E-Residency in Estonia, Part I - <AUTHOR> https://www.lawfareblog.com/e-residency-estonia-part-i-wherein-i-apply-digitally-betray-my-country <comment><USER2> Toomas Hendrick Ilves, the current Estonian President, represents a cybersecurity expert. Things like that can mean a big deal, with respect to policy.

I lived next door, in Riga, Latvia, for several months, in late 1997; during that time, we visited the beautiful city of Tallinn: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallinn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallinn) . Definitely worth the trip.

<comment><USER3> Talinn is a beautiful city. It feels a bit Scandinavian, but newer, smaller, friendlier, more optimistic, less rich but faster growing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In every EU country digital signatures have the same validity as physical signatures since a long time (Directive 1999/93/EC). Most company filings are submitted electronically. Every state keeps a list of certified identification providers, which are mutually recognised. This list usually includes some government agencies, the national post service, sometimes banks, professional associations, chambers of commerce, and other private providers. The identification device is either a smartcard or an RSA dongle. The smartcard can be also used as PKI certificate for remote logine, S/MIME signatures, etc.

What is so special about the Estonian programme?

<comment><USER5> > What is so special about the Estonian programme?

They actually use it.

<comment><USER6> They've had this in Sweden for like 10 years. It's all pretty clunky, even though you can now use an app instead. You generally have to have your card, then some plug-in, then the host have to implement the whole thing. Usually signing things isn't the whole story either, so you still have to deal with e.g. payments.

The Estonian system is probably better, since it's newer, but the challenge isn't really in handing out cards. It's standardizing authentication on the Internet and connecting that to whatever else matters.

<comment><USER7> That's the trick, all Estonian government services + all private services which benefit from strong authentication or authorization have implemented the ID-card log in and signature functionality to their services/apps/websites.

So whether I send 5€ to my mother, or I sell my car to a stranger on other side of the country, or I submit my yearly tax data, or I complete my 1 000 000 € M&A deal, I use my digital identity (PKI infrastructure) to sign the transaction.

The physical ID-card itself is not the most user friendly token in this Estonian infrastructure (requires the reader + op system drivers/soft). The alternative token is Mobile-ID, where the same PKI infrastructure is deployed onto my phone SIM card and I use my mobile device to authenticate / authorize my transactions. At the moment this only works with certified Estonian carriers but in 2016 the next generation of mobile support should make this channel usable over the whole world.

<comment><USER6> Don't get me wrong that's all good and well, but it's still 15 year old technology being implemented and not a paradigm shift. Most of the time you're still going to be typing in your e-mail, postal address and credit card number when doing things online. It's not like you swipe your card once for logging in to you computer and then when buying some service online to verify the setting up a subscription payment and having all your data at the provider encrypted with your identity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can I and if I can, how easy it is to get e-residency, open bank account and form a company from abroad (I am from Serbia)? Anyone with such an experience and using such company for a startup?

<comment><USER9> Getting e-residency is pretty easy. You would have to pick up your ID card, and residency package, at one of the authorized locations, though, and there is none is Serbia. I think the closest may be the Estonian consulate in Vienna. But, if you are going to travel, it may be more worthwhile to go to Tallinn.

Once you have e-residency (which takes a few weeks to be granted) opening a company can be done in a day. You will need an official address in Estonia, but there are several companies that offer that service. I used LeapIn, whose prices are very reasonable. They can also take care of your accounting.

Opening a bank account requires you to visit the bank in person (another reason why traveling to Tallinn is worthwhile). It is not guaranteed that they will open the account for you. I visited two banks. The first turned me down because I could not prove sufficient ties to Estonia. Swedbank (one the the three largest banks operating in Estonia) did accept me. They have a very good service. LeapIn was very helpful in setting this up too. Please note that Estonia is working on making the bank account opening process easier later this year (I believe it will make it possible for you to open an account from abroad; but it is not there yet, as far as I know).

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the answer. I have seen this "The first turned me down because I could not prove sufficient ties to Estonia." on some other place as a reason for a turn down. What they actually need to prove ties to Estonia when you are only e-citizen? Or that other bank that accepted you is not requesting such proof? If you have income with that company, how hard and costly is to take that money (as I understood they tax only when you pay income from the company to you).

<comment><USER9> The proof of your links to Estonia is really up to the bank. They each have their own policy. I think, in my case, it helped that LeapIN was there with me. A local business partner who speaks the language and is there with you for support, I think is an advantage anywhere.

If your company is a foreign-operated LLC (OÜ), which is what I opened, and what was recommended to me (I have no employees and reside in another EU country) then the only taxes are VAT, and dividend tax, which is incurred when dividend is paid out. There is no income tax.

Note that the dividend tax liability is of the company making the payment, not of the individual receiving the payment. So, even if there was a taxation treaty between Estonia and Serbia to avoid double taxation, you personally may still be liable for dividend tax in Serbia, if Serbia taxes foreign dividend income. But, here comes the usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or an accountant. You'd better check with one!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know if they will take a US DL, or do you pretty much need a passport? Their form has an option for "other ID" but I'm skeptical that a drivers license is adaquate.

Otherwise there's a consulate in NYC so it would be easy to pick up :)

<comment><USER11> You need to present a legal travel document (passport or ID-card), driver license won't do as mentioned in an update to the original article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I applied for this about a year ago and actually got approved. I was instructed to go to their New York embassy to pick it up but I live in SF. I wish they would mail it in or were okay with it being picked up at other consulates/embassies.

<comment><USER13> I'm afraid there's a fingerprinting requirement</comment></comment>


Robots Still Haven't Taken Over: A brief history of machine anxiety - <AUTHOR> http://lithub.com/its-been-100-years-and-the-robots-still-havent-taken-over/ <comment><USER2> The meme that man's creations will eventually kill their maker is at least as old as the jewish Golem. They're classic tales warning of hubris. Whether it's automata or summoned demons doesn't make much of a difference I think.

What's interesting to me is that as technology progressed, the gap between fiction and fact keeps narrowing. Take for example _Der Sandmann_. While true artificial intelligence is still far away, I think we'll see animated sex dolls in the next ten or twenty years that rival the capabilities Olimpia displays. As we already have a small number of people that prefer dolls to humans, I wonder where the tipping point will be where, say, about as many people are gay as are robophile.

<comment><USER3> I thought the twitter list of ethical questions about sex robots was fascinating in the ways it asked some very real questions about this.

The change that I continue to watch for is not when robots are used to do an undesirable job, but instead they are used to do a desirable one. I suspect the first hints of that are programs that write sports copy for newspapers. I have known a couple of sports writers over the years and they really liked what they did, and would (and sometimes did) do the job for free.

<comment><USER4> Heavy automation definitely does away with jobs that people liked doing, but that's been true since the industrial revolution.

Most train drivers like driving trains, something like London's DLR doesn't have train drivers (a human _can_ drive the train, but when they take over it deliberately goes slowly for safety reasons, so this is not normally used in paying service). A five year old (or a twenty-something going on five years old) gets to sit at the front and pretend they're driving, which is fun for them but it's not a job any more.

Some people enjoy operating a simple mechanical loom. Some expensive cloths are still today "hand woven" with such a loom because the legal protection for the name of the cloth mandates that they be produced this way. Probably everything else you have that was woven is woven automatically by a machine because machines produce the same quality as a skilled weaver but in enormous volume and more quickly.

The question is never whether machines will displace people from jobs, but about whether new jobs will come into existence (in large numbers) to replace those jobs. It's not "Can a machine do my job?" so much as "Is there anything I could get paid to do that a machine couldn't do?".

<comment><USER5> People say automation will kill many jobs, but often forget that when that day comes, we'll also be much more empowered.

Now we can use neural nets and all sorts of mechatronics to create our own automation and bots. Software's free and hardware is cheap. What will so many people with so much free time on their hands, and with needs that are unfulfilled, do?

<comment><USER6> > Software's free and hardware is cheap.

Imho that hardware part really depends on scale. As nice as the thought might be, I doubt there are enough resources on Earth for a future where 8 billion people live a leisurely first world lifestyle in their smart homes with IT gadgets all around them, while robots take care of all the manual labor that needs to be done.

All that hardware requires resources and those resources are finite, at least on that little piece of rock we like to call Earth. As of right now that's pretty much the current ceiling for humanities progress and it ain't a very high one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The counter argument is that they actually _have_ , but we call them corporations. Artificial quasi-sentient life forms, with superhuman powers and in many cases, rights beyond those of humans. With the rise of the internet and ecommerce, it's possible for them to transact with each other with no human intervention. Think about a whole ecosystem of DAOs.

<comment><USER8> I can still get a job working for a corporation though. Maybe not with actual robots.

<comment><USER7> I think the robot apocalypse scenario is broad enough to include humans working for our robot overlords. :-) Think of the many humans essentially indentured to corporations, working for low wages while trying to pay off enormous debt.

<comment><USER9> Meh. It beats the old days. At no point in human history have we been so comfortable.

It's hard, yes, but we only have eight hours every weekday forced out of us. That's a bit different from the past.

<comment> vertex-four "It's better than it used to be" is not a valid argument against thinking about the problems of how it currently is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone who thinks robots haven't taken over hasn't been paying much attention.

The major difference is that, factory automation aside, they don't _look_ like robots. They look like the normal everyday items that they replaced, except they are imbued with more intelligence.

Take, for example, modern cars. They're really as much software as hardware these days. Networked processors talking to each other via CAN bus. Just because they're driveable robots doesn't mean they're not robots.

That's leaving aside the other issue, which is that it turns out it's much easier to automate non-physical processes.

<comment><USER11> You focused on explaining how many everyday objects could be described as robots, but you left out any discussion of the phrase "taken over."

<comment><USER10> I mean it simply, many of our major life activities are now intermediated by robots. Logistics, manufacturing, farming, transportation, media and entertainment, etc.

How long has it been since most people have hand-written a letter?

<comment><USER12> I feel like people are confusing the meaning of "taken over" because it means both "outnumbers" and "controls".

Electronic messages outnumber paper letters, but humans still control both.

<comment><USER10> Well, I mean it in the sense that, if you turned off all of the microprocessors, what would still function? Almost nothing. Ergo everything that would die is "taken over" fully by automation, in a way that should concern people but not terrify them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If someone doesn't think "robots" (i.e., automation) hasn't devastated the usual human modes of keeping a livlihood, they haven't been paying attention.

When you consider how nearly half of working age adults are unemployed, how many of those actually in jobs spend most of their time largely inactive and unproductive, and how many people are removed from the job market entirely by being warehoused in education or incarcerated, it's astonishing how much our lives have been "taken over".

<comment><USER14> 90% of people used to work on farms. Should we return to that lifestyle?

<comment><USER15> I think that is the most likely outcome for those who don't own the robots.

<comment><USER14> Why wouldn't they make their own robots?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the reason AI & robots are so rich a concept for these fictional explorations is that humans vs robots are like (at least?) three significant archetypes:

(1) Parents/children (2) Gods/humans (3) Owners/slaves

Sometimes these comparisons are evoked explicitly (in Blade Runner, Roy Batty says "I want more life, Father"\--which alludes to both the religious and parental Father--and later, "That's what it is to be a slave.")

</comment><comment><USER17> This article is kind of meaningless since an artificial general intelligence hasn't been achieved yet. The usual story that probably got more public traction with the introduction of "The Terminator" movie always assumes a self-conscious entity that had mountaints of data on humans to analyze and quickly concluded we must go, either because we're warmongers and are constantly causing trouble and havoc (Skynet), or we're not evolved enough compared to that artificial and much more developed organism ("Avengers: Age of Ultron"), or a mix of both ("Transcendence").

An article saying "chill out people, robots won't ever take over because they haven't so far" is missing the point by kilometers. Our robots are dumber than an individual ant and have zero concept of self, life, death, needs, or their own place in the world.

<comment><USER18> You're basically stating a tautology though.

"Robots haven't taken all jobs because we haven't invented a robot that can do all jobs yet."

The point is, we have no reason to believe that such a robot is even possible.

The most compelling argument I've heard is, "they're getting smarter faster, so eventually they'll be infinity smart."

But... the logic is flawed. Another good argument is "humans exist that could do any job, and humans are just biological robots, so a mechanical robot could do it too."

But that one is just as flawed. I will concede a sufficiently human-like AI could do any job, but a sufficiently human-like AI isn't necessarily meaningfully different from a human with an iPhone, which means it doesn't free employers from the human rights burdens that make AIs such attractive employees.

<comment><USER17> > _The most compelling argument I 've heard is, "they're getting smarter > faster, so eventually they'll be infinity smart."_

I am not saying that though. No, robots aren't getting smarter at all. Just a corporation investing a bit more in 2000+ if/elses that they sell as "intelligent home cleaner". We all know it.

> _But... the logic is flawed. Another good argument is "humans exist that > could do any job, and humans are just biological robots, so a mechanical > robot could do it too."_

Not sure what your argument is. I know I am not saying that quote either.

All I was saying is that the article is meaningless. It basically goes like this: "hey people, don't you get so worried, nothing happened so far, so it won't ever happen". This is children's logic and serves no purpose except for laughing at the author, really.

Maybe what I said is tautology. Not sure. But what the author is saying is "what comes after is caused by what came before", which is basically the first thing any logic law will forbid you to conclude. Practically the first law of logic is: " _after_ doesn't mean _because of_ ".

No, we're not safe just because nothing happened so far. That will never be true. We're safe because our robots are just as dumb as the time the first robot was invented. And that might change at any moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 3/5 of Americans don't work a full time job today. That's a rather large change vs even just 150 years ago.

<comment><USER20> And nobody worked a full time job 10,000 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And they won't for a long time, our deep neural networks are still very rudimentary in comparison to the brain. They take a ton of tweaking, and very specific setups, in order to achieve acceptable results in a limited domain. It is progress though.

<comment><USER22> >And they won't for a long time

What is a "long time"? That is the question, right?

Given that artificial neural networks were only invented a few decades ago and have since improved by many orders of magnitude, who's to say this won't happen during our lifetimes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Robots, well, machines, _have_ taken over certain fields. Take agriculture for example. 100 years ago America had 30 million farmers. These 30 million jobs have now largely disappeared and been replaced by highly automated farming machines. There are only ~3 million farmers left in America.

And in no way this is a problem for society. New technology created new job opportunities.

<comment><USER24> _And in no way this is a problem for society. New technology created new job opportunities._

Heh. If you hadn't noticed... society's not doing so hot, and it's largely due to an absence of opportunity in non-urban areas.

<comment><USER23> Are you kidding? Society/quality of life is SIGNIFICANTLY better compared to 100 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We currently have drones with missiles and quadcopters with grenades.

They can be piloted remotely by a human.

The day that someone sets up a quadcopter controlled by AI and computer vision....

Is the day we should probably fear robots.

<comment><USER4> There's a fun SF short about AI drones in which the AI is taught to go after lifeforms which are larger and have weapons [enemy soldiers] and prefer to avoid attacks which will harm large numbers of the smaller lifeforms that make high-pitched noises and don't have weapons [civilian women and children], and its military commanders are able to override this. Over time the commanders order more and more overrides, and it gets intolerable. Eventually the AI looks at the "enemy" who are mostly smaller and making high pitched sounds, and it looks at the source of its override commands, who are big lifeforms with lots of weapons, and it decides what to do about that...

<comment><USER26> Do you have a link or title? Sounds interesting

<comment><USER27> Malak, by Peter Watts:

[http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Malak.pdf](http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Malak.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ncache: a web cache system base on nginx. faster and more efficient than squid - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/ncache/ <comment><USER2> There are many caching proxies "faster and more efficient than Squid". But, none do all that Squid can do. Much like there are many web servers that are faster and more efficient than Apache...and yet Apache remains the worlds most popular web server. (Yes, there is room for others, and performance is a niche that needs to be served, but the dominant player also has to have a very large feature set in order to answer the needs of a very large range of users.)

Also, there is an industry standard tool for testing performance of web caching servers called polygraph (written by two of the founding Squid developers), and ncache seems to have not been tested with that tool. Micro- benchmarks are almost always misleading.

Disclaimer: I was a core Squid developer for several years, and consider many current Squid developers good friends. But, I don't think that invalidates my assertions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have just posted: "Ncache: a web cache system base on nginx." instead of just copying the whole tagline. by the time I realized my mistake it was too late to edit the title

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Where is the evidence that it is "faster and more efficient than squid"?

<comment><AUTHOR> good point:

not sure about faster but the dev posted some stats

[http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google...](http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google.com%2Fgroup%2Fncache- group%2Fbrowse_thread%2Fthread%2Ff4563390ee8351d7%2F92247f7521eea6bf%3Flnk%3Dgst%26q%3Dsquid%2392247f7521eea6bf&langpair=zh%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8)</comment></comment>


AWS increased error rates / intermittent outages - <AUTHOR> http://downdetector.com/status/aws-amazon-web-services<p>https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=ec2&src=typd <comment><USER2> FYI there's a great Chrome extension that hides all the working services (green checks) on the AWS status page so you can quickly see what's down.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/real-aws- status/ka...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/real-aws- status/kaegondhonfdclembpcgaaammmlfaekj)

<comment><USER3> Yeah I wrote this during the last extended outages - had some downtime since, well, I couldn't interact with the api :P .

The source code for it is here: [https://github.com/josegonzalez/real-aws- status](https://github.com/josegonzalez/real-aws-status)

<comment><USER4> Well their status page is down too: [https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

Edit: http(s) was at fault (no SSL cert?)

<comment><USER5> Yes no HTTPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry guys, I knew I shouldn't have started my 4 instances at once.

<comment><USER7> It wasn't you. Somebody had set up auto-scaling at the behest of AWS support.

<comment><USER8> And it solved all their problems!

Because the whole thing stopped working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Status page is down too: [https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

Shouldn't there be a separation of concerns for status pages, maybe use: [https://www.statuspage.io/](https://www.statuspage.io/)

Edit: http(s) was at fault (no SSL cert?)

<comment><USER9> Looks like they don't have a cert on their status page. [http://status.aws.amazon.com/](http://status.aws.amazon.com/) works fine, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Brace for half the internet going down if gets any worse, especially if its us-east (wish I was being ironic).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dammit now my Amazon Echo doesn't work.

<comment><USER4> I feel sad for a lonely grandma somewhere; her grandchildren never visit, but they bought her an Alexa to talk to that Amazon couldn't keep online.

<comment><USER7> I can't even ask Alexa if AWS is up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> API Gateway is returning 500s. So much for server-less architecture :(

<comment><USER6> I've had both 500s and 401s interestingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Many customer-facing amazon services are also affected, including amazon.com!

Twitter is not pretty:

[https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=amazo...](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=amazon%20down&src=typd)

</comment><comment><USER13> I blame Pokémon Go. Somehow or another I'm sure it's to blame.

<comment><USER4> Global Outage?: [http://downdetector.com/status/pokemon- go/map/](http://downdetector.com/status/pokemon-go/map/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like how half the internet can die when EC2 has problems.

<comment><USER15> Part of the problem is that a large number of site pull in services, re- targeting, AB-test, and weird Javascript in general. These things are pulled in without questioning or demanding an SLA or putting in an easy way of pulling them back out. Even if you don't use AWS yourself, you can be sure that some third party you rely on is deploying on EC2. Of cause they'll never tell you that.

For most new stuff, we require that it can be loaded with something like Google Tag Manager or UberTag, so we can quickly disable them when they fail.

It doesn't help that Amazons status page isn't all that good and sometimes doesn't seem to actually reflect the true state of their service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> AWS would wish that all those downtime reporting services move to their infrastructure. That ways there won't be anyone to report the downtime.

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't log into amazon.com to check my orders (first time that happened). THat's quite surprising as often these problems are unrelated

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one having daily issues with SQS? I have 150+ servers writing to a queue and they timeout at random a few times per day.

<comment><USER18> The app I work on is a single server writing to a dozen or so queues. The throughput is pretty low but I still manage to see failures for a few minutes once or twice a week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> AWS should design for resilience [0].

[0] This is a part of the wisdom shared by AWS support upon reporting an outage.

<comment><USER19> 1\. "Aren't you fault tolerant against AZ failures?"

2\. "Aren't you fault tolerant against region failures?"

 _throws up hands, moves back to bare metal_

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems to be effecting everything but I have some running instances that seem fine. [https://cloudstatus.eu/status/aws](https://cloudstatus.eu/status/aws)

Edit: Does seem to be recovering now

</comment><comment><USER21> Amazon.com remains up... unless you attempt to buy something, when you get a 500 error.

<comment><USER22> I wonder how much revenue is being lost every second

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 11:27 AM PDT We are investigating increased API error rates in the US-EAST-1 Region.

<comment><USER12> 11:50 AM PDT We can confirm increased error rates for the EC2 APIs and are currently working to resolve. We also observed isolated periods of impaired network connectivity for some EC2 instances.

12:21 PM PDT We have identified the root cause for error rates accessing the EC2 APIs and EC2 Management Console and are currently working to resolve. We observed isolated periods of impaired network connectivity for some EC2 instances, however running instances are currently operating normally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is anyone having issues with their lambda functions not working? Mine stopped working and is just returning "Service error." when I try to test even though they claim it's operating normally.

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like it's just their service API for now, i.e not responding to any queries on existing instances for me at all. However, everything else is working fine as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER25> We are getting very intermittent issues with S3 and SNS so far.

<comment><USER7> SNS informing about down services would be too bad. So it must go down with others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't log in to AWS Console. Instances running fine.

</comment><comment><USER24> In the console, running instances was timing out on load for EC2 and some of our AWS API calls to get hostnames are timing out in PHP

</comment><comment><USER26> Ditto, can't see any instance data either via the API or graphical dashboard. Instances themselves seem normal for the moment.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just got through to the AWS Console. Finally can get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER27> On this note: what are some good alternatives to AWS?

</comment><comment><USER28> Dear smarta$$es, could you please tell me the benefits of serverless architecture (lambda) once again? My monolith app works perfectly fine even when the whole AWS is offline :P

</comment><comment><USER29> everything on getstream.io is still up and running. most issues seem related to provisioning more instances.

</comment><comment><USER29> does anybody have more details about what's actually down? their description is a bit vague.</comment>


Foreign investment - <AUTHOR> I'm starting a company, it's already registered as a delaware c-corp and friends and family from outside the us would like to invest a little. What is the best way to go about it? They are not accredited investors but at the same time they don't live in the us and the living standards are not the same so I'm unsure if they are still covered under the SEC's Regulation D. <comment><AUTHOR> Does a YC SAFE deal for example work with Foreign investment?</comment>


The 3n+1 conjecture: Terry Tao has some thoughts ... - <AUTHOR> http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/the-collatz-conjecture-littlewood-offord-theory-and-powers-of-2-and-3/ <comment><USER2> A couple of remarks.

1\. For those who don't know of him already: Terry Tao is a very, very smart mathematician. (One indication: he has a Fields medal.)

2\. He is not claiming to be anywhere near having either a proof or a refutation of the conjecture, nor a plausible way of getting near to either.

3\. The main contribution (novel, so far as I know) of what he's done is the observation that there's some connection between the conjecture and transcendence theory. (Transcendence theory is an important and quite well explored field of mathematics. A number is "algebraic" if some polynomial with integer coefficients evaluates to zero at that number, "transcendental" otherwise; almost all numbers are transcendental but proving them so is generally difficult; transcendence theory is concerned with methods for proving that numbers are transcendental and quantifying how transcendental they are in various senses.)

The point of Tao's observation here is: as if we didn't already know, the 3n+1 problem probably isn't easy; an easy resolution of the problem would imply not only that people working on the 3n+1 problem have missed something simple (always possible since it's mostly of interest to amateurs) but that people working in transcendence theory have missed something simple (less likely because lots of really first-rate mathematicians have worked very hard in that field).

<comment><USER3> Or as Paul Erdös put it: "Mathematics is not yet ready for such problems".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a way to benchmark NoSQL Databases with the 3n+1 conjecture.

[https://docs.google.com/View?id=dd5f3337_12fzjpqbc2&pli=...](https://docs.google.com/View?id=dd5f3337_12fzjpqbc2&pli=1)

I've submitted that to ycnews, but it didn't appear. I've no idea why. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2919371>

<comment><USER5> I used Collatz conjecture as a part of an anti-cracking scheme in one of my projects. There was an obfuscated .exe consistency check, but it was not run until few other parts of the code (mostly rare event handlers) iterated a very long Collatz sequence down to 1. I figured if a cracker knew about hailstorm numbers, I was cool with him messing with my stuff ... and if he didn't, at least he would learn about it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> WOW: His father told the press that at the age of two, during a family gathering, Tao attempted to teach a 5-year-old child mathematics and English. According to Smithsonian Online Magazine, Tao taught himself basic arithmetic by the age of two. When asked by his father how he knew numbers and letters, he said he learned them from Sesame Street.[4] Aside from English, Tao speaks Cantonese, but does not write Chinese.

</comment><comment><USER7> My "Formal Methods in CS" prof dropped this conjecture into a problem set without naming it or remarking on its heritage.

Pre-google, you had no way of knowing what you were dealing with.

<comment><USER3> Maybe he was hoping one of you would be the next George Dantzig. <http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are lots of things one can say about Collatz which would seem to affect the problem but really don't. My favorite: All natural numbers belong to a Collatz graph containing {4, 2, 1} if and only if all natural numbers _not divisible by 2 or 3_ belong to that Collatz graph.</comment>


How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90% - <AUTHOR> http://www.jitbit.com/news/183-how-google-authorship-decreased-our-traffic-by-90/ <comment><USER2> Authorship had nothing to do with this site's drop. The site has been affected by our Penguin webspam algorithm and that accounts for the drop. See <http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/penguin-2-0-rolled-out-today/> for details of the recent Penguin launch, or [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-s...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another- step-to-reward-high-quality.html) for more information about Penguin in general.

<comment><USER3> Still #1 when I search and that's not even what he's talking about.

He's claiming that having a G+ picture inserted next to search results is resulting in a much lower CTR than they previously had.

Which I think is plausible as it detracts from the search experience, I often skip those results as the text isn't lined up so I can't scan it properly. Wish you could turn them off, it's really off putting. I also wonder what the CTRs of pretty people are like compared to munters. I still don't get why Google added it.

<comment><USER4> Authorship ties Google+ to search. Can I have my photo next to my search result if I don't have a Google account?

<comment><USER2> Authorship markup launched before Google+ was even available to the outside world: [http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-launches-authorship- ma...](http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-launches-authorship-markup-what- does-it-mean-for-seo/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Which is true but it's irrelevant to the current situation. Which is that lots of us (see below) have come to associate the mugshots with G+ posts, which are usually mediocre, so we don't even look at them.

What people perceive governs how they behave, and your explanation won't change that.

<comment><USER5> Well the FTS100 and Global 500 Publisher I used to work for where very interested in using authorship and publisher markup up to stop crappy sites ripping our content off.

Farmers weekly where the most keen and you can see the result in the serps - though Matt why are you picking a pic from the Telegraph to go with thier articles?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not surprised at all. Any time I ever see a social photo next to a search result, I automatically assume it's a social media post or page and won't even bother to look at it, if I'm looking for anything else.

Why on earth would anyone want a face associated with a program, website, or anything that's not a social media account?

But, very good to know the statistical result.

<comment><USER7> >Why on earth would anyone want a face associated with a program, website, or anything that's not a social media account?

A coworker runs one of those aggregate-amazon-affiliate-link sites (think <http://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/>) for camping and outdoorsy things. He saw a noticeable increase in traffic by associating his wife's picture in his search results. He's of the opinion that a pretty face helps sell things.

<comment><USER8> I've watched that website launch and develop with some interest. Without disclosing any particulars, does the site do well for him? I imagined he was raking in the dough, but if he's still your co-worker I guess that's not the case?

<comment><USER7> To be clear, my coworker doesn't run thisiswhyimbroke, but a site with a similar layout.

It's a little extra money in his pocket, but not something profitable or rewarding enough to do full time. (He also has a few other attempts that don't do as well as the camping one, and with the camping one the income is pretty seasonal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if your Google+ Profile picture was your JitBit Name + Logo, you would have done better.

I think it is your face that is the problem. Not because it's ugly, but because it's obviously a face, which is out of context when searching for "macro recorder". We naturally gloss over things that don't sync with what we expect.

<comment><USER10> I believe Google will only show a "recognizable headshot,"[1] not any image you give them. So you cannot use a logo.

[1] <https://plus.google.com/authorship>

<comment><USER11> This is 100% right. A quick confirmation: "John Mu of Google has confirmed that you must have a headshot of yours in order to see your Google Plus avatar in Google's rich snippet."

source: [http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social- media/log...](http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/logo- as-google-plus-profile-picture/)

<comment><USER12> In fact I have mug shotted my posts before and if you switch the picture to a picture of something other than a face Google seems to penalize you.

Was an interesting experiment and one that I would like to take further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The photo is a tell-tale to me. Each time I see one on the first search results, they get filtered out by my brain (they are either 'news' or 'youtube').

But this is just my reaction.

<comment><USER14> Even though I _know_ what the photo is for, subconsciously it makes me think "Oh, this is going to lead me to some guys Google+ profile page."

I imagine I've skipped over a ton of search results that are just like the one in the article for just that reason.

<comment><USER15> This is exactly what I think every time I see it. And sometimes it does take me to a g+ page, so I've trained myself to just avoid it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author's takeaways are pure speculation as to causation, but he presents them as if they are facts. I could claim that people just don't like the color of his photo, and I would have as much evidence to support this has he has for his other claims re: authorship placement. And he doesn't mention that since he is not doing a split test (since it's not possible) _and_ he's not measuring confidence intervals that his "A/B test" may be meaningless.

His intuition makes sense, and his conclusions are probably correct in this specific case, but this is shoddy analysis and shouldn't be presented in a generalized manner as he's done here.

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone who for the past several years has done very high end legitimate SEO consulting to fortune 500 style companies (i.e. not the spammy mess than the HN crowd would usually associate with SEO), I am more than happy to go on the record and say that for what it's worth, this is the exception and not the rule.

As a few others here have pointed out, slapping Google Authorship markup all over your site is probably not a good idea unless you run a pure news / blog style site.

One other point to note though as well is that I am very familiar with that message in GWT telling you that traffic dropped by a crazy percentage overnight. Given everything going on in the SEO space at the moment, I am not entirely convinced just yet that you don't have a case of correlation rather than causation at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER18> My question is, why did you add authorship sitewide? Authorship should be established only on jitbit.com/news/ where your blog is, NOT on your entire website. For example, if I search jitbit in google, your authorship photo is appearing for your domain, not good.

<comment><USER19> If you hadn't mentioned this, I wouldn't even know that Authorship could be associated with just a directory. I bet a lot of people, including the OP, fall into that category. If the OP just associated it with his onsite blog (/news/), then essentially the only purpose of Google Authorship would be promote his company blog, not his overall site. So he would be G+ blogging to promote his blog to promote his products. Sounds a bit convoluted to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The quality of the photo can make a huge impact on clickthroughs. Cyrus Shepard of (seo)Moz saw a 35% increase in click-through rates after a/b testing his profile photo: <http://moz.com/blog/google-author-photos>

He also mentioned that, "Bounce rate dropped while time-on-site and page views increased. It's as if having an authoritative photo in the search results raised users' trust in my site and expectations of authority."

</comment><comment><USER20> My brain went through a few things when I saw that result screenshot:

1\. I thought it was giving results for a guy named Marco.

2\. After realizing it was Macro, I thought the #1 result was a blog or review.

3\. I then focused on the 2nd result because it looked less cluttered.

<comment><USER21> Good observation. So basically, the fact that Google authorship did this is a _good_ thing for people who search Google, because until now his title could "trick" people into clicking on his site (because it was more SEO optimized or for whatever reason), but the "real" result was always the Wikipedia one - because I suppose most people don't have a purchase intent when searching for that, but an intent to find out more information about it.

<comment><USER22> I think if you are searching for "macro recorder" then you know what it is and are looking for a solution rather than a description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting...you think of all the A/B metrics that Google tests, this would be among one of the most obvious standouts. The percentage of users who click on lower-ranked results is reportedly a big factor in the decision of how results are laid out and paginated (e.g. if the 12th result in Google SERP had a relatively similar amount of "usefulness" as the 10th, it's likely that Google would have the search pages show 12 results)...you'd think a statistical drop in first-result clicks would trigger an analytics alarm.

<comment><USER24> +1. You have to think many sites besides the OP's experience a similar effect. This, combined with Google's collective UX wisdom and the not-at-all unintuitive nature of the result, makes it pretty shocking that they have not put a stop to this. Maybe they are getting some value from the uptick in people maintaining G+ accounts, so it's being swept under the rug?

<comment><USER25> You're assuming this is generally true. All we know is that it seems to be true for this one guys site/picture. Google has access to ALL of the data for this feature. They're in a much better position to make an informed decision on its value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Dear Google, please stop content skimmers.

Dear Google, thanks for trying to address content skimmers - but now we may have another problem...

<comment><USER27> Firstly, google became a verb and now replacing Dear God... ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Google is basically twisting everyone's arms to join G+. Here is the Google progression of things:

1\. Hey we support all open protocols all you need to do is use our FREE service that is superior to all others.

2\. OK now you need to unify your profile with Google+

3\. Either kill the product entirely or drop the open standard support because the open standard does not support some awesome feature they made.

4.You are stuck in a proprietary world

<comment><USER2> You may want to defend this (incorrect) blog post with that world view, but Google launched authorship markup before Google+: [http://www.seoinc.com/seo- blog/google-launches-authorship-ma...](http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google- launches-authorship-markup-what-does-it-mean-for-seo/)

<comment><USER29> Assuming your ordinary niche blogger (no celebrity, no New York Times author, no one with a dedicated Wikipedia page): Is there a way to have a photo next to his or her search result if he or she doesn't have a Google account?

<comment><USER30> Generally speaking, the mechanism used for attribution is not specific to Google accounts. It's just a rel="me" or rel="author" hyperlink somewhere in your articles, and you can list multiple source of profile data. (Which is generally a good idea for semantic web purposes. Take a look at the social links on my website for an example.)

The Microformats Wiki has more details on how these work: <http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me> <http://microformats.org/wiki/rel- author>

That said, I believe Google Search only knows how to extract author bios from the Google Profile database. Personally, I don't think this is different than having to creating a Webmaster Tools account if you want to view your website data -- it provides an authoritative, user-editable source of biographical data for the system to use.

(If this was scraped from across the web for everyone, I could imagine some folks getting upset if the wrong information is picked up. Case in point: I remember a while back when somebody's Wikipedia article listed them as dead, and that information was automatically pulled into the Knowledge Graph. Oops.)

That said, I'm not on any of the teams involved in creating this, so take all this with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If someone was looking for macro-recorder, they probably just wanted a download link.

His authorship link makes it look like a review of some macro recorder software. I would actually consider an authorship link that's being triggered by a product page a bug that needs to be corrected ASAP.

EDIT: Strangely enough his authorship image is still triggered by a search for "macro-recorder". Did he reactivate it?

Now imagine if Google allowed him to tag his page with a "Software Download" tag.. and enabled him to attach a appstore like icon next to the search result instead of his face. Would that drive more clicks?

</comment><comment><USER32> When you're assessing the viability of microdata or any SEO strategy for that matter, you have to consider the context and whether or not it works for the market that you're in.

I don't see this as an indictment of Google Authorship at all; rather this is an example of a situation where user intention is misaligned with what a webmaster is showing. If I'm looking for content (particularly the originator of said content), having the author's name and face is exactly what I'm looking for. When you're searching for car parts or baby strollers or software, that same name/face is going to throw you off.

</comment><comment><USER33> For a lot of people the face gives credibility. It makes you think it's a more legit article because somehow google took the time to associate an image with the article which it would never with spam content.

And it's too bad they don't accept company logos, I think that would really help. It downplays company we pages versus articles.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would love to hear more on this. Are others seeing this problem as well and what photo are they using ?

My first thought when seeing the photo was ok, this is a guy giving his opinion on the topic, I'm not interested in opinion, I want the facts. Can companies act like an author on G+ ?

</comment><comment><USER35> Thoughtbot performed the same experiment; their results seemed favourable: [http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/51068089232/google- authors...](http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/51068089232/google-authorship- on-giant-robots)

</comment><comment><USER36> This happened with the Puppet type reference search result. Still feel weird clicking it with the guy's picture next to it. Makes it feel like it's his page when I want to believe it belongs Puppet.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's funny how clueless most SEO experts really are.

<comment><USER38> Exactly! Stop taking SEOmoz as gospel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is one of the reasons I asked my Facebook friends to A/B test two photographs I have used as profile photos before setting my Google+ photo. I should probably be a lot more rigorous about this, but at the very least a photograph should be compared to other available photographs for what it says about your online persona.

</comment><comment><USER40> > most people are clicking #2

Maybe a little nit picky but that's a bit of an assumption especially in the context of the article.

I guess it shows the importance of having more diverse results, you want other results appearing that strongly link to you positively (our official twitter/fb/software reviews for example)

</comment><comment><USER41> My own experience is that I would skip it but not because it is an possible ad. Especially if I'm looking for a product I will look at the ads, sometimes the ads are better than the actual result.

But there is a problem with the SERP, and that is that the result under the ads (if any) is sometimes a related sub search.

So if i'm looking for some thing scientificy it will show me some sub search of Google scientific results. Or if I'm searching form some thing that has been in the news recently it will show me some Google news results. Now unless I'm looking for papers or news I will skip over it. Since it shows your face next to the link it looks like an news sub search result or indeed a blog result.

</comment><comment><USER42> This article made me realize that I am unconsciously filtering out things that look like G+ posts. In part because my expectation of it being high quality content is low, and because the experience of switching to the G+ app on my phone is slow.

</comment><comment><USER43> That is pretty fascinating. It seems like Facebook, who I use because this was their early marketing strategy, is teaching us to ignore data that has peoples faces associated with it. I wonder if there is broader research being done on this?

<comment><USER44> This is fairly well researched wrt banners. Basically once users associate visual elements with noise, the will start to automatically filter them to the point of not being conscious about their existence.

In a even broader scope, Jakob Nielsen has shared lots of data from his eye tracking usability studies that show just how little attention users pay to online content [1][2].

[1] <http://www.nngroup.com/topic/advertising/>

[2] <http://www.nngroup.com/topic/eyetracking/all/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I know this isn't suppose to be funny, but I couldn't help but laugh at how you presented this. I completely lost it where you had written "My Stupid Face" with an arrow pointed towards your google result.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why don't you change your icon to the icon of your program or something users associate with what they need? A face says "social" - which is great for your personal Google+ account but not great for your company. At least try it -- if everyone is like me it should increase the clicks.

</comment><comment><USER47> I am more likely to click a link with a "stupid" face in front of it, because it looks more qualitative to me. More I simply don't know about this topic or SEO. But maybe because most people know as much as me, I guess that most people will react the same way.

</comment><comment><USER48> So basically people are learning that the first Google result, especially if visually "enhanced", is usually irrelevant advertising?

That would concur with my personal experience, and is pretty much the same as what happened to standard size display ads.

</comment><comment><USER49> On seeing what it did, my first thought was that the result with his picture next to it was one of those horrible promoted pages/adverts. I'm used to just skimming over the first results that look different to the rest with Google.

</comment><comment><USER50> That sucks; sorry to hear it happened to you. But I can tell you why I will usually scan search results (or C-s) for Wikipedia over other results: Wikipedia won't jerk me around. What I mean by that is that (currently) Wikipedia doesn't require JS, flash or any other BS; WP pages load quickly, and are often informative, not some wink-wink-nudge-nudge advertising that may or may not tell you about the product without requiring an email address. Oh, and WP doesn't (currently) have advertising.

That being said, I've been noticing that results returned in Google, even for technical posts (eg, Emacs howtos) have more and more been including headshots from the writer. It's the same posts I would have trusted before, it just seems weird to actually have a face to go along with the post.

<comment><USER51> I think you meant: it just seems weird to actually have a face to go along with the search results.

And when I think about it, that's the whole issue: I'm beginning to think that images (of authors or webmasters or product logos) don't belong on the serarch results page--ever. I can't see a case where it helps the average person who is searching because the photo is always once removed from the actual content.

If I search for a "thingamabob" how does the photo of somebody who wrote about thingamabob help me choose a result? If I'm searching for a company, even the company logo doesn't help because I may not know it ahead of time. Or if I'm looking for a blog, how would I know the face of the blogger ahead of time? I just can't see that many searches where the author's face is relevant to choosing the content you want to see.

Then there is the issue of Google putting the photo in the hottest part of the user's heat-map eye-scan of the search results page. If you put an irrelevant item where the user is looking for immediate relevancy, that result will get skipped (just as the OP postulated and so many commenters are confirming here on HN).

Finally, you have to wonder what Google was really thinking. If images do have an impact on click-through rate, then the images will get SEO'd and become useless. There is a comment on this thread that confirms that putting a woman's picture for the authorhip increased hits. Great, soon every website will appear to be written by a hot babe showing skin (or hot guy depending on the target audience), or if logos are allowed, all competitors will have a logo that looks like the #1 in the field.

Google is killing the golden goose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wonder if niche also plays a part in this - perhaps for certain search queries it is best to have a face associated with the result. Thakns for this post though, it's some food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER53> Really, people will most likely skip the #1 search result? Please, teach me web marketing.

</comment><comment><USER54> The WWW desperately needs a free and open search engine that everyone can hold accountable. The WWW is much too valuable to hand over to a company with blatant conflicts of interest in their search results.

<comment><USER55> ?</comment></comment>


MIT researchers use Bayesian inference, a form of AI, to make computer programs - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-aims-to-help-data-scientists-by-having-ai-do-the-heavy-lifting/ <comment><USER2> I've always found Bayesian Inference to be a more "solid" theory than neural nets. I like the idea, but its just a mish-mash of words to me right now...

EDIT: The link in the article doesn't work for me. Here's the link I used instead: [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3290350](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3290350)

Looking it over, the words seem to be... in the correct order. :-) "Proper use of Prior" and Baye's theorem. Heh, I'm going to have to pull out some textbooks to remind myself what these words mean.

EDIT2: Are they... generating a Bayesian model automatically? That's some meta-level theory going on here. A Bayesian Model is a graph of priors (If A then B 50% of the time, if B then C 25% of the time, etc. etc.). You observe "C", and then the program seems to be trying to find the "If A->B" probability and "If B->C" probability.

Unlike neural nets which are "unobservable", the human can theoretically look at the list of priors and understand the model that the computer has generated. As I stated earlier: I've always found this branch of AI to be more interesting than neural nets.

<comment><USER3> Working link to a copy of the paper on one of the author's websites: [https://people.csail.mit.edu/rinard/paper/popl19.pdf](https://people.csail.mit.edu/rinard/paper/popl19.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title pretty much reflects today people's focus on such a progress. Maybe we can train attention networks to simulate focus of different groups of people, and I'm sure that "MIT" & "AI" will end up with high weights for average people while "Bayesian inference" will be on the top for researchers' model.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bayesian program synthesis is an approach to ML that's been slowly brewing since the early parts of this decade, and as a member of a "sister lab" to Vikash's, I'm excited to see their POPL paper getting this kind of popular attention.

I'll be even more excited if their techniques from this paper can actually be widely reapplied! BPS as a technique hasn't had its "ImageNet" moment in which a strong, nontrivial, real-world benchmark is identified and then solved.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you introduce new team members to your codebase? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I might give you my experience from the other side of a table - how I was introduced to the codebase in my last job.

On the first day, I sat down with my lead and for about ~3 hours he was explaining to me the whole codebase. It was overwhelming but the codebase wasn't that big (~18k LOC).

I'm not saying that the approach was good/bad. Just sharing my experience.

I wonder whether this approach is common.

</comment><comment><USER2> Show:

* give an architecture walk thru

* give a directory walk-thru

* show the hot modules. something like

      git log --pretty=format: --name-only | sort | uniq -c | sort -rg | head -10

* if can generate a dag of module dependency, that would help

* walk thru of the test cases

hands on:

* Ask them to add log messages at strategic places (find needle in haystack)

* Add new test cases in areas with low/no coverage

both are very low risk ways to get familiar with the code base

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you keep some internal programming knowledge for the team?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's always a story behind every codebase. Taking the new team member through the codebase at a high level, telling the story and explaining how everything fits together and is deployed is a time well spent.

It helps me connect with them, develops empathy, understanding and aids my form of communication with them.

The how is explained above. Why you should is "because humans".</comment>


Alex Payne — Good Things: Ubuntu and Android - <AUTHOR> http://al3x.net/2010/02/15/ubuntu-android.html <comment><USER2> I switched laptops last November and have been having a Linux just works experience ever since. Previously I'd been on a System76 pre-installed linux laptop where I was paying them to make sure it works. This time I just walked into best buy and walked out with a dell and installed everything myself.

All hardware worked out of the box including wireless and suspend.

I started reading OMG Ubuntu (<http://omgubuntu.co.uk/>) which clued me into some good productivity tips and also some bling. I like Docky as much as I ever liked the Mac dock. Ubuntu Go is the Ubuntu equivalent of Quicksilver.

Even stuff I expected to be hard, like my Verizon USB 3G card, was easy. That in particular has been a moderate pain on other operating systems but was just a drop down option in the ubuntu networking widget.

For times when I need to be mainstream compatible I run Windows in Virtualbox. That's how I sync my iphone, play online poker, run Quickbooks, etc. Plus laptops come with such enormous hard drives, I felt like I could leave myself a dual boot option in case I wanted to play games.

Overall, I'm much happier having my day-to-day operating system match my servers. There's just something nice about having a dev environment that's so close to my production environment.

I wrote a longer version of this here: [http://www.stubbleblog.com/index.php/2009/11/linux-on-the- de...](http://www.stubbleblog.com/index.php/2009/11/linux-on-the-desktop/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel old when I read articles like this because I remember back when Linux was difficult. I meet new Linux users all the time who almost can't believe stories from the bad old days.

Anyway, we use Ubuntu at my office, and we're super productive with it. I would recommend it to everyone.

<comment><USER4> Heh. My "when Linux was bad" story was when I was 14 and trying to bootstrap mkLinux for PPC on my PowerBook 1400. It had a problem that whenever an interrupt would happen close to an HD ACCESS, the text {IDE TIMEOUT} would crawl across the screen until you pressed the debugger interrupt switch, after which it would continue on. This meant that any form of input while it was accessing the HD would result in the interrupt switch being hit, or even transferring data from the CD to the HD would take for-ev-er.

This meant the normally 45-minute install process turned into about two-and-a- half-hours of babysitting the poor laptop. I also became very conscious of memory/swap usage early on, so I had to use a rather light window manager (I think I settled on AfterStep as a decent combination of features and light- ness). I also learned how to tune X11 color requirements, since only 256-color mode was supported.

A good way to cut my teeth initially. Later on I got my parents to purchase a 7200/75, which was the cheapest Mac I could find that would run the official Linux/PPC distribution. That box carried me a hell of a long way - used it as a print server and as the family NAT router, compiled my own kernels for the first time, even wound up doing a Linux From Scratch build at some point.

Good times, those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Linux has totally arrived. As someone who occasionally gets asked to help fix friend's computers(as I'm sure many HN'ers do) my latest approach is to just recommend linux and then just do the install for them. Everything works out of the box, old computers breathe new life (and speed) and with the addition of a few proprietary fonts (which come with Adobe Acrobat Reader) the OS looks BETTER than OSX. I like Kozuka Gothic Pro.

I think that the pretty OSX apps are mostly a myth. The only one I really want is Skitch and I'm doing OK without it.

<comment><USER6> Myth? Keynote alone makes OS X a necessity for me. I can spend 1/3 as long and come up with something that looks 5 times better than either Powerpoint or Impress. When Open Office gets Magic Move, let me know.

(Actively uses OSX and Windows. Also long time Linux Debian user.)

<comment><USER5> Have you tried Google Docs presentations? They have some great looking templates that I think might be just as simple and beautiful as what you get with Keynote.

<comment><USER7> I like S5: <http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/> It's quick, easy, open, universally accessible, and as customizable as any web page.

<comment><USER6> For sheer presentation beauty per unit of user-effort, Keynote still is way ahead. S5 does have its uses, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been using Ubuntu Netbook Remix on a Dell Mini 9 as my primary setup for over a year now. UNR is dangerously close to being mass-market ready, and it's certainly ready for developers and power-users. Virtually everything 'just works', and the Netbook Remix UI is far preferable to Windows or OS X on a small screen.

The most remarkable thing is that you _never_ have to drop to a command prompt, unless you want to. All of the linux infrastructure and tools are there, but it's all been abstracted away with a nice clean GUI. For the first time in my life, I actually prefer using X over the shell for managing my machine.

It's also amazing to look at how rapidly Canonical is improving Ubuntu. Every six months, I get more functionality and new software, with an improved UI and fewer rough edges. I'm anxiously awaiting 10.04, and I know that 10.10 should be another big improvement. That kind of predictability is nice.

I jumped ship from Linux to OS X nine years ago, when OS X 10.0 came out. I hated wrestling with X, battling device drivers, and constantly missing basic functionality. All those problems are finally solved, and I'm back on board. 'Desktop Linux' may never happen, but 'Mobile Linux' is definitely here, and it's pretty darned cool.

<comment><USER9> I have a serious problem with the UNR: Why the _fuck_ did they include an email client? I mean _seriously_.

Worse, removing the e-mail client removes the Gnome-Panel. Genius, guys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my opinion, not having a unified package management system (as Windows and OSX do not) is a serious usability and security bug.

How many users accidentally install malware b/c they don't know exactly the proper workflow for installing security updates. Many older users (60+) are fearful of installing any security update b/c they have heard that that's how viruses get there.

For OSX there are some alternatives (mac ports and that new git based one) which look awesome, but it's not the same as having it fully integrated into the OS and automated security update notification and/or install for all apps.

OSX is not immune to the security bug -- as it gains in popularity people will begin writing viruses for it and it'll be the same windows nightmare all over again.

<comment><USER10> Agreed, apt-get that just works is the "magic sauce" for me. It blows my mind that there are so many packagers out there doing that work, but it's freakin' awesome as a user.

<comment><USER5> Exactly! It is the highly labor intensive nature of this process (and Apple's greed for money as in the iPhone Store incarnation) that prevents this from happening in mainstream OSes.

It's really quite a phenomenal achievement and I think it will begin to be broadly recognized very soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That is reasonable, albeit something i regret at times.

I have many friends who develop open source software but resist Linux. I have been working on Linux desktop for some years, but at times it is irritating to no end, especially in the realm of design. I often advocate for Linux, but it is still messy, it is not for everyone.

interface design seems to be a real problem for open source apps, few manage to get it polished enough, and mostly on web apps, not on the desktop.

I used KDE for years, and switched to Gnome when KDE 4 was too messy to deal with. now that KDE 4.4 i think ii might give it a try, but from online video i wasn't too impressed

<comment><USER9> I think the real problem with Linux ui/ux design spawns from the X Server. It's old and decrepit, levied in aged development standards, and guarded by a bunch of grognards who fear change.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely untrue. The X server is an orthogonal issue to UI design. The real problem is that a lot of Linux apps still have GUIs designed by programmers rather than UI designers.

<comment><USER13> In fact, how many open source apps have dedicated UI designers? Probably Mozilla stack, but who else?

Even very popular OS apps, such as GIMP, Inkscape, Open Office have questionable design.

Granted sometimes UI designer can misunderstand user experience in a particular domain, but programmers are more apt to do so.

Disclaimer: I program and sadly, also design(not by choice, I can't really design) UIs on Linux.

<comment><USER11> can good open source interface design be achieved? and if so how?

I agree with this, it has nothing to do with X. this has to do with design choices, and the method in which the consensus is achieved.

My friend Mushon Zer-Aviv is attempting to tackle this issue

[http://www.mushon.com/2009/12/18/shortaudio-my-open- source-d...](http://www.mushon.com/2009/12/18/shortaudio-my-open-source- design-slides/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've loved Linux for a while, but needed to stay in Windows for the Adobe apps (Illustrator, most notably). I just made the switch to Ubuntu about a month ago. Now when I need to run Illustrator, I just fire up a VM and boot Windows. I'm using Virtualbox for the ease of use and its "seamless integration" feature. The Adobe products are a bit slow reading from/writing to Ubuntu shares, but the gain in productivity I get from having Linux for everything else more than makes up for it, and I can dedicate 4G of RAM to the VM so Illustrator & Photoshop can still run fast side by side without slowing the primary OS down a bit.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really like Android. I never had an iPhone, though, just an iPod I rarely used. I just could never get into it. Yes, the animations and scrollings are probably smoother - that's actually what I hate about Apple stuff. I don't care about fancy animations, I want to get things done. The smooth animations of Apple things just make me feel cheap, like a marketing whore. Not to say that Android isn't pretty, but I am guessing iPhone fans would have trouble adapting.

The Nexus is the first real mobile internet device I own - might be part of the excitement. But I am actually surprised how well everything works. I was expecting Android to remain in perpetual beta state, but it seems very usable to me.

I know I should be more excited about iPhone development, because of the huge money making opportunities. But I just can't. iPod and MacBook have been sitting on my desk for a year and I could not really get started. Getting a Nexus just made click and I feel enthusiastic about coding once again. Ever since I got it last week, I spent every spare minute on coding for it. Unfortunately I hate Java, but for the time being I try to see how far I can get with HTML+Javascript, otherwise, maybe some of the JVM languages can be made to run.

<comment><USER16> One thing that's bugging me about Android right now - there's no widely accepted location standard for storing data on the SD card. Some of the "in the box" apps put all their data inside the Android directory, but others use "data", some use the Java-style reversed DNS (com.example.App), others use the same but with dashes (com-example-App), and others again just dump their guts into the root directory (espeak-data, amazonmp3) etc.

It all reminds me of DOS days when people would install their apps in subdirs of the root directory, or even worse, neophytes who installed their apps in the root directory itself. It really makes me feel like I'm living in the wild west when I put files on the SD card - the data might be safe today, but what if some app tomorrow happens to choose the same directory name?

There definitely needs to be more guidance given here. A harder line like, store app-specific data in Android/data/com.example.YourApp, media of kind x in <here>, etc. would be very helpful.

For example, it's the blind leading the blind here:

[http://androidforums.com/updates-cupcakes/5930-definitive- an...](http://androidforums.com/updates-cupcakes/5930-definitive-androids- folder-structure.html)

And calls for clarification go unanswered:

<http://osdir.com/ml/AndroidDevelopers/2009-08/msg00721.html>

<comment><USER15> Haven't reached that aspect yet (trying to stay in HTML), but I am surprised. I thought apps would be shielded from each other, which would imply they could not mess with each others files. Well, I am curious to learn more about it.

<comment><USER17> Because of some weird need for backward compatibility here, the sdcard needs to be dos/vfat formatted so file perms can not be enforced. This makes USB mounting work on all OSes, but this means many apparently need the "can modify sdcard contents" perm, which is global for the entire sdcard. I think this is why apps can not be stored and run from the sdcard currently.

<comment><USER16> The OS presents a file system API to programs. It isn't necessary for the characteristics of the underlying file system to be directly reflected in the view programs see. It would be perfectly possible for the OS to lie to processes, somewhat like chroot, and present each an idealized and sandboxed view of the sdcard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ok, let's leave aside that Ubuntu is basically just Debian with much better "OMG usability" hype--the biggest difference is that Ubuntu doesn't have as many packages available by default.

With the increasing acceptance and widespread development/use of Linux, I have progressively seen it become more and more like Those Other OSes.

Once upon a time, Linux was fast as hell on any hardware. It isn't these days. Now, we generally run a massive desktop environment (GNOME/KDE) on a massively bloated display system (X.org), so we can display disgustingly huge programs (Firefox/Chrome, OpenOffice, even Pidgin is a pig). I run Debian on my T22 laptop (PIII, 512 MB of RAM), with the 9wm window manager, and it is _slow_.</comment>


Google To Launch Venture Fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/30/google-to-launch-venture-fund/

<comment><USER2> I wish I could downmod for the overly sensational title. So Google's doing something that a lot of other big tech companies do, so what? If the article had said Google was starting a YC-clone, that would've been something.

</comment><comment><USER3> the title is very link-baitish

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Someone should change the title. Very misleading and not title of OP

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> YC is not a VC fund, and Google is not starting a seed-stage funding program.

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems like such an obvious thing to do if you're a huge tech company, why hasn't MSFT or YHOO done this yet? I have a hard time thinking this is a good thing, the last thing we need is Google dominating the VC market.

<comment><USER7> _why hasn't MSFT or YHOO done this yet?_

As other people have pointed out, they might have. I imagine the reason it isn't successful is the same reason government sponsorship of startups isn't successful - bureaucracies tend to not work very well when it comes to having to often admit mistakes and changing course - sunk costs bias and all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For some reason, it doesn't even seem to have the same appeal as YC. If given the choice, I would much rather work with YC. I'm a bigger fan of Paul Graham than I am of anyone in Google.

<comment><USER7> _I'm a bigger fan of Paul Graham than I am of anyone in Google_

You must not be aware of who works at Google... Peter Norvig and Guido van Rossum come to mind. Granted, in the domain of advising startups, Paul is both a lot more knowledgeable and accessible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This link-bait thing has to stop. Every now and then, somebody wants to get creative with the title.</comment>


Ask HN: Was Hacker News "better" in the "early days"? If so, how? - <AUTHOR>

Sorry for the overuse of quotation marks... I've only been reading Hacker News for the past year or so and I really enjoy reading it. From time to time, I'll see a comment complaining that Hacker News is not what is used to be, that is has turned into something trashy, that discussions used to be more intellectual, etc. For you long time readers/contributors to HN, I'd love to get your perspective and thoughts on how HN has evolved. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Yes, all of what you said. It's absolutely changed as it became popular - I'd guess most of the new users over the past 1-2 years have heard about it via reddit and thus you get that same commenting style/quality here:

      - lots of puns in replies

      - people being very snarky

      - people who downvote b/c they disagree

      - people who reply just to point out mistakes

      - lots of "+1 here too" replies

      - a mean tone in many replies

      - people who upvote off-topic stories

      - people who submit/upvote White House petitions

      - increase in psuedonyms like "throwaway235" or "anonymous354"

I think most of the old timers prefer the old days because we don't enjoy the above. In 2009, for example, HN was HN and reddit was reddit and you went to each for different reasons. Today nearly every non-Ask HN post on HN is either on reddit soon after or on reddit first. I'm not saying that the above didn't exist on the "old" HN - it did - but it was much less common.

That being said, I'm one of those who believes that not showing comment scores causes some of this behavior. Not my site so I don't get a "vote" per se but I do not agree that hiding comment scores has made things better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm only in the 4.5 year club, but I'd say story submissions are better now, but comments are worse. HN also goes through fashion trends. I remember when it was full of Ruby on Rails posts and Bitcoin posts. Now they pop up, but less frequently. For obvious reasons Aaron Swartz and related submissions will dominate for a while. Dunno what the next trend will be.

</comment><comment> cm-t I think comments you saw are from people on HN before reddit steal it</comment>


Raspberry Pi Swarm - <AUTHOR> https://fxapi.co.uk/2016/11/19/raspberry-pi-swarm/ <comment><USER2> Clicking on this article is a complete waste of time. It's nothing more than an attempt to introduce something, which ends with a useless "To be continued."</comment>


Ask HN: How to hire sales people - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a project targeted towards SMB mostly, although it could go the enterprise route. How do you go about hiring sales people? Craigslist? <comment><USER2> A salesman once told me, "Any salesman, no matter how bad, can sell himself to an engineer." You really need someone you trust to evaluate the candidates. Find successful entrepreneurs in your area and have their VP of sales help. Exercise your network. Enlist your SO, neighbors. VC's might help. I'm not kidding. An ad on Craigslist will probably attract some slick scum.

More advice from the salesman. Hire a salesman driving a Mercedes. The payments will keep him motivated. I once hired a salesman driving a beater and got performance commensurate with his car.

We are supposed to be gender neutral in this world, but I think that women beat us males in people skills, and sales is very much people skills. If nothing else, run your candidate by a sharp woman.

EDIT: When I wrote this I was thinking of direct sales, which is hugely expensive. I strongly recommend against it. Been there. Done that. I found telemarketing with skilled salespeople to be much more cost effective. And I really mean skilled, well trained, and well paid. Serve yourself is the most cost effective of all.

Disclaimer: I have run sales, but I dont pretend that I was any good at it.

<comment><USER3> I've seen more than a few salesmen that did their best work selling themselves into the job, but never live up to that initial impression. I now realize that I can't spot the fakers.

Agree on women in technical sales, as long as they're competent. Among the vendors that call on me, some of the best use women for outside sales. OTOH, the saleswomen that don't know the tech/product/business are really frustrating, more so than the clueless salesmen. (Not sure why--maybe the ones I've run across come off as especially whiny or needy?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summary: Tricky sales people can _sell_ the fact they are good at a lot of things. How do you figure out what type of people they really are? By tracking the energy that interviewees have around their responses and digging deeper, people will inevitably reveal the behaviors and principles they live by day- to-day.

\----

When trying to hire someone you may find that you are looking for a particular type of person (maybe someone who works well in teams or, instead, is more of a performer on their own). To learn more about the way the person is (I mean they way _really_ are, not just what they sell about themselves) try these steps:

1\. Ask them questions that might reveal one of the characteristics (Are you better at working on teams or by yourself?)

2\. They will usually answer "both" and try to sell you on it

3\. Ask them to recall some productive/highlighting/significant experiences in working alone

4\. Then ask the same for working in teams

This obviously doesn't cover the whole process, but can be a helpful technique.

5\. Feel a sense of energy coming from each response

6\. Ask the base question again ("Teams or alone?") and see which they give more weight to.

7\. Assess how strong you can confirm a conclusion of which they truly prefer

</comment><comment><USER5> That's a great question. I'd love to hear some answers.

I'd also like to know how to decide between hiring sales people and selling a product online (self serve), or can both be done simultaineously?

A product we're considering could really be sold either way.

<comment><USER2> As I said here, I recommend online sales. Sales and marketing can eat 50% of your revenues, and it is very hard for engineers to pick good salespeople.</comment></comment>


Accepting Entrepreneurs for Startup Development Program - <AUTHOR>

Entrepreneurs are taken through a startup development plan that starts with idea definition, business model, competitive advantage, segmentation, targeting, path to market strategy, execution plan, pitching, etc. WHILE Minimum Viable Product is being built. After launch we test, measure and build again.
With a different pricing and development plans, we're democratizing startup development.
More information at www.GetAspired.com or email us at email@example.com. <comment><USER2> Bundling the promise of funding and connections with development services makes me want to run the other way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I think our point didn't come across.

A startup is a journey. It starts somewhere, an idea, and goes through stages. Entrepreneurs wanting to start a venture often have two options. They can either put together a team that shares the same commitment, drive and willingness with skills that complement each other or they can spend a significant amount of time and money seeking advice from a startup coach, reading and learning from others, hiring a developer, a designer, a lawyer, a project manager, etc.

We're the team behind that entrepreneur. Though we do invest every now and then, we do not guarantee an investment (at the moment) but what we do guarantee is to support the entrepreneur throughout the way by not just coaching, developing, designing, valuating, and providing tech law advice, but also seeking an investment from potential investors. Our compensation does not occur until the entrepreneur gets financed. From now until then, we receive a very minimal monthly fee for the amount of work and commitment we put in every company.

Our promise is to be a team that would care as much as entrepreneurs would about their startups and help them start, launch, grow, get funded and connected with likeminded individuals.</comment></comment>


Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/wild-flower-blooms-again-after-30-000-years-on-ice-1.10069 <comment><USER2> Every day we inch one step closer to bringing back dinosaurs, thus making Jurassic Park a reality.

<comment><USER3> I agree. One of these days, one of the icebergs will crack revealing a massive dinosaur that will come out of it's cryo-sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When talking about megafauna resurrection, it is often said that it's not possible because DNA degrades too much after a few thousand years. Yet apparently the DNA of this plant was still viable. What am I missing?

<comment><USER5> A seed is a living organism essentially in suspended animation. Cells in the embryo have intact plasma membranes, DNA repair mechanisms are present (although working very slowly), each cell is surrounded by a cell wall, and the entire seed has an outer protective seed coat.

When people talk about DNA degrading, they are usually referring to DNA that is no longer inside living cells, and that doesn't have these multiple levels of protection.

<comment><USER6> Plant's also generally contain much more DNA than animals. (fun fact of the day)

<comment><USER7> Why is that?

<comment><USER8> Plants are usually polyploid

<comment><USER7> Cool!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice to read about a new breakthrough in botany. The field doesn't get much attention at all. Maybe now it will benefit from the popularity of Martian, the movie.

<comment><USER5> As is true in many areas of organismal biology, botany is a field in decline. There are not a lot of jobs anymore, and in academia, not a lot of grant money. In spite of this, every year universities continue to pump out more and more graduates trained for careers that no longer exist. Some of the best botanists these days are citizen scientists who have day jobs at the Cheesecake Factory or driving limos in Las Vegas.

<comment><USER10> I've recently read a (German-language) article, that botanical gardens in Germany are an endangered species.

That's because they are expensive to maintain, professorships have been faded out and biology students and post-grads are usually not so much interested in real plants and systematics anymore, but more in genetics and laboratory work.

The small state of Saarland doesn't have a single publically accessible botanical garden anymore. Across Germany the outlook is dim.

<comment><USER11> The Saarland University has a (pretty small) botanical garden that is open to the public.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanischer_Garten_der_Univers...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanischer_Garten_der_Universit%C3%A4t_des_Saarlandes) says it closed April 1, 2016. More details (in German) at [http://www.uni- saarland.de/nc/aktuelles/artikel/nr/14351.htm...](http://www.uni- saarland.de/nc/aktuelles/artikel/nr/14351.html) .

<comment><USER11> Man, that really sucks. I spent many nice afternoons there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of an episode of Futurama where they revive xmas trees which were accidentally were cross contaminated with bio-weapons. _Spoiler_ , the Christmas trees shoot exploding pine cones that multiply until the entire earth is covered in pine trees.

Amy: "What's that splork on them? It's not germs, is it?"

* [https://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:The_Futurama_Holiday_Sp...](https://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:The_Futurama_Holiday_Spectacular)

</comment><comment><USER14> Please tell me that virusses and bacteria can't be revived after 30k years in ice, or that our imune system is able to remember its defenses against virusses and bacteria it hasn't seen for 30k years.

<comment><USER11> Our immune system is pretty good at identifying all kinds of foreign proteins. Unless a virus or bacterium has specifically evolved to evade our immune system, its chances are pretty bad. I wouldn't be too worried.

<comment><USER15> and if we find natural antibiotics there is a good chance they work even better today, because adaption of the germs reverts over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can it be considered a one more proof supporting the Panspermia [1] hypothesis?

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

<comment><USER17> What does the resurrection of a flower have to do with the origin of life?

<comment><USER18> Nothing. But, _Panspermia is not meant to address how life began, just the method that may cause its distribution in the Universe._ \- from the Panspermia Wikipedia article

<comment><USER17> I'm sorry, I still don't understand the connection. Aliens buried the flowers under the tundra in the ice age? Why bring it up?

<comment><USER19> If the DNA in a seed is still in good enough shape to support blooming after being frozen 30,000 years, perhaps a seed frozen in a meteorite [1] could also survive long enough to be spread between solar systems.

[1] maybe after glancing off a planet or created by the collision of two large objects

<comment><USER20> Could survive long enough to be toasted when the meteorite finally falls to the promised land planet, in form of fireball.

<comment><USER16> Inner ice of sufficiently large comets can survive atmospheric entry.

<comment><USER20> I'm not an expert on comets, so I might be wrong, but I guess that we talk about recycled ice; that would be sterilized each time the comet orbit pass closest to the sun and the water is (partially?) boiled, to become frozen again later.

There would be probably other consequences if a such large comet will fall in a planet. I can't see any happy ending for this organism to surviving its travel just by chance. If the comet is small or disintegrates in smaller pieces the plant is roasted and dead. Otherwise if fallen in one piece, all the life in the impact area of such large comet should be crushed by the pressure wave and vaporized also, including our plant

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Surprised to see spam in the comments there, nature should do a better job of keeping their pages clean from trash like that.

</comment><comment><USER22> Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

</comment><comment><USER23> Im likely allergic. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER24> I guess it's all about freeze/thaw cycles, if the plant can handle one 6 month freeze, it can probably handle one 30,000 year freeze. The freezing is what causes damage, not the being-frozen. I guess.

<comment><USER25> Even though the seed is frozen, respiration still goes on -- albeit slowly -- and eventually the seed will run out of fuel and die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Somewhat misleading title, but a very interesting read nonetheless. "Welcome... To Neolithic Park!"

<comment><USER27> What's misleading about it? Did you read it as saying the flower bloomed naturally after thawing without human help?

<comment><USER26> The flower itself didn't so much bloom after being frozen, as cultivated tissue was worked in vitro to produce a viable flower. It's not exactly clickbait given the payoff, but it's still less than truthful IMO.

<comment><USER27> I guess I automatically assumed it was a human-assisted process since the link was to nature.com, although in hindsight it would have been equally publishable, if not more so, if the flower bloomed on its own.</comment></comment></comment></comment>