendai Testing with Release config (full program optimisation):

      testing loading image: D:\art\cryptovoxels\ortho overview.png
      libSPNG decode took 0.1901 s
      libPNG decode took  0.2069 s

      testing loading image: D:\art\skymodel2_test3\top2 CPU.png
      libSPNG decode took 0.007862 s
      libPNG decode took  0.007801 s

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what I use for benchmarking: [https://github.com/libspng/spngt](https://github.com/libspng/spngt), my platform is Debian 10, GCC 8.3.0 with -O3 on an i5-4670. I use -SPNG_SSE=2 because that targets SSE2 instead of SSSE3, this matches the Debian build of libpng, both are linked against zlib-ng. The results I get for medium_rgb(a)8.png and large_palette.png are the results on the charts.

<comment> Ono-Sendai What version of LibPNG are you comparing against? I am using LibPNG 1.635. Note that recent versions of LibPNG have some SSE optimisations contributed from Intel.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using 1.6.36, the most obvious speedups should come from RGBA 8-bit PNG's, that codepath doesn't rely on compiler optimizations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find stb_image single file format and lack of dependencies to be extremely convenient.

<comment> Ono-Sendai Libspng seems to just have spng.c and spng.h, which is just as convenient.

<comment><USER4> But that doesn't include the zlib dependency

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how these libraries compare to using something like image-rs [0] w/ a custom-exported C FFI extern? I have used that library's PNG decoder/encoder in WASM and it seems simple and small and fast. I think it'd be worthy to include in the next bench round since it's only a bit of glue code away from a "C library" too.

0 - [https://github.com/image-rs/image](https://github.com/image-rs/image)

</comment><comment><USER6> How does this compare to something like [https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_image.h](https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_image.h) ?

Is it just that it has more features and can handle weird edge cases?

<comment><USER7> There's a comparison in the linked article.

<comment><USER6> Ah, my bad! I didn't read it closely enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Doesn't compile 'out of the box' in Visual Studio 2019.

<comment><AUTHOR> Submit a bug report on github, appveyor doesn't report any issues with VS2017.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just to say the obvious: by using zlib it gets future speed improvements and bug fixes "for free".

</comment><comment><USER9> FYI, randy: `fmt` is not declared in `Decode example - libspng`.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like it only does reading at this point - I can find docs or entry points in the code for writing png.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for including ARM optimizations and using meson. I'll try to use this with my tablet UI app.

</comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Question: do you have to decode to a 4-channel format, e.g. with alpha? What about decoding to just RGB?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now it's either 8- or 16-bit RGBA, adding more output formats adds complexity and requires more test cases. What's your use case for a 3-byte layout?

<comment> Ono-Sendai RGB uses less memory than RGBA (obviously), so if there is no alpha channel I don't want to allocate the memory for a channel completely full of 255 bytes.

<comment><AUTHOR> A 3-byte layout can be worse for performance, I think the simplest solution would be to add a special format that always matches the PNG's format, that way you always get RGB from RGB images, grayscale from grayscale images, etc. This wouldn't require a conversion step.

<comment> Ono-Sendai Yeah, generally if the PNG file is RGBA, then I want to load as RGBA, and if it's RGB, I want to load as RGB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> your-nanny I don't program C languages, but I can't help but feel that naming your incompatible library libspng you are introducing a source of potential confusion.

edit: Thank you cormacrelf for the explanation re: lib being mandatory. Thank you OP for explaining your rationale.

<comment><USER12> The 'lib' is generally mandatory so that the GCC/clang linker flag can find the binaries in its search path. '-lpng' means 'find libpng.a or libpng.so'. Hence many, many C libraries have it as part of the name of the project. In general the 'lib' prefix in a name means 'this is a C library', or at least now in the days of Rust, 'you can link to this with a C linker or normal FFI'.

Considering that, 'spng' is different enough from 'png'.

<comment><USER13> It's a very generic name and adding a single letter doesn't do much to differentiate at a cursory glance. If you're focused on what you're doing then maybe...

<comment><USER14> I suggest you not take on dependencies based on your cursory glances, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> libpng is so slow to compress. A large 2000x2000 png will actually take about 1 second to compress. This is basically forever for a user experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> libpng compresses the image rows multiple times with different filters to optimize for size, this filtering process is not optimized. The choice of zlib also makes a big difference, stock zlib is very slow, zlib-ng is the closest to a fast zlib alternative.

<comment><USER15> Amazing info.

> libpng compresses the image rows multiple times with different filters to > optimize for size, this filtering process is not optimized.

Is there a way to disable this multiple-pass approach to get a slightly larger image that is generated faster?

> The choice of zlib also makes a big difference, stock zlib is very slow, > zlib-ng is the closest to a fast zlib alternative.

I'm looking for benchmarks but I haven't found any that make it look good. This one makes it look nearly equivalent to zlib: [https://quixdb.github.io/squash-benchmark/?visible- plugins=z...](https://quixdb.github.io/squash-benchmark/?visible- plugins=zlib,zlib-ng)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Is there a way to disable this multiple-pass approach to get a slightly > larger image that is generated faster?

Use png_set_filter() with PNG_NO_FILTERS.

> This one makes it look nearly equivalent to zlib

I don't know how squash is set up, but decompression performance depends on which library created the DEFLATE stream (see [https://github.com/zlib- ng/zlib-ng/issues/326#issuecomment-4...](https://github.com/zlib-ng/zlib- ng/issues/326#issuecomment-471076049)).

<comment><USER16> There is no multiple-pass. libpng only tries to guess the right combination of filters, without doing actual compression. It's not always a good guess, but at least it's fast.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python 1.0.0 is out (1994) - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/comp.lang.misc/_QUzdEGFwCo <comment><USER3> I think it's interesting to note the primary usecases / benefits mentioned: more readable than perl, better syntax than bash, easy to follow stacktraces. In short: an object-oriented scripting language. In that respect I think python has succeeded, probably beyond even the author's wildest dreams. And I love python, it's a language I use almost every day. The areas where it falls short are those which it was never designed for, as this announcement reminds us.

<comment><USER4> Also interesting that the first discussion is about the number tower, along with a reference to scheme...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "Python has been used by hundreds of happy users"

Hundreds!

> "Please don't ask me to mail it to you -- at 1.76 Megabytes it is unwieldy > at least..."

I can not even figure out if this means email or snail mail.

<comment><USER6> You're probably joking but, just for kicks and to provide some historical context, my guess is email. I seem to recall that attachment sizes would have been limited to something less than that back then. Also, 1.76 MB could have fit onto two HD floppies which would have made it easy to snail mail. Although it wouldn't have been all that hard to download with a 14.4 modem.

<comment><USER7> Also to give more context: Back in the late 90s I remember I had a linuxmail.org web-mail account. It featured a whooping 4MB of space. 4MB!

That's why when Google released GMail with 1GB of storage in 2004 ( [https://slashdot.org/story/04/04/01/0038200/googles-gmail- to...](https://slashdot.org/story/04/04/01/0038200/googles-gmail-to-offer-1gb- e-mail-storage) ) it really blew everybody's mind.

<comment><USER8> In fact 1GB was so mind-blowing that people thought it was an April fools joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting to read his description of the language, which sounds pretty much exactly like python is now. It's a pretty good testament to why python gained and retained popularity. Though not without fault, python is certainly one of the best-designed languages ever created, in my opinion.

<comment><USER10> It may not be the most efficient one out there, but it certainly is the most productive, atleast for me.

God I love the language. The only language, that allows my thoughts to flow alongside writing code that allows my thoughts to manifest.

I am well experienced with C# as well, but something about statically typed stuff (I worked with C# before the dynamic stuff wasn't added to it) breaks the flow of thoughts.

With python, it's like designing systems on paper. Friction-free.

<comment><USER11> C# does not in any way represent the best that static typing has to offer. Try F#, Haskell or OCaml seriously before discounting static typing. These functional languages offer much better safety (e.g. no nulls, no casts, case exhaustiveness) and are as succinct as Python. They also generalise a lot of features that are ad-hoc in C# and Python (e.g. async-await is a library in F# and Haskell). For me, using Haskell is also like "designing a system in paper, friction free". In fact, I tend to write down the types and type check them, before I attempt to fill in any implementation.

Truth be told, I am not a Python fan. I am seeing it take over in my industry, because it's superficially 'easy' and it's popular. The lack of static typing only later becomes a big problem when large codebases start to appear with many contributors.

<comment><USER4> I think the closest thing to "python with types" is probably Julia: [https://julialang.org/](https://julialang.org/)

I think the efforts of adding type/type hints to python are interesting - <USER2> there's a tension between "weee! Look at me ducktyping, metaprogramming all the prototypes!!"-design and leveraging types _as part of your design_. Haskell/f#/ml are great languages, but they feel very different from python (ml maybe less so,but afaik there are no full featured implementations with areasonable standard lib...).

If Python is the starting point, I think there's probably four approaches that makes sense if python ends up being limited (in part due to lack of typing): move to a language like Julia, proto-type in python; re-employment in go, prototype in python; reimplement _parts_ in cython and/or rust, add type hints on top of python.

[ed: almost forgot, secret option number five: use restricted-python and the pypy framework to implement a language suited to the problem domain..]

<comment> benji-york Every time I look at Julia, I like it a lot, right up to the point where I remember that indexing is 1-based and I loose the will to go on.

<comment><USER12> _Rolls eyes_. 0 or 1 based indexing is one of the smallest thing to worry about in a programming language.

<comment><USER13> I disagree when you're used to 0based array languages and you use a 1based array language (or vice versa of course), you have a high risk of 'off by one' errors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Want to play with it?

      conda create -n py1 python=1.0
      source activate py1
      python

      Python 1.0.1 (Mar 26 2014)
      Copyright 1991-1994 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
      >>>

Sorry Windows, only on macOS and Linux.

<comment><USER15> Does this not work with Ubuntu on Windows? I've been using it as my primary development environment and it seems to work perfectly with the mainstream Ubuntu/linux software I deal with. [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/wsl/about](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about)

<comment><USER16> While we fix bugs in our Linux packages so they work on USW/WSL this one appears to have problems (and I do not expect I will look into them any time soon):

      Python 1.0.1 (Mar 26 2014)
      Copyright 1991-1994 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
      Segmentation fault (core dumped)

.. I did capture the backtrace though; for what it's worth:

      (gdb) bt
      #0  0x00000000004212bb in do_mkvalue ()
      #1  0x00000000004210a7 in do_mktuple ()
      #2  0x00000000004211a8 in do_mkvalue ()
      #3  0x00000000004213f2 in vmkvalue ()
      #4  0x00000000004214a1 in mkvalue ()
      #5  0x0000000000422438 in err_input ()
      #6  0x000000000042258c in parse_file ()
      #7  0x00000000004226ae in run_file ()
      #8  0x0000000000422bf3 in run_script ()
      #9  0x000000000042232a in realmain ()
      #10 0x00000000004039f4 in main ()

<comment><USER17> Do a 'bt full'?

<comment><USER16> There is no symbol table:

      bt full
      #0  0x00000000004212bb in do_mkvalue ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #1  0x00000000004210a7 in do_mktuple ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #2  0x00000000004211a8 in do_mkvalue ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #3  0x00000000004213f2 in vmkvalue ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #4  0x00000000004214a1 in mkvalue ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #5  0x0000000000422438 in err_input ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #6  0x000000000042258c in parse_file ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #7  0x00000000004226ae in run_file ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #8  0x0000000000422bf3 in run_script ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #9  0x000000000042232a in realmain ()
      No symbol table info available.
      #10 0x00000000004039f4 in main ()
      No symbol table info available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My favorite part:

> "If you have a WWW viewer"

</comment><comment><USER19> > "If you have a WWW viewer ..."

Just curious, had the term "browser" not caught on by then?

<comment><USER20> gopher? lynx?

<comment><USER6> I thought lynx was a terminal based web browser or am I wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The most successful language in the last twenty years.

<comment><USER22> Arguably, that would be Java, which was introduced in 1995. For whatever hey are worth, most language popularity indexes (TIOBE, LangPop) place Java above Python with quite a large margin.

Java may not get much exposure here or in startups, but if you go out in the real world of 'boring' business applications, Java is pretty much the defacto language (together with C#).

<comment><USER10> I don't get why Python can't replace Java in almost all domains. It's exceptionally well structured and fast enough for most use cases.

<comment><USER23> Java's tooling support blows Python's tooling support right out of the water. The static type system of Java allows faster refactoring and IMHO makes development of large applications easier and less error prone.

I use Python for simple scripts and often for data transformation. But e.g. at work we have a few million lines of C# that I would never ever want to manage if it was written in Python.

<comment><USER24> One might argue that Python doesnt need as much tooling. In java you need tools to autogenerate code, refactor, etc. Because its so strict. But with python, you can use the language itself to do things, such as adding a parameter to a function without actually modifying any existing references. In other words, in java, the language is the canvas and the ide is the paintbrush, but in Python, your editor is the canvas, and the language is the paintbrush.

<comment><USER25> That works for single developers and tiny codebases, but for large teams and long term maintainence, Java's tooling is superior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow it's much older than I thought. As it says in the post, if you want to a view the online doc's just fire up Mosaic. Then compile it on your IRIX box. Those were the days.

<comment><USER27> Most languages are. Javascript, Ruby, Java, PHP, ColdFusion - all mid-90s languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow. What a gift this language has been. Thanks Guido! I'm using it this morning with GAE. I was using it last night to write a Luigi ingestor for Redis. It's my favorite language.

</comment><comment><USER29> A good automatic code formatter (like JavaScript's/typescript's prettier) really really breaks the arguments used by significant white space supporters ...

I use a code formatting tool in my python work flow as well but it's nowhere near as nice/fun as with a non-significant white space language ...

</comment><comment><USER30> Guido took a lot of ideas for Python from ABC, a language he worked on previously. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_\(programming_language\))

</comment><comment><USER31> Been using python since 1996/7\. Just picked up python 3 and mypy. It's been quite a ride.

</comment><comment><USER32> This can be viewed without JS enabled:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/co...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/comp.lang.misc/_QUzdEGFwCo)

</comment><comment><USER33> Was there ever a DOS binary? That would be worth firing up a VM for.

<comment><USER34> There was. I used to maintain one for a while, compiled with DJGPP, long ago (obviously). Links might still work: [https://web.archive.org/web/20080828160609/http://zephyrfalc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080828160609/http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/pythondx.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Pls add (1994)

</comment><comment> dis-sys Python 1.0 is great because back then you don't need to worry about the Python2/3 issue. :)

<comment><USER6> Is it still an issue really? :/

Have been using Python 3 exclusively in production since about a year ago and it really seems like the whole 2/3 thing is starting to blow over.

I haven't found any packages I need that aren't 3 compatible and porting to 3 was really way easier than people had made it out to be.

<comment><USER36> Yes. Very much still an issue. There's mountains of Python 2 code still out there and loads of software starts with Python 2 and then maybe adds Python 3 support later. Hopefully.

For example [issue #1]([https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/1](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/1)) for Tensorflow - one of the most popular Python packages out there is "add Python 3 support".

It's one of the biggest reasons not to use Python IMO. No other popular language has this issue. The other reasons I wouldn't use Python:

1\. Difficult to distribute standalone programs. You end up having to bundle an interpreter which is a pain. 2\. So many programs include python interpreters you end up with insane path issues, especially on windows. 3\. It's still slow.

<comment><USER6> > It's one of the biggest reasons not to use Python IMO. No other popular > language has this issue.

No other popular language struggles with issues of backwards incompatibility? That's a huge exaggeration.

> Difficult to distribute standalone programs. You end up having to bundle an > interpreter which is a pain.

I guess then you generally prefer not to use interpreted languages?

> So many programs include python interpreters you end up with insane path > issues...

How is that? There's usually a system Python which system programs should reference explicitly if they care. If you code up a Python program without being careful about its dependencies, then yeah you're asking for trouble. But that's true of any program, whether it needs to locate an interpreter or be compiled against a shared library.

None of the pain points you mention are inherently specific to Python. But maybe Python's huge success and ubiquity trick people into conflating general software development issues with Python issues; rather like how people start confusing popular brand names with actual products (e.g. Band-Aids).

<comment><USER36> > No other popular language struggles with issues of backwards > incompatibility? That's a huge exaggeration.

Pretty much true. As far as I know C, C++, Java, C#, Javascript, etc. have never broken backwards compatibility. At least not in a serious way (like changing how `print` works).

> There's usually a system Python which system programs should reference > explicitly if they care.

Not on Windows.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


California Considering Lanes with No Speed Limit - <AUTHOR> https://www.motortrend.com/news/calinornia-unlimited-highway-lanes/ <comment><USER2> I have always lived in the US and Canada but was on a driving vacation in Germany in the past year. I did hours of Autobahn driving at 160kMh/100MPH. The drivers are MUCH more courteous in Germany. ALL Trucks are in the right most lane as are cars pulling ANYTHING. That alone will never fly here.

This means that the only vehicles in the two left lanes are cars and some small trucks. Even then most vehicles stayed well away from the far left lane. Mostly because the cars were not capable of courteously driving in the left lane.

What this all means is that I saw no acts of aggression on the roads that are very common on US freeways. Acts of aggression can include driving at the speed limit or less in the left lane because "I can and it's not against the law".

Speeding cars approaching other cars quickly, tailgating, and flashing headlights when they are maybe already exceeding the speed limit and have not had a chance to move over yet.

In summary, it was much more comfortable driving in Germany at 100MPH than driving on US roads at much lower speeds.

<comment><USER3> > Acts of aggression can include driving at the speed limit or less in the > left lane because "I can and it's not against the law".

What's especially shitty about this is that in many states, it actually _is_ against the law, but since it's so poorly enforced, people either don't know or don't care.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a left lane parker, but isn't driving above the speed limit also against the law?

<comment> Spartan-S63 Yes. In some (most?) states, the leftmost lane on a motorway above 65MPH is supposed to be used for passing only.

What makes highways dangerous are large speed gradients and this is an issue caused by drivers both on the high end and the low end of speed. Hence why most highways have a minimum advertised speed. The issue is that no one respects the speed limits anymore which often expands the gradient and makes the highway less safe. Left lane or not, you shouldn't exceed the speed limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > According to the bill, money for construction of two new lanes on each side > of I-5 and CA-99 would be drawn from California's Greenhouse Gas Reduction > Fund.

Wait, what?

> The bill is being pitched as a way to cut idling in traffic and therefore > reduce greenhouse gases

This looks like next level reality distortion field to me. Increasing speed limits cannot possibly decrease greenhouse gases, nor can adding lanes (which increases capacity and therefore use.) The most optimal speed for reducing greenhouse gasses appears to be 40-60mph, so any discussion of speeds outside that range is therefore not about lowest GHG emissions.

Having high-speed lanes seems OK to me, but drawing that effort out of funds tagged for GHG-reduction seems like a court challenge waiting to happen, and is morally unacceptable anyhow.

<comment><USER6> If you're getting when you're going faster there is less congestion on the road therefore less pollution form other cars, there are other advantages too but please do not make this a moral argument.

<comment> Spartan-S63 Actually, there's less congestion on the road if you follow at a safe distance from the car in front of you. Congestion is caused by following too closely and braking too hard. If everyone followed at the minimum safe distances, your average speed would likely be faster than it would be in stop-and-go congestion.

<comment><USER7> Congestion can also be caused by too little free capacity to even maintain that distance... Which is what typically happens where I live. There's a bridge with four lanes. Two of the lanes split off to an exit which includes another highway junction. Two other lanes continue, and are joined by a third lane from the other highway. This turns almost the entire bridge into a parking lot every afternoon. Even on the weekend, this interchange will typically be backed up.

[https://email@example.com,-82.5425725,1869m/da...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-82.5425725,1869m/data=!3m1!1e3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not "considering" in any serious way. Proposed by one wealthy GOP State Senator from an area full of wealthy anti-tax hard liners who like to speed around unsafely in their sports cars, and don't like the concept of a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Here's the district: [https://calwatchdog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/37th- Dist...](https://calwatchdog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/37th-District.jpg)

This bill is never going anywhere. The GOP is now 10/40 seats in the CA State Senate (2 seats vacant), and 19/80 in the CA State Assembly.

<comment><USER9> Yep. I live in said district and this could not be any more true. I don't have just one or two anecdotes, but hundreds and I've only lived here for a relatively short amount of time. I drive a red Model S and people attempt to race all the time (once out of every few times I go out, or more often), and even then they drive super aggressively and fast. On YouTube, many of the high speed driving videos are filmed here, too.

I'm not going to say this should have any bearing on the merits bill at hand, but your characterization is absolutely correct.

<comment><USER10> > I drive a red Model S and people attempt to race all the time

I saw a documentary about this once called 'Fast and Furious'. You just need to find the fastest guys and beat them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny that at the same time Germany is considering speed limits. American cars also need better tires to go faster, not just all-season tires.

</comment><comment><USER12> >local reports indicate the lanes would run from Stockton to Bakersfield, a distance of approximately 240 miles via I-5 or 230 miles via CA-99.

I've driven these probably 30 times each. The standard minimum speed there in the daytime is already 80-90 mph in the fast lane.

Getting stuck behind some asshole who actually goes the speed limit in the fast lane isn't just annoying (it can add an hour to an SF => LA trip), it's also dangerous. It encourages people to pass by dodging and weaving through the line of much slower semi trucks in the slow lane. Also, CHP likes to hide under overpasses to hand out tickets, so people tend to slow down before them and then speed up again after them.

All these lane changes and speed changes are much, much likelier to cause accidents than high speed is. The road would be a lot safer if people in the fast lane were encouraged to all drive at the same high speed. This bill is a fantastic idea.

<comment><USER8> Cars driving slowly in the left lane is occasionally annoying, but in my experience the much more common problem with the 5 is that with 2 lanes and lots of semi trucks, there are frequently trucks passing trucks, and a lot of entitled car drivers will see the left lane moving slowly and try to pass on the right.... which of course they can't actually do because there was a truck passing a truck, so you get lots of unsafe leapfrogging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13>
       According to the bill, money for construction of two new
       lanes on each side of I-5 and CA-99 would be
       drawn from California's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
       Moorlach doesn't give an estimated cost for the project,
       but says the state already owns the right of way necessary
       for the lanes. The bill is being pitched as a way to cut
       idling in traffic and therefore reduce greenhouse gases,

The irony of making a lane unlimited speed when 1) Driving over certain speeds (60?) significantly increases fuel consumption and 2) It's pretty constly, environmentally speaking, to replace cars and people when they inevitably crash at 100MPH

<comment><USER11> " when they inevitably crash at 100MPH"

Why would they crash? 100 is not difficult to do.

<comment><USER13> this was more to emphasize that accidents do happen and that at 100MPH the magnitude of the crash has increased (its more catastrophic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That makes a lot of sense for I-5. It's dead straight, and since trucks pass each other, the passing lane is often really slow. A third lane would get bogged down behind slowpokes trying to park their way past the trucks at a comfortable 5 over, when 90 is a perfectly reasonable minimum speed, so having this law might mitigate that.

<comment><USER13> This is also an argument against No speed limit as speed differential is really the more dangerous aspect. It's not safe to drive 100MPH along side semis doing 65MPH .

<comment><USER15> It is very safe as long as people have lane discipline. Which is to say slow drivers keep the fuck to the right.

See Germany for examples.

Unfortunately here in America a lot of slow shitheads have an entitlement complex and think that anyone who wants to go faster than them is evil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The autobahn is safer because the drivers have better training. If we are not willing to train drivers just as well or better then we might want to stick with the train, which the Germans also have. While we're at it we can ask them how they managed to actually follow through and finish building it.

<comment><USER17> It's also safer because the grade and turns are carefully crafted, the surface is maintained very well, and wildlife crossing is taken into consideration. You can't really say that of most US Highways.

<comment><USER18> How do they prevent poor animals from entering the roadways?

<comment><USER17> Fences and land bridges apparently. Seems like it doesn't get them all, but keeps the bigger ones out most of the time.

[https://www.quora.com/Are-collisions-with-animals-a-major- pr...](https://www.quora.com/Are-collisions-with-animals-a-major-problem-on- the-German-Autobahn)

I've never seen anything even remotely like that on a US highway, and I've driven around the US a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Per California law the speed limit is supposed to be set at the 85th percentile of speed as measured by a traffic engineering study (operating speed), not the rate of travel the roadway was designed for (design speed).

The idea behind the law is that the majority of people are lawful, and that we are in fact "voting" for the right speed to be set by traveling at that rate.

Rather than creating lanes with no speed limit, we just need to force Caltrans and local municipalities to enforce this standard.

<comment><USER19> And to legally use radar enforcement, there has to be a current survey affirming the limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The practical speed limit is 100 MPH, and in Texas, we have 75-85 MPH in a lot of sparse areas. And if it's a clear day, that 75 MPH is effectively 85.

So from a safety perspective, there is nothing wrong here.

The logic of pulling from a greenhouse emission reduction fund is bonkers.

</comment><comment><USER21> This will never happen because 1. There is no appetite for increasing speed limits due to increase in emissions and increase in enforcement costs 2. Drivers here are simply not disciplined enough to make a no speed limit lane successful 3. Our roads are not engineered to support that kind of speeds, both in terms of pavement conditions as well as merge and off ramp designs. 4. There is no funding to build new lanes to I-5

</comment><comment><USER22> > _According to Moorlach, the lanes would be kept separate from other lanes, > where the speed limit would remain 65 mph._

I don't know about CA-99, but I-5 is definitely 70 MPH for stretches.

EDIT: looks like both are 70 MPH at various points: [http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/roadinfo/70mph.htm](http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/roadinfo/70mph.htm)

</comment><comment><USER23> The obvious place to start are commuter lanes, especially those with specific entry-exit points that are otherwise shouldered off. Remove the maximum and introduce a 100 mph minimum.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does "lanes" mean whole roads, or just that, single lanes on a highway composed of many? The first option seems acceptable, but the second seems like a nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd require drivers in such lanes to have a special license and the cars pass an inspection that they are sound enough to drive faster.

</comment><comment><USER25> Cool! can't wait to be crushed by a 5000 pound tesla going 100MPH faster than me.

</comment><comment><USER26> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER27> Good!

I blast between LA and SF on a regular basis with my motorcycle. The bike and tires are good for cruising at 160 mph, but with all the trucks in an elephant race, I'm lucky to average 80 mph.

I'd pay a small ransom in tolls to drive on a road with no trucks and no speed limit.

<comment><USER28> I did that trip south on the 5 once. Initially I was impatient and tried lanesplitting between semi trucks. After doing this about 4 times, rationality kicked in and I decided that waiting the extra 30 seconds it takes for a semi to pass another was worth it to not have "he was smooshed to death by a truck, the idiot" in my obituary.</comment></comment>


"BitHack" Hackathon by Coinbase - <AUTHOR> http://blog.coinbase.com/post/76553987867/introducing-bithack-hackathon-by-coinbase <comment><USER2> From the rules:

> Coinbase must be the sole bitcoin payment method included in the app.

So, is it a hackathon to make something cool with bitcoin, or to make something cool with Coinbase?

Anything anyone does to make bitcoin bigger, better, and more mainstream, will benefit Coinbase in the long run. So it might be a bit short-sighted to restrict this unless there is a really good reason.

<comment><USER3> So they put 18k USD on the top 3 applicants that provide their closed source, coinbase only solution? They already got attention worth more than that by having us read the terms and coditions. Why not do something cool and respected. I have no problem with the coinbase API having to be used but the exclusiveness is so anti bitcoin spirit.

<comment><USER4> Consider the volatility of hackathon ROI for Coinbase. Ofcourse they want to strengthen the ecosystem of its company and good for them! Their goals are aligned with the general bitcoin ecosystem. Discovery and adoption of repeatable, scalable model of generating value with hackathons would be _absolutely great_ for ecosystem, while benefiting Coinbase. Other companies would copy and imagine how hundreds of hackathons are held by many startups, all benefitting bitcoin ecosystem.

I assure you that this is a good thing in the long run, even if may be considered anti-bitcoin in spirit by some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "All materials submitted in connection with this Contest will not be returned. By participating, you agree to be bound by these Rules including all eligibility requirements. Participants acknowledge and agree that all entry materials submitted in connection with this competition are submitted on a non-confidential basis and may be used by Coinbase, its agents, subsidiaries, and related companies, for advertising and promotional purposes. Coinbase reserves all rights, including the right to edit, publish, use, adapt, and modify proper names, likenesses, and photographs for advertising and promotional purposes in all media (including, but not limited to, the internet) without additional compensation, expect where prohibited by law." -[http://bithackathon.com/terms.html](http://bithackathon.com/terms.html)

This seems like a pretty brilliant way to get tons of apps for only 18k

<comment><USER6> I like the part where they say they reserve the right to edit and modify names, likenesses and photographs. Basically they could take your product and say that their internal team made it if they wanted to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would you award a US dollar amount of bitcoin?

The point is to adopt bitcoin as it's own entity.

Awards should be 10, 5, and 3 bitcoin.

Or if you like big numbers call it 10 million satoshi, 5 million satoshi, 3 million satoshi ?

<comment><USER8> 1 BTC = 100,000,000 satoshis.

<comment><USER7> Even better then

        first prize:  billion satoshi
        second prize: half-billion satoshi
        third prize:  300 million satoshi

Very large numbers, almost sounds like dogecoin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey all,

I'm a student who is looking to join a team for the [BitHack Hackathon]([http://bithackathon.com/](http://bithackathon.com/)) - are any groups out there looking for someone to help with team coordination, app testing, user experience, etc.? My background is not technical in nature, but I've found that I always find a way to contribute in hackathons. I'm not in it for the money (although that does sound very nice) as much as I am for the notoriety.

Get at me!

My previous hackathon experience includes:

● Atlanta Govathon (2013) Finalist: Created a web app which scrapes local and state government websites to centralize public hearing and election information

● Hack for Cystic Fibrosis (2013) Finalist: Created a mobile responsive web app called Track*d which helps CF patients track, visualize, and broadcast medical compliance

● Random Hacks of Kindness (2013) Participant: Created a simple gradebook app for the Peace Corps which can be easily modified to reflect the language of a host country

<comment><USER10> Hey -- I might be interested. And I'm in Atlanta. Let's talk!

<comment><USER9> Sure. Email in my profile

<comment><USER10> Is it? I don't think it's visible -- mine is craig at concrete-jungle.org

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aside... I use Coinbase. But am I the only one concerned they built a transactional system on top of MongoDB?

<comment><USER12> Nope. I'm very concerned. That said, I don't use Coinbase (I use blockchain.info for storage.)

<comment><USER11> Coinbase's buy mechanic is very easy and allows you to not have a bunch of money stuck inside an exchange. You pay for the pleasure, of course, but if you aren't dealing in big money the fee's are negligible. Once you have your btc you can move it anywhere. I'm fully verified so I can insta-buy $1000 in BTC a day if I like which is more than enough for me ($1000/wk instant buy limit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hackathons with cash prizes need to die. It's no longer a "hackathon" when money is involved. It's an app building contest with cash prizes.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am interested in working with someone for this hackathon. I don't have an idea myself. I am a developer from NY/NJ. I have experience developing web and mobile apps. email me at archerabi at gmail.com

<comment><USER15> I am interested in participating in this hackathon too. I'm primarily a designer and was looking for a developer to team up with. I'll email you.

<comment><USER16> I'm interesting in teaming up as well. I'm a coder myself, but happy to work with designers and other coders. I'll email you three.

I'm not glued to any particular idea, but was thinking a fun, one click trading app might be fun. E.g. some default settings like sell/buy in one minute or at a set price and then you just click if you think it will go up or down every once in a while. Like how binary options made trading stocks so simple and fun. ZoomTrader is a good example of a successful company doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "No 24h time limit. No pain. Yes, with $18,000 in prizes.."

A bitcoin hackathon with prizes in dollar? Even if the winners are rewarded in bitcoin, it's still weird.

<comment><USER18> It makes sense. The payoffs are going to show up on Coinbase's balance sheet in USD, and they don't want to commit to buying $X BTC if the market changes.

On the flip side, if BTC crashes, this is good for participants.

<comment><USER19> They could just convert the prize money to BTC today, advertise it in that currency, and not have to worry how the market changes?

<comment><USER20> Problem there is that you're exposing the participants to volatility risk. if btc drops in price then people might be less likely to participate. Many view bitcoin as a great new technology but its price is still too unstable to actually quote products/prices/prices in. Quote in dollars, delivery bitcoin and everyone wins

<comment><USER19> I guess I imagined that being exposed to volatility risk is something that anyone involved in Bitcoin came to terms with a long time ago.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but the smart ones learned to minimize their exposure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fojo.us - Open Drive : Show HN - <AUTHOR> http://fojo.us

<comment><USER2> It would be great if there was a page explaining what it does, or if you could post on here.

I'm assuming it's like a browser based Dropbox, which anyone can access if they have the path and key right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, thats it. Basic philosophy being, a pen-drive (plug n play style) but without the hardware.

<comment><USER2> I like it. Some other ideas: * some sort of key file access * public password to share contents with delete controls.

What's the storage limit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't implemented any storage limit as such, but the max file size is 16mb right now.

Key access file with delete control sounds great but wouldn't make any sense to implement all that before the adoption kicks in. Storage limit can always be implemented later, if the need is felt. Do you see it being regularly used or do you think dropbox etc will still be a better for people? I was going with the idea of making it a password protected disposable drive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>