Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52698133 <comment><USER2> Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying.

I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a _classified military space program_. How much does one of those cost ?!

<comment><USER3> Enlighten a simpleton here please, why do "we" need to leave the planet. I am far from a space nerd but I do know that neither mars or any solar object other than other is known to contain climate that is better or would even come close to earth's climate even with no polar ice caps and extreme global warming.

Wouldn't it be cheaper (more humane as well) to "colonize" earth? For the next 100 years,even with full on warming , coastal areas and certain eco systems will be lost but you will still no matter have most parts of the big continents in tact. The land there exists now can support humanity even with 10x the population (if made arable). I mean things like beef and single story housing would certainly be rare.

How about building new cities by the rockies and great planes and build things like the hypertube (whatever it:s called) to make emmigration easier. Have friendly eco-immigration policies to avert a humanitarian and geopolitical crisis. Heck, even "colonize" the sahara,antarctica or ocean beds! Half your problem is solved on earth once you desalinate ,irrigate and build viable transport.

<comment><USER4> Your ideas for the Earth would play out in a catastrophic manner in practice. Every bit of it requires violation of a basic economic principle - we build out based on the lowest marginal cost. Before we go to the Rockies, we will saturate more fertile and coastal areas. Easier to use what nature provides than to supply those things artificially. Humans will eventually switch over to artificial options, but only after collapse of the parallel natural system is in terminal collapse. Examples start with fishing, and then never end.

In these macroeconomic terms, there is 1 viable way to save life from destruction - open up new frontiers that have characteristics which are MORE attractive to humans than counterparts on Earth.

In practice, that means the moon. The moon is smaller than Earth, but the accessible area is possibly greater because of lack of oceans and lack of existing use. It doesn't end there. Lower pressure and temperature gradients mean that you can dig MUCH deeper. With similar original compositions, industrial mineral availability (in terms of raw elements) from the moon vastly outstrips the Earth. Some asteroids can be cherry picked, but depth of the resource is more shallow.

Much high-tech lithography requires vacuum, which is produced artificially on Earth. Space gives you that for free. We don't even really know what's possible industrially with diffusion and surface tension effects, because gravity cannot be eliminated on Earth for factory-type work, at all. Combined with the mineral abundance, you have what you need for a self-sustaining super advanced and practically limitless robotic industrial society. That is the draw. Other things that fleshy humans need are a cost, which the other benefits have to offset.

Materials from the moon can be delivered to low-Earth orbit at extremely low physical effort compared to delivery from Earth's surface. Rockets are improving such that human trips to space stations from Earth could be economical, but a cislunar robotic presence must be able to sustain activities beyond there.

This is the only option for saving the planet, and we are lucky that the richest person on the planet shares the view that Earth should be light industrial and residential... but ultimately, narrowly specialized in environmental tourism. All we have to do is move the primary economic engine into orbit.

<comment><USER5> > lowest marginal cost

> moon

The energy economics alone doesn't work out. We might be able to make a robot economy in space, but we can't have a significant _human_ economy in space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The press around the X-37B continues to perplex, it's particularly disappointing to see this "super secret but let's talk about it constantly" article using the word "very" 3 times.

I think it was drilled into me by the age of 12 to avoid "very" in written English in order not to obviously oversell, and yet here it is from a professional writer working for the BBC

<comment><USER7> In general the BBC prioritises simple writing, a reasonably low reading level, and common words to make it as accessible as possible. They don't pay much attention to ideas of artistic writing and they aren't looking to use a different adverb or adjective every time for the whimsical sake of it. It's a public news service, not a mid-atlantic magazine.

<comment><USER8> The best news choice I made, as an American, was to get my primary news through foreign outlets.

Because generally, they don't really care enough to implement systemic bias about another country.

<comment> kube-system That's quite a broad brush to paint with. There's plenty of bias in media around the world, and more than a few examples are even more systematic than what we see in the US.

<comment><USER9> Bias is unavoidable but if you read a variety of reputable news sources from around the world you will at least know when they disagree.

Then, if you care enough you can investigate the issue yourself and come to your own conclusions. In not, then at least you know that it's controversial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wife and I stopped in at Edwards AFB perhaps around 2000? Maybe 1998 or so.... Have to dig up the photos to be sure.

The armed guard let us on the base so we could head to Dryden Flight Research Center (now the Armstrong Flight Research Center). In those days I figured you just tried to do a thing until someone said you couldn't. It didn't occur to me that there would be a problem driving in to Dryden.

The guard asked a lot of questions, but, pre 9-11, we had no problem getting in.

Dryden has a small museum, a few hangars. One hangars has the original M2-F1 lifting body.

I distinctly remember this space plane (or it's predecessor?) being towed down a small road near Dryden. I guessed it was some sort of X-plane. We were on a sort of mini-tour at that point, being shown around, and I believe there was an attempt by the tour-guide to distract us from that plane.

<comment><USER11> Wonder if you saw the x-34 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Sciences_X-34](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Sciences_X-34)

<comment><USER10> Yes, you may be correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> More on the "power-beaming technology", [https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space- pl...](https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-plane.html)

 _> ... test the idea of using microwave beams to send solar power to Earth from space ... Build a big solar array in orbit, the idea goes, and it could collect enough sunlight (unfiltered by atmospheric effects or clouds,) to generate a powerful beam of microwaves. A collection station on Earth would then convert that beam into useful power ... down the road he said he hopes it will lead to a futuristic clean power source that could benefit everyone — and give the U.S. a new near-monopoly over a global energy supply._

<comment><USER13> That brings back some nostalgia. I remember playing one of the early Sim City games and that was one of the types of power plants you could set up. It had a small chance to malfunction, causing the beam to miss the collection station and set everything in the surrounding area on fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the least secretive X-37 mission yet. We know a fair amount about the payloads onboard.

<comment><USER15> Or, this information can be thrown in intentionally to divert attention from the _real_ mission. Make it plain and boring so that people quickly lose interest and switch to next topic in the newsfeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here are some additional clues on the mission: [https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/498210-how-the- latest...](https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/498210-how-the- latest-x-37b-mission-may-change-the-world)

</comment><comment><USER17> "One of the experiments will test the effect of radiation on seeds and other materials."

Are seeds the baseline in testing biological effects in space? Asking as I would of thought that testing seeds in space had been one of the most tested avenues and with that, a known consistent form of biological matter that can be compared with.

Certainly if you wanted to test a space shield, you could test with something that can contain a few seeds and see how the results compare. Though as one of the tests is for energy transmission, then seeing if such equipment increases biological impact in proximity is worth knowing for future plans. Seeds certainly robust enough and can crudly test them by growing them as well, so I can see many reasons for them on many missions.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find it amusing that I now consider it so wasteful to throw away all that rocket gear just to launch a payload :-).

I also wonder if they still have the "crew return" insert for the ship. Early in its life it was envisioned as a way to bring the full crew of the ISS to earth.

</comment><comment><USER19> A mew Kzinti lesson? "a power beam's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a power beam."

</comment><comment><USER7> Did this mission not transfer to the new Space Force? If not, what kind of things are they doing?

<comment><USER6> Given the frequency and consistency of narrative with which it appears in the press, at this stage I'm convinced it's an empty UAV used entirely for some marketing purpose

<comment><USER20> It's spending months in space, I don't think it's for marketing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j56s46e97Lo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j56s46e97Lo)

Based on what this talk indicates, the US Government is doing some _questionable_ (...) things in terms of signals intelligence in space.

We probably won't know what X37-B is doing in space for years but I imagine they will have at least tried to do some big brother exercises. The US/Western Intelligence community effectively treats all communications as fair game - they always have (e.g. MI5 were capturing encryption keys from neutral embassies using microphones in the ~50/60s) they just possess the means to do it efficiently at large scale now.

I imagine a large part of its mission is also just testing military equipment that can't go on the ISS but that's not as sexy.

<comment><USER21> They're doing some questionable sigint things I'm sure, but you don't need reentry and reusability for that. The most likely use-case is for testing components to use in conventional satellites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That they send it up for years at a stretch mostly indicates that they have not discovered any good uses for it yet. If it were in demand, they would need it back before two years have passed.

Keeping it parked in a hangar when it's not needed would get embarrassing. Leaving it in orbit makes it seem to be doing something, particularly if you pretend it's all hush-hush.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is it possible to use the same "power-beaming technology" as a directed-energy weapon ?

</comment><comment><USER24> "power-beaming technology"

<comment><USER20> Sarcasm?

Even uBeam does work, it's just not very efficient

<comment><USER24> I have no doubts beamed-power is possible, I just assume it's effectively an energy weapon and the real magic is at the receiving end harnessing the power without getting destroyed.

But if you aim it somewhere other than the receiver, it's a weapon, no?

<comment><USER20> I'm not convinced. I forgot the exact numbers but when I was trying to look at studies 5G alarmists cite* with an open mind some Energy Densities in question (being applied to animal subjects) were stronger than standing in front of one of those enormous ballistic missile tracking phased arrays (Which given the subject of this thread are also used for tracking satellites)

* My absolute favourite one was "Sleeping next to a mobile phone is correlated with lack of sleep" _hmmm I wonder why_

<comment><USER24> > I'm not convinced. I forgot the exact numbers but when I was trying to look > at studies 5G alarmists cite* with an open mind some Energy Densities in > question (being applied to animal subjects) were stronger than standing in > front of one of those enormous ballistic missile tracking phased arrays > (Which given the subject of this thread are also used for tracking > satellites)

Thank you for implicitly putting me in the company of 5G alarmists.

We're not talking about 5G here.

<comment><USER20> It's an extremely inefficient weapon, is my point. Sending energy from orbit to earth sufficiently strong to kill someone would need something like thousands of gigawatts as a point source I think

<comment><USER24> > Sending energy from orbit to earth sufficiently strong to kill someone would > need something like thousands of gigawatts as a point source I think

It doesn't need to kill people to have utility as a weapon.

Just look at how the unexplained alleged "sonic attacks" on the US embassy in Cuba played out.

I also presume there's potential for damaging sensitive electronics.

I'm not in objection of any of this, it's a military mission in nature. It just seems obvious to me that anything capable of beaming useful amounts of energy from space to power drones or anything portable on earth also has potential for direct use as a weapon. The energy density must be relatively high for things having such limited area to collect it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> all the money on military, and not in investing in healthcare, improve public health responses, increasing financial reward for the front line workers that are sacrificing themselves for the greater society. In my opinion, this is sad. I would rather have this money being written as a check to every nurses and doctors served in COVID19.

<comment><USER26> I dont disagree that we spend too much on defense but the idea that we should stop all spending on science to help out some nurses is super strange.

Its akin to saying we should stop funding nasa be ause who needs space travel.

Also please stop glorifying a set profession as some kind of ulturistic calling. Theyre in it for the money and prestige, and frankly, wouldnt be there otherwise.

If you want to thank someone, thank the delivery guy, the supermarket clerks, the flight attendants, or the casual staff out of the job right now.

These people are feeling the brunt of this. These people are the front line.

<comment><USER27> Many of my in-laws are medical professionals: GPs, surgeons, physicians, anaesthetists, nurses, the list goes on.

Not a single one of them has done it for financial gain or prestige, and for the most part the driving force really does seem to be a genuine desire to help people. (I'm based in the UK, going into medicine for money or prestige would be a fool's errand.)

Please don't make assumptions about things with which you are clearly unfamiliar, and if you must do so please do not assert them as facts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I thought this would be about the declassified UFO

</comment><comment><USER29> Isn't X-37B the name of Elon's other child?

</comment><comment><USER30> > Mysterious US military aircraft launches

> Mysterious US military aircraft

Journalists need to stop using adjectives like "mysterious" when writing about the X-37B. While the aircraft's technology and missions are classified, there is nothing mysterious about the existence of the plane itself.

<comment><USER24> > Journalists need to stop using adjectives like "mysterious" when writing > about the X-37B.

Considering there isn't even a journalist attributed on the article, I'm not sure we should be presuming any were even involved in its publication.

<comment><USER31> BBC doesn't put bylines on articles that are merely reporting general information cobbled together from press releases and public activity.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/help-41670342](https://www.bbc.com/news/help-41670342)

That does leave a hole when articles include opinion content mixed in with general facts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Good thing this was built years ago, probably won't glitch out like Boeing's other products.

<comment><USER33> More so that Boeing is lucky it's classified or else all the blunders would be public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> One day after [https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12617475806665523...](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1261747580666552320) can't be a coincidence right

<comment><USER35> Someone hacked my computer - it looks like the president of the United States of America is posting some kind of ironic meme video about himself on Twitter.

<comment><USER36> Not the first time he did this ([https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12251747139929907...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1225174713992990721?s=19)). It's ... awkward to watch this as an European.

<comment><USER35> I wrote a half satire thing about how the Trump became on office, ostensibly voted to by congress, but somehow they always vote a Trump descendant into office. For life.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please Re-Review My Webapp - <AUTHOR>

Site: http://www.celebsutra.com
Previous Review: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=869803
New since last review:
Top celebs by twitter activity and followers, Pictures shared by celebs are easily browseable and I think the celeb list was revamped after the previous review.
About: Celebsutra aggregates tweets by celebrities. This a side project I was working on for fun
Design is by a friend of mine: http://sandosh.info/v2/pages/home/
Thanks in advance for spending your time on reviewing the site. :) <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links

<http://www.celebsutra.com>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=869803>

The image browser can become popular is my hunch.

<http://www.celebsutra.com/celebs/pictures>

<comment><USER2> (Not your target market, but I'm sure with some work your site could be interesting to some.)

1\. As someone has already said, feature the photos more strongly in your layout. Otherwise what you've put up is a little too like Twitter Lists, right?

2\. Maybe make their name and photo larger (even if it means using a stronger photo that isn't their current avatar).

3\. Upgrade the design - it's pretty bland and not very "celeb". Needs to be brighter and bolder.

4\. You'll want to have more countries represented before plugging it to the public - I'm sure you could do a country per evening for a couple of weeks, just find a list of movie and sports stars, track them down online and get them into your database.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1: Yeah. Will be doing so

2: In the photo view or the tweets view ?

<comment><USER2> Tweets view. For celeb lovers, I imagine a big part of it is the vibrant looks and identities and small avatars might not really cut it. Maybe just use a larger version of their avatar because custom-creating your own adds more work you don't want to be doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you have a view that shows the last tweet of each celebrity you want to see? This might be a good alternative to getting spammed by one prolific celebrity (or one who is paying someone to twitter for them). This might go against the real time grain though... maybe use AJAX and sort the a celebrity who just tweeted to the top?

Also, reach out to some celebrities and see if you can get them to tweet you. I know some maybe receptive if this will help them get more users. I.e. if you know that users who followed Martha also likely followed Newt Gingrich, you could build a suggestion engine. (you maybe able to scrape twitter for this data?)

Hopefully this feedback was of nonzero value. Unfortunately, I don't think HN is the same demographic as the one you are targeting :)

Edit: Oh I just had an interesting idea. When people sign up for your service, give them an opt-in to also follow celebsutra. Whenever someone follows a celeb through celebsutra, you RT their action. (@biggestcelebfan just follow @bigceleb through @celebsutra) This could be a kind of discover engine for people to find people with the same interest. I know it's a little spammy, make it an easy opt out but it could easily create a viral loop.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting.

It would be more useful for me if it displayed only a subset of messages from any one account. Some accounts are very active (e.g. Martha Stewart: <http://www.celebsutra.com/tweets/index?profession=Corporate> ). I'd like to be able to get a sense of what's happening from a single page.

What is your target audience by the way?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you register you can choose the celebs you want to see.

Target audience is anyone interested in following celebrity news. Readers of tmz.com etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. I guess you might wanna test with putting fewer pics on home page but of higher resolution if possible. It can be two rows with a simple right/left arrows that pull in more pics without requiring the page to refresh.

2\. For login you can use Twitter's OAuth</comment>


Apple's growth vs. top ten largest tech companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2010/09/27/apples-growth-vs-top-ten-largest-tech-companies/ <comment><USER2> "Google seems under-rewarded." Google's growth was anticipated more and the and factored into the stock price (at the start of the five years) to a greater degree than was for Apple.

<comment><USER3> I had the same thought when I read it. Either that or Google's initial stock price was based more on the company's goodwill than earnings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A little bit misleading since it captures the period of Apple's largest growth (the last 5 years). Better to show some additional time periods, for example the last 10 years.

<comment><USER5> Just ask Wolfram Alpha:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+over+time+of+go...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+over+time+of+google%2C+apple)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Note the "Wintel" cohort consisting of Intel, Microsoft, HP clustered around the Low growth, low valuation quadrant in the lower left (coincidentally co- located with IBM)._

<comment><USER3> Did you have a comment with this quote from the article?</comment></comment>


The Cartographer Who Mapped Out Gotham City - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cartographer-gotham-city-180951594/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of OpenGeofiction: "a collaborative platform for the creation of fictional maps." [http://opengeofiction.net/#map=5/51.495/-0.088](http://opengeofiction.net/#map=5/51.495/-0.088)

Perhaps someone can port this so that we can all modify it for good measure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its one of the hallmarks of a great story, a consistent world to host it in. That does create a level of authenticity that is felt more than read. I really enjoyed all of Tolkien's maps and even the maps in the Thomas Covenant series.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's impressive that the Smithsonian has added ads to cutting and pasting of the title. What a perfect way to motivate people not to share the link..

</comment><comment><USER5> It's reached the point where Gotham really is one of the main characters in the Batman stories, if not the main character.</comment>


WordPress names their 3.1 release: Reinhardt - <AUTHOR> http://wordpress.org/news/2011/02/threeone/ <comment><USER4> Hey guys -- for the past 7 years we've named every release after a jazz musician, as you can see here:

<http://wordpress.org/about/roadmap/>

Usually no one notices, and the codename isn't even in the tweets or announcement email, just a sentence that clearly links to the jazz musician's Wikipedia page. (It's not like Ubuntu codenames that are widely used.) We also put a fun plug for djangoproject.org to the end of the "future" section, which hopefully will also introduce some new people to their project. I haven't seen anyone tweeting the codename except to complain, so I don't think this is going to confuse anybody think we're rewriting in Python. (However much they may want that.)

That said, apologies for the unintended controversy. In hindsight, we probably should have used "Reinhardt" to have the same effect of honoring one of our favorite musicians without anyone getting confused with a fellow Open Source project.

Now to work on 3.2 Sinatra! (Kidding, Ruby folks.)

<comment><USER4> And just updated the post to change the codename to "Reinhardt," just as a sign of good faith and before anyone else gets the wrong idea.

<comment><USER5> Dispute resolved - in under an hour, to the satisfaction of both parties. And not once were the lawyers called.

This is one of the major secondary benefits of OSS in action.

<comment><USER6> Your username made the comments on this so much better.

<comment><USER7> Please do not start with this. Look at what has become with Reddit's "novelty accounts" making thematic comments that do rarely add to the topic but rather distract from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They might want to check the footer of djangoproject.com _ahem_. "Django is a registered trademark of the Django Software Foundation.", pretty sure this infringes.

<comment><USER9> Well, I guess their lawyers will have some work to do.

<comment><USER10> How about someone sends a polite but firm email before calling a lawyer?

<comment><USER11> Orrr... they could just deal with it, because it's just a version codename and it's not like people are going to start calling WordPress, "Django".

This shouldn't be a big deal, it's two OSS projects.

<comment><USER12> On the other hand, names are meant to be used, otherwise why have one at all. So there would have been people referring to the Django release of WordPress - at least for a while. That would be very confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2061877>

"The obvious answer is to rewrite WordPress with Django"

Done.

<comment><USER14> Ease of installation is one of the biggest SOP of WordPress. I am sure anything written in Py would not have that level of ease for common developers, at least for a few years to come and it become more tough in shared hosting environment.

<comment><USER15> _Au contraire_ \- it is the implementation details (create database tables for you? handle install exceptions gracefully? blablablabla) and not the platform (in the case of PHP/Python/Ruby/Perl from personal experience) that makes installation "easy". There are a large set of shared hosts that boast Python and Ruby support - fact of the matter is, WordPress exists and it was written in PHP and nobody from the other language camps has cared to do anything like it in x language.

No need to go sowing seed like this!

<comment><USER16> The platform does make a difference in this case. With the way PHP is set up on most servers, you can have static files and dynamic files (PHP files) in the same folder (although you'd probably separate them into subfolders). This makes everything easier installation-wise.

I'm a big fan of Django, but you'd have to admit that Django's "one virtual host for Python, another for static files" would over-complicate installation. Even on a made-for-Django host like WebFaction it would still be easier to install PHP-WordPress than Django-WordPress.

<comment><USER15> I still disagree. I don't use Django so I actually don't know what you have to go through in order to install it but a python app can be packaged and installed on a shared host with mod_wsgi installed. All you need is an index.wsgi to act as your front controller.

Setting that up? You just have to install a python egg in the app directory and you should be good to go.

Like I said, it's implementation details - a python application could be made easy-to-install. It's just that no one has built a special purpose application with a single minded install path (Django can be self-hosted, mod_python, or mod_wsgi but it is a _framework_ and not an _application_ in the sense that WordPress is an application and CakePHP is a framework) that is relevant to WordPress, closest probably being Plone.

<comment><USER17> Your level of knowledge in administration is not common. PHP wins on deployment because every $5 host your average beginner programmer uses already has PHP on it, and deploy is just ftp/sftp. By comparison, a beginner in python will probably also need to learn some *nix and/or get a root account.

When wide acceptance is the goal, even small frictions can be material.

<comment><USER18> Uh, nope. You definitely don't need root to use Django.

<comment><USER17> I know. I think you're missing the point. The fact that one may make an informed decision does not change the fact that many make uninformed decisions and judge the situation based on their perception rather than independent reality.

This matters, facts or no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The code name is only ever used in these posts as far as I know, it's the version number which is most used for referencing the install type. It's not that big of a deal.

</comment><comment><USER20> In July this year the Django (as in framework) mark, assuming it's the one below, becomes incontestable, which strengthens it's case a lot if they sue Wordpress.

It's also generally a strong mark as it is what TM attorneys call "arbitrary" - like Apple computer.

If Django doesn't sue, they weaken their trademark. You have to enforce your rights to your trademark if someone infringes or a later infringer can use your lack of enforcement as an argument against you.

The reality is that Django probably won't sue and it doesn't matter because few people Google for Wordpress releases by release name.

From the USPTO:

Word Mark DJANGO Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: DOWNLOADABLE OPEN SOURCE COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR USE IN CONNECTION WITH INTERNET PUBLISHING AND WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT. FIRST USE: 20050719. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20050719 Standard Characters Claimed Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK Serial Number 78680396 Filing Date July 28, 2005 Current Filing Basis 1A Original Filing Basis 1A Published for Opposition April 25, 2006 Registration Number 3117015 Registration Date July 18, 2006 Owner (REGISTRANT) THE WORLD COMPANY CORPORATION KANSAS 609 NEW HAMPSHIRE, P.O. BOX 888 LAWRENCE KANSAS 66044 Attorney of Record Michael B.Hurd, Warren N. Williams, Stephen D. Timmons, John M. Collins, Thomas H. Van Hoozer, Thomas B. Luebbering, Andrew G. Colombo, Scott R. Brown, Tracy L. Bornman, Tracey S. Truitt, Michael Elbein, Joan Optican Herman, David V. Ayres, Kameron D. Kelly, Gregory J. Skoch, Jennifer C. Bailey, Cheryl L. Burbach, Matthew P. Harlow, and Sam M. Korte Type of Mark TRADEMARK Register PRINCIPAL Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

<comment><USER21> "If Django doesn't sue, they weaken their trademark."

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm nearly certain that this isn't true. Trademark holders are required to defend their trademarks, but "defense" does not mean "lawsuit." The law requires us to do whatever's necessary, which can run the gamut from polite notes to suits. Happily, as I knew it would, the former was perfectly sufficient in this case. Score one for open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Android names their 3.1 release: Windows.

<comment><USER23> Is Windows a form of dessert now?

<comment><USER24> Android 3.2 - <USER2>

Okay, so maybe apples aren't your stereotypical dessert...

<comment><USER25> "Apple pie" instead?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> damn, they really want to contaminate google search results...

</comment><comment><USER27> They weren't unaware of the Django project, as their link for 'on using PHP' actually points to django's homepage. Friggin weird.

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this just asking for a trademark lawsuit from the Django software foundation?

</comment><comment><USER29> What's with the edited title on HN? Now most of this doesn't make any sense.

</comment><comment><USER16> Okay, so everyone thinks that WordPress shouldn't use the name of a well-known jazz musician, but they're perfectly fine with the fact that the Django Software Foundation has trademarked Django, a common Romani word/name?

WordPress certainly doesn't own the name Django, but the Django Software Foundation shouldn't have any particular right to it either if things were fair.

(Oh, btw., I'm a happy Django user - but I'd still be pretty upset if someone decided to trademark my name).

<comment><USER30> The Django trademark is for a specific context-- downloadable CMS software. You are free to use Django in other contexts, such as naming a car, a band, or whatever.

<comment><USER16> Except Django isn't a CMS, it's a framework (a CMS is a piece of software that allows non-technically-minded people to manage the content of a website. A framework, on the other hand, is made for developers).

But my main point is that, while I understand that the Django Software Foundation has a trademark on the name Django in a specific content, it ought not to be possible to trademark a common name at all.

<comment><USER12> Are you suggesting that the only trade marks be totally made up words? That flies in the face of hundreds of years of tradition. People have been using their own names in their business and need to be able to keep others from unfairly trying to confuse customers.

If Roberts and Sons Cleaners is an established brand in a community, we would want a legal mechanism for that business to protect their brand - <USER3> having to change every business name to XYZZY, etc.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't have a problem with a name like "Roberts and Sons Cleaners" because, after all, it's a fairly unique combination of words. I would, however, have a big problem with someone trademarking the name "Robert". And that is the issue here: Django is a first name.

<comment><USER12> I agree it would be nice to be more cut and dried. In practice, I think it would come down to a court deciding if their was the possibility of misleading the consumer, by mimicking a well-known brand in a particular market.

So I think businesses can get trademarks for English words and common names - with the understanding that they might be geographically or market-segment limited in their protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The guys behind the Reinhardt framework are going to be mad! [http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/10/09/reinhardt-a-client- si...](http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/10/09/reinhardt-a-client-side-web- framework/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Absurd.

I'm currently working on a blogging/messaging website. Maybe I should call it Wordpress? :-)

<comment><USER33> Only if its auto-update mechanism mysteriously crashes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Off-topic: Poor title rename; it should include that it was renamed "Reinhardt" from "Django" so as for the discussion to make sense.

</comment><comment><USER35> Didn't even know they had codenames for wordpress, but this one sounds surprisingly similar to something python-y people claim to be great (can't judge it myself)

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, they follow a tradition of naming their releases after Jazz musicians, and have been since before Django was released.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress#Releases>

But still. WTF.

<comment><USER36> They should have been kind enough to use his last name if they were going to name the release after him.

But I've never heard of release names for wordpress before so I don't expect this to mess google search results up when searching for django (python) related things.

<comment><USER37> Or even his real first name: <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would have loved to sit in on this meeting ...

<comment><USER39> "We've got these lawyers on retainer doing nothing! Let's get sued to give them something to do!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I believe it now says "Reinhardt" on their page, and not "Django". So you can rest easy. Sure, there might be a guy named Django Reinhardt, but surely of someone called their project "George" and another person called their project "Washington", it would be ok right?

</comment><comment><USER41> Will Wordpress 3.2 be named Rails?

</comment><comment><USER42> Rather poor judgement.

</comment><comment><USER43> If they were in a completely different area, for example if they were selling baskets, Django would have been perfectly acceptable.

But calling a blogging platform Django is just stupid. It might also be unethical as some pointed out Django is a registered trademark.

I can see this happening:

\- "So how do I get started with WordPress?"

\- "You have to download the latest Django release"

\- "Oh, ok"

(downloads latest from djangoproject.com ...)

<comment><USER44> The only difference is ghat they usually say "you have to download the latest version of WordPress from their website."

<comment><USER43> But what is the latest version called?

Django, of course! o_O

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> So what? What makes this a #1 story in HN?

</comment><comment><USER46> This has influenced me to name my releases after Ninja Turtle characters. Hoping for a ROCKSTEADY RC opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER47> Is it April 1st already?

</comment><comment><USER48> Wow. I'm going to start using this approach with my own app...

ParkGrades 1.0 codename "Hotpot"

ParkGrades 1.3 codename "Yelp"

ParkGrades 1.5 codename "Reddit"

ParkGrades 2.0 codename "Apple"

<comment><USER49> Next release of Set For Marriage, codenamed: PlentyOfeMatchCupidHarmonyOK

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> OK this page makes no sense whatsoever, how much edition has been going on in this thing?

Let me see if I understand what happens from the apparently still available press releases and puff pieces on the web: WordPress 3.1 was actually released using the codename "django"?

</comment><comment><USER51> At first I was like "Heh.."

But then I looked at my calendar and realized it wasn't April.

</comment><comment><USER52> Is this evidence that WP is feeling the heat from frameworks?

I can imagine that after years of using WP there would be a significant portion who are looking for something more full-featured or performant or whatever, there are myriad reasons for changing platforms. That reasonably intelligent (or moneyed) people can so easily learn or hire to write a completely custom site seems uncontroversial. The enterprising RoR or Dj coder would do well to sniff around WP site owners.

In other news, WP has a new version coming out, which I imagine was the real point of WP starting this controversy. Cheap publicity, blog mentions, yadda yadda. Learn from history: upgrade early and often!

<comment><USER53> > Is this evidence that WP is feeling the heat from frameworks?

No.

<comment><USER52> You may be wrong.

<comment><USER53> I might be wrong that WordPress continuing their long standing naming convention for releases isn't a sign that they're seeing competition from frameworks?

They may be seeing competition, but naming it Django - and quickly renaming once they realized - is hardly a sign of that.

<comment><USER52> True story: today I got Chinese takeout for lunch from a restaurant I've been going to for over 15 years. Every single lunch special they offer and have _ever_ offered comes with rice. When I got home, I found that there was no rice in my lunch special. No rice... _from a Chinese restaurant_.

I'm pretty amazed at how well this provides an allegory for WP people somehow not knowing about Django, and for what it's worth there are 188,000 Google results for "Wordpress vs. Django." I'm not trying to lie with statistics, I'm just trying to provide an illustration that they aren't worlds apart.

But it's not a huge deal, it's been fixed, no harm no foul, and only a controversy among tetchy nerds. I'm fine with that, but I can still say something's weird about it. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Does anyone else find is amusing that a framework named after a human being is complaining about someone else sorta-not-really using their name?

Lame. Who cares.

</comment><comment><USER55> WordPress 3.2 release: "Microsoft" just announced

</comment><comment><USER56> I smell trademark infringement. I really do wonder if this wasn't a "prodding" on purpose after all.

<comment><USER29> Considering how agressive Automattic was in competing with SixApart a few years back, I wouldn't be surprised.</comment></comment>


FLAC 1.3.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://xiph.org/flac/changelog.html <comment><USER2> Flac is a great format.

I've been making music for years and I often work with samples. Luckily, Ableton Live accepts .flac files. It's important to have high quality samples considering manipulating the sound (especially time-stretching) can easily alter its quality.

Unfortunately, it's still hard to obtain music in Flac format. Few online music stores offer tracks in that format. [1] It's maybe a marketing issue. Everybody knows what an Mp3 is. It also took me some time to learn that such a format as Flac existed. But it's also a size issue. Although the compressing algorithm is incredible, people prefer to download (legally or illegally) a 80 MB album rather than a 500 MB one, regardless of its quality, because they either won't hear the difference or just don't care. And considering iTunes doesn't support Flac (only their own Alac format that is even less known), Flac isn't meant to be widely adopted yet.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_music_stor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_music_stores)

<comment><USER3> I'm in the camp of people who literally can't perceive the difference, so why would I download the much larger audio?

In fact I can't even tell the difference between 128kbps MP3 and the CD it's encoded from, let alone superior formats like Opus or AAC or higher-bitrate MP3.

<comment><USER4> Flac is future proof. You can always take losslessly compressed audio and convert it to another lossless or lossy format.

You can convert lossy formats but there is no way to tell how the artifacts will interact.

<comment><USER3> And yet we save movies to h.264 or WebM and save photographic images to JPEG.

Lossless formats _do_ have their place but it's not as if lossy formats literally sustain bit rot; they lose information one time and that's it. Unless, of course, you convert lossy formats, but you should know not to do that.

If you do have to convert between lossy formats or absolutely need every bit of data (e.g. RAW photography) then that's one of the places you might find lossless archival storage useful. But _most_ uses don't need it at all.

<comment><USER4> Lossy formats are useful, no doubt about that. I was just pointing out an advantage of a lossless format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love FLAC, I just wish it had more mainstream support: I'm looking at _you_ iTunes Player & 160GB iPod Classic.

<comment><USER6> Agreed... It was an interesting discovery that Google Music allows you to upload FLAC, though. While I'm pretty sure actual playback is something lossy, at least it prevents them transcoding lossy format into another lossy format for streaming... (or so I heard...)

<comment><USER7> The Google Music Manager program just transcodes FLAC to 320kbps MP3 before uploading.

[https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1100462?hl=en](https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1100462?hl=en)

<comment><USER6> The one thing I know, though, they require FLAC upload for their commercial music distribution service.

It's actually better than some place, which actually requires a physical CDDA ROM...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "libFLAC encoder was defaulting to level 0 compression instead of 5"

Level 5 is better imho, as I guess most of us want smaller files not faster encoding. Computers today are fast enough to do this without a significant wait.

Also this: Created: 2007-10-19 Closed-fixed: 2009-01-02 Released: 2013-05-26

<comment><USER9> Yeah, any idea why development slowed on this so much? Did they get the codec so perfect that there was nothing left to do? It's kind of interesting that something that has seen so little development over the past several years still dominates this market, or whatever you call it.

<comment><USER10> Level 0 uses less CPU (and improves battery life).

<comment><USER11> Only (significantly) on the compression side. Decompressing is about the same whether you used 0 or 9.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Besides having a lossless compressed audio file, I often wonder, if one can actually hear the difference between a well compressed mp3 (say, converted from a flac) and the actual original flac? Is there a real benefit for the average consumer? The problem I see is the quite large file size.

<comment><USER13> I have invested a lot of money into good headphones and good speakers and I can't tell the difference between good lame mp3s and flac...

<comment><USER14> Blind test? HydrogenAudio forums will tell you that if it's not a blind A/B test you can fool yourself very easily.

You might also like to try AAC (or ogg) at a similar bitrate: MP3 has a couple of encoding peculiarities that are an unavoidable function of the format & if you know what to listen out for they're fairly obvious even at higher bitrates. (I'd still be surprised if you could tell the difference between flac and 320kps mp3 in a blind test though.)

<comment><USER12> I think you misread "can't" and "can".

<comment><USER14> oops: Mea culpa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The official announcement [http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac- dev/2013-June/004223.ht...](http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac- dev/2013-June/004223.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> if anyone wants different compiles for windows of a whole lot of various encoders, including FLAC 1.3.0, check out [http://www.rarewares.org](http://www.rarewares.org) been using it for years</comment>


Silicon Valley Needs to Lose the Arrogance or Risk Destruction - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/02/silicon-valley-backlash/

<comment><USER2> To sum the article up: "Here are a couple of references to hot headlines like NSA spying and protests at Google bus stops, mentioned purely to make it seem reasonable to push a very simplistic political agenda."

>>> In advancing their case that Silicon Valley's profits only benefit the few, critics often note the structural advantage of tech companies, which allows them to build massive businesses with tiny workforces. (In December, Twitter flirted with a valuation of $50 billion despite having just 2,300 employees, while Dow Chemical, worth a similar amount, supported more than 23 times as many jobs.)

How is that a bad thing? I think I'm going to call for Dow Chemical to hire 25,000 more people, hand them some test tubes, and shut down it's manufacturing plants.

>>> Silicon Valley might need to spend a far greater share of its treasure to maintain a general faith in its good intentions. It might need to wade more deeply into politics, not to secure tax breaks for itself but to force the development of affordable housing and transit in the Bay Area and beyond, so its neighbors don't lose when it wins.

You can't _make_ housing affordable (other than making it less attractive). You can subsidize it, which is a charitable thing to do, but the price didn't change, just the person paying the rent.

>>> Were either company to lose the trust and optimism of its customers, it wouldn't just be akin to ExxonMobil failing to sell oil or Dow Chemical to sell plastic; it would be like failing to drill oil, to make plastic.

This author has a very weird view of the world. People don't use Google because they like Google, they use it because Google has solved entire swaths of problems that are very handy to have solved (like finding things on the internet, and email that isn't awful). Are there privacy concerns? I guess, but honestly outside of people who complain about privacy as their actual job, people clearly don't care even a little.

>>> If inventing new modes of communication or collaboration was seen as a mercenary act—as no nobler than drilling a well or devising a mortgage-backed security—then such platforms would never thrive, because their value tends to arise from a long, slow, unprofitable process of experimentation.

Anyone who actually understood the valley would see that not only is it the most mercenary place imaginable, but also that this is exactly how it should and must be. Competition breeds efficiency and innovation. You can start a company here and succeed exactly because you can compete on the same terms as the big players, and if you build something better it is very hard to stop you.

The message should be more "hey idiots who seem to have time to stand around protesting that someone is using a bus stop, spend less time protesting bullshit and more time trying to make money if that is a major concern in your life" and less "making money means you have obligations to cough some up whenever anybody with less money notices".

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

</comment><comment><USER3> This guy who write this piece of shit has an obsession with Mrs. Robinson I bet. Well, the movie the Graduate.

I've grown up in Silicon Valley, lived here since 1976. I am 46 years old now. I have seen the last remaining orchards replaced by tech companies. And I see the ghost town buildings of old tech companies not far from Fry's on Arques.

The Google buses are discreet, quietly picking up people and dumping them off home like on at the plaza on Cox/Saratoga, weary nerds wandering off it to go home and get some shut eye.

This is how it is, there are those who have and the have nots. We all agree there should be a better way. But arrogance? Not hardly. Would you say the same of an actress in Hollywood trying to make it, working on tables, then she gets her first big break and goes a little mad, spending her money? Well, that's what has happened with some of the people that have made things happen in Silicon Valley.

Arrogance is writing a shitty whiny complaining article that solves no problems. Whinge whinge whinge.</comment>


HTTP2 Push: The details - <AUTHOR> http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2016/http2-push-the-details/ <comment><USER2>
        Instead, the official method is that the browser can
        signal the server to cancel a push with a so-called
        RST_STREAM reply to a PUSH_PROMISE.

while this sounds reasonable it's actually strange. Basically a PUSH_PROMISE has two stream id's. One with the stream it is sent over and one with the promised stream. Actually the RST should target the promised stream.

another thing which his article never actually mentions is when to send the actual PUSH_PROMISE. And the problem extends further that the most reasonable moment to send it is before the actual html, but the DATA (should not always as explained in his article) sent directly before the actual html. This actually makes it really hard to have a good implementation since you actually need lots of state and priorities to get the best behavior.

I'm extremly skeptical of http/2\. we go from a stateless protocol to a extremly stateful one, just to fix some things, but we raise a lot of new ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good luck reading localStorage server-side!</comment>


GAO Issues More Cost Warnings For F-35 - <AUTHOR> http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_03_24_2014_p0-674992.xml <comment><AUTHOR> "The program's continued failure to develop and test mission software on schedule will also either result in delayed initial operational capability (IOC) dates, or in further reductions to the capability delivered at IOC, the report predicts."

and

"By January, the GAO says, the program had verified only half as much of the Block 2B software – the Marine Corps IOC standard – as planned, 13% versus 27%. The GAO endorses the DOT&E's estimate of a delay as long as 13 months, and recommends a new assessment by the Office of the Secretary of Defense "of the specific capabilities that can be delivered and those that will not likely be delivered" to the services at their different IOC dates."</comment>


Interview: From refugee, to teacher, to parent, now creator of UX-App - <AUTHOR> http://makers.gumwall.com/2015/05/06/maker-interview-eli-of-ux-app-high-school-teacher-designer-developer/

<comment> ux-app Many thanks to Braden for putting this interview together. Braden reached out to me after seeing my product on Designer News and was kind enough to offer me the chance to talk about product development as a parent as well as some of the features of UX-App.

If you'd like to see some of what can be achieved with UX-App then you can check out my YouTube channel

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJcCuBcl_a2Zdmr01eSK1Gg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJcCuBcl_a2Zdmr01eSK1Gg)

Thanks again Braden!

Eli</comment>


Computer Security Expert Claims he Hacked the ObamaCare Website in 4 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/01/20/computer-security-expert-claims-he-hacked-the-obamacare-website-in-4-minutes/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is from a rather dubious (Fox 'News') source originally, but as it appeared on Zero Hedge it will get a fair amount of views. I guess it is a tossup between Fox's 'reporting' and the incompetence of the ObamaCare web site programmers. A tough call.</comment>


Real-Time Programming (2004) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www2.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/iste/ps/Lehre/stuff/rt.script.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Professor Plödereder was (is?) in the ISO standardizing committee for Ada and it shows.

Great professor, great lectures. I took every lecture he offered.

My best memory is when he asked me questions in an oral exam that weren't totally foreign, but... somehow off the expected path. He never asked many questions whose answers were right in the lecture notes, always probing whether you had understood the concepts, so I assumed he was particularly demanding that day. When I came back into the room to get my grade, he told me that his TA had informed him that he was examining a different lecture than he was supposed to, and that he was quite impressed how I held myself up. The grade was accordingly chosen. :-)

<comment><USER2> Check out his research group. They apparently have a collection of free code for Ada:

[http://www.iste.uni-stuttgart.de/en/ps/adabasis.html](http://www.iste.uni- stuttgart.de/en/ps/adabasis.html)

EDIT to add: Not just on a committee but helped write the Ada 2012 reference with Tucker Taft and some others. Too bad they're fans of paywalled and non- FOSS work. A lot of this will disappear into ancient history because of it. Least we got a great RT book. :)

[http://www.iste.uni- stuttgart.de/en/ps/publications.html](http://www.iste.uni- stuttgart.de/en/ps/publications.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and doing the diploma thesis (or the undergraduate thesis) in his group was one of the rare opportunities to get your hands on AdaCore's compiler, not the neglected free gcc version.

<comment><USER2> What did you do in yours?

<comment><AUTHOR> I finally decided against it and went to the department of linguistics for the thesis. Nothing special, just an average thesis.

<comment><USER2> Oh OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a good amount of knowledge that I use in my day-to-day job all wound up in one place. Most excellent -- takes people years to get good at and accustomed to designing systems and software for a hard real time, safety- critical environment. We measure/characterize certain aspects of our software's performance down to the nanosecond (and more commonly, to the microsecond) ... pretty sure that's not the norm in most disciplines :). FWIW, we use Ada, a restricted version of C, and a version of C++ that's so restricted that it's really more like our restricted version C than true C++. Industry trend seems to be away from Ada and toward C, at least for non- military aerospace. We use Java, C#, Python, etc. etc. etc. for our ground- based stuff -- restrictions are only on flight software.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any idea why the industry is moving from Ada to C? That seems like a retrograde move to an outsider.

<comment><USER3> Too hard to find people who know ada, and more difficult to do some of the low-level things that operating systems need to do (for the same reasons that it's safer). Might not be the case for application software -- I work mostly on platform/OS software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is real real-time, not the internet's "it'll get there faster, maybe..." redefinition of real-time.

</comment><comment><USER6> He covers _priority inversion_ , a high priority task is preempted by a lower priority task. There's a similar neologism, _bikeshedding_ , wasting time on trivial details while important matters wait.

<comment><USER7> It's not that similar at all. In priority inversion, the task of choosing the colour of the bike shed is essential to complete the whole reactor (even if it's unimportant which colour would that be). In bikeshedding, both tasks can be carried out independently. Priority inversion happens when a task of high priority waits for a low-priority task to finish, then the low-priority task has its priority artificially and temporarily increased.

Moreover, bikeshedding is not a term from technical ground, but from psychology. It talks about what people want instead of how computer system works.

<comment><USER6> Bikeshedding, in its current usage, stems from the FreeBSD mailing list. It is not _from psychology_.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding) [http://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed.html](http://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed.html)

In Parkinson's original and fictional example, _members of an organisation give disproportionate weight to trivial issues_. This is not a matter of sequence or independence. With respect to _similarity_ , I will equate _priority_ and _weight_.

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

Parkinson himself is a historian and not a psychologist.

<comment><USER7> > In Parkinson's original and fictional example, members of an organisation > give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. This is not a matter of > sequence or independence.

But it's a matter of _psychology_ of the organization members, not a _technical issue_. On the other hand, priority inversion is purely technical thing.

And then, the reactor could easily be built without bike shed finished. The two tasks are independent. Inversion of priorities happens precisely because the high priority task _cannot be finished_ without the low priority task.

Thus, both the field the term operates on _and_ the term's mechanics are completely different.

> With respect to similarity, I will equate priority and weight.

And that's about the only aspect of the two terms that is similar. Both talk about two objects with vastly different (nominal) importance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WeWork documents reveal it owes $18B in rent and is burning through cash - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/WeWork-documents-reveal-it-owes-18-billion-in-12863094.php <comment><USER2> _Revenue from memberships more than doubled last year, to $822 million, but expenses also more than doubled, to $1.81 billion._

Then:

 _Filling desks — and keeping them filled — is an important metric for WeWork, which says it has done so with 81% of them, higher than its minimum requirement of 60% occupancy to cover costs._

But it's not covering costs, and considering its rent obligations are so high, it may never be able to.</comment>


Ask HN: How to run queries on 20B clicks log - <AUTHOR> I have a click log with 20 Billion clicks. I want to perform a group by, count, sum, average queries on this data set and make it available to all the customers. Each record includes Browser name, Country, Carrier, Campaign ID. Queries include a) Get the number of clicks from X to Y date, for each specific browser. What options do I have? <comment><USER2> BigQuery would probably be the easiest, low maintenance approach. Normally I would leverage the Hadoop ecosystem for this type of ad-tech/analytics problem, but I am not 100% certain of your use case, budget, etc. Providing clients read-only SQL access would be much better than a REST API.

</comment><comment><USER3> You mention about making it available to customers - are you looking for APIs ?

[https://github.com/o1lab/xmysql](https://github.com/o1lab/xmysql) \- one command to generate rest api for any mysql database in seconds. (shameless plug - something i've been workng on)

This supports grouping, count and where as query params of api. I'll be happy to help - pls raise an issue if you get stuck. Thank you.

<comment><USER2> This is not going to perform well with this amount of data. HTTP Response times for queries are likely to timeout. Needs a job-based queue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd go for Druid + Pivot (or BigQuery if you happen to be in GCloud already).

[http://druid.io/](http://druid.io/)

[https://docs.imply.io/pivot/](https://docs.imply.io/pivot/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you actually deployed this in production? Last year, we had lots of issue with Druid. Do you know about clickhouse?

<comment><USER5> can you write briefly about the issues you had with Druid? We've been looking at bringing it into out stack for our OLAP queries and aggregates and would appreciate a war story.</comment></comment></comment>


Google trademarks Spot for new programming language? - <AUTHOR> http://fusible.com/2011/08/google-files-spot-trademark-registers-domains-for-programming-language/

<comment><USER2> So now you could create a system with a "Go, Spot, Go" architecture. (depending on what Spot actually does). (<http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US7/NAMES/dickjane.html>).

(I hope this message isn't inappropriate for Hacker News, at least right now when I think it is still a (pun not intended) novel joke. Yes, I realize the article alludes to See Spot Run, but I couldn't find anybody linking Go and Spot together in such a way.)</comment>


5 Things That Make Me Believe Nothing Is Impossible - <AUTHOR> http://www.ideatagging.com/five-things-that-make-me-believe-nothing-is-impossible/

<comment><USER2> A minor quibble: read about intentional programming, you'll find that while it _is_ magical, it's not software that writes itself...</comment>


Snowden Has NSA Blueprints - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-has-nsa-blueprints-2013-7?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Falleyinsider%2Fsilicon_alley_insider+%28Silicon+Alley+Insider%29 <comment><USER2> An alarmist bunch of FUD, clearly written with an agenda, though whether that agenda is distraction, villification or simply pageviews is not obvious. Probably the latter two combined.</comment>


Solar-Powered Water ATMs Provide Clean Drinking Water To The Thirsty - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1782224/solar-powered-water-atms-provide-clean-drinking-water-to-the-thirst

<comment><USER2> Small semantic note: isn't this really a type of "vending machine", rather than an "automated teller"? Seems it's really a drink dispenser, and not a money dispenser. The idea just doesn't seem very revolutionary, and is maybe reaching for a "high-tech" metaphor to gain some tech-cred.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is such a bad idea.

a) $3 per month for a family in India is quite expensive.

b) It adds artificial scarcity and dependency on the "water dealers".

Sounds like Rango to me.

<comment><USER4> No one is forcing anyone to use this water. The villagers can either use the cleaner water, something which they had no way to get before, or continue to get water their old way. How is it a bad thing to provide a better product to someone for a price?

<comment><USER3> It's not a "product". It's a survival essential. Everyone should be entitled to clean water, not at a price.

<comment><USER5> Sure, everyone needs water. But, "there's no such thing as a free lunch", and this seems to be a reasonable way to get water to people who need it right now.

update, when I had a chance to look at some data: As for affordability, it seems 5% of monthly income is typically used as the threshold [1]. This would mean that someone would have to earn $2 dollars per day to have affordable water through this solution. You're right: for many below the poverty line in India, this does not meet the affordability standard [2].

However, I would argue that any way of increasing access is an improvement, simply judging by how available water currently is [3]. As was said earlier, you're not making people any poorer by giving them another option to attain water.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_India#Tariffs.2C_cost_recovery_and_subsidies) [2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India> [3][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_India#Water_supply)

<comment><USER3> But when you make the most profitable way the preferred way, you shift the power from the people to a controlling party, at which point, the price goes up to suit the "investors".

It's an unfortunate part of human nature.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shortest summary of the release of Arc and the Lisp world's reaction - <AUTHOR> http://www.elbeno.com/blog/?p=445

<comment><USER2> Shortest summary of the release of the iPod: [http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257...](http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257&tid=107)

<comment><USER3> The most amazing part is the end of post in the slashdot.

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

7 years later when we look back, it look like iPod team really just worked on some consequential features. But at the same time, how do I know what I am working on is not inconsequential features?

<comment><USER2> _how do I know what I am working on is not inconsequential features?_

Get the thing in front of users. Usually this means launching, but it could be enough to use what you're making in-house.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, pg.

But how do you filter out what those users exactly want from noise? For example, a lot of users making noise to Apple saying they want FM radio, wireless feature. Apple did not put the wireless until iPod Touch and iPhone. And still no FM.

The filtering is based on data? or vision?

<comment><USER2> Look at what they do instead of what they say.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, this is the greatest enlightenment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I noticed this while looking for cute kitty photos on reddit this morning, surprisingly the discussion remained remarkably on topic. That Arc spurs a mostly rational discussion on reddit is perhaps an indicator of the value of the exercise.</comment>