Ask HN: What are you reading? - <AUTHOR>

That's right, its the Sixth Edition of the HN Bookclub. Don't you dare upvote or post.
5: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9543693
4: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9443897
3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394397
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342886
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8918181 <comment><USER2> The Intelligent Investor[1] is my current focus after reading How I Lost a Million Dollars[2] both on Kindle.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Collins- Business-...](http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Collins-Business- Essentials-ebook/dp/B000FC12C8/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=) [2] [http://www.amazon.com/What-Learned-Losing-Million-Dollars- eb...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Learned-Losing-Million-Dollars- ebook/dp/B00MNMHBA0/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1433263440&sr=8-1&keywords=how+i+lost+a+million+dollars)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sprinting through Cibola Burn [http://www.amazon.com/Cibola-Burn-Expanse- James-Corey/dp/031...](http://www.amazon.com/Cibola-Burn-Expanse-James- Corey/dp/0316334685) before Nemesis Games gets here [http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-Games-Expanse-James- Corey/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-Games-Expanse-James- Corey/dp/0316217581/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1433257392&sr=1-1&keywords=nemesis+games)

Also working my way through SICP to see if it makes be a better front end dev. Results pending.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm taking a trip to UK in the fall, so I'm doing related reading until then. Currently: "A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3500 BC-AD 1603" by Simon Schama [[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/155314.A_History_of_Brit...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/155314.A_History_of_Britain)]

</comment><comment><USER5> For Fun: The Girl on the Train - Just finished it, kept me interested not bad. [http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Train-Paula- Hawkins/dp/1594633665...](http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Train-Paula- Hawkins/dp/1594633665/)

For learning: Automate the Boring Stuff [http://www.amazon.com/Automate- Boring-Stuff-Python-Programmi...](http://www.amazon.com/Automate-Boring-Stuff- Python-Programming/dp/1593275994/)

</comment><comment><USER6> The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250061350/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_HI9Avb0...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250061350/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_HI9Avb091WCJH)

And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307338622/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_BK9Avb1...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307338622/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_BK9Avb1V7BR0V)

</comment><comment><USER7> Accelerando by Charles Stross ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando)). I'm mostly enjoying his look into humanity's near and not so near future and his views on business, economics and technology. It's interesting and I like his writing style but sometimes it doesn't feel like much is going on story- wise.

</comment><comment><USER8> Jo Walton's _What Makes This Book So Great_ along with about half a dozen of the books it mentions (it's a collection of blog posts on books she's rereading) which I hadn't previously read. All of the previously unread ones I've now finally read are good, a couple great, ditto the ones previously read. One was enough of a downer that I didn't finish it ( _Random Acts of Senseless Violence_ ).

Definitely recommended if you enjoy science fiction and/or fantasy.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time by Will Durant... [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78162.The_Greatest_Minds_...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78162.The_Greatest_Minds_and_Ideas_of_All_Time)

Durant has a remarkably well thought out list of book recommendations on what makes an educated person-- I thought I was well read; afraid I've barely scratched the list.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie. Book 3 of the First Law trilogy.

[http://www.amazon.com/Last-Argument-Kings-First-Three- ebook/...](http://www.amazon.com/Last-Argument-Kings-First-Three- ebook/dp/B00H6T36QI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=)

</comment><comment><USER11> Technical: Build your own AngularJS [http://teropa.info/build-your-own- angular](http://teropa.info/build-your-own-angular)

Non-technical: Traction [http://tractionbook.com/](http://tractionbook.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson - [http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Life-Universe-Walter- Isaacson...](http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Life-Universe-Walter- Isaacson/dp/0743264746)

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity- Charact...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity- Character/dp/0544104404/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1433124003&sr=1-1&keywords=how+children+succeed)

</comment><comment><USER14> Fiction: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (loved the movie as a kid, but never got round to reading the book), will follow up with the Lost World.

Non-Fiction: Chaos by James Gleick.

Semester break reading, Real World Ocaml and Modern Compilers in ML (assuming they arrive in time)

</comment><comment><USER15> Thinking in Systems: A Primer

[http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Primer-Meadows- Donell...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Primer-Meadows-Donella- ebook/dp/B005VSRFEA)

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://www.amazon.com/Gentle-Madness-Bibliophiles- Bibliomane...](http://www.amazon.com/Gentle-Madness-Bibliophiles-Bibliomanes- Eternal/dp/0805061762)

A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

</comment><comment><USER17> From Mathematics to Generic Programming (2015)

[http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Generic-Programming- Alexan...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Generic-Programming-Alexander- Stepanov/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Leviathan Wakes [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8855321-leviathan- wakes](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8855321-leviathan-wakes)

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.amazon.com/The-Third-Chimpanzee-Evolution- Future/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Third-Chimpanzee-Evolution- Future/dp/0060845503)

</comment><comment><USER20> What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami

</comment><comment><USER21> [1] Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (almost through with this one - highly recommend it) [2] Quantum Enigma by Bruce Rosenblum, et.al

<comment><USER22> I started with the first one but got busy and forgot about it. This will be a good reminder to finish it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Currently reading: Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Usually don't read fiction, but this is good.

</comment><comment><USER23> To Mock a Mocking Bird by Raymond M. Smullyan. I'm having fun while my brain gets stretched.

</comment><comment><USER24> For pleasure: Backbone.js Blueprints by Andrew Burgess

For work: Stealing The Network, The complete series collectors edition

</comment><comment><USER25> I wanted to read something about logical thinking and cognition. So just started with Godel Escher Bach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Buckle up, my friend. You are in for a trip and like LSD, there is no guarantee of good or bad. I personally love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The Violent Land - Would certainly recommend it for a non-technical read.

</comment><comment><USER27> I feel like we should do this once a month at most instead of every two to three weeks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been doing it every time i finish a book or two, but once a month works too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Grand Design - Stephen Hawking.

Should finish it by tonight.

After that, it is time for 1984 - George Orwell.

<comment><USER29> I'd love to completely wipe 1984 from my head, just for the pleasure of reading it again! You will not look at the world in the same way once finished.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you feel about Aldous Huxley's _Brave New World_? A juxtaposition between _BNW_ and _1984_ is very interesting in terms of what actually happened vs. what the authors portrayed.

<comment><USER29> Added to my reading list, will report back :)

<comment><USER30> You have to read the island [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_%28Huxley_novel%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_%28Huxley_novel%29)

The utopian version.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Island is my favorite Huxley book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nominally, I'm "reading" 23 books that are in my Goodreads "currently reading" shelf. But of the ones that I'm really working on and will finish fairly soon:

1\. _Secret Societies_ \- John Lawrence Reynolds

2\. _Black Wings of Cthulhu 3_ \- S.T. John (ed)

3\. _Unleash The Warrior Within_ \- Richard Machowicz

4\. _Data Crush_ \- Christopher Surdak

5\. _Thinking, Fast and Slow_ \- Daniel Kahneman

6\. _The Glass Cage: Automation and Us_ \- Nicholas Carr

7\. _Future Shock_ \- Alvin Toffler

8\. _The Balanced Scorecard_ \- Robert S. Kaplan</comment>


Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/28/quadrocopters-juggle-balls-cooperatively-mesmerize-with-their-l/ <comment> DanI-S _Robots are the next revolution, so why isn't anybody acting like it?_

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2380270>

Seems like some people are.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to take away from the obvious coolness of it all, but am I the only one who was disappointed to see that "juggling" here didn't really mean "3 balls in the air at once"? The headline led me to believe it would resemble a circus routine...

<comment><USER4> Apparently, "juggle balls cooperatively" is German for "play catch".

<comment><USER5> volleyball

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These things feel like the iPad of robots, as in basic hardware that's massively customizable via software.

Check out their YouTube channel:

<http://www.youtube.com/user/ETHZurichIDSC>

<comment><USER7> It's funny that you say that, because you can buy an iPad-controlled quadrotor on Apple's store right here:

[http://store.apple.com/us/product/H1991ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA3NA...](http://store.apple.com/us/product/H1991ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA3NA&mco=MjEzMDMyNTY)

<comment><USER8> Just wait till they film one controlling an ipad by gently scraping itself across the screen.... perhaps playing angry birds.

From these videos it looks plausible. The hard part now would be setting up the camera to see what's happening on the screen when the copter is on top of it.

<comment><USER9> You're going to need a sausage stylus for the 'copter to activate the capacitive touchscreen.

Also, the _hard_ part of any such project is the control code.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps it will harvest stylus from the nearest human.

<comment><USER9> Now you have me thinking whether a severed finger would continue to work on a capacitive screen. A fine way to start the morning!

<comment><USER10> Sausage works. Why won't a finger? It is about conductivity, isn't it? May be the bots will pickle our fingers for best results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These robots seem to be using external sensors (cameras mounted in the room, not just on the robot's body).

Of course, the achievement of the research group is impressive, but for those excited about the possibilities to use such robots right now: it's still a long way till relying just on internal sensors and using such robots in arbitrary environment.

<comment><USER12> You don't need an arbitrary environment.

I can imagine having them used as killer bee guards for indoor use - even if they're helpless outdoors. Well to not only think of weapons usage - <USER2> could be used for lots of tasks indoors (painting walls/ceilings for instance :D).

<comment><USER13> Catching litter before it hits the floor!

Shooing cats off the table.

Preventing insects that can carry harmful diseases from entering sterile environments - tropical hospitals could be designed with a long entry hallway swarming with little bots designed to catch flies and mosquitos.

<comment><USER14> It might be more cost effective to have the robots install mosquito netting.

<comment><USER13> It's 2011. I want some _future_ , damnit!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Military use: Personal Grenade "Return To Sender" Protection.

<comment><USER16> Fly a swarm of them around military ships. "Living" armor as missile defense.

<comment><USER17> Missiles move _very_ fast.

<comment><USER18> But they don't change course that fast. They have great velocity, but only average acceleration. These copters have really good acceleration at low speeds, so they should be able to get in the way of a missile with a known target really well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know why my instinct is to anthropomorphize them, but somehow they're goddamned _cute_. Look! Robots playing ping pong!

A robot dog might be in my future :/

<comment><USER20> The last ditch effort they make to grab the ball before it falls feels very human.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, they need an attachment to pick the ball up and start again. I'm sure they're just dying to get rid of the slow human component of their game so they can play faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why aren't they using these in Fukushima:

[http://metamodern.com/2011/03/24/fukushima-%E2%80%94-where-a...](http://metamodern.com/2011/03/24/fukushima-%E2%80%94-where- are-the- parrots/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Metamodern+%28Metamodern%29)

<comment><USER23> Uh... that's your first thought, really? You honestly think, out of the combined force of Japan, the US, the US military, and plenty of brilliant engineers across the globe, that that HASN'T crossed their mind?

Try radiation hardening electronics + battery life + hardening optics/sensors + control range + reliability/safety + size of areas involved = a 1,200lb flying robot that probably won't work, or only work for a few minutes, nevermind will probably crash and break open the pressure casing.

...

Godamnit...

<comment><USER24> [EDITED:] Your condescending tone is unhelpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess if it's Engadget it's not blogspam?

<http://www.youtube.com/user/ETHZurichIDSC>

<comment><USER26> It's never "blogspam" if additional information is provided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> These young whippersnapper roboticists have it so easy these days, what with their new fangled flying robots. Back in my day, we were happy if we could get our robots to walk. In the snow. Up hill. Both ways.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's cool because it's about as good as ping pong as me. Even more if I had to fly.

</comment><comment><USER29> I feel like I'm watching what would be R&D for the movie _Batteries Not Included_ if it were being made now.

All joking aside, I love these things. Logistically, is there any hope of a solar panel attachment to keep them alive longer?

<comment><USER30> I have always wondered if a quadrotor could be set up to harvest wind energy. I'm imagining it propping itself up against a tree or something and letting the wind blow it's rotors to recharge. Does anyone know why that won't work?

<comment><USER31> These aren't quadrotors, but they're relevant: <http://www.makanipower.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's another video of quadrocopters flying through windows: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7X0_6o9J10>

Fascinating and slightly disturbing at the same time.

<comment><USER32> Fear not, unless you have a Vicon system installed in your house. Most of these quadcopter demos involved very expensive motion capture systems to determine the location of the vehicles. Pretty much all of the control software is on a separate system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Call me paranoid, but it probably wont take too many iterations for them to get the price down, and integrate the control system into the quadrocopter. Once that happens, we'll have manhacks on the market.

<comment><USER33> > _Once that happens, we'll have manhacks on the market._

Researchers at CERN have discovered an effective defense against those:

<http://imgur.com/qMCeI>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So, how long until police/military are using these against people?

Definitely within our lifetimes, but this decade?

By the way, the programming looking like it's REACTING to the ball, not PREDICTING how it will respond be based on it's behavior.

<comment><USER35> For surveillance above crowds, within a couple of years if not already IMO.

<comment><USER36> They are already: <http://www.aeryon.com/>

<comment><USER35> I've stumbled across reports of "unnatural dragonfly-like" drones above crowds/protests but it's often hard to tell if those are legit sightings or imaginative conspiracists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm salivating for the opportunity to write AI for this. Reminds me of these drones I saw at GDC: [http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/03/05/gdc-2011-a-r- drone-f...](http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/03/05/gdc-2011-a-r-drone-flying- remote-control-plane-demo-video/)

</comment><comment><USER38> It's not a pleasant thought, but the military applications for this are many and will be very lucrative.

<comment><USER39> When it comes to unpleasant thoughts I'm more scared of this robot bird: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnR8fDW3Ilo>

When you see a quadcopter hovering you know you are being watched. But with the bird it's a different story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'd find it more interesting if you actually managed to get them to compete against each other. They're not playing pong, quite the opposite.

I'd like to see them paint one red and one blue and make them compete in an airborne ping-pong match.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have a question.

It seems like they perform better when they are two than one.

I.e. when it's only one QC it lost the ball quite quickly.

Is this telling of something or is that just coincidence?

<comment><USER42> Seems intuitive to me. Once the ball bounces, a stationary robot will be able to react quicker from moving at a stand-still, where-as the robot that did the bounce has to control it's momentum, which is often going to be going to be taking it in the wrong direction (upwards) to where it wants to be (lower down with x/y shifts to anticipate ball arc)</comment></comment>


Microsoft is downloading Windows 10 to users machines without their consent - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2425381/microsoft-is-downloading-windows-10-to-your-machine-just-in-case <comment><USER2> just posted 50' ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10202360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10202360)</comment>


Is eating behavior manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota? - <AUTHOR> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/bies.201400071/

<comment><USER2> This is a very interesting (though not new) hypothesis. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21303428](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21303428) is the usual citation.

Neither paper has data how much of your dietary behavior is microbe related, which is a shame. Here's the data I have from developing a pseudo-FMT probiotic:

During initial beta testing, I found myself snacking less and forgetting to eat. The forgetting to eat bit was extremely abnormal, as I'm usually very regular about meal times. I also found myself eating breakfast for the first time since starting at college.

These and the experiences of my co-founder were sufficiently interesting that we added questions to our pilot study, where 72% of participants reported a reduction in food cravings and mild weight loss.

So the effect is much bigger than you might imagine. Here's a customer describing his rather extreme subjective experience:

 _" I started a total fast on Monday, and for the first 3 days only consumed water or green tea (and your probiotic), and today I only had BCAAs and a plain salad with vinegar, and so far this has been by far the easiest fast I've ever done. I haven't even gotten to the point where I feel physically hungry yet, and even my psychological desire for food is much weaker than it has been in past fasts."_

If anyone here is interested in a longer discussion of health related microbiome research, [http://www.generalbiotics.com/science](http://www.generalbiotics.com/science) (which my co-founder wrote) provides a fairly through overview.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by "developing a pseudo-FMT probiotic"? How did you do that? I ask because your results are interesting enough that I'd like more information to understand if I should pursue it.

<comment><USER4> I believe he's referring to the product he's selling [1].

I've been struggling with digestive issues all my life. The recent findings on gut microbiome have interested me. I checked out the site below and appreciate the rigor behind the product development. Enough that I'll part with $37 to see if it helps.

[1][http://www.generalbiotics.com/](http://www.generalbiotics.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Alternative hypotheses for unhealthy eating and obesity

Where is the hypothesis that states of hunger and states of anxiety are "signaled through the same mechanisms" (sorry, no time to locate all the long names) and, that the state which in other languages is called "being full" is gives "relief" from anxiety and stress. In other words, overeating is just a misuse of food as an answer to increased stress.

Binge eating is not like binge drinking of a stupid youth, it is like "aged" alcoholism of "staying stable" with a glass in each two hours. And it is much closer to tobacco smoking than to drug abuse (there is a nice course "Drugs and Brain" on coursera, btw).

Sometimes I wish I could be one of these "meme"-scientists claiming that they have found oversimplified single cause (it is microbes, like fly, stupid!) for a vastly complex, multiple-causation phenomena. Of course, microbes have some influence over host's eating behavior, via described neuro-chemical feed-back loops, but of course this is not a "single" or even the "most powerful" cause.

"Change of social norms" was a good insight - now it is OK to live this way.

<comment><USER6> > an answer to increased stress

It appears you did not read the article.

The microbes increase the host's feeling of stress (dysphoria) because it influences the host to overeat.

<comment><USER5> More than everything else? Without quantitative analysis - does it amount for a 0.5% of stress or 3% (which I think is intractable problem) it is an "empty message". Nightfall also increase a feeling of stress, so what? TV increases it more than darkness. How could you distinguish between these causes of stress outside a lab?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Jsn – A relaxed, user-friendly JSON-like data format - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/polymonster/jsn <comment><USER2> The lack of all these added features is the feature of JSON. Just use Toml or Yaml if you need more features and don't like quotes.

Also need to appreciate the immense cost of splintering off yet another data format. The value of common formats is that even if it's not ideal for any of our individual needs, we're at least all using and maintaining the same tools.

I think where experiments like this shine is when you're doing some limited scope personal project. Like I'll probably use this for a few days of Advent of Code to see what ideas stick.

<comment><AUTHOR> This project came about because we were using json a lot for it's for simplicity and also widespread support in languages and tools we were using.

We started hand editing a lot and making more mistakes, but we have a lot of code generated json from build pipelines and use json with a number of different libraries in different tools already so didn't really want to switch to yaml or toml.

Jsn is not meant to replace json, we are still using json a lot natively, we just can write config files more easily and jsn spits out fully compliant json for you, or you can use a python dict the same as json.

Jsn does not have a serializer, once it has been parsed it is json.

<comment><USER3> JSON to YAML is super easy, and back too. That's what we do here. YAML+comments is generated by humans, conver to JSON, merged with JSON made by machines into final JSON configs used by loads of apps. And dumping the whole thing, or parts back out to YAML is trivial.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, in hindsight maybe we could just switch to YAML but it does have quite a lot more syntax.

Jsn started as a python function which removed comments and fixed trailing commas. YAML does not come bundled with python and is an external dependency..

I suppose looking at it now jsn grew to a point where using something else in the first place would have been less work :)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for acknowledging that YAML could have been an alternative choice. But don't let such alternatives stop you from hacking your own solution or scratching your itch. If every person on the earth, stopped developing their own solution because there is an alternative that works with limitations we will see no progress in technology. It is good to develop your solution and then come to the conclusion that there is a better alternative than not having tried at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Universities spend millions on accessing results of publicly funded research - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/universities-spend-millions-on-accessing-results-of-publicly-funded-research-88392 <comment><USER2> When I was in school we had to travel to the library of a different University to work on some of our projects because the one we went to didn't pay for the journals we needed to access to do our work and buying access to a single article would have been ridiculous. We cited over 100 papers in our final project many of those we couldn't access from our school. Paying for them would have cost anywhere from $20 to over $100 per article, not issue, article. A good majority of the studies we cited were funded either directly through government or through universities funded by government. It's entirely a way to keep knowledge out of the hands of the poor. Publicly funded studies should be made freely available to everyone.

Even the project I worked on when I finished school. We were funded by government grants and our results were intended to be posted publicly, it was written in our proposal. Instead, once we started posting our data online we were told that we were no longer allowed to and our data must now be submitted to a government database. Otherwise we would recieve no more funding.This database of course had access fees that needed to be paid. It felt really shitty to have to lock everything away. I'd worked on an online database and map I was really excited about and it all had to be taken down.

<comment><USER3> A friend was working for the EPA and she didn't have access to all the journals to do her work so she had to ask me to fetch them for her from the university library. Remember seeing the prices for each article and each subscription and thinking - they are making some nice profits charging $30 per paper.

<comment><USER4> I've been in academia for three decades, and have yet to pay a cent to download a paper. I don't know any colleagues or students who have done so, either. I doubt that they make much money from per-article fees. I think they set them high so that universities will be forced to subscribe.

My funding councils want people to publish in open-access journals, but they don't provide extra funds for the doubling of cost that's involved. The money has to come from somewhere, and the main cost item tends to be student stipends, so professors tend to continue publishing in pay-access journals.

I've been on both sides of the "fetch for a friend" process. I've had to ask friends to fetch copies of papers that I've written, for which I've paid page charges, because my university had to drop the journal in one or another waves of cost saving.

And for all this money, the journals do very little in the way of contributing to the process, nowadays. Reviewers work for free, as do most academic editors. Technical editors seem to barely exist anymore, since authors do their own typesetting and journals rely on academic reviewers to help with English.

Academics are caught in a narrowing vice as they move through the career process. Papers have to appear in high-reputation journals, or else. And those journals just happen to be expensive.

<comment><USER5> I do not understand what exactly you are claiming in your first paragraph. You say that you have never had to pay for an article yet you "have been on both sides of the fetch for a friend" which strictly speaking (and despite how much I hate it) is illegal.

<comment><USER6> They didn't say they weren't asked to pay for an article - just that they did not. In other words, when confronted with a paywall, they either skipped the article or asked a friend with access.

Note that asking for an article is not always illegal. For example, authors are often allowed to share the article, and there are often also provisions that allow institutions to "loan" access to each other (inter-library loan), although presumably that would have to go through the institution's librarian.

That said, even if it's illegal, I'd worry about it about as much as worrying about pedestrians skipping the red light on deserted crossings.

<comment><USER2> Tell that to the person that started sci hub

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific- resea...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific-research- piracy-site-hit-with-15-million-fine/?amp=1)

I thought the music anti piracy people were bad.

<comment><USER6> Starting Sci-Hub is something I'd worry about far earlier than I'd worry about asking a friend for an article, obviously, just like I'd worry more if I'd started the Pirate Bay than if I'd downloaded a song.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most relevant quote in the article:

        > the research community uses historical journal reputation to
        > evaluate researchers, making it harder for new, better run
        > journals to enter the market.

This problem would be solved tomorrow if those allocating public money to science made funding contingent on the research being published in open access journals.

Scientists can't have their cake and eat it too. Either they fund their own research and publish in prestigious expensive journals that cost the public money, or they take public money and make the research available for all.

But it's not easy to migrate to that because scientist aren't just using journals as a publication platform, but as a reputation platform as a function of their exclusivity and reputation.

<comment><USER8> blaming scientists is misplaced. This is a policy-level question, for which the policy IS evolving fairly rapidly. The scientists are also rapidly updating and most papers have pre-prints available via arxiv or bioRxiv, etc and the NIH and many other funding agencies require open access soon after publication. Lastly, many scientists end-run the publishers and make the print copy PDFs available on their lab websites.

In no way can I imagine how blaming scientists for working within the established incentive structure to advance their careers helps advance this issue.

<comment><USER9> Blaming _individual_ scientists is largely misplaced, but you can definitely blame then collectively. The root cause of a lot of these problems is that academia has an almost farcical obsession with prestige, and that's largely a bottom-up function of the culture. The inability to collectively move to different publishing venues is merely one consequence of this culture.

<comment><USER10> If you want to blame anyone, blame publishers, not scientists. Open Access fees assessed by publishers are astronomical, and fall to the scientists seeking to publish them.

I haven't published in Nature yet, but my group has to fork over thousands per open access article above the usual cost. There is a disincentive to publish open access given that.

<comment><USER11> Blaming the publishers is not very useful, they are just acting according to their self interest. Their interests are not well aligned with those of the public or scientific community, but they won't care about that until they have to. Have to focus on building up the alternatives, so that the publishers lose the power to dictate the terms. It's happening though, slowly...

<comment><USER10> As a publishing scientist, let me tell you, science publishing is _not_ a free market. We can't just "build up the alternatives" because that is not conducive to anyone's scientific career. If it's some no name journal where you will publish along side free energy and cold fusion articles, no one will do it.

The mistake is giving journals a profit incentive in the first place in a system that inherently doesn't work well in a market system. You can't have "competition" between journals, it just doesn't work that way. A handful of journals have high impact factors and so get most of the submissions, that's how it is, and they then can crank up their publishing fees because they can.

Perhaps you shouldn't "blame the publishers" given they are "acting according to their self interest." I did say "If you want to blame anyone[...]," implying I don't really care to blame anyone. I admit I am more inclined to blame the publishers, but the whole system is fundamentally broken.

<comment><USER12> Blame the taxpayer. We as a nation should demand we get access to what we pay for. At this point we are funding publishers to make free money off of what was already paid for.

<comment><USER13> That's effectively what this article does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Recently, I tried to access a paper I had written in the past to put in my grad school application, and couldn't get it. My current university doesn't have access to it. The irony is ridiculous.

<comment><USER15> Same issue, luckily i found a copy buried deep in my google drive

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Everyone working for Elsevier should resign. The board is forced to pursue this rapacious harvest strategy, but the employees are not. They should go work for an honest, value-creating company.

<comment><USER17> Crowd fund a program to offer buy-outs of key employees in immoral enterprises. How much would it take to get half of the employees to resign?

<comment><USER18> Sounds like the Cobra Effect just waiting to happen.

Besides, if the positions pay well there will be plenty of other candidates willing step in. There is no shortage of examples showing that morals are often secondary to money.

<comment><USER19> You didn't explain how it would make the situation worse.

<comment><USER20> GP was referencing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

Some ways this could play out would be:

a) Found a startup that does $immoral_thing, wait for "payouts for everyone" to start rolling in.

b) Like (a), but just invent fake employees and give them a linkedin and some social media profile.

c) As an employee, keep joining immoral enterprises. I get a payday every time! So sort of a reverse incentive actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The practice of charging for subscriptions to information that benefits the public good seems silly. Publishing fees make sense, researchers would work the costs into their grant proposals and taxpayers would ultimately bear the cost there instead of in university departmental budgets.

But I also know nothing about running a journal. Can someone explain the cost structure of an academic journal, and why a model like publishing fees wouldn't work?

<comment><USER22> Most of the work is done by academics who receive no compensation from the publisher. Most importantly, it is expected that one participate in peer review. Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with a reciprocal model of review, but why should publishers get to enjoy enormous profit margins on said work when they're not the ones doing it? Authors don't receive any money from subscriptions or access fees, either. Editors sometimes receive some compensation, but very little. There's just not a lot that the publishers do. It seems unfair that they should be the only ones to profit monetarily from academics' work.

<comment><USER23> Reviewers certainly shouldn't be the ones profiting from it, that would be an absurd conflict-of-interest. Publishers do some work, but I think it's mostly the long-tail problem. The popular stuff is subsidizing the large number of very very esoteric. Unbundling might help.

<comment><USER24> You're mistaken. Paying reviewers would only cause a conflict of interest if it biases reviewers in a particular direction. Which direction would that be?

Paying the reviewer doesn't incentivise them to accept or reject only to actually do the review. As it stands, in many fields reviewers are far from experts in the area they're reviewing but only in the same general discipline. Papers sail through review without proper statistical oversight, because what statistics expert is going to spend their time reviewing psych or bio articles when that's not their discipline?

Well if we paid people to do what amounts to some of the most important work in science, maybe we'd get actual experts to do it!

<comment><USER23> Or, you get charlatans who review for money.

<comment><USER24> That's a danger, for sure, but once you're paying people you can generally be more choosy. CVs can be reviewed as can previous review work.

No one suggests that paying programmers to program results in shoddier work. There just needs to be an accountability and feedback system just like in any other industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And it's gonna cost even more money, because some are trying to actively block access to Scihub. For example: [https://sciencebusiness.net/news/court-tells- internet-compan...](https://sciencebusiness.net/news/court-tells-internet- companies-block-access-pirate-research-site-sci-hub)

</comment><comment><USER26> Something on the order of 50% of all research funding goes to the academic publishing industry.

edit: Downvote if you want, but it is true, maybe not at every institution, but some Latin American countries the budget for access to the literature is greater than what they spend on supporting basic research [0].

0\. [https://www.slideshare.net/biodiego88/force2017-ppt- diegogom...](https://www.slideshare.net/biodiego88/force2017-ppt- diegogomez-81175547)

<comment><USER27> For such a strong statement as that, some context is critical. Many readers are doing mental math based on American pay rates, and concluding that this can't possibly be true. Indeed, the access cost cited won't be anything even slightly approaching 50% in a first world context.

In less well off developing countries, you are absolutely and completely correct in every way, shape, form, and manner. The cost for access to literature can be greater than that of the salaries a department pays its basic research faculty.

<comment><USER28> I am charged with the task of returning a university that used to be a research school before the Khmer Rouge to be a national research university. Professors are paid a little over US$500 a month by the government. Staff often have to buy their own office supplies, computers and even light bulbs. We're finally getting some foreign grants from China to rebuild some of the laboratories, but there is no budget for paying subscriptions to journals. JSTOR provides reasonable discounts for developing countries, as does APNIC (for IP blocks) but it's difficult to try to build something when US45,000 a year is considered to be a low paying job and used as a baseline for access to information.

Thankfully there is lib-gen and sci-hub. Sadly, the United States is trying to force developing countries to support copyright measures that will lock us out if we adopt them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's currently a push in Germany to negotiate more reasonable licensing agreements nationwide, and to publish all research by authors in Germany under a CC-BY licence: [https://www.projekt-deal.de/about- deal/](https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/). There's a long list of universities that have decided not to renew their contracts with Elsevier for future publications. I recently got an email from my university's administration that "numerous scientists have pledged their support in the negotiations with Elsevier by not reviewing for or acting as editor of Elsevier publications until a mutual agreement has been reached".

<comment><USER29> I work at a German research center and we recently also got informed by our library that all contracts with Elsevier will end at the end of year. However, and this is the fun part, it was also noted that it has been reported by other institutions that Elsevier did not actually cancel the access permissions for them after the contracts ended. Seems to me we could finally got into a good position for negotiations about fair access to our own work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Its not only the journals. Another thing that costs shittons of money are standards. A single two-dozen page ISO, DIN or comparable standard can easily amount to a couple thousand Euros. And it's not like you need one. You might need a second or third or fourth one because they just chain their references. "Test Devices can be found in ISO-123" In ISO-123:"The devices listed here have to be configured analogue to the devices mentioned in DIN-2153" And so on. And don't get me started about versioning. A couple of same-number standards in parallel because they are from different months or years or just small amendments (Single Sentences). And there is only one company selling em. It's laughable. Oh, and it's not as if anyone gets paid to write standards. Standards are written for free by engineers and scientists in their free time. It's a money-printing machine.

</comment><comment><USER6> I got so fed up with this that I quit my job a few months ago to work on this issue [1]. I've researched it quite a bit and have written about that (which I've been linking to where relevant in the comments here), and I'm gearing up to launch a non-profit to combat this in January. If you're interested, you can leave your email address at [https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic](https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic)

(And of course, any questions and remarks are welcome!)

[1] [https://medium.com/flockademic/dear-scientists-help-me- help-...](https://medium.com/flockademic/dear-scientists-help-me-help-you- help-me-fix-academic-publishing-fe31004b8de7)

</comment><comment><USER31> In the meantime, Reed Elsevier stock is at an all time high [https://www.nyse.com/quote/XXXX:RELX](https://www.nyse.com/quote/XXXX:RELX)

<comment><USER6> Obviously - they've so far managed to stave off threats to their subscription business model, __and __managed to make good money off of the open access movement (through charging publishing fees for opening up articles).

That said, they do definitely feel the pressure as well, given their moving in the direction of a research analytics company rather than a publisher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> One entity not mentioned in the article : [https://www.plos.org/who-we- are](https://www.plos.org/who-we-are)

</comment><comment><USER33> I posted a commenton how I read mathematics [1] I would be able to not jump through so many hoops if universities got what they contributed.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911888)

<comment><USER6> Now imagine that, but for reading up on experimental treatments for a rare disease that you or a relative got.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This reminds me that the EU had a proposal last year about mandating all publicly-funded research to be open access. I'm curious to see what will become of that.

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic- statement-e...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement- european-leaders-call-immediate-open-access-all-scientific-papers)

[https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=opena...](https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=openaccess)

<comment><USER35> Somewhat related, there's also small advocacy towards releasing publicly funded code under the open source licenses:

[https://publiccode.eu/](https://publiccode.eu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ugh. Why are we still having this conversation after so many years? Everyone knows the system is broken but no one will fix it.

<comment><USER37> In Germany universities have joined efforts to at least bargain with Elsevier & others for overall cost reductions:

[https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/](https://www.projekt-deal.de/about- deal/)

Of course in the US with basically unlimited student loan money, no one seems to be in a particular hurry to cut costs.

<comment><USER6> > Of course in the US with basically unlimited student loan money, no one > seems to be in a particular hurry to cut costs.

Well... [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard- univ...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university- journal-publishers-prices)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm not very well versed in academia, so correct me if I'm wrong.

The research in these journals isn't funded by the journals, and researchers aren't payed royalties for people reading these journals (I assume they don't get paid by the journal at all).

So why are these journals so expensive to access? Is it all just a rort?

<comment><USER6> Basically, yes. There is barely any market pressure on the publishers, so they can keep asking ridiculous fees. More on why it doesn't change at [1], and how it got this way at [2].

[1] [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of- scholarl...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarly- publishing-eef794937c9c) [2] [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable- business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've had dealings with the publishing industry over the years and some of the "Open Access to the rescue!" comments here badly underestimate the business acumen of Elsevier & co.

They're no idiot. Do you think these guys have been asleep at the wheel for the _past 6 years_ , oblivious to the Open Access debate and the general sentiment?

When it comes to Open Access, the new distribution and sales channels have already been accounted for, new policies (and policy makers) worked out. Open Access will be the second coming of Christ for that industry, a new golden goose.

</comment><comment><USER40> Lets narrow it a little bit for anyone who wants to try and argue that there is nothing wrong here...

Universities pay publishing companies millions to access the results of research their employees performed.

<comment><USER41> ... and publishing companies use that money to lobby against free/cheaper alternatives.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chemical_Society#Cont...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chemical_Society#Controversies)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am not a researcher, so I'd like to get some answers.

Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the research?

Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers?

If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on costly journals?

<comment><USER6> > Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it > a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the > research?

All three of those are correct.

> Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and > make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers?

Yes, although it's usually not that simple. The focus of research is usually more fundamental in nature, that only leads to products far down the road.

But note that the researchers are funded using public money, so if there was anything to give back, it would be to the public (which sort of happens through new companies).

> If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that > the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on > costly journals?

"Acknowledgement" goes beyond that - it needs to be considered good in order to qualify for further academic positions. See [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that- ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or- break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> A good journal needs good reviewers.

The quality of peer-review at conferences for example is terrible, and that is well known. Even at not very big conferences, and despite the usually hard work of the organizers.

So establishing a good review process is not easy and perhaps that is what is stopping the open access model rather than just the prestige issue mentioned in other comments.

<comment><USER24> The review process at the "prestige" journals in many disciplines is garbage. This is a known issue. Competent experts simply don't have time to do the reviews, so they end up being farmed out to graduate students and post-docs if they get done at all. I had one paper get rejected, because they couldn't find anyone to review it! By the time a reviewer is found, you're often the action- editor's last desperate pool of 5th-tier people who are sort of maybe vaguely related to the topic area.

Add to that that the majority of papers in many disciplines receive virtually zero statistical oversight from an actual statistical expert, and... well... you begin to wonder what service the existing journals are actually adding. Marketing and sales?

<comment><USER43> I know that in some journals it is good some of the time. But yeah, didn't mean to imply thats always good. Maybe we should introduce a process of reviewing the reviews, and some incentives accordingly. Not sure how to do that.

<comment><USER44> An example - as a 1st year grad student, I had to review a number of articles in 'top-ranked' journals, just because my supervisor preferred to dump it on me rather than bother to do it himself...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Are there good open source solutions for journal publishing? (HTML abstract, PDFs, comments, ...)?

<comment><USER6> Yes, quite a few: [1], [2], [3], [4], to name a few. Maintain a server and keeping software up to date is no small feat, however, so just making those available does not seem to be enough (although it helps!).

[1] [https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/](https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/)

[2] [https://janeway.systems/](https://janeway.systems/)

[3] [https://coko.foundation/](https://coko.foundation/)

[4] [https://cos.io/](https://cos.io/)

<comment><USER46> I don't think that [4] can really be accurately characterized as producing general-purpose journal management systems. The OSF is more for study management and sharing results, although I imagine that you're referring to OSF Preprints ([https://osf.io/preprints](https://osf.io/preprints)) which serves a similar function for pre-peer review results sharing.

For [3], the actual platforms produced by Coko and its affiliates are more readily discovered here: [https://pubsweet.org/](https://pubsweet.org/) [http://substance.io/](http://substance.io/)

Hadn't heard of [2] before- looks neat.

We have [1] currently deployed for a couple of websites where I currently work. We've found it to be a bit of a pain and are trying to phase it out to some degree. It's basically a layer on top of WordPress to the best of my understanding (I haven't dealt too much with it).

<comment><USER6> You're completely correct, thanks for the updated links!

Your final point is probably correct, but I'd add that when it comes to wanting to take publishing out of the hands of the established publishers, having to run software yourself is going to be painful anyway (though hopefully not as painful as OJS, which has quite a history already).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What is stopping somebody from not publishing in a journal and simply putting up a PDF on their own website?

Otherwise, if you ran a Journal, how would you setup a free system to curate high-impact research? Or alternatively, how much would you charge to run such a journal?

<comment><USER6> > What is stopping somebody from not publishing in a journal and simply > putting up a PDF on their own website?

That they want to have a job in research, which are really, really scarce. I explained this in more detail at [https://medium.com/flockademic/the- ridiculous-number-that-ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous- number-that-can-make-or-break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

> Otherwise, if you ran a Journal, how would you setup a free system to curate > high-impact research? Or alternatively, how much would you charge to run > such a journal?

If you run a journal, you're most likely one of the big publishers that is profiting heavily from the status quo.

Much of the actual academic work (finding reviewers, etc.) is done by actual academics (mostly for free), but the rest of it, including promoting it to potential readers, is done by the publishers. (There have been some success stories of editorial boards leaving the publishers' journals to start their own, e.g. Glossa (formerly Lingua), but those are few and far between.

<comment><USER47> Thanks for your comment. I enjoyed reading your article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's easy to be outraged by this, but the bottom line is that journals need to make money to sustain their own operations. Research might be tax-funded, but the publishing houses are privately-held entities with employees and payroll (per their wiki page, for example, Nature employs 800 people).

Someone has to pay for expenses associated with maintaining these platforms. Right now its either the tax payers or college students who pay for it indirectly, when their institution buys library access.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but there are strong reasons to believe that the amount of money they are currently charging is in no way proportionate to the amount they need to sustain (+reasonable profits): [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-future-of- open-access-sho...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-future-of-open-access- should-not-be-left-to-the-legacy-publishers-634c188d28b9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Can't wait for the day that universities are massively overpaying supplies, chemicals and equipment comes to light.

<comment><USER50> Those are not comparable to research publications. The university does not give corporations chemicals for free and then pay to get them back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's almost like everyone agrees capitalism is fucking terrible.

</comment><comment><USER52> Remember Aaron Swartz

</comment><comment><USER53> How the hell is this even legal? And people say the government is efficient? Is waste like this even preventable? Is it possible for people to have ethics?

<comment><USER54> Please don't post unsubstantive rants to HN. I'm sure most of us agree with you but one still has to bring thoughtful comments, not howls, into the discussion.

If you can't or don't want to do that, please just don't post until you can and do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Because it costs money to read the research that costs money to produce... How is this controversial?

<comment><USER46> I would review the following articles for more context / so that you can actually produce an informed (rather than lazy) opinion:

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable- business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science) [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/22/academic- publishing-monopoly-challenged) [https://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31858...](https://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31858/title/Opinion--Academic- Publishing-Is-Broken/) [http://thecostofknowledge.com/](http://thecostofknowledge.com/)

<comment><USER56> the first thing I thought of when I came across this post is indeed [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable- business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)</comment></comment></comment>


Earth's Mysterious Magnetic Field, Stored in a Jar - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/earths-mysterious-magnetic-field-stored-in-a-jar <comment><USER2> > Today, the scientific consensus is that the field arises in Earth's outer > core, where the movement of liquid iron creates a giant, self-perpetuating > electromagnetic dynamo, ...

I get that this is in the New Yorker, but "self-perpetuating" is just _wrong_. It's dissipating rotational energy, I think. I believe that "self-exciting" is more accurate. Yes?

</comment><comment><USER3> For a moment I saw .jar which would be a surprising title

<comment><USER4> I'd click on that.</comment></comment>


Free servers with 1080Ti for deep learning - <AUTHOR> There's no catch. We're on very early stage with https://tensorpad.com — it works pretty well already but we are looking for as much feedback as possible to improve the overall experience and make the product perform better.
We are offering free 1080Ti GPU instances for deep learning.
Sign up at https://dashboard.tensorpad.com/signup

    - The instances have 16GB RAM, 4 CPU cores (Ryzen Threadripper), and one 1080Ti GPU, and you can run up to two instances in parallel. Contact us if you need more.

    - Instances run a customizable JupyterLab deployments (currently the choice is between fast.ai, PyTorch 0.4, TensorFlow+Keras 1.10, 1.9, 1.8, 1.7 and 1.5 on CuDNN 9.0)

    - You can access the command line and with full root access and use at as regular Linux server
 Our goal is to lower the entry barrier for deep learning so we will work hard to make sure we support the community. We are inviting you to help us learn how we can better support researchers in the field of AI. We want to improve the product, and so we are exploring the community feedback.
We will be providing free GPU time, reaching out to the registered users and asking for feedback. If this sounds like something that would fit you, please don't hesitate to sign up at https://dashboard.tensorpad.com/signup
If you have any questions, feature requests or any other feedback, reach us using the chat button in dashboard, or drop an email to email@example.com
Thanks for your attention! <comment><USER2> Awesome. How cool is that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it!</comment></comment>


Publish your book with Markdown - <AUTHOR> https://moopato.com/ <comment><USER2> Honest question out of technical curiosity, not trying to de-value the product: is this output/end product significantly different from writing your book in markdown and using something like pandoc to create an e-book?</comment>


EPYC's Chinese Counterpart, Hygon C86, Takes No.1 Spot in Cryptography Benchmark - <AUTHOR> https://wccftech.com/amd-epyc-chinese-hygon-c86-no-1-cryptography-sisoft-ranker/ <comment><USER2> > If you remember reading my exclusive (here) on AMD's partnership with Hygon > you would remember that the one thing AMD did not design in the Hygon > processor was the cryptographic layer.

The processor with china-mandated modified encryption runs much faster than their regular counterparts?</comment>


Show HN: statifyme.com web app built on python & django - <AUTHOR>

I've just launched my coming soon page for Statify, a website monitoring service built using python and django. While the soon coming page has been just been launched. I've been busy the last few months working on the actual service, which is very near completion.
I regularly build and maintain sites and anyone whose ever built a site will know that they will go down at some point and you'll find out via the client or from pissed off users.
So I decided to build my own app that would track my sites and notify me when they go down, that way I can get a jump on things before clients and users jump on me :)
I recently started using python & django and found the power and the cleanest of them to be wonderful and a welcome relief from other languages. My goal with this project is make a simple to use, fire and forget app that will let you manage your websites and be notified when something goes wrong. Along the way I hope to share lessons I'll learn and I look forward to learning more from others. Your feedback is very welcome, thanks.
http://statifyme.com http://twitter.com/statifyme <comment><USER2> Why should I use this instead of <http://pingdom.com/> ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, while pingdom is a similar type service, Statify (<http://statifyme.com>) will focus on just the simple task of notifying you when your site is down. The tools will be a lot easier to use, setup and manage your sites, there will be no fluff to get in the way. The pricing will be a lot simpler too, you'll get more for way less. As I get closer to launch I'll update the launch page to show more of the coming features. Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As mentioned before, the load time is awful. Furthermore, the white text with a glow effect hurts my eyes: it's very hard to read.

The logo is cool, though. Can't say much more at this time, since all that there is is a signup form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm tweaking it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was kinda thinking about making my own, just for my own sites, got a cool domain: <http://d0wnt1.me>

</comment><comment><USER5> Page load was very slow for me (especially the background). Probably worth looking in to

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm checking it out now.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here are the click-able links to the page, Your feedback is very welcome, thanks.

<http://statifyme.com> <http://twitter.com/statifyme>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm just curious, are you pinging the server every few minutes?</comment>


Ask HN: Why no search bar? - <AUTHOR>

When I first wondered why there was no search bar, I went to go find it to see if this had been asked already. <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure this came up before and PG's short answer was that while he isn't opposed to a search bar, it's a feature and features take time. And that time's a resource he didn't have between managing a new YC funding cycle and getting hitched.

</comment><comment><USER3> google for "site:news.ycombinator.com [query]" or <http://www.searchyc.com/></comment>


Curated list of mind expanding books - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hackerkid/Mind-Expanding-Books <comment><USER2> This is just a list. There is no curation. No commentary, no analysis, no setting in context.

<comment><USER3> It fits the definition of curation: "The act of curating, of organizing and maintaining a collection of artworks or artifacts."</comment></comment>


The Art of Assembly Language (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20010903173628/http://cs.smith.edu:80/~thiebaut/ArtOfAssembly/fwd/fwd.html <comment><USER2> I love assembly language! I stream my programming sessions Monday-Saturday 5am-10am on Twitch ([https://twitch.tv/nybblesio](https://twitch.tv/nybblesio)).

All of my previous streams are archived here: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaV77OIv89qfsnncY5J2zvg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaV77OIv89qfsnncY5J2zvg)

I have around 23 videos now on YouTube covering both ARM 64-bit and x86 assembly language.

I have two projects on the schedule that are 100% assembly language:

\- Let's Make an Arcade Game in MS-DOS: 100% x86 assembly language. I use DOSBOX and period tools for this project.

\- Arcade Kernel Kit: 100% ARM AArch64 assembly language running on Raspberry Pi 3.

All of the code for these is available on Github: [https://github.com/nybblesio](https://github.com/nybblesio)

I'm also working on a game engine called Ryu: The Arcade Construction Kit where I'm writing my own assembler for classic arcade CPUs.

I'll be working on the x86 project again starting 2 April through 7 April.

<comment><USER3> Cool initiative, but please don't add music to the videos. It makes me nervous and unable to focus on you talking. Such a waste of otherwise great content.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback. The videos I have on my YouTube channel to-date are all from my Twitch streams. For or better or worse, these streams capture my working habits: when the camera isn't running, I'm doing the exact same thing -- even talking to myself. :) For some reason, suffering from ADHD, music helps to focus my attention. I've never been able to explain why.

However, with all that said, I am producing non-stream content that will start airing on my YouTube channel soon (within the next 30 days). This content will be more structured and focus on a specific topics with a set lesson plans. These videos won't feature any background music. I hope you'll be able to enjoy these when they're available.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for making these videos. I'm watching the "x86 assembly language programming on reference arcade game" video right now.

Knowing that the music is there for your focus actually makes it a lot easier for me to focus as well, somehow. Glad to know that.

Your voice is very relaxing, I'm actually working while I watch! Great explanations also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> emily-c Assembly language is really fun to write! I think that it's really important to know the basics of modern computer architecture and their ISAs. All abstractions are leaky and I don't think that you can be a truly proficient systems programmer if you don't know the basics of the hardware your code runs on.

Lately I have been writing a lot of code in x64 asm for fun. I've found that it's impressive how much functionality you can fit in such a small amount of space. Randall Hyde's book got me started but I think that a much better introduction would be Paul Carter's PC Assembly Language [https://pacman128.github.io/pcasm/](https://pacman128.github.io/pcasm/)

<comment><USER5> I still don't understand how you can use basic data structure in assembly. I know strings are just allocating a blob of bytes and usually reserving the last for null terminator, but what about arrays? Is it just like in C where you allocate a blob of bytes but now you manually calculate where the index is based on item size? What about hash tables, that seems even more confusing... are they just not needed due to the nature of assembly?

<comment><USER6> Well, Hash tables are much more complicated. I think the closest analog is going to be a jump table, just with fancy math.

I feel like the hardest part of Assembly is all of the hex math required...

<comment><USER7> Just use a programmer's calculator or a software calculator (e.g. bc on Unix, RealCalc on Android) for the hex math (and for math in other number bases and conversions between bases too). Or even write one of your own as an exercise and then use it.

<comment><USER8> Do you even do any of the hex math when writing actual code in assembly?

I understand when you use something along the lines of a disassembler that requires you to actually see the addresses of the values. But even these are sophisticated enough to give you symbolic values instead.

<comment><USER9> A lot of my hobby programs are emulators or parsers for old file formats (think DOS-era games). Bitfields become important, and they're more convenient to express in hex than in decimal.

There are times where it feels convenient to express things in decimal and times where it seems better to use hex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really enjoyed learning x86 assembly in college, and I'd highly recommend others give it a try. If you focus on the core essentials (e.g. the reduced instruction set from the 8086), it's a small and fun toolkit.

Learning assembly and creating my own simulated processor using multiple layers of logic gates was one of the main cornerstones of my college education. I remember when things finally "clicked" and I finally understood how computers worked on a fundamental level, I was positively giddy for days.

Unfortunately, our technology has become increasingly complex. For a while I tried my hand at learning more about modern processors, but found it far too overwhelming. Maybe I just didn't know where to look for more approachable resources. Just taking a look at the reference manuals provided by Intel is enough to make anyone lose hope. I seriously doubt any single human is capable of reading and understanding that in any reasonable amount of time.

If you wanna go down into the metal, consider picking up a microcontroller and writing your own firmware. You can ditch the OS and start squeezing every ounce of power from the hardware. It's pretty crazy how little power a well configured microcontroller can get by with.

I'd also suggest learning WebAssembly! The text format is quite pleasant, and it does away with many of the issues you'd have to deal with when using real hardware. Even better, the spec [0] is actually quite readable for regular developers. That might let people get their feet a bit wet without having having to go into the deep end of the pool right away.

[0] [https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/index.html](https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/index.html)

<comment><USER11> "From NAND to Tetris" is the classic starting point.

<comment><USER12> The NAND to Tetris textbook is a masterpiece. (The book is called The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles. The authors are Nisan and Schocken).

I worked through the entire textbook by myself, doing all the projects, and having no previous knowledge of computer architecture or compilers. It was a challenging but smooth process. The difficulty level was just right and I didn't get frustrated.

The computer you build is designed brilliantly. It's as simple as it can be, while still being a real computer can be that can play video games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> MC68000 assembly language was so much fun on the great Commodore Amiga. It gave you the opportunity not only to code quickly nice video effects, but also to learn a lot about what is the architecture of a computer, how the CPU works with other coprocesseors (there were many on the Amiga, among which the Blitter to copy data blocks / draw lines / fill shapes, and the amazing Copper to control the video).

I recently decided to code again some stuff because I wanted to write some articles for the retro section of a magazine, and it was so pleasant that I coded some more and documented it (here for those interested, in french at this time, but there are pictures: [http://www.stashofcode.fr/category/retrocoding/](http://www.stashofcode.fr/category/retrocoding/)).

I hope people still have the opportunity to have a look at assembly language at school. The article is interesting. It reminds me also that I always heard that coding in assembly language was hard. Well, I would not have say that back in 1996. x86 was a pain in the ass because of the lack of registers and the way memory was managed, but Mx68x00 was very simple indeed. IMO, what was a bit difficult was that if you wanted to code assembly, you had to learn about how what was around the CPU did work.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't remember which book I read on 6502 assembly (may have been Randall Hyde's, actually), but learning it was one of the most satisfying programming experiences I've ever had. Strongly recommended for coders of all types and styles, even if it's a dialect that's pretty far removed from the CPU of your standard environment. You'll never be confused by what is meant by a pointer or reference ever again, that's for sure!

And anyway I have this cool Apple II video codec to show for my efforts :)

[https://hackaday.com/2013/07/22/animated-gifs-on-an-apple- ii...](https://hackaday.com/2013/07/22/animated-gifs-on-an-apple-ii/)

<comment><USER15> There's a nice interactive 6502 tutorial at [https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/](https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I didn't see a link to navigate to the rest of the book, so here's the Table of Contents from the same date:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20010812234934/http://cs.smith.ed...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010812234934/http://cs.smith.edu:80/~thiebaut/ArtOfAssembly/ArtofAsm.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> If, as a novice, you wish to write assembly code: \- compile your code with "-O3 -S" and examine \- analyze it.

Assume that glibc for your architecture is going to be hand tuned (and exceptionally highly optimized)

Read and try to understand the native mem _() and str_ () routines, as the folk who write these routings DEEPLY understand the micro-architecture and instruction set.

A counter example: all implementations of strlen() which evaluate a single character at a time are completely inept if the architecture has vector comparison capabilities.

<comment><USER18> If you can cut things down to something reasonably self-contained, [https://godbolt.org/](https://godbolt.org/) is incredibly useful. For example, I was curious about the approximate inverse square root instruction, so I wrote some code: [https://godbolt.org/g/qdfSj4](https://godbolt.org/g/qdfSj4)

It's a lot easier to read that than the raw output from gcc. The highlighting between matching segments is nice, and the right-click menu has all sorts of goodies, like scrolling everything to the same place or showing the manual entry for some instruction. Plus, it's super easy to see the effect of switching flags or compilers.

Though to your point, apparently godbolt v0.0.1 was basically just:

        watch "g++ /tmp/test.cc -O2 -c -S -o - -masm=intel | c++filit | grep -vE '\s+\.'"

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Randy wrote the Lisa Assembler for the Apple II.

[https://archive.org/details/LISAAssemblerVersion2.5ManualPho...](https://archive.org/details/LISAAssemblerVersion2.5ManualPhotocopySource)

</comment><comment><USER20> Memories! Thank you for digging this up. 1996 sounds about rigtht - that's when I actually read the thing, and that, alas, is around the last time I did any serious assembly. Switching to Linux, and later on to 64bit, and all sorts of complexities cropping up, nd portability becoming more of an issue, I sort of lost touch, but it was wonderful while it lasted. Squeezed some screaming speed and ridiculously microsized code out of 486's and early pentiums.

I stil squirm when I see anything javascripty labelled ' _asm_ '. Because, you know, it's not.

</comment><comment><USER21> Recalling when I was at college I used machine code to pre-fetch data into cache to improve an algorithm by 40x, even the professor did not believe that and asked me to explain all the hacking code I did and later on gave me the highest grade for that class. Yes ASM and machine-code are fantastic...

</comment><comment><USER22> I learned x86 floating point assembly from Ray Seyfarth's book:

[https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bit-Assembly- Programming...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bit-Assembly-Programming- Linux/dp/1484921909/)

I figured out how to write some basic stuff, then I learned to use perf to performance tune. Being able to read a little assembly was a revolution for me.

I also chuckled about how C is non-portable; omg C++ is so much worse. In some sense, x86 asm is more portable than just about anything now, sure you can't run it on ARM, but your C++ code won't compile on ARM either and you'll be in #ifdef hell for two weeks to get it there, at which point you'll give up.

<comment><USER23> Why is C++ less portable than C? In my experience, non-portable code happens when the interaction with the OS is not well isolated. Since the major OS interfaces are C header files, I don't see why C++ makes it any worse.

<comment><USER22> I should've clarified: I meant portability of code so that is can be compiled by multiple compilers, VS, clang, gcc. The feature set for C++ is so vast that it's almost certain that you'll write code on for one compiler that doesn't compile on another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Available in print from No Starch Press, last updated in 2010 [https://nostarch.com/assembly2.htm](https://nostarch.com/assembly2.htm)

<comment><USER25> The second edition introduces high-level assembly (HLA) though. I never found HLA to be that appealing. I'd be curious to know if anyone who has read the book found it to be useful in learning assembly. I used "Assembly Language for x86 processors" by Kip Irvine, and I thought it was pretty good.

<comment><USER26> I've had many an argument with Randy over HLA and I agree. His point is that it makes assembly and computer programming at a low level easier to understand but I just don't see it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Writing assembly is tedious when the processor is smaller than the task at hand. Doing more than 8-bit math on a 6502 was a pain because you had to handle multi-byte addition yourself. Zero page - because no 16bit pointers. But when the processor isn't too small and the instruction set is well written with humans in mind (I look away from Intel here) it can be kind of nice. The MC68000 was a dream compared to earlier processors I'd used before.

On a related note, I learned first on an 8080 but with a different naming and syntax than the standard intel ASM. Maybe it's because that's what I learned first, but it still seems better to this day.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is anyone still programming in assembly in 2018? Maybe some embedded systems people?

<comment><USER29> Not really, but I'm writing C code and reading the asm with the expectation of seeing exactly the asm I expect. About the only major thing I want from the compiler is register allocation and scheduling, but it's way more maintainable to let the compiler make these decisions based on its machine model than have me do it.

Note that I'm a heavy user of intrinsics and SIMD, so I'm writing a lot of code where I've pretty much already done instruction selection, often at algorithm design time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love assembly! I think if you know C/C++ it's not too difficult to learn. One thing I noticed is, it can be a bit rough coming back to an old project, I thought I had left enough comments on one of my projects ([https://github.com/nemasu/asmttpd](https://github.com/nemasu/asmttpd)), but I was still scratching my head a bit in some places.

</comment><comment><USER31> A shining example of the principal that sometimes restrictions precipitate the most creativity.

</comment><comment><USER32> Its a fair metric that the amount of maintenance in coding support is proportional to the number of lines of code you write. Assembly code is an order of magnitude lines longer than higher level languages.

Otherwise I dont think Assembly is that difficult to learn or code.

</comment><comment><USER33> I only got into assembly recently when programming the C64, its such a simple instruction set and there is so much documentation that it seemed to me much easier to get into. Also its fun to have to work around its limitations.

</comment><comment><USER34> x86/amd64 assembly, along with common lisp, are two languages that I find pleasurable in itself to write in. Probably because there no artificial barriers to what is possible. There's nothing more infuriating than knowledge that something is possible but artificially prevented/hidden.

</comment><comment><USER35> Which assembler do people typically use these days? nasm?

<comment><USER34> I recommend fasm

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I loved this, best book on assembly ever written.

</comment><comment><USER37> Knuth's Art of Computer Programming is written in an Assembly variant, FWIW. At least you get to see the memory as it's actually being written to.</comment>