Handbook of Constraint Programming (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/CSP/papers/CP_Handbook-20060315-final.pdf <comment><USER2> For anyone interested in playing around with constraint logic programming I can highly recommend Eclipse (not to be confused with the IDE): [http://eclipseclp.org/](http://eclipseclp.org/)

If you're looking for ideas, classical examples are work sheduling (nurses), layout planning for production facilities or stuff like soduko (I also did a poker hand ranker once)

Edit: they also have a good self learning course on their site: [http://4c.ucc.ie/~hsimonis/ELearning/index.htm](http://4c.ucc.ie/~hsimonis/ELearning/index.htm)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Constraint-based things to check out:

1\. Sussman's talk "We Really Don't Know How to Compute" ([http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know- How-T...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To- Compute)) and his work on the Propagator ([https://github.com/ProjectMAC/propagators](https://github.com/ProjectMAC/propagators)).

2\. Gremlin Graph Traversal Machine ([http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.03843v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.03843v1.pdf), [http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/the-benefits-of-the- gremlin...](http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/the-benefits-of-the-gremlin- graph-traversal-machine))

3\. Clojure core.logic ([https://github.com/clojure/core.logic](https://github.com/clojure/core.logic)) and core.match ([https://github.com/clojure/core.match](https://github.com/clojure/core.match))

4\. Yedalog: Exploring Knowledge at Scale ([http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43462.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43462.html), [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9zS43FRzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9zS43FRzQ))

5\. Datomic Datalog ([http://docs.datomic.com/query.html](http://docs.datomic.com/query.html))

</comment><comment><USER3> Constraint programming is extremely important, now more than ever. I don't want to fall on the tired old explanation that says, "you program by declaratively describing the answer instead of procedurally describing how to compute it," both because it's sort of not true and because there's a whole declarative-procedural continuum: FORTRAN is more declarative than assembly language, LISP or Python is more declarative than FORTRAN, arguably ML is more declarative than Lisp or Python, Prolog is more declarative than ML, and SQL is more declarative than Prolog. And it varies by application area: probably, if you're describing a circuit layout, Verilog is more declarative than SQL, and MyHDL is more declarative than Verilog.

Unfortunately I don't have a good, compelling way to explain why I think constraint programming is so important. Here are a few attempts.

Constraint programming transforms a program that determines whether a possible solution is acceptable into a program to compute an acceptable solution.

Constraint programming allows you to write the specification of your program and then separately search for ways to fulfill that specification, either manually (by specifying search strategies/proof tactics) or automatically.

Constraint programming allows you to abstract away the question of which values in a subroutine are returned and which are provided as parameters. If you have only two such candidates, like the tired old °F↔°C example, this is a minor saving. If you have many parameters, it can be a major saving.

\---

So much for why constraint programming would be important if we could do it. Now what's new about being able to do it, particularly since 2006?

I'm not a specialist in the area, so this may not be the best possible answer to the question.

However, it looks to me like miniKANREN is one important development: it's a logic programming language far more powerful than Prolog. cKanren is an extension to CLP.

Also, SMT solvers ("SAT modulo theories"), which are capable of fairly general-purpose constraint solving, have gotten enormously more efficient since 2006. One of the fun things about exponential-time algorithms is that reducing the base of the exponentiation even by a little bit can produce enormous speedups in practice.

Additionally, constraint solving shades over into optimization. In constraint solving, you have a bunch of absolute constraints, and you try to find a configuration that satisfies all of them. A configuration that barely fails to satisfy any of the constraints is no good. (Although this book talks a bit about "soft constraints", too.) In optimization, you have a "loss function" that you try to minimize (or equivalently a value function you try to maximize) and so you're looking for a configuration with a good value of this function. So if you turn each constraint into a Boolean variable that takes on 0 or 1 and subtract their product from 1, then you've turned a constraint problem into an optimization problem. (Maybe you want to sigmoid out the 0/1 transition a bit in order to keep everything differentiable.) All this stuff we've been seeing about "deep learning" and "machine learning"? Those are optimization problems! You can use those techniques to solve constraint programming problems, and you can use CLP techniques to dramatically speed up optimization problems. This is in its infancy. A really cool example of solving inverse kinematics constraints with optimization (just using gradient descent and reverse-mode automatic differentiation) is [http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/constraints](http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/constraints).

Finally, lots of the things we run on our computers — word processing, spreadsheets, HTML rendering, TCP/IP — really don't benefit from the immense increases in computation and memory that have happened since 2006. But constraint solving is NP-hard, and consequently it can eat up all the computrons and DIMMs you can throw at it.

<comment><USER4> > Constraint programming allows you to write the specification of your program

This captures the core idea from my brushes with various constraint based programming languages. There's nearly always a spec floating around somewhere, it's really a question of how expressive your constraint language is. Even programs in "higher level" languages can be seen as a (rather complex) set of constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool, but it's also almost 10 years old... Is that a problem, or is it still up-to-date?

<comment><USER6> Does it matter? Even if it isn't the latest and greatest, it's still valuable for it's original reason: To teach you about the basics of constraint programming. And now it's valuable for a new reason: To teach you about the context and evolutionary path which led to modern constraint programing.

Often, the latest and greatest is defined in terms of incremental changes from the body of generally accepted knowledge. If you just read the most recent stuff, you'll probably lack the requisite knowledge to understand it. This is true up until the point that the new stuff becomes generally accepted and widely known. At that point, somebody writes it up nice, requiring minimal context, but by that time, it's no longer the latest and greatest!

<comment><USER5> > Does it matter? [...] Often, the latest and greatest is defined in terms of > incremental changes from the body of generally accepted knowledge.

I don't know. Some fields that's true, and some fields that's not (a book on the latest and greatest of web development from 2006 would be highly out of date). Constraint Programming isn't a field I'm versed in, so I'm asking to find out whether or not it matters.

<comment><USER6> That's not an apt comparison. This book is about a general technique and problem domain, not a particular constraint programming language/framework/toolchain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The link does not work for me.

<comment><USER8> Current link should work. Does on Android.</comment></comment>


The Prosecution Cannot Rest on a Trade Secret - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-29/the-prosecution-cannot-rest-on-a-trade-secret <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/3urmgj/the_pros...](https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/3urmgj/the_prosecution_cannot_rest_on_a_trade_secret/)</comment>


Writing outlines for projects - <AUTHOR>

So I come from a writing background, and programming and writing have turned out to be very similar. I'm wondering how many of you write outlines for large projects, and how much time you spend on these outlines/how detailed these outlines are.<p>Do you write an outline in pseudocode, or an outline detailing the class/object relationships? Any insight or advice would be great. <comment><USER2> For single me code:

For anything at about a page or two, I just code and fix as I go. I may or may not have tests at first, and if I don't have any tests at the end it's because the thing is so short that it's its own test.

For anything larger I write/draw "thing diagrams" on paper, an informal way for me to think out loud. Thing diagrams might be just a list of things and what they do, or they might look like class diagrams, or mind maps, or combinations of all that. Each thing might have a word, or sentence, or paragraph. In some cases there might only be words and paragraphs. It just depends on random cosmic rays, and on how what I'm working on directs me to think.

For me as a team member, I follow whatever practices and lore the tribe follows. Usually there will be a larger design from a larger tribe member, and I'll do my part like a single me coder until I know enough about it to produce tribally approved practice and lore. Then I code, and correct my delivered practice and lore.</comment>


Cocoa with Love: Debugging tips for Objective-C programming - <AUTHOR> http://cocoawithlove.com/2008/10/debugging-tips-for-objective-c.html <comment><USER2> the NSZombie and malloc tracing stuff shown in this article helped me out a number of times

<http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?DebuggingAutorelease></comment>


Future Android versions will improve battery life by killing background services - <AUTHOR> http://www.xda-developers.com/how-android-n-will-improve-battery-and-memory-management/ <comment><USER2> I am skeptical when I hear about what Google is doing w.r.t. to Android, in particular I wonder if any of these people have actually used an android device.

My Nexus 7 tablet has a hard time just charging, turning on and off, and the people I know who have actual phones have continuous problems.

I remember Win 2k allegedly having "power management" on laptops, which mostly meant that my co-workers at the time had their laptops lock hard 4 times a day and have to remove the battery to reboot. Android is a much worse mess than anybody admits it is.</comment>


400Gbps: Winter of Whopping Weekend DDoS Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-winter-of-400gbps-weekend-ddos-attacks/ <comment><USER2> Some awesome challenges in this space.

What would of been the response if you hit 100gbit/sec inbound to edge112.tel01.cloudflare.cc ?</comment>


Announcing a Specification for Hack - <AUTHOR> http://hhvm.com/blog/8537/announcing-a-specification-for-hack

<comment><USER2> Is anyone besides Facebook using Hack? My limited searching revealed little but side projects.

<comment><USER3> There are folks using Hack (e.g. [http://hhvm.com/blog/6005/hack-community- roundup-3](http://hhvm.com/blog/6005/hack-community-roundup-3)) and there are some others in the pipe that will be detailed later on.</comment></comment>


Trump Administration Seeking to Expand Collection of Biometrics from Immigrants - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/09/01/908599539/trump-administration-seeking-to-expand-collection-of-biometric-data-from-immigra <comment><USER2> My government is for equality and tries to get biometrics from everyone. So much better.</comment>


Mobile e-commerce fraud detection - <AUTHOR> http://blog.siftscience.com/mobile-e-commerce-fraud-detection/

<comment><USER2> >> "In contrast, fraudsters tend to create accounts and then go shop for merchandise."

Perhaps this is overreaching and the results have been skewed by various factors. According to one of the tables on that post, the analysis revealed that a purchase occurring between 3-10 minutes of account creation is 'quite suspicious'. I find it hard to believe this matches to reality.

I hope I don't come across as insulting, it's just that I know how easy it is to get false positives with anything involving statistics and machine learning.

<comment><USER3> These results are averaged across many different types of e-commerce companies. So you're correct that a particular company shouldn't necessarily set up a rule to flag transactions occurring 3-10 mins from account creation.

At Sift Science, a user is flagged based on a combination of many different factors. So while a transaction 3-10 minutes after signup is associated with increased risk of fraud, a user typically has to match many different patterns to be flagged as an overall risk.</comment></comment>


Vaughn and Franco placeholder service - <AUTHOR> http://placevaughnandfranco.it/ <comment><USER2> Just as I was getting bored of kittens and puppies.</comment>


White label opportunities for a solopreneur? - <AUTHOR> I have a successful SaaS product and it has attracted a few businesses wanting to work with me on a white label opportunity.
Essentially, they want me to launch the same service branded for them (data, customers, servers, etc are mine, but the branding is theirs) but sharing the profits (they do the marketing, etc).
Is this wise? What kind of revenue split is normal for these kind of arrangements? <comment><USER2> I wouldn't touch profit sharing with a 10 foot pole. You'd be surprised by how creative they can get at inflating expenses.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot depends on the detail of their definition of 'white label'.

Do they want just a version of the product that has their branding front and center, but which with even a cursory scratching of the surface is your product.

Or do they want a complete white-label version including domain names (incl. backend services not shown in the browser), email, payment processing, etc, etc.

In the later case unless they are willing to pay $$$$$ up front for the development it would seem very unlikely to be worthwhile.

In the former case, you could decide if it is worthwhile for a moderate amount of development effort and perhaps even include a 'Powered by ...' link in the footer. Then offer them a 30% discount on pricing: eg. a plan that costs $300\year normally you'll sell them for $210 and require they market it at a price of at least $300 ... if they can sell it for more and capture more profit take that as a signal to raise your prices!

</comment><comment><USER4> Offer a reseller program.

1\. They sign a Non-compete agreement to ensure they don't become your competitor. Get a lawyer involved to protect yourself.

2\. They pay a huge upfront fee. Call it "licensing" or "new reseller" fee. If they dont agree, move on. This fee should cover at least 12-18 months of average profit you make per client generally.

3\. On top of the fixed one time fee, they pay you a flat fee per customer that they onboard. This could be harder to verify so the upfront fee should be your minimum guarantee.

Generally profit sharing sounds great on paper but you wont be able to track those metrics unless you are the one who hosts the software.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hard to say. It's a complex decision based on your company's specifics. If you do it, I'd suggest you strongly consider charging them a largish upfront fee, like a licensing or franchising fee. Otherwise you risk bootstrapping a competitor without any compensation for that risk. Revenue split for affiliate deals (that's close to what this is) is often a function of base price + margin - customer acquistion costs. Kind of like how Apple lets retailers sell Macbooks for price X but no lower. So affilates can charge any amount above a profitable floor that you have set.

</comment><comment><USER6> If everything goes to hell, can you afford a long court battle against your partner? If the answer is no, don't even think of doing it - joint ventures like this have a peculiar tendency to become non profits. If the answer is yes and if they are willing to make a large cash payment up front (to compensate you for your time), make sure to get very clear terms around what expenses are allowed to be charged to the joint account.</comment>


How open data was used to uncover the elite benefiting from Myanmar's jade trade - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@opencorporates/how-open-company-data-was-used-to-uncover-the-powerful-elite-benefiting-from-myanmar-s-multi-1ef35f88d6bd#.ommzbiwrk <comment><USER2> "This white paper shows how not only was it critical that OpenCorporates had this information (much of the information was removed from the official register during the investigation)"

I've been spending a lot of time in Myanmar over the past 3 years. While there is incredible progress on some fronts, corruption and asset grabbing by those in power is so entrenched that I'm pretty sure nothing will change as a result of this investigation, except perhaps removal of some data from public records.

The country is deeply in need of public revenue to fund the most basic public needs, like functional roads and sanitation, but vast amounts of the natural resource wealth are being misappropriated with no end in sight.

</comment><comment><USER3> OpenCorporates limits you to 500 req/month + hard to download data in bulk (you have to pay) => This is a good example of what Open Data should not be.

The crazy part is how they receive so many OpenData prizes while being so closed.

<comment><AUTHOR> The data is under a share-alike license which means if you're not going to share the results of the whatever you're going to do with the data with the rest of the world. A lot of academics, open data projects, NGOs and journalists use our Open Data API without any problem but ofcourse, we use the profits from selling our data to businesses to support the organisation. We think it's really important an organisation such as OpenCorporates remains sustainable and that's why we have this model.

<comment><USER3> That's a fair reasoning. I'm just saying that this is not opendata for me. And calling yourself opendata is misleading in my opinion.</comment></comment></comment>


Starbucks to Revise Policies to End Irregular Schedules for Its 130,000 Baristas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/us/starbucks-to-revise-work-scheduling-policies.html <comment><USER2> This article that sparked the response is phenomenal:

"Working anything but 9-5" \- [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-w...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks- workers-scheduling-hours.html?_r=1)

A lot of the problems she is dealing with are things I have never experienced and likely never will. The things she is facing on a regular basis are personal nightmares of mine. Imagine if your life story started out "drug addicted mother and an absent father," what a disadvantage that is. Certainly worth a read.

<comment><USER3> _Maria Trisler is often dismissed early from her shifts at a McDonald's in Peoria, Ill., when the computers say sales are slow. The same sometimes happens to Ms. Navarro at Starbucks._

This is just a plain evil tactic, moving the cost of bad capacity planning from management, who made the decision, to the employee.

<comment><USER4> It's easy to blame it on bad capacity planning, but some times it really is just irregularly slow (or busy). When I waited tables it wasn't at all unheard of for the manager to ask if someone wanted to leave if it was abnormally slow. If there were no volunteers (or if everyone was indifferent) they almost always picked someone to go home.

Same goes for it being extremely busy and calling someone who is off and asking if they wanted to come in to make some extra money.

<comment><USER5> Even if it's not bad planning, the business is the more appropriate party to bear the risk of unexpected slow times than the employee. The employee has already reserved the time in her schedule because she's been told that she will be working then. Even if it turns out her works is not needed, she should be paid for those hours.

<comment><USER6> Except that there are plenty of people who are willing to work for these terms.

I own several retail stores. Labor is by far the largest manageable cost and whether or not we make any profit is often a direct result of managing our labor cost.

Re: being the one who should bear the risk, I am also the one who bears the responsibility to make sure they have a job tomorrow. If we don't make money then there is no job.

Of course, the alternative is that we could raise prices so that we don't have to be ruthlessly efficient. But then, the market doesn't tend to like that.

<comment><USER7> I appreciate your position as a business owner but I take issue with your assertion that it's okay to dismiss workers because 'there are plenty of people who are willing to work for' those terms.

There are also other practices that people might be allowed to perform but which are prohibited - consider, for example, young children working for businesses outside the home. I don't think the willingness of labor is a reasonable metric to gauge the fairness of a business practice.

In general, I think it's the government's responsibility to make sure that pro-business positions (even understandable ones like what you're mentioning) don't unfairly hurt workers - to be fair, 'flexible' hours have been mentioned by the Obama administration multiple times this summer.

<comment><USER6> The option isn't between a job with irregular hours and a job with regular hours. The option is between a job with irregular hours and no job.

With all of the talk about raising the minimum wage drastically (small increments are fine), or something like requiring a certain minimum shift length, it will push small business owners towards non-human workers faster (automation and robots).

<comment><USER8> That sounds really good. The only possible way that would be bad is if we insist on keeping society in a state where not having a job is not an acceptable state. But why would we insist on everyone working, once we can automate most of what people do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm working on scheduling problems at StaffJoy - shoot me an email (philip at staffjoy dot com) if you are interested in the field.

We are revising classic OR scheduling methods to fit small workforces. With fewer workers comes fewer constraints and more canonical solutions, so just minimizing cost does not always create the best schedules - in fact, with little or no increase in net employee hours worked per week you can make cleaner schedules that prevent things like "clopens" and give employees consecutive days off every week.

We are accomplishing better small-workforce schedules using a two-stage nonlinear model that first minimizes net employee hours (cost), then holds that minimized sum as a constraint (plus optional flexibility) to pick the canonical schedule that meets "nice to have" criteria, like letting employees pick preferred shifts ("I like to work mornings").

To learn more about the difficulties in scheduling, check out the "Nurse scheduling problem":

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

<comment><USER10> Yikes, sounds like a pretty tricky mixed integer programming problem. What are the usual go-to techniques for optimization? branch & bound?

<comment><USER9> We're experimenting with different solving techniques. One of the difficult parts to fit into an algorithm cleanly is "pick how many shifts this employee should have" \- e.g. should a part-time employee have two 8-hour + one 4-hour shifts, or one 8-hour + three 4-hour shifts. If you are trying to build that logic into the solver then branch and bound struggles but something like basin hopping seems to work better. However, with fewer employees you can just solve all possible weekly shifts per employee in parallel with a branch and bound. The most basic way to calculate the range is using the hours an employee works in a week and dividing it by both the minimum shift length ("not worth coming in for a shift of less than two hours") and max shift length ("don't have somebody work for more than 8 hours in a day"). Gets more complex when you move into problems like required number of days off per week.

<comment><USER6> What is your target market?

I own several retail stores that usually have 2-6 employees on the clock at any given time and don't see any meaningful benefit at our level. I could see how a place with 20 employees on the clock at one time might have more benefit, but that seems like a pretty small market to me.

<comment><USER9> It's a solution searching for a problem. I talked to many coffee shop and restaurant owners, and my conclusion was that independent stores would be hard to acquire as customers, require more ongoing support, and bring in less revenue. Initially I am planning on targeting medical (ERs, private ambulance companies), construction, warehouses, and chains where there are economies of scale or higher-paid hourly workers that would justify such a solution.

<comment><USER11> There's a good reason it's called the Nurse Scheduling Problem, not the Barrista Scheduling Problem :-)

When my twins were in NICU, it hit me what a challenge it must be to schedule nurses in such a unit. Accross the three shifts in a day, the nurse/patient ratio is a little over one. I think for about 30 NICU babies you had about 75 nurses, so this is an interesting planning problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Part of the reason that companies enacted irregular schedules was to remove the ability of managers to schedule employees in a biased (or perceived as biased) manner. Some examples:

* Employee A gets a more desirable shift than employee B. Employee A also gets along with the manager better that employee B.

* Employee A gets a more desirable shift than employee B because employee A has worked for the company longer. Employee B is equally capable of doing the work.

* Employee A gets a more desirable shift than employee B. Employee B feels that it's because of race/gender/sexual orientation.

* Employee A covers the shift of employee B. Employee A now has enough hours to qualify as a "full-time" employee, causing an administrative headache.

This is not to say that completely randomizing work schedules is the answer, just to point out that there's more reasoning for these systems than the article suggests.

(edit: I worked for a major U.S. retailer when they were implementing such a system.)

<comment><USER13> > Part of the reason that companies enacted irregular schedules was to remove > the ability of managers to schedule employees in a biased (or perceived as > biased) manner.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim? (I hate to be that guy, but, wow...)

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what evidence you're asking for... That people sometimes feel discriminated against?

(edit: The mere fact that Starbuck's has 130,000 barristas at any given point in time makes it quite likely that someday one of those barristas will sue them for discrimination because they couldn't get the shifts they wanted. If the company can prove that the shifts were assigned using an algorithm and not by a person, they have a good chance of winning their case.)

<comment><USER14>
      I'm not sure what evidence you're asking for... That people sometimes feel discriminated against?

No, he's asking for evidence to the claim that irregular schedules are a result of trying to avoid discrimination, because that is a big claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Worth a re-read: [http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> A friend of mine had an internship helping folks appeal denied unemployment insurance claims. Almost every case come down to the employer playing schedule games and forcing the employee to quit.

</comment><comment><USER17> Scheduling is so amazing when you are first exposed to it, I never used to work shift work until a few years ago but it was well-organized; minimum two weeks posting of your schedule, very few late/early shifts.

Then as the years went on and new people took over it changed abruptly to pretty much daily. Lots of terrible shifts like 2pm to 10pm.

One time my schedule changed five times in one hour. I've talked to staff who were on vacation and had their schedule changed to require them to work or change so much they return not having a clue what happened.

Names of staff in an Excel spreadsheet seems to be the most common way for supervisors unfamiliar with anything other than typing words and numbers into a cell, and even then some can't even highlight or add colour.

I can certainly see the value in a good schedule and a good application to create it but the complexity of it, business needs, lack of skill of management all seem to converge into one big clusterfuck.

</comment><comment><USER18> I used to close and open the next day at Starbucks. Didn't mind though, since they worked within my college schedule and gave me hours that fit around my classes. Still, good to hear they are making advancements in how their employees are treated. First health care, then college, now better work/life balance. What's really great is how they accomplish this without being required to. Good job Starbucks.

</comment><comment><USER19> The last line of the article is heart-rending: _"I want to surprise everyone," she said, "because no one is expecting anything of me."_

I have no doubt she will.

</comment><comment><USER20> The most interesting bit of the article, to me, is this:

 _"Encouraging managers not to rely entirely on the automated software is the best thing they can do. But I'm doubtful of how many managers will actually do it," she said, because of the wide variation in how managers at different stores treat their employees._

Why? Because it gets to the point that a company may, _on the whole_ be trying to do the right thing, and may have progressive policies, etc., but - at the end of the day - it is individual middle managers who most directly impact the conditions that workers experience.

I doubt this point will resonate with the left'ish wing folks who consider all business owners evil, blab about "capitalist oppressors" and want a wholesale adoption of socialist (or psuedo-socialist) policies, but this is the truth. Companies are _not_ inherently evil, and companies can - and do - choose to try to do right by their employees... but enforcing consistent application of a policy related to working conditions is just as a difficult as enforcing consistent application of _any_ policy in a large organization.

The question then, to me, is whether or not Starbucks can find a way to ensure that this policy _is_ actually adhered to. And at any rate, good on them for at least making the attempt.

<comment><USER21> > Companies are not inherently evil

You're right, companies are inherently amoral. If their pursuit of profit happens to be moral, all the better, but don't expect them to rescind immoral policies if it means it'll hurt profit and nobody with any power is around to put on pressure to make them stop.

When they do awful things, those poor persecuted businessmen can always count on apologists like you to come to their defence though.

<comment><USER22> Problem with that is that there is no "evil" there is only good and "amoral".

I fully subscribe to one of the basic economic axioms. That people act out of self-interest (whether being a manager in a capitalist system or volunteering in a hospital in North Korea). This is a rule that's true "on average", not absolutely, but it is true in the overwhelming majority of cases you'll look at.

That means "evil" barely ever happens. There are very, very few people who hurt others knowing they'll also hurt themselves in the process (there are, in theory they should be confined to insane asylums). This suggests it's at least a Nash balance.

Almost all people who commit bad acts do so because they are expected a benefit in return. Murder, theft, rape, hell, even suicide bombing ... all come with a benefit to the perpetrator. This makes their actions fit your description of "amoral".

The opposite of good is not your definition of evil. That's merely insanity. I'm not saying that never happens, but it very rarely do. The opposite of good is your definition of "amoral", and because of that it makes a lot of sense to call anything amoral evil.

Having some machine learning experience I might also mention that I've noticed on easy communality in evil versus good. There is this concept of "time horizon" of decisions. Because predicting the world is a cpu and memory expensive process, when evaluating a decision people only simulate X time out. X is called the time horizon. If there is a decision that will have good effects for X-1, and cause a disaster at X, they will make that decision. What we call evil can, to some extent, be simplified as being a "decision with low time horizon" and good is the opposite. Hell, what most saints did can be summarized as making decisions where the time horizon is far longer than their lifespan, which doesn't make sense for most people.

Alternatively one could say that you're trying to let companies get away from being called "evil" by taking a far extreme and then showing that they don't satisfy that standard. That you are presenting a "reductio ad absurdum" fallacy.</comment></comment></comment>


Numan Türle adds every Gitlab user to project - aaron-santos https://gitlab.com/numanturle/tetete/-/issues/1 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/numanturle/status/1304154397417635842](https://twitter.com/numanturle/status/1304154397417635842)

#tetete

#bringbacktetete

</comment><comment><USER2> Just saw this, searched for the project, and found this thread.

</comment><comment><USER3> That was unexpected.

Heard about it on slack and also got the email.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not to be mistaken with the Numan Turtle project.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good job</comment>


Shuttleworth: "Apple is driving the innovation" - <AUTHOR> http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=3413801

<comment><USER2> I just gained a whole lot more respect for that man:

 _" I think we don't yet deliver a good enough user experience. I think we deliver a user experience for people that have a reason to want to be on the Linux platform, either because of price or because of freedom. If that was your primary reason, Linux is the right answer.

But if you are somebody who is not too concerned about price, who is not too concerned about freedom, I don't think we can say the Linux desktop offers the very best experience."_

<comment><USER3> I'll play devil's advocate for a sec. If some user doesn't care about freedom/price, why should anyone care about him using linux? Linux is free; I don't imagine a higher market share will increase profits much. Seems to me like shuttleworth's doesn't know who his customers are & I wonder how far he'll get running this as a charity.

<comment><USER4> "If some user doesn't care about freedom/price, why should anyone care about him using linux?"

Network effects. The more Linux users there are, the greater the incentive for companies to support their hardware and software on Linux.

<comment><USER3> I see your point. I wonder, though, whether it's worth the trouble. We're doing really well for <1% market share or whatever it is. Much of the popular windows games/software runs on wine/cedega & I haven't had any trouble finding linux-compatible hardware. Maybe it was the case in 2001, but I don't think unsupported hardware/software is much of an obstacle today.

<comment><USER2> I don't think we've reached the point yet where you can buy a laptop or PC and not wonder about whether it can flawlessly run all your Linux apps, with all the finger print readers, weird mice and keyboards, webcams, etc, that now come with computers. That's the point I'd say Linux hardware support should aim for.

I don't think any more than that would be good. If it gets too mainstream, it won't be a geek OS anymore... We'll have to find something else :(. And the possible problem of people writing more viruses for it. (Though I'm not an expert on security issues)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Our Experience Switching to Gulp - <AUTHOR> http://istrategylabs.com/2015/02/swept-up-in-the-stream-5-ways-isl-used-gulp-to-improve-our-process/

<comment><USER2> insightful</comment>


Reverse Engineering Cyclic Redundancy Codes - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2019/06/27/reverse-engineering-cyclic-redundancy-codes/ <comment><USER2> So maybe someone else can help me understand, but I do not know why you would want to "spoof" CRCs. CRCs are not a cryptographic hash algorithm, and CRCS are meant to correct errors in transmission. If I were to MITM, I would simply recalculate the CRC after changing the transmission.

<comment><USER3> >I would simply recalculate the CRC

This is how you figure out which CRC to use in order to "simply" recalculate it.

Usually you are doing this because you want to interface with a closed-source device where only the messages are known, or if you want to check a closed- source device for vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you on that, however the article says "The CRC RevEng code can also manipulate a message to generate a desired CRC value."

That is what I am confused on. Why would you need a desired CRC value?

<comment><USER4> Maybe there are CRC values that signal hashes, and are used as such. So instead of looking at a message, it'll look at the CRC instead. This gives you the ability to not have to know the full message, but leverage this with part/none of it.

Another reason might be for QA testing, or for fuzzing purposes.

You don't always know the implementation details, but this type of control allows one to get more understanding of those details, by seeing how the software under test reacts. This stuff is not wildly uncommon in low-grade IoT devices, or high-end devices with a low level of security maturity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article in this post talks about figuring out the parameters for an unknown CRC, based on sample data.

Somewhat relatedly, I have an article talking about modifying a file to generate a particular CRC, assuming that the parameters are known. [https://www.nayuki.io/page/forcing-a-files-crc-to-any- value](https://www.nayuki.io/page/forcing-a-files-crc-to-any-value)

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool indeed, but I wish the blog post would go more in detail about how the program works instead of just that it exists.

<comment><USER3> A CRC is the remainder or residue after division (by the CRC generating polynomial).

So you are given a dividend (the message) and a remainder (the CRC). What is the divisor (the CRC polynomial)? From one example dividend/remainder you can come up with several possible divisors, but you have already greatly narrowed the field. With more examples you can eliminate the false positives.

<comment><USER6> That's what it says in the article, I just think the interesting part is HOW the number of possibilities are narrowed down efficiently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty interesting! The tool they use is CRC RevEng - apparently one of the things it does it try known CRCs, and they give this unique catalog of known CRCs:

[http://reveng.sourceforge.net/crc- catalogue/](http://reveng.sourceforge.net/crc-catalogue/)</comment>


Richard Feynman's Integral Trick - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/richard-feynmans-integral-trick-e7afae85e25c <comment><USER2> Interestingly, Mathematica does evaluate the integral successfully, but unless you add the constraint that alpha is real, it outputs a truly hideous looking result.

This expression:

        Integrate[Log[1 - 2 \[Alpha] Cos[x] + \[Alpha]^2],
          {x, 0, \[Pi]},
          Assumptions -> Abs[\[Alpha]] >= 1
             && \[Alpha] \[Element] Reals]

Required 33 seconds of CPU time @ 4 GHz and outputs the short and neat expression in the article. Slow, but successful.

This is a symptom of Mathematica's symbolic engine being written with the "everything is a complex number" assumption deeply ingrained in it. Simplifying assumptions are treated as an afterthought. Conversely, it's not able to generalise to number spaces such as quaternions, matrices, or noncommutative algebras in general.

It's a pity the Mathematica engine has not had a revamp, it would be great if they did a major update to bring its capabilities in line with modern group theory and category theory.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Did you try MatLab?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> AKA Leibniz's rule: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_integral_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_integral_rule)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there a link that doesn't require signing in with Facebook, etc?

<comment><USER5> Use a private window

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I recall he used power of two trapazoids to bound above and below? Paywalled article.

<comment><USER7> Medium -> incognito</comment></comment>


Czech power company holds Facebook bikini contest to choose interns - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/power-company-holds-facebook-bikini-contest-to-choose-interns <comment><USER2> The end of this article is some sort of gold "In 2017, I find it incredible that someone could gain a professional advantage for their good looks."

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope they choose their male interns with bodybuilding contests.</comment>


The Rise of the Kluges - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-kluges-1468968418 <comment><USER2> Kludge</comment>


Interesting Web 2.0 Jobs with those Pickup Artists from "The Game" - money-cowboy http://www.realsocialdynamics.com/employment.asp

<comment> money-cowboy I don't work for them, but I did attend the free Boston lecture last week, and was prety impressed with how the business is run.

I was talking with Nick, the ceo who did the talk (Papa, if you've read neil Strauss' book), and got on the subject of IT. He said the IT dept had a lot of job openings. This is a pretty cool company and I doubt these are the typical fortune 500 type jobs that hackers hate. Nice Website too.</comment>


A site for unbiased news reporting  - <AUTHOR> http://edwardshui.blogspot.com/2011/03/startup-idea-no29-mar-2011-news-without.html

<comment><USER2> _...a site which allows user to post certain news from a particular source, and then followed by posts there are coming from other users who discover either complementary or contradicting information from another source._

Sounds similar to NewsTrust (<http://www.newstrust.net/>).

 _NewsTrust helps people find and share good journalism online, so they can make more informed decisions as citizens._

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for letting me know about that site @dmlorenzetti! You are right, it's pretty similar. Looks like I need to refine my idea then.</comment></comment>


Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/

<comment><USER2> I was originally going to post that sometimes I wish gifts like this would be given to smaller, less fortunate schools. A top tier school like CMU is always going to be able to find new sources of endowment. I still believe this in general. However before reading the previous comments, I had no idea how small CMU's endowment was compared to other top tier universities. If the numbers I read are correct, CMU's $815 million is only 2.97% of Harvard's $27.4 billion. Not nearly what I assumed it was.

<comment><USER3> CMU made some very big announcements (big to students at the school) in 2007 when their endowment broke $1 billion for the first time ever. And then 2008 happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to Wikipedia, CMU currently has an endowment of $815m so rather huge donation. I was actually surprised by this. For some reason I thought CMU had one of those endowments where $250m gets a urinal named after you.

<comment><USER5> I'm a CMU alum, and I asked about that once when they were mentioning "space naming opportunities". Very roughly and unofficially speaking, $50,000 gets you a classroom, $1,000,000 gets you a floor or wing, and $20 million gets you a department. Apparently $265 million gets you a college.

<comment><USER6> $55 million (Tepper) in 2003 was the previous price...

<comment><USER5> Well, you expect the b-school to cost more than other departments, don't you :-).

<comment><USER7> The Tepper School of Business is a college at CMU just like the newly-named Marianna Brown Dietrich Humanities and Social Sciences college. The colleges contains departments such as English, Philosophy, etc.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, of course it is. I wasn't thinking straight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wondered what the other biggest gifts were, but could not find a canonical list. A good starter is the following:

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2000/neurogifts.html>

I guess that its top 3 still hold. In addition, I found the following:

\- $1b endowment to found Vedanta University from Anil Agarwal Foundation (2006)

\- $454.5m to National Taiwan University from Terry Gou (2007)

\- $400m to Columbia from John Kluge (4th largest in 2007)

\- $360m to RPI from an anonymous donor (page mentions largest in US history in 2001)

I could not easily find the _official_ list all of these pages refer to, anybody has an idea?

<comment><USER9> I don't know about 'official', but it's highly likely that the Chronicle of Higher Ed/Chronicle of Philanthropy are the most referred to. Here's a list from 2008:

<http://chronicle.com/stats/big_gifts.htm>

And here's a searchable database:

<http://philanthropy.com/stats/topdonors/index.php>

<comment><USER8> Thanks for that list, it seems to me that this is the list all of the articles refer to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It starts after his death? Why might that be

<comment><USER11> I think (and I may be wrong) - he gets to write off the donation now (probably amortized) to help his tax basis even though the $ doesn't go anywhere until he's gone...

<comment><USER12> Yes, this is something I talked about with an estate attorney when we had kids and were setting up a living trust. Basically you can create an entity called a charitable trust which is a gift to a third party, that transfers on your death, and avoids estate taxes. What is more interesting is that many of these are more durable than language in one's will, specifically the will can be challenged and thrown out but a charitable trust won't get screwed because of it.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the answer, thats real interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Live announcement here now <http://www.cmu.edu/event/sept7/>

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great for CMU but it has a long way to go to catch up to the endowments of its peer institutions -- both on a gross and on a per capita basis.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats to CMU!

</comment><comment><USER15> Always amazes me that there are people out there who have $265mil to give that you can barely find anything about on Google. (Bill likely has a lot more too, as he is expected to give a very large gift to the University of Pittsburgh).

More details on him here: <http://www.postgazette.com/pg/11250/1172681-455-0.stm>

<comment><USER16> What surprised me even more was that it was only the 14th largest donation in history made to higher education. Here's the list if anyone else was wondering: <http://chronicle.com/stats/big_gifts.htm>

<comment><USER17> That list is slightly outdated, missing the $10b endowment for the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (endowed by its namesake).

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

<comment><USER18> Does a large endowment incentivize murder?

<comment><USER19> I'm sure the document has a clause which invalidates the donation if they murder him for the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, just looked at his book, "In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: The Political Roots of American Economic Decline" (published in 1991, at the time when Japan was today's China...), and this guy is about as far away from my libertarian worldview as you can imagine. He believed that America's problem at the time was that it didn't have enough bureaucracy (which is especially ironic given how bureaucratic gerontocracy today is believed to be stifling Japan's growth). Hope his donation will do some good though.

<comment><USER21> > And this guy is about as far away from my libertarian worldview as you can > imagine.

There is something really funny about a guy with a 'not so libertarian' worldview donating 265 million to a university and a guy with a libertarian worldview that probably will never be in a position to do so commenting on that.

<comment><USER22> "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"</comment></comment></comment>


Opensource project controls Google Glass with your mind - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ThisPlace/MindRDR

<comment><AUTHOR> Users only need to think about certain tasks to execute it, the project uses MindWave Mobile from NeurSky ( [http://neurosky.com/products-markets/eeg- biosensors/hardware...](http://neurosky.com/products-markets/eeg- biosensors/hardware/) ) and Google Glass

Information about the project can be found here : [http://mindrdr.thisplace.com/static/index.html](http://mindrdr.thisplace.com/static/index.html) but it seems to be down at the moment, so i referenced the Github project and it's also live on [https://twitter.com/mind_rdr](https://twitter.com/mind_rdr)</comment>


Show HN: I finally launched my new weather app - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1011881829?mt=8

<comment><USER2> Seems like it would be better as a free app and you make money if I buy the t-shirt (or whatever) through the app. Not sure many be willing to plunk down .99cents when there are so many other, great free weather apps. Neat concept none the less.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We thought $0.99 was pretty cheap for a weather app, but who knows, maybe later we'll make it free

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You rated your own app with 5 stars? I imagine the other 5 star customer rating is staged too since you just released it 10 minutes ago...

<comment><USER4> Why would he not rate his own app 5 stars? Same reason every presidential candidate ever says they are going to win the election. It makes no sense to say otherwise.

<comment><USER5> I think most presidential candidates actually believe, that they are the best choice. As a programmer you know where you took shortcuts. I think I would not honestly rate any software I wrote to be perfect, because such software has not been made yet. On the App Store I would probably just lie and give it 5 stars anyway :)</comment></comment></comment>


Dave McClure's answer to 500 Startups: What is 500 startups business model? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/500-Startups/What-is-500-startups-business-model/answer/Dave-McClure <comment><USER2> pretty fascinating that a seed fund can also make money in very creative ways.</comment>


The Responsibility of a Developer with Regards to Climate Change - <AUTHOR> https://blog.m7w3.de/responsibility-of-a-developer-climate-change.html <comment><AUTHOR> I sometimes wonder what other software developers (who seem to be quite eco conscious) think about the consequences of their job. It's kind of refreshing to hear someone else's thoughts on this...</comment>


Sixty Years Old - is my future short and messy, or long and glorious? - <AUTHOR> http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pellissier20120410

<comment><USER2> If I live another 50 years, I'll make it to 83. At the rate I am going, by 83, I'll have watched the sun rise about 6 times by then, maybe taken 12 walks on the beach and star gazed a few more; but I'll have eaten another 6500 cheeseburgers, drank 4 swimming pools of soda and beer, and watched a gigahour of netflix. I think we get very unrealistic when we consider the future. I'm not an extraordinary person, though.

As a cynic, I say it's just a complete fear of not existing that's the draw to living forever. But if you can experience something new only once, it seems very greedy to keep this little body going while using up some kid-to-be's spot.

<comment><USER3> If you become an unproductive drain on society, yes that would be bad. Otherwise there's no such thing as 'spots'. The whole point of extending human life is to maintain youth-like or better functionality. If you can't think of a way to enjoy an unlimited lifetime filled with exponential technological innovation and scientific progress, I suggest spurring your imagination a little.

<comment><USER2> Or maybe I spurred it, and thought that something unlimited might become boring and akin to some form of hell.

<comment><USER4> If you don't like it, you could always choose to die. The point is that these technologies will give you the luxury of the choice to live as long as you want.

Personally, I've tallied up a number of things I want to do in my life, and after having done 2 big ones (well, one finished and one still in progress with a moving goalpost), I've realized just how long it takes to accomplish big goals. Even my incomplete list far exceeds 200 years already. I'll take the life extension, thanks.

<comment><USER2> I just feel like turning when I die into a luxury option somehow trivializes my entire existence. I know this is just a personal hangup of mine, but I feel like I am nothing but a summation of activities if I know it's time to die when I get bored with this now-plentiful lifetime. It's like, if you could just keep disney world open as long as you wanted, you could get to ride everything until you were sick of it, and then you'd finally be happy and ready to go home. _shrug_ Maybe I am just uncomfortable that that level of control. It's definitely pressing a lobe in my brain I don't have a name for. I'm sorry I can't be more articulate than that but I know it's based in some rat-brain non-rational fear. It's interesting.

<comment><USER5> According to various philosophies and religions, defining life in terms of "doing" is one of the fundamental errors, and it does have various negative implications if you think it through to its logical conclusion.

So, no, I don't think this is just "a personal hangup" of yours...

<comment><USER4> Any thing you define life in terms of is a fundamental error. There is no meaning except that which you make for yourself. You can define it in terms of what to be, or what to do. If you define it in terms of what to do, life loses meaning once you run out of things to do. If you define it in terms of what to be, you end up in an ego contest with anyone else who wants to be the same thing, and life loses meaning once you become "common".

Religion dodges the issue by presenting goals that cannot be reached, which I think is a fair compromise for most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the age of immortality, everyone eventually dies in a car crash or something similar. There is no escaping death.

The common objections don't change this. "Uploading your brain" is an unsolved philosophical conundrum that may or may not continue the existence of "you".

The universe eventually dies, too. 10 billion years is not immortality. Escaping to a newer younger universe is a pure speculation.

Everyone will die.

<comment><USER3> The notion of so-called uploading is an interesting one. From a philosophical and practical point of view, I think it's actually pretty simple. If you uploaded my brain into a robot and we both woke up, he'd say he was the real me and I'd say I was the real me. An outside observer could not tell the difference--it would be theoretically impossible to. If you killed one of us, one of use would feel like he died, the other wouldn't. Both of us would feel like we'd lived an entire lifetime before this moment because we'd share the same memories. This is the farthest one can ever dig into this problem. An ego is a side-effect of a functioning mind, it's not something with a unique physical location or material continuity. I think it's highly unsatisfying from our ego's perspective to think of uploading like this, but our ego also wasn't designed to think of itself in these terms any more than it was designed to visualize 4+ physical dimensions.

<comment><USER7> > _This is the farthest one can ever dig into this problem._

No, I think the whole problem can be bypassed, check my answer above.

<comment><USER3> Amazing the lengths we'll go to just to satisfy our simple evolutionary incentive to live, no matter how ludicrous from an outside perspective :)

<comment><USER7> _> Amazing the lengths we'll go to just to satisfy our simple evolutionary incentive to live, no matter how ludicrous from an outside perspective :)_

"Lengths" like, err, making a thought experiment like the above in a HN thread? I've went further than that just to get a bag of Pringles.

And it's not like it's a "simple evolutionary incentive" anymore. That might hold true for a lizard or a deer, but a human has more complex rational to want to live. It might be evolutionary still, but it's far from "simple" when you can think about it.

<comment><USER3> I don't mean discussing it, I mean that doing it would be. In particular, it seems like a dramatic length to me because an outside entity would never be able to tell the difference between your theoretical swap and a 'standard' upload/copy in terms of the resulting individual. The only difference would be that the person would go into it perhaps more confident that his ego wouldn't 'die'.

But no, I don't agree with you that humans' desire to live is any more real or special than a lizard's, or a tree's, or a rock's desire not to break apart for that matter. It's a natural extension of physical laws combined with the circumstances of our evolution as a system--in this case linked directly to our basest subconscious instincts. To say that your desire to live is fundamentally stronger or more complicated than that of a deer reeks of geocentrism of the ancient world to me.

<comment><USER7> _> But no, I don't agree with you that humans' desire to live is any more real or special than a lizard's, or a tree's, or a rock's desire not to break apart for that matter. It's a natural extension of physical laws combined with the circumstances of our evolution as a system--in this case linked directly to our basest subconscious instincts. To say that your desire to live is fundamentally stronger or more complicated than that of a deer reeks of geocentrism of the ancient world to me._

You say "more real or special" here, though, whereas you said "simpler" in your previous comment.

You get back to the same argument at the end though: "To say that your desire to live is fundamentally stronger or more complicated than that of a deer reeks of geocentrism of the ancient world to me."

It might not be more "real or special" or "stronger" (I never argued that it was anyway), but it SURE is more complicated.

And to deny that reeks of obsessive reductionism to me. The desire to live as expressed and felt by some billion (trillion?) neurons of a human, is more complex than the desire to live as expressed by the primitive brain of a lizard, or even a "rock's desire not to break apart" (!). I don't even think we can call the latter "desire".

We can feel everything a deer can feel about the desire to live (horror, survival instinct, etc --we're animals after all), but ON TOP OF THIS we can write poems, sing songs, make movies and have deep conversations about it. Including massive institutions on the matter, such as religion.

I'd call that more complex --calling it anything else would be delusional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry short and messy, ask an actuary. The probability of a breakthrough is IMO much the same as for an afterlife, not very high. There are lots of quacks about.

However the following about fasting once a week is interesting:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9091794/Fasting...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9091794/Fasting- once-a-week-could-help-you-live-longer.html)

<comment><USER9> Breakthroughs in science are a myth - what does happen in reality is that steady research that you and most of the rest of the world weren't paying attention to starts to achieve results.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/07/there-is-no- such-...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/07/there-is-no-such-thing- as-a-scientific-breakthrough.php)

"The point I want to make with all of this is that longevity science, work that will lead to biotechnologies capable of human rejuvenation, is no different. It is a process of incremental advances, requiring a large research community for any sort of reliable progress, and in which the nature of forthcoming discoveries are telegraphed by the nature of the work today. If you think that scientific breakthroughs are the way in which the world works, then you might be sitting there expecting significant advances in engineered human longevity to arrive no matter what the state of the present research community. Because some people are working on it, right? And it's just a few scientists and a eureka moment, right? Sadly not. One of the biggest challenges facing us today is that there is no large rejuvenation research community, and if we want to see real progress, that community must come into being - large enough and vigorous enough to match the stem cell research community pace for pace."

The seed of the rejuvenation research community of tomorrow is the SENS Foundation and its allies, advisors, and supporters in the life science community. Much of their work today is not just in producing research progress, but laying the groundwork for the next twenty years of work: the people who build the applied technologies of mitochondrial repair, biomedical remediation of amyloid and AGEs, rejuvenation of the lysosome, and so forth, are in college today. That is why programs like the SENS Foundation Academic Initiative are so important:

<http://sens.org/academic-initiative>

Check out their student research projects:

<http://sens.org/academic-initiative/research-projects>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I highly recommend anyone who is interested in this subject read Aubrey de Grey's book on the current state of the science of biogerontology: [http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation- Breakthrough...](http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation- Breakthroughs-Lifetime/dp/0312367066)

It's interesting, thorough, and optimistic. I also recommend donating money to SENS, as this cause is dramatically underfunded relative to its realistic potential to save and enhance human life for everyone. <http://sens.org/>

<comment><USER9> Also strongly recommended: read the SENS Foundation 2011 annual and research reports, which outline for the layperson (while giving details for the scientist) exactly what biotechnologies the Foundation and its allies are working on, where present progress stands, and how mature versions of these technologies can be used to reverse aging.

[http://sens.org/files/pdf/SENS_Foundation_Annual_Report_2011...](http://sens.org/files/pdf/SENS_Foundation_Annual_Report_2011.pdf)

"We are delighted that SENS Foundation was able to make expenditures of $1,518,000 in 2011. This was an increase of over $400,000 from 2010, overwhelmingly in support of direct research and conference projects. ... We greatly appreciate the support of the many individuals who contributed to our mission. We would like to thank Peter Thiel, Jason Hope, the Methuselah Foundation, and all of our contributors and volunteers for their on-going generosity. We expect a significant increase in both revenues and expenses for 2012, as we begin to see distributions from a de Grey family trust, under a grant from SENSF-UK. This support will be in addition to the contributions we receive from other sources."

<http://sens.org/files/pdf/2011_Research_Report.pdf>

"The elasticity of the artery wall, the flexibility of the lens of the eye, and the high tensile strength of the ligaments are examples of tissues that rely on maintaining their proper structure. But chemical reactions with other molecules in the extracellular space occasionally result in a chemical bond (a so-called crosslink) between two nearby proteins that were previously free- moving, impairing their ability to slide across or along each other and thereby impairing function. It is the goal of this project to identify chemicals that can react with these crosslinks and break them without reacting with anything that we don't want to break.

"In 2011, we established a Center of Excellence for GlycoSENS and other rejuvenation research at Cambridge University and hired postdoctoral student Rhian Grainger to design and perform experiments to develop reagents that can detect proteins bearing glucosepane crosslinks, facilitating further studies on its structure, abundance, and cleavage by small molecules. We also established a collaboration with researchers at Yale University, who will lend their expertise in generating advanced glycation end-products and lead efforts in developing agents which may be able to cleave glucosepane."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> First rule of living a long time, have good genetics. Second rule, see the first rule.

Diet and exercise can probably affect it a few percentage points either way but for all the advice, tips and tricks, people who do absolutely nothing special but have good genetic heritage will easily outlive you with better quality of life.

<comment><USER9> Not true until very late in life - post-80s or post-90s - at which point it looks like genetics has a larger impact on survival. See:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/10/historical- inheri...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/10/historical-inheritance- of-life-span.php)

But whether or not your reach early old age and what shape you are in when you get there is largely determined by lifestyle rather than genes for the vast majority of people. Basically don't get fat, and keep exercising, and that's the 80/20:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/08/can-you- optimize-...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/08/can-you-optimize- exercise-for-longevity.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe an artificial intelligence may yield the results necessary to enable some of us to "live forever" - in whatever form that may be. However, artificial intelligence may go bad and turn against us even if that honestly wasn't our intention when creating the AI. The folks at LessWrong have some pretty good thoughts on that topic: [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intellige...](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence)

</comment><comment><USER12> If indefinite life extension ever becomes possible it would create an uberclass of people, those who could afford this new technology in the first place. A true god-like class defined by power and immortality. If you think social and economic inequality is bad, what about existential inequality?

</comment><comment><USER13> The quickest way to immortality is to create an artificial intelligence that will conduct the necessary experiments to discover cures for aging or invent brain uploading.

The second quickest (and the first step towards AI) is to create computer vision algorithms, specifically human level object recognition. These will dramatically increase the wealth in the world (seeing robots that can do all manual labor tasks) so that conducting biomedical experiments becomes dramatically cheaper.

Therefore, anyone really serious about curing diseases should be devoting most of their time to objection recognition technology.</comment>


What's at covid.com? "Your Connection Company" - <AUTHOR> http://covid.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> CoVid, ironically, would have been a great name for a video conferencing service.

There's a landing page at VidCo.com</comment>


Ask HN: Book recommendations for GUI development - <AUTHOR>

This is a question for those with experience in GUI development ( Code ).
Do you have any books or articles you can recommend to someone interested in going deep into this subject?
So far I haven't found many books that would go deep into this subject, and most programming books treat GUI development as the boring part of writing programs, describing very simple architectures, that still leave me wanting more.
The other source of information I have found is from game development. Game developers are a great community and they care a lot for graphics and interaction.
So far, the best Books and articles I have found are:
Building Interactive Systems: Principles for Human-Computer Interaction, from Dan Olsen
Professional Java User Interfaces, from Mauro Marinilli
Programming Windows, from Charles Petzold
Thing-Model-View-Editor, from Trygve M. H. Reenskaug
Cocoa Framework documentation, from Apple
Designing Interactive Systems II, lectures from RWTH, available on Itunes U http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/rwth-aachen.de.1778590405.01778590407.1837303882?i=1131324278
Hope someone has more recommendations / advice for a fellow programmer interested in this amazing area of programming.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> If you want to know learn how to implement not-so-out-of-the-box GUI elements, I will suggest a book called Swing Hacks. If you want advanced controls, plus some nice animations, try Filthy Rich Clients. Both books are for the Java Swing library.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I will check these books. And I also bookmarked your posterous, nice to know a gui developer =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Alternatively you should also check out the GUI guidelines by Apple, Windows, Palm, etc. They give good insight on how to design usable interfaces and interactions.</comment>


Aks HN: What do you think are good PBS Show to binge watch? - <AUTHOR> Or any interesting shows everyone should known of? <comment><USER2> It's old but still really worthwhile "The Story of English" a documentary with Robin McNeil one of the originators of PBS NewsHour.</comment>


Ask HN: How to define ranges for user hierarchy - <AUTHOR> I have an app where users are scored based on the quality of their contributions.
I want to create logic to make sure top contributors only receive content from other top contributors within a certain range. So a user can contribute to anyone below them, but can only contribute above them within a range.
My plan is to allow users to only have access to contribute to other users whose score is no more than their own plus X.
I'm not sure how to determine what X is, which essentially creates a range of how much higher in ranking they can contribute towards.
Are there any models or examples similar to this? <comment><USER2> Perhaps have X = the standard deviation of the scores? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation)</comment>


Netflix's Worst Nightmare Has Come True - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenmcbride1/2019/07/08/netflixs-worst-nightmare-has-come-true/ <comment><USER2> Have we come full circle? Before streaming services, you paid for big cable bundles if you wanted all the shows. Now you will have to pay for several streaming services. You can cherry pick which ones you want, just like the old cable bundles. The only upside for me is that everything will be on demand, unlike the old days of cable.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I think we have come full circle.

The content is becoming more and more fragmented across an increasing number of services, so to obtain the content legally, you will have to pay a lot more than we are now.

Piracy will definitely increase again and I'll have no sympathy for these companies who will cry poor over the issue. If you want to silo your own content, then you're just thing to have to suck it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this article is horribly researched.

I think my favorite line is - "AT&T is best known as a cell phone company". lolno.

How is this guy involved in any sort of investment/research firm?</comment>


Chefs and truck drivers beware: AI is coming for your jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.apnews.com/6034c9ce1af347ec8da996e39b29c51b <comment><USER2> I worked a good chunk of time in a mid-sized Italian restaurant with maybe 10 cooks, 10 waiters, and 7 bussers/dishwashers/preppers.

I doubt that right now a robot could do any of the backhouse stuff with the versatility, speed, and durability required to be better than a human chef working for easily less than 40k a year.

I think if we reach a point where one or two laborers can pre-prepare all of the ingredients the night before and the robot cook can just spit out a hot meal in 5 minutes (with one person overseeing a symphony of robo chefs), then AI/robots will win and chefs as a profession will go bye bye.

But until then, the owners will continue to spend on quality labor because that's the only way they know how to make the meals efficiently.</comment>


Ask HN: Someone wants to resell our SaaS. What can go wrong? - <AUTHOR> Long story short: we provide our software as SaaS, and for our type of business (online ad delivery), due to the complexity of the applications, there's a whole industry of people who make money doing the actual operations of the application (called ad ops).
Now, our application is sold on a usage basis (use more and you pay more), and someone wants to start reselling our application by directly billing his clients instead of referring them to us.
What can go wrong? What can we forget? This seems like a no-brainer, since they can only make us more money, but I can't help but feel there's a snag to it. <comment><USER3> I hope you can forgive me a chuckle at the irony of a company in the marketing business worrying about having a channel conflict.

What can go wrong? They can do a better job of marketing & service than you and effectively build their own brand on the back of your efforts, before dumping you for another supplier or an in-house development.

I suggest you develop a reseller product and approach it as a whole new channel. You should consider whether to use push or pull marketing or whether to require co-marketing efforts linked to VAR channel discount points. Perhaps you will have minimum volume requirements and tiered pricing, with white-label option at additional cost. You should consider exclusivity requirements - <USER2> both sides, and examine the scenarios in a competitive context. Since this is effectively a revenue-sharing partnership, you should have a standard heads of agreement and standard T&Cs ready to go. Oh, and prime your accounts people for the additional reconciliation burden.

In other words, you need a channel management strategy. All this puts you in a much stronger negotiating position and is much better than allowing yourself to be led into it blind by a savvy customer.

If none of the above is worth the investment, don't do it at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> From a business perspective one challenge with reselling is that the reseller "owns" the client.

This could be a risk or not. It depends. Do you currently upsell/cros-sell your customers? Do you have any plans to do so? Would you ever be interested in reselling other companies products/services to your customer base?

How important is your brand? Having more customers can increase the perceived value of your brand. Customers can be a source of future growth through referrals, partnerships, etc.

For example, if one of your reseller's clients really likes your product is that brand value going to accrue to him or you? Or does it even matter in your space?

Sorry I can't be more specific, all I'm offering here are questions. If they prompt a thought or two that helps you negotiate a better deal then that's awesome, if not then I hope I didn't waste too much of your time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like they're planning on charging a lot more (50-100%) more than you, to be able to afford you and still make a profit.

Have you considered private labeling for them? That way the billing can still go through you. They might have concerns about knowing if they're being paid fairly enough but that's something that should be able to be sorted out.

My recommendation is to date before getting married.

Start small, do a small joint venture where he sells your stuff through you to prove he has the volume. Maybe some sort of affiliate program or revenue share. If things go well you can spend time on the big deal.

Things that could change:

Positives: \- They really drive you a lot of business \- The time you spend figuring this all out was worth it

Potential negatives: \- The deal could go nowhere after all your hard work, talk, costs, agreements. \- They could go head to head against you in advertising, raising your advertising costs. \- They might already address a lot of your customers \- The time you spent on this could have better been spent elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> To expand a bit further on j45's points, this sounds like it's the OP's first time doing this. If there are enough resources to seriously investigate if this reseller model could be scaled to different ad-ops agencies/brokers, then it makes sense to go with a trial period.

If the deal goes nowhere, then at least you'll have a data point to figure out if you want to pursue this model further (as opposed to a hypothetical, educated guess).

One thing to consider is making sure that the reseller uses the same licensing/payment model on both sides of the contract. This is mainly to avoid a potential issue where the reseller gambles by going with a (much higher) fixed price site/unlimited license model on the end-user* side, while keeping the utility model on your side. This would only work if the reseller believes that they can accurately forecast maximum end-user volume.

I'm aware of situations where the licensing model was not mirrored between reseller and software OEM, resulting in awkward contract discussions between the upstream parties.

This can be somewhat (but not entirely) mitigated with high-watermark volume triggers, and (most important!) an agreed-upon volume metric used in the licensing discussions. You may think that the latter is easy enough to rely on since you're the one serving the ads on-demand, but how do you know you're serving the ads directly to the end-user and not going through a/the reseller's aggregation platform instead?

*Note: "End-user" refers to the customer paying for the ads to be displayed, not browsing audience.

<comment><USER5> Some nice points by otoburb to think about for sure.

One other thing that popped into my mind is, if they bill and then pay you, they can always replace you and keep the customers, and revenue stream.

If your business is not about flat rate, it might benefit from staying pay as you use. Flat rates should probably mean a jump in price to reflect.

If in your business the customers are the most valuable part, act according to that.

From what I've known, Lead Gen, and/or affiliate agreements don't veer into revenue sharing, or in this case, out right re-selling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The snag is that you'll still have to make an investment in helping the reseller, training him, supporting the end-customer through him, etc., but you'll take a hit on your margin. Worse still, he'll own the customer and you'll have had to create scale in an area which won't be strategic for your organization - unless you decide resellers are the way to go.

Developing a sales channel is definitely a valid strategy, but unless you extend it beyond one reseller (i.e. go big or go home) then it probably won't pay off for your org.

We run a wholesale sales channel of more than 10,000 resellers in over 110 countries and I can tell you that it definitely works, especially in markets where someone else has a stronger likelihood of owning the customer relationship. In reality, some sort of a hybrid approach to the channel - direct and indirect, is probably the best approach, presuming you can balance the channel conflicts.

</comment><comment><USER8> The most likely thing to go wrong with a reseller is that they won't actually resell anything, resulting in a huge waste of time. Make sure the boots on the ground really want to sell it, not just the execs.

<comment><USER9> They also tend to be VERY demanding in terms of support, and what they expect you to do for them. (In many cases, it's pretty much been expected that we do all the work for them, and they get paid)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Consider some of the business and legal issues covered in a panel discussion (summarized at [1]) in which I participated for the IACCM [2], including:

\- Territory

\- Term

\- Training (of reseller's sales and support people)

\- Sales targets

\- Resale restrictions

\- Franchise-law liabilities

[1] [http://www.lawnotes.com/reseller-agreement-negotiations- note...](http://www.lawnotes.com/reseller-agreement-negotiations-notes-from- an-iaccm-paneldiscussion/)

[2] International Association for Contract & Commercial Management, <http://www.iaccm.com>

</comment><comment><USER11> Watch out for the reseller contractually locking up territory or clients, and not selling your product. If it's not an easy sale for them, they may move on to other projects, and you'll miss out on a lot of potential business.

Also, watch out for an agreement that gives you a percentage of the sale price, without specifying a minimum that you'll get. I've seen deals where the reseller negotiated a percent-of-gross deal, and then "gave away" the product to their best customers of other products. You get virtually nothing, and the reseller gets the benefit of your product and the goodwill of their customers (and potentially more sales of another product in their arsenal).

</comment><comment><USER12> When something goes wrong, are the folks they're reselling to going to come to them, or to you? You might end up playing a two-way game of Chinese Whispers.

<comment><USER13> You will need a SLA contract for this.

<comment><USER3> Writing as someone who has frequently had to negotiate on behalf of enterprises buying a resold service, I can tell you that I regard SLAs as a mechanism for a vendor to provide lousy service whilst transferring almost all the financial risk and compliance burden to the customer.

I have never yet seen a SLA with penalties worth signing up for. Nor do I ever expect to.

I would rather have reporting transparency on things like uptime & service desk responses, than have penalties on those things i.e. creating incentives for suppliers (especially intermediaries) to report them deceptively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Definitely date before you can get married.

Think of a proximate opportunity you can work together on where he can prove his value to you (and vice-versa).

A lot of these deals have a tendency to get hung up on theoretical discussions about what could happen a few years down the road. If you want to grow quickly and actually if they are as they as they say then table that discussion and figure out a simple way you can work on ONE customer, project, etc. If successful, expand from there.

Also: if they are focussed too much on how to get paid then that is often an indication that they cannot provide a lot of value.

</comment><comment><USER15> You can research this a bit more by googling for 'white labelling' and see what kinds of issues you may come across. I think if you have a good contract in place and work out who is going to be doing the customer service, you might be able to figure something out that works for both of you.

This is one of those instances where it isn't a zero-sum game, and you and the reseller can both benefit.

</comment><comment><USER16> you can limit your own marketshare if you whitelabel too early in your product's lifecycle. You want market recognition for your product and brand, so make sure you don't shoot yourself in the foot too soon.</comment>


Is Anonymous Less Anonymous Now? - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=37572

<comment><USER2> Sounds relevant: <http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm>

Some quotes:

"During the years in which the women's liberation movement has been taking shape, a great emphasis has been placed on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main -- if not sole -- organizational form of the movement."

" Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved."

"A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones."

</comment><comment><USER3> Are we really asking the right questions? I mean, for us guys, who are not part of Anonymous, does it really matter how strong their hierarchy is?

For me other questions matter a lot more. Like, how does Anonymous influence our laws and how do these apply to my daily life? Maybe they help making organisations who possess a lot of power, to consider the public oppinion more (like Sony, Paypal, and so on). Or maybe they help the governments more to convince big organisations like Google and Facebook to spy on ME.

AnonOps is for sure not the one, who dictates which questions matter for me and which don't. I hope the scientists who try to analysie the Anonymous situation don't forget that, despite spending so much time in the surroundings of them.

<comment><USER4> "us guys, who are not part of Anonymous"

Anyone can be part of Anonymous at any time just by saying so. At least, this is my idea of Anonymous. If Anonymous is doing something you like, you can either follow instructions that some other random (possibly secretly organized) person/group has posted to the internet, or you can simply decide what you think would be a productive action for you to take. Anonymous doesn't like Organization X, and wished to cause them economic harm by DDoSing their servers, you join in the DDoS, or, if you are more thoroughly versed in infosec, you can engage in a different sort of attack. If you don't support what Anonymous is doing at that particular moment, you can simply choose not to participate.

My idea of Anonymous is that it changes from day to day, both in members and in structure. It may become more or less organized depending on who views themself as a member on that particular day, or who supports the currently popular "operation".

This may be a naive, misinformed, or idealistic view, but it's the view I've always had. Anonymous can't be disassembled, since you could imprison every member of Anonymous today, and tomorrow an entirely different group of people could reconstitute it to just as much effect.

I would be glad to hear alternative opinions of the nature of Anonymous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> TL;DR - No.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should read the article, and _then_ form an opinion. If you're really curious, try to figure out what information was released by the umm "non- conforming" admin about other Anonymous users/members. I don't know the details, or care to know, but it doesn't sound good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-0Az7dgRY></comment>


The Origin of the Term "Junk DNA": A Historical Whodunnit (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://judgestarling.tumblr.com/post/64504735261/the-origin-of-the-term-junk-dna-a-historical <comment><USER2> For what it's worth, by 1988 the term was in SF novels such as David Zindell's Neverness

</comment><comment><USER3> the whole concept of "junk dna" is hilarious to me and is emblematic of the main problem with modern science, where everything we don't understand yet is either not real, not possible, or not relevant

<comment><USER4> In this case it's actually the other way around. There are good theoretical arguments that without junk DNA at least human reproduction would be quite difficult.

The average number of mutations per human generation is known and most mutations are deleterious. They destroy something. The mutation rate is high enough that the genome would quickly deteriorate over multiple generation.

But with most of the genome being junk most mutations don't matter, so this problem isn't that serious, and humanity survives.

<comment><USER5> This would only be true if there was a roughly fixed number of mutations per cell. There isn't. There's a roughly fixed chance of a mutation _per base of DNA_ , so having more DNA just means you have proportionally more mutations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From 2013</comment>