Namecheap now officially accepts Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.namecheap.com/support/payment-options/bitcoin.aspx <comment><USER3> Well, I just tried to transfer one of my domains to Namecheap using Bitcoin, but their implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

I filled in my domain, got to the checkout page, and it gave me three options: Pay from 'Funds', 'Credit Card', or 'Paypal'. Turns out in order to pay with Bitcoin, you have to first add 'Funds' to your account. So I click the link to do that, it asks me how much I want to add (I don't know, aren't you supposed to tell me how much I owe?). Anyway, I follow a few pages and finally end up on BitPay's page where it asks me to send a specific number of Bitcoins to their address, so I do. The page recognizes immediately when I have sent the funds, and redirects me back to Namecheap.

Great, now I can find my way back to the checkout page and finally finish the transfer! Except I can't. Despite having sent the funds, they won't show up in my account for another hour (or possibly up to 24 hours). I understand they want to prevent double spend attacks, but this is absurd. We're talking about a $10 domain that they can just revoke if the payment doesn't clear. They have to wait 45+ days for paypal/credit cards to clear, but they give the product to me immediately, and I don't have to go through their ridiculous fund adding process to do so.

I applaud the effort Namecheap and I'm happy to see Bitcoin becoming more useful, but this needs work.

<comment><USER4> NameCheap actually doesn't have the capacity to revoke domains as they're an eNom reseller. Enom's policy is that once you buy a domain, it's yours. With domains sales being such a low margin business I can understand their level of caution.

<comment><USER5> I had no idea they were a reseller. It's all the more interesting when you look at eNom's reseller pricing page <http://www.enom.com/resellers/benefits- pricingplans.aspx>. I hope NameCheap is getting better bulk rates than what is listed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm loving this Bitcoin ramp up over the past few weeks. Namecheap should be applauded for their general endorsement of "what's good for the internet". Of course it's in their best interest, but you don't see GoDaddy doing the same.

I think back to the "So, that's the end of Bitcoin"[1] article by Forbes and chuckle to myself. Hopefully one day we can look back at that article in the same way we look back at Ballmer laughing at the iPhone [2]

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/20/so- thats-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/20/so-thats-the- end-of-bitcoin-then/)

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U>

<comment><USER7> Second that on Namecheap apparently being on the side of the internet. Weren't they a vocal opponent of SOPA?

<comment><USER6> Yep

[http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/22/we-say-no- to-...](http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/22/we-say-no-to-sopa/)

<http://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx>

<http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2012/01/18/blackout/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ok. So accepting bitcoin, but they still won't have things like two-factor auth available for "several months" (reference: [https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10...](https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4766)).

I realize PR departments are probably flailing wildly over $33 bitcoins, but which feature do you think your users are more likely to use?

<comment><USER9> minor correction to a valid post: as of 06:33 UTC, bitcoin goes for 37.9 USD

<comment><USER10> And now its $39. Its volatility makes it impractical to use as a currency. A bitcoin yesterday is worth 10% less than a bitcoin today.

<comment><USER11> Today's bitcoin is a little more liquid than yesterday's, and the trend will continue as long as more and more people start accepting bitcoin as payment. This liquidity has a positive effect on value.

<comment><USER12> I would assume that one of the major reasons in holding bit coin is still to sell it at some point (until a large amount of people accept it)

Meaning that once it hits a certain level people will start cashing in and crash the price again?

<comment><USER13> > Meaning that once it hits a certain level people will start cashing in and > crash the price again?

Only if they all sell at the same time. I don't see why that would happen. Selling ones bitcoins isn't an event you coordinate with other holders of bitcoins. It will happen gradually, and have a dampening effect on the price. In all likelihood it's happening right now. There was a huge ask wall at $40. Seems like a lot of people wanted to take profit at that price.

This is also why a crash doesn't happen. If everyone decided right now they've made enough money and wanted to sell their coins, the price would start dropping, until it reaches a point where people are no longer satisfied with the price, and they will stop selling. At which point some buyers will be satisfied with the price drop, and get into bitcoin again, thus raising the price, and the cycle continues.

It's really fascinating to watch the sum total of the actions of all the sellers and buyers, and how it unfolds as an ever-changing price and order book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neat, but will they turn a blind eye to domains registered with false information? After all, the biggest advantage of Bitcoin over traditional digital payment methods is its capability to be used anonymously.

<comment><USER15> > Neat, but will they turn a blind eye to domains registered with false > information?

I imagine in the future internet, domain registrations will be just as anonymous (like .onion on tor) as bitcoin, no reason domain names can't be decentralized (different tld's of course).

<comment><USER16> i would love a method to be able to anonymously host websites that is un-take- down-able and untracable. It would mean that contriversial stuff can be put there without fear of repercussion, and thus, more democratic.

<comment><USER17> Tor hidden service? [1]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Hidden_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_\(anonymity_network\)#Hidden_services)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The price of Bitcoin is currently hovering around 37 USD. I remember when Bitcoin was $2.00 after the first crash, I never expected it to rebound so quickly. Announcements such as Namecheap's lend credence to the current price, but I would not be surprised if a correction brought Bitcoin below $30.

Regardless, I am excited that there are more places to spend Bitcoin each and every day.

<comment><USER19> Well I don't think any average person is really keeping large amounts of money in bitcoin.

It has mostly a transactional since the use cases are so niche.

<comment><USER20> >use cases are so niche

This is a first-world misperception. There is half a world excluded from traditional payment methods.

<comment><USER21> Is Bitcoin a realistic option for those people?

<comment><USER22> Maybe for low-fee international money orders. Certainly not for everyday transactions away from the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A domain registrar is going to have a fairly technically literate customer base, but bitcoin is edging towards the mainstream faster than I'd expected.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen The Coupa Café of Palo Alto is going to support paying with bitcoin soon. Yesterday I bought coffee for $2.00, with the option of paying .17 bitcoin.

<comment><USER24> Do you know what technology they're using? How long do they make you wait for confirmation, etc.

<comment> daniel-cussen I asked, but the people there didn't know much at all about it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like they're using BitPay <https://bitpay.com>

edit: I just tried it. The workflow works well, but this brings me back to my biggest reservation about the usability of BitCoin for regular transactions: The long period (hours) to confirm a transaction.

<comment><USER26> Hours to settle into $? Or hours to confirm the Bitcoin transaction at all?

<comment><USER25> To confirm the Bitcoin transaction at all. That's just how Bitcoin works - <USER2> have to wait for X new blocks to get confirmations from other peers. How long you wait determines your risk level.

<comment><USER27> It doesn't require hours at the protocol level, it's just a social standard. Typically, the first confirmation would occur in ~10 minutes. At the moment, the convention is 6 blocks / 1 hour is sufficient to prevent double-spending, but any merchant could have its own standard.

Also, for something revocable like a domain name, there's nothing preventing Namecheap from giving you the domain name immediately, and then revoking your access to it later if the transaction ultimately fails.

<comment><USER13> > Also, for something revocable like a domain name, there's nothing preventing > Namecheap from giving you the domain name immediately, and then revoking > your access to it later if the transaction ultimately fails.

Not according to shiftpgdn:

> NameCheap actually doesn't have the capacity to revoke domains as they're an > eNom reseller. Enom's policy is that once you buy a domain, it's yours. With > domains sales being such a low margin business I can understand their level > of caution.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323964>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I seems the overall useage and popularity of bitcoins has gone down though. I haven't had a single purchase with bitcoins in about a year at Flow and Zone Games ( <http://flowandzonegames.com> ) and that's quite a change from the one-a-week clip before.

I don't understand the currency so maybe I'm overpricing.

<comment><USER29> Welcome to deflation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Now Amazon needs to start accepting Bitcoins for EC2 instances and the world will be on its way past the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

<comment><USER31> Well since we are living in a fantasy land why not McDondalds, Ferrari, Apple and Starbucks as well.

<comment><USER32> I much prefer it if they all just gave stuff away for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think in five years, the idea of using credit or debit cards for electronic transactions will seem slightly ridiculous, sort of the way using snail mail to pay bills by check seems now.

<comment><USER34> I think most people will still love the idea, because of a little thing called payment protection.

No chargeback possibility? No sale from me.

<comment><USER35> Not every online transaction requires a chargeback. Perhaps donating to your favourite artist, author, charity would be easier in Bitcoin. And would mean you don't have to keep careful track of your spending to avoid huge interest rates from the card company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's a great step towards domain anonymity, but at the end of the day Namecheap is a company in the USA that needs to comply with USA law and its enforcers. And we know it's not the most privacy-friendly country in the world.

To be fair, registering a .com domain is a bad idea if you want to stay anonymous. Go for a .is, a .ch or even a .eu.

<comment><USER37> >It's a great step towards domain anonymity

It`s not about anonymity. All other payment systems just suck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is crazy: MtGox is 37 USD/BTC today, up from 20 USD/BTC a month ago.

<comment><USER34> Bubble 2.0?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting if anyone had conducted an experiment, whether new Bitcoin button, near old good CC payment, actually worsens whole conversion rate, due to interesting Bitcoin reputation in masses.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is beautiful to watch unfold: The universe is taking flight! Do help it, not for the sake of a cryptocurrency, but for the ethical implications. For you and for me.

<comment><USER41> Why ask useless questions? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

<comment><USER40> Galt he isn't - "The universe believes in Encryption" (J.Assange) and this fact is at the same time the redeeming and redemption of the system we're watching suffer. Key point though - we're not relying on Nietzchieans supermen championing themselves or their genius. We're championing the universe, and empowering everyone. Freedom.

<comment><USER42> Atlas? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Hey all! I'm trying to build a domain registrar we'd actually love to use. Does bitcoin really appeal to you as a user? I'm trying to find a list of must-haves and want-to-have features to bake into my project.

<comment><USER44> Let me programmatically set the ip you point to and I will give you money

<comment><USER4> Can you expand on this? You could run your own DNS server and setup the appropriate DNS records at any registrar.

<comment><USER44> I have a free subdomain from afraid.org. They've given me a URL with a secret key. When that URL is requested afraid updates my records to point my subdomain at the IP the request came from. I don't have a static IP at my apartment, but I have a script that calls that URL whenever my IP changes, allowing me to always have a domain name pointed toward my home server.

I am not familiar with operating a DNS server. Would that accomplish the usecase I described above? I would like to set up the same system but with a domain I own and not the free one from afraid.org

<comment><USER45> There are other DNS providers that will do what you want with a purchased domain... you can also use afraid.org for that matter... I put up a domain I wanted others to be able to use for dyndns on afraid.org ...

<comment><USER44> I remember seeing something about using my own domain on afraid.org. However I use google apps, and I wasn't sure if it was possible or what it would take to keep my email hosted there while still using the dynamic dns. Honestly I don'y have much experience in this area and I don't really know what to research to learn more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'd like bitcoin to succeed even to a small extent if only as a counterweight to keep central banks in check but it would be better if it weren't so cumbersome to use, ie slow.

<comment><USER41> It usually takes several days for funds to transfer between banks. Payment processors are a layer built on top of USD. The same infrastructure can be built on top of bitcoin.

<comment><USER34> "It usually takes several days for funds to transfer between banks"

Maybe in the US. In the civilised world it can be pretty much instantaneous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Accepting a volatile currency seems risky.

What if bitcoin drops and I fill register domains on the cheap? Is there a way to prevent this? Are the prices somehow pegged to the dollar?

<comment><USER48> The payment gateway BitPay calculates how many bitcoins equal a USD price and then give that amount (minus their fee) in USD to Namecheap within 2 days.

"It does not matter how many bitcoins we collect, how long it takes to collect them, what we can sell them for, or how long it takes to sell them."

<https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api>

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The same namecheap that blocked *.imgur.com ?

</comment><comment><USER50> To put in perspective:

_____~10000000 (10 million) dollars in bitcoin transactions a day [1] verses

~5000000000000 (5 trillion) dollars in daily foreign currency trades worldwide. [2]

[1] <http://s831.us/XIQoZ7> [2] <http://s831.us/XISAQb>

<comment><USER51> My take away is "holy crap, 10 million bitcoin a day is trading hands. That's a lot!"

Especially for a fledgling currency with staunch opposition by traditional bankers and financial markets because it solves a lot of problems that make them a lot of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Well, just reading about bitcoin and saw this here. I am pretty fascinated by the fact that it take not much time for currency conversion across the world. Awesome. Hope, this will dominate the current methods, and frauds.

</comment><comment> johnx123-up OT: Can anyone suggest a good Bitcoin processor? What about Mt.Gox? Is it sensible to create our own processor and escrow for Bitcoin?

</comment><comment><USER53> Let's say I think that in one year's time Bitcoin will be gone. And let's say I want to put my money where my mouth is and want to short Bitcoin. Presumably there's a lot of people who think that Bitcoin is going to appreciate and thus should be happy to give me a low-interest loan. And yet there is no way to get a Bitcoin-denominated loan. Does this mean that people don't really believe Bitcoin will be with us in one year's time?

<comment><USER54> Bitcoin is not exactly a mature currency. When a new merchant starts accepting Bitcoin payments it's still front page news. So I wouldn't read too much into the lack of lending infrastructure. Evaluating creditworthiness, and going after defaulters, is a lot more work than holding cash deposits or accepting cash in return for products, and those things are still big logistical challenges in Bitcoin land.

<comment><USER53> Sure, but I still have my doubts. Apparently merchants like Namecheap accepting Bitcoin don't name their price in Bitcoin, they name their price in USD. Again, if you believe in Bitcoin, shouldn't you name your price in Bitcoin?

<comment><USER55> With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, it's quite hard to do. They can't set a single price, so they would have to modify their existing site (where most people probably come to pay in USD anyway) to automatically fetch the current market price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Looking pretty good, privacy and IPv6 support like you might expect nowadays, only no DNSSEC. Not buying.

</comment><comment><USER56> Because bitcoins are illegal in my country, I'll keep my personal domains on namecheap but will certainly move my company domains out of there until I figure out if there's a chance I have problems with this.

I like bitcoins just like everyone, but there are laws you need to abide by and bitcoins are illegal in many countries.

<comment><USER57> Sorry dude, you have several people asking you what country your in and you give no answer. What you said (That Bitcoins are illegal in your country) is complete FUD until you provide some proof.

As far as I am concerned, until you tell us where your country is, it seems your trying to damage namecheap's and /or Bitcoin's reputation for no reason.

Please provide the country and law cited. Cheers.

<comment><USER56> My country is in my contact information, I didn't answer because I went to sleep.

This is the law that complete forbids using any currency other than the national for internal commerce and disposes about how forex must work, which bitcoins do not comply.

<http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/LEIS/L4595.htm>

This is a case where people were using dollars to pay for national contracts:

[http://jus.com.br/revista/texto/8566/da-impossibilidade- de-p...](http://jus.com.br/revista/texto/8566/da-impossibilidade-de-pagamento- em-moeda-estrangeira-nos-contratos-celebrados-em-territorio-nacional)

<comment><USER57> Thanks for replying, I can't read the links however I have a question: Is buying a domain from namecheap considered internal commerce? Also many other items bought with Bitcoins would be external to your country.

Surely you can buy a wordpress account with USD without being arrested? What makes buying wordpress / namecheap with Bitcoin any different? Or maybe i'm misunderstanding something. (Honest I probably am missing something, this happens to me a lot :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Fuck yeah Namecheap!

</comment><comment><USER59> It's odd about technology. The more pervasive it becomes before it legislators are aware of it, the harder it is to crack down upon. I don't know what the legal challenges will be to the widespread use of BitCoin in commerce, but I'm sure there will be some.</comment>


Amazon's Giving Away the AI Behind Its Product Recommendations - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/05/amazons-giving-away-ai-behind-product-recommendations/ <comment><USER2> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11671787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11671787)</comment>


Apple contractors 'regularly hear confidential details' on Siri recordings - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings <comment><USER2> Why is it so hard to properly parse the wake word? My Google home turns on all the time from background noise. Is there a specific technical challenge that makes it hard to avoid these false positives?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reaction to the same news about Google: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070)

<comment><USER4> love how openly biased and full of shit everyone on HN is. Google does it and the world is ending but apple does it and not a peep

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is anyone surprised by this?</comment>


We developed software to solve the problem of counting growing plants - <AUTHOR> https://evrone.com/plantscounter <comment><USER2> I'm a bit perplexed by this. On its surface, it's a case study being used for Evrone (a Russian software development firm), presumably to convey their expertise. However, there's essentially no meaningful detail supplied. The problem itself is fairly well-stated, but the useful information stops about there.

The page claims that "there are several ready-made solutions in the market that could be easily integrated with the system developed by Evrone" but does not describe how the product was tested, what their results were, under what conditions it was tested, what hardware was used, nor provide a comparison of those results to using the traditional methods--all things that I know I'd want to consider before hiring a contractor for development work or further considering this particular technology into an application.

And then their "used technologies" section simply lists "Rust, Python, Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning", with no other information. While I don't believe the use of Rust in this particular problem space is common, there's not nearly enough information to form any sort of conclusion, and saying that the stack contains Python and AI/machine learning is again exceedingly generic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your review and comments regarding the article. We are working hard to enhance the experience of our website users. We will surely take all your remarks into consideration while improving the article to deliver the clearer and more detailed message about the project and the solution we built.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm skeptical at the method of using video images to create what is essentially an orthomosaic. Either this technology is BS or this article was written by someone who is decidedly non-technical.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great job!</comment>


The Water Computer (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.inquisition.ca/en/info/artic/ordineau.htm <comment><USER2> What is referred to as a "water transistor" in the article is in fact a standard industrial part, known as a hydraulic relay:

[https://www.bermad.com.au/category/hydraulic- relays/](https://www.bermad.com.au/category/hydraulic-relays/)

Instead of the BJT that is shown in the article, these act more like MOSFETs; and in fact, the "water analogy of electricity" translates quite well, since the "gate" has no current flow besides the tiny amount of "leakage" past the seals, and the volume of the actuating chamber and its return spring acts like the gate capacitance.

 _This is just to clear the OUT hose, so it will be ready for the next cycle. If this wasn 't done, the WT could block in the "Logical One" in some circumstances._

...and that corresponds to the "high-Z" state, which along with the "capacitance" of the circuit would actually be usefully analogous to dynamic CMOS.

One more remark from someone who has worked with hydraulics before: the valve drawn in the diagram is known as a spool valve, and usually for diverting the flow of fluid, the chambers would be so arranged that they don't create any forces on the valve spool --- see how pressure on the "VCC" or "GND" ports would act on the land and tend to push the valve? In practice a "balanced spool" design is used, where the pressure of the controlled fluid is balanced on both ends:

[http://www.modernhydraulics.net/images/hydes/uploads/2011/01...](http://www.modernhydraulics.net/images/hydes/uploads/2011/01/flow- condition.jpg)

<comment><USER3> I wonder if one day we'll ~program other than linear topologies. Something more like chemical reactions in 3D. Or maybe that would lead to biology.

<comment><USER4> Remember that the complexity of programming is built on the simplicity (structured, independent, repeatable actions) of the processor/language/OS.

Mechanical (esp 3D) and Chemical systems are so complex that modeling the results of highly simplified systems is often almost impossible, results are nonlinear and mixed with "unrelated" inputs and prior state, and thus results are "chaotic" and unpredictable. That's not usually what you want to base a complex system on.

Now if you can simplify operations like DNA... you may have a chance, but it's still quite difficult.

<comment><USER3> Understood, but complexity ~just needs a proper abstraction (see quantum mechanics) to make it reasonable.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to agree, but when I look at quantum computers all the problems are in scalability, error correction, temporal stability... etc. Those have to do with many of the same problems that plague mechanical and chemical systems: non-local coupling, non-linear mixing, inherent thermal noise.

<comment><USER3> You know more than I do it seems, I might be naive. Although, transistors were feeble at first.. who knows.

<comment><USER4> The beautiful thing about electronics (and hydrolics) is their inherent 1 dimensionality (although you can create higher dimensional interconnections). Electrical components in particular can be spectacularly linear (capacitors and log-lin diodes) over 4-8 orders of magnitude.

The great thing about transistors is their localized non-liniarity (gain)... which was used to create simplified digital systems from analog circuits. This allowed fan-out and noise tolerance... which allowed more complex abstractions, processors and OSes to be built on top them.

<comment><USER3> I guess even if we try chemo-spatial things.. we'll end up reusing linear network topology knowledge. But then.. I see radial wave local interactions and diffusion laws.. Just a thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gene-h There is also the field of non-moving parts fluidic devices[0] which did find some industrial applications and might even be in use today. Unfortunately, because they have no moving parts there's not much to see when they are in operation. They are interesting though because they can be made to operate at kilohertz frequencies, can be made quite reliable(no moving parts), and can operate in conditions electric circuits cannot. Because operation is dependent on shape and not material properties, fluidic devices can operate in harsh conditions like inside nuclear reactors, in molten steel, or in intense electromagnetic fields. Because they had no moving parts they are fairly insensitive to high accelerations and shocks, which is useful for things like missile guidance systems[2] and tank gun stabilization systems[3]. One very interesting demonstrated use of fluidics was an aircraft autopilot built with very little moving parts[1]. They found their biggest use in industrial control systems for some period to control things like factory equipment.

[0][http://miriam- english.org/files/fluidics/FluidControlDevices...](http://miriam- english.org/files/fluidics/FluidControlDevices.html) [1][https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/197300...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19730002533.pdf) [2][https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a204334.pdf](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a204334.pdf) [3][https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA038394](https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA038394)

</comment><comment><USER5> Puts me in mind of MONIAC that used tanks, floats and fluid valves to model the UK economy. Created by an NZ economics student, in the 50s, part time in his garage, from war surplus bits. At this point it sounds far too Heath Robinson to be real, but it was and several were sold worldwide. It could be adjusted to run within 2% of reality - to the surprise of its creator.

It was the inspiration for Terry Pratchett's Making Money, just without the magic ability to control the economy. :)

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

<comment><USER6> To add on to this, the creator of MONAIC - Bill Phillips - is easily the most badass economist/mathematician to have lived in the 20th century.

He worked as a crocodile hunter and cinema manager in ANZAC and later moved to China during the Sino-Japanese War, but had to escape via the Soviet Union during the height of the Stalinist purges. Yet immediately after that he ended up joining the RAF and being posted in Singapore, which was then invaded by the Japanese, and he ended up being sent to a POW camp after being caught after trying to escape via Indonesia. During his time in the POW camp, he learnt Chinese, jerryrigged a secret water boiler for tea, and built a secret radio. Following WW2 he was then made an OBE due to his exploits in SEA.

As if that wasn't enough, he went back to school to study maths and Econ at LSE and ended up developing the epynomeous Phillips Curve that is the backbone of macroeconomics (and his coauthor won a Nobel for it since Phillip died before the recognition).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My friend Jem Finer was actively researching building a water computer.

In the end he found it too difficult ("It would have necessitated a 60 foot high water tower to provide the necessary pressure, and a far greater budget.")

Instead he built one using ball bearings:

[http://www.supercomputer.org.uk/](http://www.supercomputer.org.uk/) Located at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London E14 0JW

[http://supercomputer.org.uk/photographs.html](http://supercomputer.org.uk/photographs.html) [http://supercomputer.org.uk/faq.html](http://supercomputer.org.uk/faq.html)

<comment><USER2> 60ft of head is only ~26psi, which unless you need that pressure at a ridiculously high flow rate, is easily achievable with a relatively inexpensive pump.

<comment><USER7> I think he wanted it to be powered only with gravity (for artistic reasons). Also I seem to remember him telling me that it was just far too complicated and fragile. The thing he did build is sitting on the dock by the Thames and it's pretty sturdy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting application to theoretical mathematics: Terence Tao thinks it may be possible to use a "water computer" to prove blow-up of the Navier Stokes equations.

[https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time- blowup...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time-blowup-for- an-averaged-three-dimensional-navier-stokes-equation/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a common idea that has some history and recent practical implementations, ex: [https://www.niklasroy.com/workshop/184/PneumaticComputing](https://www.niklasroy.com/workshop/184/PneumaticComputing)

I think his or gate is overthinking the issue. The only thing needed is a bunch of one way valves on each of the inputs, thus creating a sort of "wired OR": any input can create pressure on the output but that pressure can't disspate back to the unpressurized inputs.

By passing this "valve OR" through a single amplifier element set up as an inverter you get NOR gates which can have a large number of inputs and can be futurer used to synthesise any circuit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Entire computers built with alternative technologies are a neat project and fun to look at, but I disagree that they make a computer any easier to understand, since they are still overwhelmingly complex to look at. I agree that they make a computer more approachable, by demonstrating that there is no "black magic" involved. I write this comment having recently taught a course on computer architecture to 11 year olds. In my mind hierarchy makes a computer easier to understand, and a physical incarnation makes it hard to hide the detail compared to a more abstract representation.

The approach I took in my course, which seemed to work, was bottom up:

* Information

* Bits: answers to yes/no questions

* Binary Numbers and Arithmetic

* Logic and gates: AND/OR/NOT

* Combinatorial logic: XOR, Half-adder, Full-adder, 4-bit adder

* Sequential Logic: RS-Latch, Master-Slave Register, 4-bit register

* A counter (=register+adder)

* Mux/Demux, Encoder/Decoder

* Memory (=registers+decoder+mux)

* Arithmetic Logic Unit (=functions+mux)

* Input/Output

* Program Counter, Instruction Register

* Fetch/Decode/Execute cycle

* Control

* A complete computer using gates

* Machine Code (write and run a program on our gate level computer)

* Assembly Code

The entire course was run using SimcirJS [1].

I think hierarchy is key, as each level of the hierarchy can be presented as a relatively small and simple to understand circuit. For example, the bulk of the gates in the final computer are in the memory, but the memory is presented as a single schematic symbol with the complexity hidden. The child understands what is inside the memory symbol but doesn't have to think about it while comprehending the computer as a whole.

It worked to present the entire computer in symbolic form (in SimcirJS), then demonstrate how we could use different easily understandable technologies to build a simple gate: electricity, mechanics, hydraulics, ... The students were able to see that once we had a basic gate in a technology of choice, we could just "turn the handle" to produce a complete computer by mirroring the easy to understand symbolic form and that there was no "magic" involved.

[1] [https://kazuhikoarase.github.io/simcirjs/](https://kazuhikoarase.github.io/simcirjs/)

<comment><USER11> Sounds a little like nand2tetris: [https://www.nand2tetris.org/](https://www.nand2tetris.org/)

<comment><USER12> Another link for people interested in this sort of thing:

[https://eater.net/8bit](https://eater.net/8bit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Really fascinating ideas! I would think that one of the difficulties would be dealing with expansion of the plumbing. Anything using flexible hoses will have to deal with this issue.

It might be easier to solve with small 3-D printed digital parts (AND, NAND, etc) that could be fitted together with rigid PVC off a plumbing manifold.

This might allow you to make smaller parts also.

I think you'd also need some sort of hydraulic expansion tank that would act like capacitors - necessary for storing memory and improving signaling.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if someone could make it by laser cutting channels and pistons into acrylic sheet, adding springs and sandwich between two more sheets?

<comment><USER15> Microfluidics computation is an active area of research. See for instance Prakash et al

[https://youtu.be/m5WodTppevo](https://youtu.be/m5WodTppevo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very stupid question please forgive me but I'm really passionate about alternative computing. How feasible is this in practice? I mean, I kinda understand how it works, but will it work like I imagine if I try build a circuit like this with a few nodes?

<comment><USER2> Yes it would work very well, if somewhat slowly. In fact, "hydraulic logic" is how automatic transmissions in cars were controlled before they had computers. Here's an example:

[http://www.oldcarmanualproject.com/manuals/trans/GMControlle...](http://www.oldcarmanualproject.com/manuals/trans/GMControlledCouplingTrans/Chapter1/images/Chapter1_Page_48_jpg.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember working with a engineering professor who had, early in his career, used a hydraulic computer to solve some equations. What I thought was amusing was the model he was working on was for water flow through walls.</comment>


Nobel Prize Announcement in Physics 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MRqQQuvGzs

<comment><AUTHOR> The announcement is delayed to 12:45 CET i.e. 50 minutes from when this comment is posted.</comment>


A little house of secrets on the Great Plains (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-usa-shell-companies-idUSTRE75R20Z20110628

<comment><USER2> Oddly enough, they still appear to exist: [http://wyomingcompany.com/](http://wyomingcompany.com/)</comment>


Cassette tapes are back, kind of - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/06/cassette-tapes-are-back-kind-of/ <comment><USER2> After the recent surge in Vinyl records in the last decade, I knew it was only a matter of time before people thought cassette tapes were "cool" and retro.

However, unlike vinyl which does provide a certain type of depth and tone to the sound of the music, cassettes are simply just lower quality. The only reason for the increase in popularity is strictly nostalgia.

<comment><USER3> > However, unlike vinyl which does provide a certain type of depth and tone to > the sound of the music, cassettes are simply just lower quality.

Just to clarify; vinyl does not provide any more "depth" or "tone" than modern digital formats. But compared to cassette, most people find the acoustic flaws of vinyl more pleasant than those of cassette.

(Whether the mixing utilizes the fantastic properties of digital formats is totally another matter.)

<comment><USER2> There is a difference between analog and digital. Analog (vinyl) is the original sound while digital takes snapshots of the original sound (albeit at a high rate).

>This means that, by definition, a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps.

>A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost.

[https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm](https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but the "steps" are so close together that the human ear can't really discern.

The typical range of hearing is 20Hz to 20kHz. Due to Nyquist aliasing [0] your sample rate must be at least twice the size of your overall dynamic range, which is why you have CD quality baselined at 44.1 khz, which is double your 20kHz and some extra to spare [1]

There are a couple of areas where analogue can still claim superiority. First is in digital reproduction quality is determined by the quality of your DAC [2], whereas analogue doesn't need this at all. Second is that you may reproduced "inaudible frequencies", in particular the "sub bass" [3] that you feel with your body beneath the 20Hz cutoff. I've been informed that these are often chopped out in the mastering process however so I'm not sure if that claim is legitimate.

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

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio#Bit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio#Bit_rate)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital-to- analog_converter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital-to-analog_converter)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub- bass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-bass)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Online Haskell REPL - <AUTHOR> https://repl.it/site/blog/haskell <comment><USER2> I just want to say congratulation to repl.it that has brought Haskell to it. I love using repl.it whenever I need to create and test a small program. Beside that, repl.it is an open source product ([https://github.com/replit/repl.it](https://github.com/replit/repl.it)).

By the way, I have no problem opening repl.it on Firefox. It runs flawlessly.

<comment><USER3> > _Deprecation notice: This project is no longer actively maintained because > we 're moving language sandboxes to the server for a faster, complete, and > up-to-date implementations. You can use our API._

That's not ideal, but fair enough. _Goes to API page_

> _We 're not accepting anymore customers as we focus our Classroom product_

Did you just tell me to go fuck myself?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol yeah I just pushed that API deprecation today. We had a free API access for almost a year. And people hammered us with support emails. Up until two months ago we were only two people on this and half of us were programmers. the guilt of not replying to everyone who is emailing was just too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For some reason, repl.it crashes my FireFox without fail every time I try to open a REPL.

It's a shame; there have been several occasions over the past few months where it would have been extremely useful, but instead brought things crashing down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to hear that. I'll make sure to fix it. Are you on windows? What version of Firefox?

Aside: Firefox have been breaking our site every couple of months and we have to keep hacking around their regressions.

<comment><USER5> Random feedback for your main site: It's totally unclear to me if you only offer some kind of classroom product or something for more general use. Some of the text indicates the latter, but all the sign-up stuff seems to only target the first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is valuable feedback. We're in an awkward transitional phase in our marketing material / landing pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone managed to hang your backend ghci or some such it seems.. simple enquiries such as `:t reverse` or `:i Maybe` bring no response in over a minute. Could be a client-side issue too (FF 51.0.1 in 64bit Win 8.1) but nothing shown in the browser console..

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope it's working fine. It's the Firefox bug (see sibling comment). If you know how to report bugs to FF please do. We can't repro on our side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always find myself trying readline shortcuts in my browser. Control + w and my tab closes. Grr.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can import modules in the repl, but not in the editor:

        import System.IO

        main :: IO ()
        main = return ()

After clicking run, this fails with "error: expecting a single import declaration".

</comment><comment><USER9> How are you sandboxing it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Docker but not just throwing in a container and calling it a day we use the user namespaces, seccomp etc. On top of that the machines running the code are completely disconnected (different cloud) from any user data etc.

<comment><USER10> I was able to hang the session using unsafeCoerce to cause a segfault, so you might want to specify -XSafe in the GHCi options for good measure. I don't think there's a way to unset -XSafe in a session once set; trying :set -XUnsafe rightly generates an error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome work @amasad—love repl.it! Let me know if you're back in NYC anytime soon—we missed each other in September if you remember.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will sure do! Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pretty cool, might be very useful for students in MOOC.</comment>


Study: Rich are less generous when they think there's high economic inequality - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/the-rich-are-less-generous-when-they-think-theres-high-economic-inequality/ <comment><USER2> This is great reporting. The reporter explicitly pointed out it isn't necessarily a causal effect instead of exploiting the misunderstanding that it might be. Then she succinctly explains the findings and a few potential interpretations without evangelizing any of them. She even linked to the original paper! I wish more scientific reporting were like this.

(Note: There's a typo in the link to the original paper. It's missing a period after pnas: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1511536112](http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1511536112))

<comment><USER3> > This is great reporting. The reporter explicitly pointed out it isn't > necessarily a causal effect instead of exploiting the misunderstanding that > it might be.

I agree this is great reporting but your comment suggests there is no causal effect, which is _not_ the case as concluded by the researchers (or as presented in this article).

Only the first part of the study doesn't demonstrate causality which is why the author states "Of course, this association does not demonstrate causality" which is why the researchers then "showed the study participants a pie chart depicting simulated economic data in their home state" and that's how they determined there _is_ a causal effect. In the abstract for the study which you link to it even states "To better establish causality..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm "rich" by my third world country standards. I used to make individual (humble) donations when I was younger and lived in the same standard as the majority of the population. Nowadays I don't. The more I earn the more the government takes (now almost 50%), so it feels to me I'm already doing a forcibly donation, as there are countless wealth distribution programs (which didn't exist when they would be of use to me, and I did fine without them). I have zero intentions of making any kind of donation, only if it works as a tax reliever. I do however make regular donations to free software organizations and other organizations that produce something that I use or like.

<comment><USER5> When and where did you grow up?

<comment><USER4> Brazil in the 90's, before Plano Real. Welfare only really kicked in with Lula in 02. At first it was great, helped a lot of people in need. It began to spin out of control later though, together with gov. spending, credit incentives and inflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They suggest a couple of explanations:

 _those at the top may feel a) more entitled to their status; and b) more worried about losing it_

I also suggest that with high income inequality the rich simply do not have the ability to raise the entire lower class significantly with donations. Individual giving is not an effective solution to the problems in their world. They can still raise an individual up, but it does not address the problem. Other solutions are called for.

With more equal income distribution a relatively wealthy person can help individuals with anomalously poor situations resulting in a higher floor.

<comment><USER7> _I also suggest that with high income inequality the rich simply do not have the ability to raise the entire lower class significantly with donations_

The paper (linked elsewhere in the comments) suggests something along those lines.

 _In addition, where greater inequality exists, the living conditions of the poor are particularly bleak and the apparent costs of low economic standing are more glaring. These settings may increase higher-income individuals' concerns about losing their privileged position, concerns that in turn may lead to less willingness to share resources with others. In contrast, where inequality is low, higher-income individuals might be as generous as their lower-income counterparts, or even more generous because their greater capacity to give makes giving more affordable to them._

That reasoning might have not made it into the ars article.

While this is worthwhile discussion to have, I'm not sure it really explains this effect. They found that lower income people (in the lower 15% range) in those same unequal areas did not demonstrate this correlation. Are the poor somehow _less aware_ of the beneficial impacts that a gift to another in the dictator game will raise that other person's stature in life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing people outside the US may not realize about studies like this is that a very large percentage of socioeconomic breakdowns in the US are proxies for the traditional north-south civil war divide. Compare a map of income inequality by state and overlay the 1860 election and you'll be looking at extremely similar maps.

So, to a large degree, this study is merely saying that upper income people in the US South are less generous than upper income people elsewhere in the country, something that isn't a surprise to anybody to anybody who even remotely follows US political trends.

[http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/07/17/united- state...](http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/07/17/united-states- income-inequality-map) of income inequality by state

<comment><USER9> Aren't NY, CT, MA, and DC the most unequal parts of the US? All "Union"? I don't think your explanation is convincing.

<comment><USER10> In the above map, those areas are not marked with the "unequal" color, can you share your source as a counterpoint?

Edit: the arstechnica article states DC is the most unequal place in the U.S. It appears there is a disparity between the two sources.

<comment><USER9> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient)

That map is by county, while most inequality in the US is concentrated in the cities; the most important drivers of state-level inequality are thus hidden. It is not a very good map for this purpose.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, though your map is even lower resolution than the previous one.

I can agree that neither map tells the whole story, and the GP's premise is strained at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It should be noted that by "rich", it's meant everyone who earns $125k/y or more (top 15% of the population).

<comment><USER12> It should also be noted that the average annual income of the top 1 percent of the population is $717,000.

<comment><USER13> Is that a mean, median, or mode?

<comment><USER14> Do you really think it could be mode?

(Also, it would be very strange to use "average of the top 1 percent" to mean "99.5th percentile")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So as the consequences of being poor become more severe, people are more likely to hoard money? Describing this as rich people being less generous seems like a questionable interpretation.

<comment><USER16> Interesting thought but I'd still attribute it more toward a disconnect with the "other side". OR, very high-disparity societies have such little social mobility that donations are seen as futile _even if_ you'd be otherwise inclined.

Regardless, generosity or the lack thereof, under the microscope, is just physics no matter what the explanation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It sounds like a very reasonable way to react. If I'm a billionaire and, because of my commute my upbringing or some other factors, regularly see poverty-stricken neighborhoods and how those people live and how they're treated by society I will do everything in my power to guarantee my family and I will never be in that position.

The tough part seems to be convincing people we know how to end poverty, because our track record is not great in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps this could be explained by the conflict between social power (voluntary generosity and kindheartedness) and State power (compulsory "generosity"). If the State taxes you, claiming that they will use the funds for helping the less fortunate, you may perhaps be less compelled to help the less fortunate voluntarily because you've already paid the State to do it for you.

When you see a beggar on the street, you may feel compelled to give him money or food, which is an act of your social power, but you may also feel compelled to do nothing, thinking to yourself that you have no responsibility to help the beggar, as the State has already extracted money from you in order to, supposedly, meet the needs of people like the beggar.

<comment><USER19> This is exactly my feeling with the French president. I've voted for a leftish president. Poverty is exactly how terrorism grows, when people are desperate, and indeed those terrorists were born in France and Belgium. Now the only decent leftish party of France uses the tax money... to kill people and plant bombs in some remote country where our terrorists didn't grow up. This is exactly how State power is misusing funds that were originally destined to help the less fortunate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's almost like there's a "scale of the problem" effect. If you see a picture of one starving child, you're much more likely to give than if you're presented with statistics on the three-some billion people who live on less than $2.50 a day.

Maybe our minds bucket each tragedy we're presented as 'one problem,' then estimate our ability to make a difference on that 'one problem' before expending energy on it.

This heuristic produces inconsistent results, but it's not a crazy heuristic if boiled down to: "fight the battles you can win."

One solution could be to remind people to subdivide problems and tasks into goals that can be accomplished, not sure.

See also: [http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2014/11/05/36143385...](http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2014/11/05/361433850/why- your-brain-wants-to-help-one-child-in-need-but-not-millions)

Citing: [http://globaljustice.uoregon.edu/files/2014/07/Whoever- Saves...](http://globaljustice.uoregon.edu/files/2014/07/Whoever-Saves-One- Life-Saves-the-World-1wda5u6.pdf)

And: [http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and- sta...](http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats)

</comment><comment><USER21> Just a reminder that perhaps 1/3 of individual studies in social sciences are wrong.

<comment><USER22> Would appreciate a source to this claim, especially if this is trying to imply that this is 1 of the 3.

<comment><USER21> It's an estimation more than a provable fact.

I'm not claiming anything about this study more than that you shouldn't blindly believe it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the more inequality there is the more poor and rich live in their own worlds where they never see each other. That makes it harder to relate to each other.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Contrary to what you think, this is not Christian Grey's favorite Saturday night activity"

Thanks Ars Technica.</comment>


Ugh fields - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/ <comment><USER2> Anyone have any ideas of what some common ugh fields might be? I can't seem to come up with anything of my own.

<comment> lobo-tuerto It could be any activity you know you have to do, but instead you end up procrastinating, or doing totally unrelated.

For example, you know you have to finish that school project, but instead of getting into "work" mode, your mind starts to wander and you go and watch youtube videos all day instead.</comment></comment>


Creativity:  A crime of passion - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificblogging.com/rogue_neuron/creativity_crime_passion

<comment><USER2> Because of the love/hate we have with creativity, could we be seeing only the most creative people as our sample size for "creativity"? If everyone were allowed to be creative, we might realize that most people aren't very good at it. Right now, those only slightly or moderately creative vaguely blame "society" for stunting their creative abilities.</comment>


VPN.sh Offer - <AUTHOR> http://www.servicious.com

<comment><USER2> Has anyone given this a try yet? Any experience with vpn.sh?</comment>


Ask HN: What to with 2 weeks off? - J-dawg I have 2 weeks of annual leave to take by the end of March. I would like to use this time to do something that makes me more employable.
I'm a mediocre front end web developer. I know HTML, CSS and JS. I have worked with Angular a little. I have dabbled with Node.
What's the best way to spend 2 weeks, if my goal is improving my chances of getting hired as a front end developer? Learn a hot new framework? Try to build a side project? Do programming exercises (e.g. Project Euler) to work on the fundamentals? Something else altogether? <comment><AUTHOR> Try to build something for your portfolio that uses various things that might be considered useful or fancy for buisness applications. The best hting imho to get a job is to be able to show what you can do, instead of being able to do it. It's hard to convey your skills via words, so try to implement all of your skills in tangible evidence of your ability.

Other than that im rubbish at web development ,so i wouldn't dare point you in any direction there ^^. But getting a personal blog / portfolio to show what you can do was the best advice i ever got which yielded direct and fast results in job interview. (notice its not plural ^^...)

</comment><comment><USER2> Look on Craigslist for a short-term employment opportunity. The job might not be listed as part-time or short-term, but the cool thing about Craigslist jobs is they are put up by smaller businesses that'll be willing to work around your schedule. Don't ask for too much pay, and just be honest about what you're trying to accomplish.

</comment><comment><USER3> The biggest thing that will improve the odds of getting hired is applying for jobs...though that's probably not much of a vacation.

My advice, beyond that, would be to do something that you enjoy and not worry about how it might effect an imaginary career.

Ask yourself, how much Rails or React or Clojure are you going to learn it two weeks?

The answer is: a lot but not enough.

Good luck.</comment>


How do I use Wordpress without going crazy? - <AUTHOR> I've never had a good experience with Wordpress. No version control, slow GUIs, bad GUIs, over-reliance on 3rd party support, difficulty migrating to production server.<p>My list of complaints is longer, but those are my biggest problems. More and more clients are asking me to build their sites with Wordpress, and I'm afraid I'm going to start losing work if I can't go along. Right now I consider Wordpress unusable. Are there any themes or techniques I should know about which can alleviate these issues? <comment><USER2> I've used WordPress as a developer for over 10 years. It's hands down my favourite CMS because it is super flexible. You have access to the entire code base so if you want to modify something, you can!

>No version control You can use SVN or git with WordPress. There are a number of tutorials online. You can use this for the WordPress core files, your plugins (3rd party and your own), your theme files, and even your Photoshop/Illustrator design files. I put my theme php in a plugin, instead of in the functions.php file, which keeps everything compartmentalized. I also use the underscores starter theme, and have built my own starter theme CSS files to go with that. This really reduces and isolates my custom changes.

>slow GUIs I haven't found the GUI to be slow during production. I use a local install hooked up with git/svn. Choosing quality plugins carefully helps a lot as well. I've seen a slow GUI on low-quality hosting, but even there, using a great caching plugin and tweaking the zlib settings on the hosting account can often help. Following the recommended guidelines and enqueuing and concatenating js and css files is also good advice.

> bad GUIs,

I find the base GUI works well for users. I find that some plugins, and especially some third-party themes with overly complex options panels, can become unwieldy. I try to avoid those whenever possible. I try to make sure that users get the appropriate user role, which also simplifies the experience for them. I've also used third-party plugins to hide some admin options if users say that there is too much going on. That helps as well.

> over-reliance on 3rd party support, As Endy mentioned, that's one of the > benefits of an open source community. If you don't see what you like, you > can build it. I think that one of the major obstacles isn't the number of > plugins, but being able to spot the quality ones. Try for ones that have > been around for a while, that have a large user base, that have developers > who respond quickly and reliably in the forums.

> difficulty migrating to production server. WordPress uses serialized data in > its database. Whatever option you choose needs to take this into account. > There are guidelines on how to move your files around on the WordPress.org > site. There are also couple of really good third-party plugins that let you > migrate from local to staging to production servers with one click. I've > used these a lot. Another key element is to make sure that your local > development environment matches your production environment as closely as > possible.

I hope that makes you more optimistic about your experience going forward. I've tried quite a few CMS/ecommerce systems, but using WordPress has made my work easier, not more difficult.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try laravel of ant other cms based on laravel like october cms or Coaster cms?

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you like better?

<comment><AUTHOR> I prefer to just write a website in HTML/CSS/JS. I can reuse code from past projects, the time between saving a piece of code and loading it up in a web browser is milliseconds, I can track it in git and migrating is as simple as copy+paste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've done several WP sites, and I'd say that how you should work to resolve this depends on what you're looking to get out of WordPress - or more specifically, what your clients are. The host also matters a lot - there are several "Managed WP" hosters, and each provides different options. I'm not a hardcore dev (i.e. I don't even do PHP), but let me see if I can suggest a couple ideas. And if my ideas spark someone else's, so much the better!

>No version control

In terms of...? The core engine version is pretty easily displayed in the dashboard. Plugins are versioned by their authors, and update notifications happen regularly. If you're talking about page versioning, I'd have to respectfully disagree. The history of all page edits is quickly found and you can revert freely (and the "future" versions of a page once reverted don't automatically get deleted either). I've found that version control is probably the best thing about WP.

>slow GUIs

This may depend on your server and what you're trying to do with the GUI in question, more than WP as a whole.

>bad GUIs

Yeah... the Dashboard could certainly use some work, but after some thought I've not found a better way to deal with it. If you're talking about TinyMCE (the text-editor), there's a few plugins for that which make it much better.

>over-reliance on 3rd party support

I understand your point. I also believe that the 3rd-party support on its own isn't a bad thing; it's the fact that in order to make it so that non-tech- savvy people can make a WP website, it's so easy to install or remove a plugin without recognizing what it will break. If you mean in the form of tech support, I wholeheartedly agree - the problem is that WP is an open-source project, and like many FOSS projects, there's an expectation that you'll be able to rely on "the community". Often, my problems could be solved just by searching either Google or DDG with "WordPress [describe problem]". Just as often though, I couldn't, so I went to the WPNYC or WPNNJ Helpdesk Meetups.

>difficulty migrating to production server

Okay, this one I really have to blame as much on your hoster as on anything else. Morally speaking, I don't like suggesting GoDaddy for much of anything to anyone, but they have found consistently easy and functional ways to handle migrating from testing to production, and cloning to testing. If your host doesn't help you in terms of that, you need to consider a Managed WP host. Otherwise, there's a plugin (there it goes again) which will allow you to quickly export and import your database - I believe it's called WP Backup or something like that; install the plugin on both your testing and production, export/import, should be simple as that. Depending on your setup, you may have to manually copy your media unless you're pointing everything to an external CDN so your images are all URLs and not Library entries. Seriously though, Managed WP - regardless of which Managed host - is probably the best way to deal with WP.</comment>


Key elements for costing out a private cloud computing platform - <AUTHOR> http://answers.getapp.com/ViewQuestion.aspx?action=rateAnswer&questionId=1193&answerId=1195&rating=1

<comment><USER2> Why am I being redirected to a login page?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> sorry the URL was not the right one. Here is the correct one [http://answers.getapp.com/What-key-elements-costing- private-...](http://answers.getapp.com/What-key-elements-costing-private- cloud-computing-platform-q1193.aspx)</comment>


Ask HN: Ruby on Rails vs Go – What would you suggest to a newbie webdev? why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I am a newbie web developer. I have had no prior app development experience using other languages such as PHP or Ruby. for months I have been learning Go and web application development through books .I have been writing small web apps. I also read some good example code. I can understand it as well. But now I have and idea for a large web app. The thing is I have no idea how to put it all together.I am really confused where to begin? what to write first routes or models or templates?how should be my workflow so that it will be easy to refactor code later. P.S. that web app is kinda like hacker news but with a job board.so it will be having authentication , users ,posts etc

So will it more easy to start with Ruby on Rails

<comment><USER2> I would recommend Go with the Beego framework. It is very popular in the far east but not so much in English-language countries. Except that it is an excellent framework for Go. I have done RoR, vanilla Node.JS and Meteor, but I my preference is Go/Beego. Static typing and simple, consistent API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The trend I'm seeing is that PHP is still strong - in terms of usage and there are loads of companies using it. RoR has had a slight downward trend and that Go is in a massive up-tick.

For jobs in legacy codebase, PHP. For new stuff Go

But really, when determining candidate qualifications its more about shipping a project than which tools you use

</comment><comment><USER4> Neither of them. Elixir/Phoenix is the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> why? isn't it new? how can it be helpful for a new beginner?</comment></comment>


Show HN: I'm building a Series Tracker Chrome Extension in Angular.js - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seriesguide-chrome-v2/hkbamkappmgfjjahmnlngibomenmbbdf?hl=en

<comment><AUTHOR> At my current job i'm working a lot with angular, so I figured i'd dogfood it a bit more and rewrite my previous chrome extension (not published in the store) in Angular.js to learn more about the services/directives/controllers part.

So after 2 weeks of work in my spare time, some features:

\- Add your favorite series, and view the schedule on the calendar

\- Completely built with angular.js and bootstrap, no jQuery as of yet!

\- ThePirateBay.org search for downloads of episodes that have aired

\- Batch mark-as-watched function

\- Local storage using via SQLite by using my new promise based CreateReadUpdateDelete.js : [https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/CreateReadUpdateDelete.js/tr...](https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/CreateReadUpdateDelete.js/tree/ipromise)

Upcoming:

\- Configurable sources to scrape for new downloads (Private trackers, rss)

\- Auto-notify of new episodes available for download

\- Subtitle integration

\- Minimum Quality selection for download

\- More improved design

Check out the public angular branch of the git repo if you want to see the inner workings:

[https://github.com/schizoduckie/seriesguide- chrome/tree/angu...](https://github.com/schizoduckie/seriesguide- chrome/tree/angular)</comment>


Publishing a new idea - <AUTHOR> http://merkle.com/1974/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is `the amazing story of how Merkle proposed public-key cryptography as a class project in grad school, and the professor described it as a "muddled terribly", and then he submitted it to CACM, which rejected it because it was "outside of the mainstream of cryptographic thinking."'

[As related by Gilles Brassard via Aram Harrow. See <http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=5728>]</comment>


All-optical machine learning using diffractive deep neural networks (2018) - bra-ket https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6406/1004 <comment><AUTHOR> I asked this on Twitter, but maybe folks here can answer better: how important is nonlinearity for deep neural networks? This method's output seems to be a linear function of its (complex) input. Does that put important bounds on performance? [https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewGYork/status/10228414045888...](https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewGYork/status/1022841404588883968) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698135)

<comment><USER2> Simple examples can be constructed showing that nonlinearity is required for certain problems.

There do exist non-linear optical components, so I assume that could be used for a piece of followup work...

<comment><USER3> True, but all the nonlinear optical effects I'm aware of only really start to matter at very high intensities - so wouldn't really be applicable to the kinds of scenarios they envision, like directly feeding it images seen from ambient light.

<comment><USER4> Uhm, speed of light differences in a modified crystal lattice are constant nonlinearities reasonable to produce. They do not need high intensity light, but they would need additional circuitry for scaling. Plus the network would have to work on phase angle and not magnitude. Mostly Kerr effect (high voltage) and cross wave polarization (e.g. given Pockel's cell) are useful there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (2018)

This is only for inferencing. It can't learn.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there sites designed to identify fake news? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Polifact: [http://www.politifact.com](http://www.politifact.com)

Seems to be doing a pretty good job.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's [http://realorsatire.com/](http://realorsatire.com/) but it doesn't have a comprehensive list.</comment>


Why Interaction Degrades on Dev Teams - <AUTHOR> http://roginc.tumblr.com/post/40397904672/why-interaction-degrades-on-dev-teams

<comment><USER2> "The best development teams are highly collaborative. They religiously pair program 100% of the time, they work on site in open floor plans, they are constantly communicating. These super teams will run circles around stereotypical anti-social types who lock themselves away to do their work alone."

Says who? No citation for the quote, and the quote itself is an evidence-free assertion (a.k.a. B.S.). I actually agree with the conclusion of the posting that "pairing" is only appropriate for certain personality types or skill level.

<comment><AUTHOR> The quote was a compilation of what I had heard from various people who positioned themselves as experts. Thanks for the feedback BTW.

<comment><USER3> There are people that get the Agile buzz. They take the word of whatever source imparted the wisdom as gospel and try and use it as a hammer in every situation.

The reality is, people, projects, and situations differ. Smart people and groups evaluate these additional approaches like any other tool - can it bring value? The exact answer to that is rarely the same for any two individuals or groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do my best work (code|writing) when there is absolutely nobody around me.

<comment><USER5> "Best" is highly subjective, as you can always write better code. But I can somehow agree that unwanted noise is an unneeded distraction while coding. Of course the subject of headphone in a workplace is always a touchy subject, but they are sometime necessary.

<comment><USER4> Best in the sense of my personal work. I am absolutely not saying my best wok is better than anybody else's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love collaboration while planning and talking about how / why to implement something; however, when I want to actually build that idea, I'm typically much faster when I just throw on some headphones and go for it.

Admittedly, I've never pair programmed. Sounds like two bros writing a screenplay in a coffee shop and high-fiving over every rad idea they jam on.

<comment><USER7> I see pair programming as a fantastic way to learn - from what I've experienced, though, it's not an ideal way to work through a project in its entirety.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone out there feel this might be a matter of unintentional discrimination?

<comment><USER8> Not legally in the US as only the explicitly named groups in law are protected. (But I do think that there's discrimination against socially awkward people--it's almost inherent in the term. However, I think this is all driven by management doing whatever they think will work to drive results and developers happily accepting the BS.)</comment></comment>


IPhone killer-app is letting users choose software - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1029547320080711?sp=true

<comment><USER2> You'd think no phone has ever had user-installable software on it. In fact reading the article you would never know that until yesterday the iPhone was almost the only phone you could buy that couldn't run 3rd party apps.</comment>


Human nature matters - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/theres-no-philosophy-of-life-without-a-theory-of-human-nature <comment><USER2> There's an interesting snippet in the beginning of the article:

> A prominent example is our colleague Jesse Prinz at the City University of > New York, who argues forcefully for what is referred to as a 'nurturist' (as > opposed to a 'naturist') position in his book Beyond Human Nature: How > Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind

I've read a bunch of books on prehistory, one thing that always stood out to me as very telling is that for a long time, homo sapiens were just like all the other humans on the planet. Reasonably smart, we had tools, rudimentary language and brains equipped to maintain reasonably stable social contacts on a small scale.

Then 70k years ago things suddenly changed, sapiens left Africa and rapidly spread to the other continents. There's not much evidence of actual warfare, but the arrival of sapiens in all cases coincided with the extinction of other humans and mega fauna.

The author of "Sapiens" argues that this happened because of sapiens' massively increased ability to cooperate. When and why did this happen 70k years ago? Because, so argues "Sapiens", a sudden mutation (or gradual crossing of a certain threshold) enabled our ancestors to construct 'culture'. Our increased mastery of language and our evolved social modules allowed a more robust societal framework to come into existence. Enabling rapid buildup and accumulation of technology and tradition. And that was ultimately what made us 'different' from the other humans on the planet.

I found it a very compelling argument (even though, ultimately, it's only a thought experiment). Maybe we do inherit a 'spray-painted wall of human nature'. But our culture and history seem to fill a function too.

<comment><USER3> I've long felt that intelligence is a property of the group rather than the individual. Language is inextricably linked to our conception of intelligence, and having someone to talk to is a prerequisite.

I feel like this is very important and seems to be missed in modern AI research. I think of most of today's systems as monoliths, lone individuals raised in isolation (receiving training data does not constitute communication/language development), forever stunted in all of the more "humanist" facets of intelligence.

Is there research going into more "social" systems of multiple "actors" that are able to interact/communicate with each other? Perhaps even develop their own language, one that we might not be able to understand? (How would we even identify such a thing? Think of dolphins - we know something is going on there, but we haven't been able to translate it.)

<comment><USER4> I agree, the idea that "intelligence is a property of the group" is an interesting idea that is worth exploring further with respect to AI research.

I think the indie puzzle platformer Thomas Was Alone explores this idea in a cute and approachable way.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/220780/Thomas_Was_Alone/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/220780/Thomas_Was_Alone/)

It's also worth noting that AlphaGo was trained against copies of itself in later stages of its development -- while this isn't "communication" in the human sense, it does enable copies of the AI to learn from each other.

[https://deepmind.com/research/alphago/alphago-vs-alphago- sel...](https://deepmind.com/research/alphago/alphago-vs-alphago-self-play- games/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One must distinguish human nature, the shared phenomena of our being, and "human nature", the rhetorical bludgeon that ends productive discussion.

<comment><USER6> The proposition "there are inherent psychological desires of humans" \-- and I must say _desires_ to distinguish from more flexible characteristics like rationality or sociality -- is supported by a variety of good heuristics such as the evolutionary origin of people, the existence of significant similarity in social structures across cultures (with stronger similarities in _literate_ cultures), and observed failures in many attempts to manipulate desires (most notably David Reimer). However, the prospect of determining what these are is difficult, the justifications behind the best theories of inherent desires are usually both complex and epistemologically imperfect, and the game of telephone that relays scientific information to a popular audience tends to oversimplify the findings, overestimate the appropriate confidence level, and distort the conclusions to better comport with the preconceptions of the audience. As a result, colloquial discussions of how human nature impacts our lives are a huge minefield of pseudoscience, narcissism and utopianism that rarely support better understanding of any situation. Most useful applications of psychology depend on the application of empirical data describing some settings to other closely related settings, rather than the great theoretical leaps in the reasoning applied in the natural sciences. As such, when a thinker is prone to making such leaps (eg Jordan Peterson) it's a red flag that they're a charlatan, or (eg "Dr. Phil") are willing to distort what they do know scientifically in order to gain notoriety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The claim that the contemporary analytic tradition has "rejected the very idea of human nature" is a little strange, given the emphasis that many in the tradition place on rational capacity or rationality[1] being the distinguishing and essential characteristic of humanity.

Many analyticists might have a generally deflationary view of human nature, but outright skepticism towards it is not dominant.

Even Locke, who the authors mention for his _tabula rasa_ , thought that children were born rational and had to be reasoned with (instead of trained or dictated to, as Rousseau suggests in _Emile_ ).

[1]: These being not dissimilar to Aristotle's claim that reasoning is man's function, and that man's virtue is reasoning well.

</comment><comment><USER8> The introduction piqued my interest but the author doesn't seem to follow through on any claims. "Something something we're genetically different so we have a different nature"

</comment><comment><USER9> It's funny how the more we know about human nature, the less it is regarded by philosophy...

Antique philosophy, at least what survived to nowadays, seems much more down- to-earth than today's popular thinkers.

<comment><USER10> What does this even mean?

<comment><USER11> It's currently fashionable to reject the idea that the functioning of the human mind is influenced at all by genetics.

Some famous philosophers of the past, despite lacking the wealth of scientific data we have today, managed to conclude more or less the opposite, which (we now know) is correct: our minds are both programmed by our environment AND come pre-populated with a wide array of firmware modules thanks to the phenotypic expression of our genes.

For a really great in-depth exploration of these facts, check out Steven Pinker's 2002 book "The Blank Slate".

<comment><USER10> >It's currently fashionable to reject the idea that the functioning of the human mind is influenced at all by genetics.

I was unaware of this fashion in either the philosophical or scientific communities.

<comment><USER12> The "scientific and philosophical" communities are, it turns out, embedded in academia. Therefore, they cannot escape the trends that are born in those circles whether they are based on facts or emotions and thus pseudoscience.

<comment><USER10> They're pretty large and varied circles. 99% of it definitely isn't based on emotion

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can somebody explain the fascination with taking different schools of philosophy and talking about who thought what?

I just don't understand why anyone should care what 'existentialists' think, or John Locke, or anybody else.

There is a goal, and there are strategies with various pros/cons for achieving that goal. Differences in opinion spring from having different goals, and/or disagreeing about the ways to get there.

What is talking endlessly about other people's opinions accomplishing? Is it about creating a 'robust philosophy'? _Throws up in his mouth_

<comment><USER14> It's a way to structure a discussion. Because philosophy is a pretty wide field, clarifying that you're talking about Rousseau's concept of human nature is simply a way to indicate that you're talking about a particular school or flavour of thought, without having to recite the entire body of work. Classification is always useful, not just in philosophy. It's no different from classifying mathematical fields as 'number theory' or 'algebra', just to indicate what frame of mind you're in when you talk about a problem.

<comment><USER13> Structure is needed to accomplish something. You're thoroughly missing my point, let me try an analogy:

I am going to gather 100 fools, and ask each, what they imagine life on mars must be like. I am then going to structure their opinions, write them down in books, and so on.

Replace 'life on mars' with 'human nature'. I fail to see the difference between my example and the presented article.

Now if someone were to go study physics, invent a rocket, get into the rocket, fly to Mars, and have the ability to report back their findings - that'd be discovering life on mars.

I'd listen to his/her take on life on mars with great interest. I'd call that a scientist with an informed opinion.

<comment><USER14> But Rousseau was no fool in the field of philosophy, he was in fact one of the chief contributors to the philosophy of human nature, so that analogy makes no sense at all.

His ideas are still very relevant and have seen a resurgence in recent years, as he was one of the first philosophers to tie his philosophy of human nature to a political and social criticism of elites, something that is again extremely topical today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's good to start with definitions. The author says,

"Human nature is best conceived of as a cluster of homeostatic properties, ie of traits that are dynamically changing and yet sufficiently stable over evolutionary time to be statistically clearly recognisable."

I'm not sure what the author is talking about. Our bodies are constantly out of stasis. Cells are constantly being repaired or replaced. Skin cells, muscle cells, cells of your internal organs. If you don't stay warm enough, you die. If you don't stay hydrated, you die. If you don't stress your muscles (ie, exercise) they atrophy. And all of these circumstances involve our internal bodies making transactions with the external world. Has the author controlled for these variables or are they just simply declaring that they don't exist?

<comment><USER16> Homeostasis means that the system is stable even though is varies slightly. It doesn't mean that the system is completely frozen like a rock.

<comment><USER17> Eh, the critique is pretty accurate. A lot of us favor the allostatic model over the homeostatic one for biological regulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is a lot in this essay that is problematic. I'll offer just two examples:

" _What exactly does science tell us about the idea of a human nature?_ "

Science can't tell you anything until you have a philosophy of knowledge which defines a thing called "science". So the argument becomes a bit circular here.

This is worse:

" _If we take evolutionary biology seriously, then we certainly should reject any essentialist conception of it, such as Aristotle's._ "

That is a large if. Here are some unsolved problems in evolutionary biology:

1\. Why do people become gay?

2\. Why do people adopt children who are unrelated to them?

3\. Why does such a large percentage of the population suffer mental illness?

4\. Why do people engage in acts of altruism, helping those they are not related to?

5\. Why do people believe in gods, and why do they make sacrifices to these gods?

A famous argument against evolutionary biology was made by Richard Dawkins back in 1976, in his book The Selfish Gene. As Dawkins says in that book: "We can rise above our genes; indeed, we do every time we use contraceptives."

Before we "take evolutionary biology seriously" we need to carefully consider all of the arguments against it. And since so much of this article depends on "take evolutionary biology seriously", the whole article is weak.

Mind you, I believe a strong case can be made for a human nature. But I wouldn't build that case on evolutionary biology, without first addressing the known limits of evolutionary biology. A stronger case could be built if one first argued for independent agency in the processes arising from genes. This is the "ghost in the machine" argument. But that argument would have something in common with the philosophers who are being criticized in this article.</comment>


How to sign commits on GitHub with GPG - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@timmywil/sign-your-commits-on-github-with-gpg-566f07762a43 <comment><USER2> Author might want to check with the GnuPG developers again:

He writes: _If you're using 64-bit Windows, don't try to install GPG directly from the GPG website . It's not supported. Gpg4win works just fine._

The page he sites: [https://www.gnupg.org/download/supported_systems.html](https://www.gnupg.org/download/supported_systems.html) says:

 _NB: The information in this page is heavily outdated. GnuPG works very well on almost all 32 and 64 bit platforms._

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I didn't notice the note at the top. I'll edit the article to reflect this.

<comment><USER2> You are welcome. I tried finding a way to contact you from the medium article that didn't require signing up to or signing into something. I gave up after trying to comment on the article directly and only finding Twitter and Facebook links.

I'm about to update some tutorials that depend on GnuPG working on 64bit Windows and was worried that I'd need to modify my plans. Your particle made me take another look at the documentation and to re-check some assumptions. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ex-Google engineer: Extreme content? No, it's algorithms that radicalize people - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/ex-youtube-engineer-extreme-content-no-its-algorithms-that-radicalize-people/ <comment><USER2> I've has this happen to me firsthand. I clicked on one dumb comedy cartoon about Italy in WW2 and my youtube algo switched completely into alt right mode. As soon as the video stopped my suggestions all switched to things like "Most EPIC Hillary Fails" and "Jordan Peterson DESTROYS whoever" over and over again.

I tried to get out of alt right mode by just never clicking any suggestions, but it just got worse and worse. I started getting recommended really weird dark stuff about how immigration causes all of our problems and fan "documentaries" about senior SS leaders in Nazi Germany.

I deleted my Google account early this year so I don't know if it's still routing people to this horrible crap, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.</comment>