Trump's Washington Is Kicking Silicon Valley's Butt - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-17/trump-s-washington-is-kicking-silicon-valley-s-butt <comment><USER2> This makes sense though, doesn't it? Doesn't Trump's campaign promise to "Make America Great Again!" hearken back to an era when automobiles, coal, oil and steel dominated the economy? I'm not so sure Silicon Valley has been sidelined as much as this administration simply doesn't deem them as all that important. If that's the case then the problem Silicon Valley faces is convincing this administration that they really are all that important. You know what? I'm not so sure that case can be so easily made. This will certainly be interesting to watch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trump was born rich, and like people who were deemed old money in the 1920s treats tech's new money as not very important and not worthy of attention. I wouldn't pay much attention to it, because it's probably the last hoorah before the death of the old economy.

In the end it'll be a short lived moment in history until this generation's kids treat the next generation with similar disdain.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you respond to a company asking for "homework" when job hunting? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If it is some reasonable amount of work to show your skills, do it.

Personally I would say okay for something up to two or three hours worth. Consider it an investment in your future job.

The alternative is a white-board coding task, where your risk of hitting something that you are really unprepared for is much, much higher.

DISCLAMER: I have given out homework in the 1.5 to 2 hour range as a hiring manager. A smallish, self contained problem (without any commercial value), just to see the candidates actually can write working code - and to get an idea about their angle of attack for the problem..

</comment><comment><USER3> I've done a few of these assignments, usually after an interview or two. I'm on the fence. Usually it's an evening of tinkering for me, which would be pretty cumbersome if I were interviewing more that two places at the same time. On the other hand, I tend to do way better at these kinds of assignments than I do with on-the-spot whiteboard type questions, so it's nice to have an opportunity to show what I can do at my own pace.

</comment><comment><USER4> I work primarily in design. When I've moved between companies I have been asked for this but usually at a final interview stage. I've mostly obliged as I like a challenge, with the caveat that I have other commitments and so don't expect a gold standard in quality.

My understanding after the fact was that this type of thing helped to identify people who were of an open mindset, the challenge put me out of my comfort zone a little too so that was another aspect. Finally it when the review happened it allowed us to talk about something we both had an understanding of.

The only memorable time was when I identified some problems in their brief, ones they didn't notice, and called them out on it (not in a cocky way). This was the nail in the coffin for other candidates as no one else spotted it.

Finally I've never been asked to do anything for an ongoing or upcoming project, only for something that had already existed. They also supplied content for me to work with and I chose what I could do with them in the context of what the role involved.

<comment><USER5> I was in design until recently, and I too have done my share of "design challenges". They're fine if they're late in the interview process imo. I did interview a couple places that tried to lead with a design challenge (HR screen -> design challenge), even before I spoke with the hiring manager at all. That's just not very respectful of my time, so I didn't pursue those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I politely decline but tell them I have a lot of projects on my github profile they are welcome to take a look at.

</comment><comment><USER7> "oh ok it sounds like im hired already, so does this first assignment pay on stipend, salary or hourly"?

</comment><comment><USER8> We give out homework, it's a 2 - 3 hour simulation of setting up services. It helps us as a team understand where a new hire's weaknesses sit. By the time we've given it it means we're interested and at the last few stages of our process.

</comment><comment><USER9> I tell them no. I don't have the time or patience for people that want to me to work for free. I'm happy to show them what I've done but anything specific they can either pay me or GTFO and find some desperate intern to walk all over.</comment>


Fifteen years imaging the Red Planet - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-01-video-fifteen-years-imaging-red.html <comment><USER2> I'm thinking SpaceX will be the first to send a GPS around Mars, they have some Satellite building experience with Starlink, and they will be the ones with a need...about 2025 for Starship.</comment>


German government puts up $165 million to start Google competitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/20/eu-google-competitor-gets-165million-cash-injection/

<comment><USER2> This and Quaero will serve as valuable lessons for the governments that sponsored them. You can compete with Boeing this way, but not with startups.

I admit I'm kind of surprised they still need this lesson. You'd think they'd have already learned this from the British government's attempt to set up ICL as a competitor to the Google of its era, IBM, in 1968. Never heard of ICL? Exactly.

<comment><USER3> Um, you can't even compete with Boeing this way.

When will other countries understand that: the best role of government is to ensure the rights of businesses and people. If you get that right, the rest will follow. They shouldn't be using tax dollars as venture seed money. They'd be better off refunding it to the taxpayers!

<comment><USER4> 100% agree - I never saw the rationale for the government making risky investments, just because purportedly nobody else does. Imagine your bank adviser telling you they are going to put your money into high risk investments because nobody else does. Yet if the government spends our money like that, few people seem to realize that it is basically the same thing happening.

<comment><USER5> _I never saw the rationale for the government making risky investments, just because purportedly because nobody else does._

Risk is important because it offers incentives to the marketplace, and prevents economic systems falling into stagnation (local optima), as Aaron Brown describes in this interview: [http://marketplacemoney.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/05/...](http://marketplacemoney.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/05/19/poker_face_of_wall_street/)

But I agree with you that it is not the government which should be taking those risks, since (as others have pointed out in this thread), governments really don't know what they're doing in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sad really that so much money will go to waste. There are some amazing hacker entrepreneurs in Germany -- many of them move to the US. Giving 165 teams $1m would have resulted in at least one billion dollar company (and probably more like 20) even with incompetent decision-making.

<comment><USER2> The money will not merely go to waste. It will actually harm German startups. A lot of smart hackers who might otherwise have started or worked for startups will get drawn into this doomed project instead.

<comment><USER6> That makes a lot of sense. I was just accusing Google of doing the same thing world wide. Do you think there's any difference between them hiring 5k developers they can't really make use of and what Germany is doing here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is perhaps the exact opposite of barebones seed funding.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I was thinking that too. This is as far from traditional VC as Y Combinator is, but in the opposite direction. Which seems a further predictor of doom, because the trend in venture funding lately has been a shift toward the low end.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. Also, didn't France already try to make a google killer? That I haven't heard much lately implies the fate of this program.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/12/21/HNquaero_1.html> " The French and German partners involved in a consortium developing future search technologies, Quaero, went their separate ways because of differences over technology, according to senior officials at the French agency funding the research. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this could be as successful as Airbus's biggest plane :)

</comment><comment><USER4> News like that make me hate paying taxes so much :-(

</comment><comment><USER9> This will give a new meaning to the expression "design by committee".

</comment><comment><USER10> A $165 million kiss of death</comment>


Get Your Smartphone's Sensor Data via API - <AUTHOR> http://datarella.com/access-smartphone-data-with-our-new-api/

<comment><USER2> Great! Is there already a demo implementation in Python?

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally an app that reliably tracks and provides my smartphone's sensor data.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good thing to work with your own data..</comment>


VoIP's Best News, Ever - <AUTHOR> http://jicksta.com/posts/257 <comment><USER2> There's a problem he didn't mention. It's something anyone seriously using VoIP will know - you shouldn't expect it to work on a random network - ever. Nat issues, traffic shaping, firewalls, address masking which is not like natting really, sip ipv6 support - or actually the lack of. These problems will kill your "transparent voip" experience. Of course you can setup a vpn to your server - which will cost you battery life, more firewall problems, more traffic shaping problems and delays caused by another network layer. The highly enterprisy solutions will have even more problems, like MS solutions requiring a login into the company domain. Maybe Cisco has something dedicated that would actually work...

In short - I think there's a long way before we can just walk into a random WiFi range and do a transparent call handover. Or you can use it on a network which has been prepared for this - but there aren't many solutions providing live call handover :( and you need to route that call through your voip to begin with (unless your mobile provider also allows live call transfers).

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that I'm not really aware of all that many open Wifi networks just hanging around these days. In fact, I'm currently in Italy, where it's actually illegal to leave your access point unencrypted and open to everyone. (It's a real pain, hence why I'm on 3.5G right now). That would seem to be the biggest barrier to entry.</comment></comment>


Why I love everything you hate about Java - <AUTHOR> http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/why-i-love-everything-you-hate-about-java/ <comment><USER2> Avdi Grimm responded [0] to this (relatively old) article with what I think is a salient point: traditional design patterns are good, but Java makes expressing these design patterns very obtuse and heavy-handed. Nick Kallen conflates using intelligent design patterns with calling out every use of said design patterns in bold-face.

Writing Java feels like "now I'm going to make a _Factory_ _Factory_! See, it says FactoryFactory right there in the class name!"

It's entirely natural to use intelligent design patterns in other languages than Java - so natural, in fact, that you don't have to invoke said patterns by name to use them!

[0] : [http://avdi.org/devblog/2010/02/09/everything-you-love- about...](http://avdi.org/devblog/2010/02/09/everything-you-love-about-java- is-everything-i-love-about-good-design/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think a lot of the complaints about the AbstractFactoryFactoryProvider nonsense in many java programs is that it unnecessarily adds complexity to projects that do not require it. In the examples provided there were clear performance characteristics and constraints that provided clear justification for these patterns. Basically design patterns like this are a way to manage complexity and add flexibility to a program. However, if the level of flexibility is unnecessary then the patterns themselves become a source of complexity.

This is definitely something i struggle with in my development (which is mostly java). Deciding when you need to introduce an interface (or use a delegate ...) to solve a problem vs. just creating a more direct fix (adding a member variable and a few if statements is probably a very fundamental design problem in all software. The response of 'convention over configuration' is just a way of saying that most of the time sticking with a convention is going to be the faster (to code) and simpler path forward. It's optimizing for the common case and building a real time graph database client is not the common case :(

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's what I hate about Java: No unsigned types. Why do you love this?

<comment><USER3> I very seldom find myself missing unsigned types in java. Most of the time using a BitSet or an EnumSet is probably what you want. What problem are you trying to solve that needs unsigned arithmetic?

<comment><USER5> Image/video data? How else are you going to store 8-bit unsigned pixels without ballooning memory and cache requirements?

Of course nobody sane uses Java to write such code, so it's a moot point.</comment></comment></comment>


IPad 2.0: Can Faster, Thinner, Lighter Compete with Android Tablets? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ipad_20_can_faster_thinner_lighter_compete_with_android_tablets.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d521cbf24ca3a7d%2C0 <comment><USER2> Could this article be any more biased. It talks as if rumors are facts and then positions itself as if Android tablets are currently the market leader. Last I checked it is Android devices trying to keep up with the iPad. There is one Android tablet shipping today and its sales are "smooth." The next one coming out will be considered $300 more than the iPad. I expect more from RWW. Too many good people working there to write junk like this.

<comment><USER3> Not that I disagree with your assessment as such, but there are several Android tablets currently shipping. Even if you ignore the $100 no-name pads, Creative, Archos, Viewsonic, and Huawei are all shipping Android tablets that cost less than the iPad and are usable, even if they can't compare to the iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> wow. it is amazing how little content that article contains. i've noticed that a few sites like mashable, RWW, TC, and a couple of others are generating content that is nearly devoid of content. don't mean to put down you linking to the article. it's good to know that wsj has the inside scoop, but they had absolutely nothing to add.

<comment><AUTHOR> WSJ had "the inside scoop"? Really? An entire story based on the fact that the next iPad is going to be lighter, faster and thinner? That's the silly part.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the startup/tech scene like in St. Paul/Minneapolis? - <AUTHOR>

I've spent a lot of time around the tech scene in SF and LA, but will be spending a great deal of time in St. Paul / Minneapolis.  Does anyone know what the local university entrepreneur / tech / meetup scene is like?<p>I enjoy mentoring first-timers, as well as learning about new technology / startups and hope to find some way to keep things going in MN. <comment><USER2> There are some pretty active Android, PHP and Python User Groups in the area (I'm not sure about Ruby).

If you look on Meetup.com you can also find active Web Design (Minnesota Web Design) and Bootstraping Breakfast groups.</comment>


$50B transit proposal would boost light rail throughout Seattle region - <AUTHOR> http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sound-transit-proposal-includes-2nd-downtown-seattle-tunnel/ <comment><USER2> To all the people dissing this plan from afar you have no idea how bad Seattle has gotten in the last three years. Over 100k people have moved into the metro area every year for three years.

My commute times changed noticeably over the course of one year. It went from consistently 30 minutes over the 90 bridge to consistently an hour (we're talking 18 miles, door to door).

This thing should have been built in the 70s.

My wife and I actually moved back to the Midwest 2 months ago after living in Seattle for 8 years, despite my comfortable Senior Engineer salary, because all of our closest friends moved away in the span of a year, because they could no longer afford to live in the city (none of them worked in tech).

I wish Seattle good things from afar, and it will always hold a special place in my heart, but I'm glad I'm not living through these infrastructure growing pains that should have been addressed years ago.

<comment><USER3> I think that economics will sort out the cost-of-living issues. Seattle doesn't seem to have the NIMBYism of the Bay Area, and Washington State actually requires that communities plan for growth under the state Growth Management Act. I'm not sure how this compares to California (witness the unencumbered sprawl of LA, or the inability to build anything in the Bay Area), but from what I've seen, local Washington governments are not pretending that population growth is a fantasy. Seattle's growth plan specifically mentions "directing growth to existing urban centers and villages", so I can see how the proposed Sound Transit line extensions would help facilitate urbanization.

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

[http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cityplanning/completeprojectslist...](http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cityplanning/completeprojectslist/comprehensiveplan/whatwhy/)

<comment><USER4> I hope so.

Seattle, Vancouver, SF, etc need to upzone, to permit more development, so that supply can meet demand. As I understand it, that upzoning is not happening nearly fast enough.

Public transit initiatives trigger (begats?) upzoning. This is an end run around the regressive restrictions on property taxes and entrenched NIMBYism.

I fully support it. Whatever works. I wish my peeps working on affordability, homelessness, economic justice would put less emphasis on set asides, protecting older listings, etc, and place more emphasis on increasing inventory.

One potential monkeywrench of increasing supply is absentee landlords. I just read something like 1/3rd of Vancouver properties are owned by Chinese investors. Which I'm totally cool with so long as the units are mostly occupied.

<comment><USER5> Seattle does have plenty of stupid people like every other place. People that vote against all road building because they only want bike lanes or transit. People that vote against transit because they don't want poor people coming where they are (really this happens, search for Kemper Freeman initiatives to keep the poor people out of bellevue).

We have to do increase all modes of transportation. The problem with this proposal is that it will take 25+ years. We need a 10 year version of this plan. Charge us rich programmers more, we can afford it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Trains are very cool, and the idea of shared public transportation is probably noble, but there is an intractable economic problem. If my wife and I both take the train, it costs twice as much to us. If we drive somewhere, it costs half as much.

Additional issues that need to be solved to make pubtrans competitive with car ownership are scheduling, the ability to bring cargo, and negative class connotation. And this completely discounts the probable arrival of ubiquitous autonomous electric vehicles before Sound Transit even gets to finish this project. As much as I enjoy the romantic nature of trains, I think the Puget Sound is gearing up for a folly of a white elephant.

<comment><USER6> Have you calculated how much you're actually spending per day?

I roughly calculated my expenses once.

$32k car $8k tax/license + loan interest up to point I paid it off = $50k $200 gas a month for 6 years = $14400 $4k renew service plan $1200 a year car ins $7200 2 sets of tires at $1k each = $2k

100k miles on it at 6 years

So $50k+14.4k+4k+7.2k+2k = $77.6k / 100k miles = 0.77 cents per mile.

My commute was 40miles each way or $61 PER DAY!!! That's a TON more than public transportation. That price will slowly go down the longer I keep the car but still, $61 per day is a lot of money. At 20days month that's $1220 a month. That's far more than 2 people's monthly transportation passes.

<comment><USER7> Not that anyone is going to be convinced of anything here, but...

Car: $11,600

[http://bellingham.craigslist.org/cto/5494584275.html](http://bellingham.craigslist.org/cto/5494584275.html)

Taxes/tags: $1,500

Gas: $150/mo (100,000 miles @ 25mi/gal @ $2.50 gal over 6 years) = $10,000

Maintenance: $250/year * 6 years = $1,500

Insurance: $600/year * 6 years = $3,600

2 sets of 65k mile tires: 2*600 = $1,200

sell the car @140k miles: -$2,000

[http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/5488481558.html](http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/5488481558.html)

Total: $27,400 or $0.274/mi

<comment><USER8> What about the inevitable repairs on a used car? I find that I spend another 1000/yr on things that break in my car because it is off-warranty. Also, gas prices are more like 2.80 to 3.50 here in Seattle, historically.

<comment><USER9> I spend at least $2000/year on things that break in my car (and I've never owned a car new enough to know what is or isn't covered by a warranty), because it's a Range Rover and replacement parts cost more than you think they should. That's still far less than I'd be spending on monthly payments if I had a newer car, and insurance is cheap since I don't have a loan company requiring me to sign up for the expensive comp/collision package, so I feel like I'm coming out way ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ironically, the existing tracks from Renton to Bothell could have been used for half of a light rail system for a song. But the government has desperately pretended those tracks don't exist, and has gone to considerable lengths to destroy them.

A few years earlier, they destroyed the tracks from Renton to Black Diamond so thoroughly the right-of-way can never be used for rail again.

It boggles the mind.

<comment><USER11> This interests me... Do you have any articles I can read about this?

I was always under the impression that the Sounder (our commuter heavy rail line) used tracks shared with commercial traffic (BNSF, etc.) and thus couldn't be fully developed into a city-wide system...

<comment><USER10> Nothing has run on the tracks for 20 years. Some of it has been pulled up, but the right-of-way remains.

Seattle Transit just announced a $50 billion plan to blast new right-of-way, never mind the trackage could be doubled by re-using that right-of-way for a few million.

You can still see the tracks on Google Maps:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.1882192,16z](https://email@example.com,-122.1882192,16z)

although it has been renamed "Cross Kirkland Corridor" in their attempt to hide what it is. Sound Transit prefers a plan that costs one thousand times as much, still won't serve the eastside, and will not be in service until half the existing taxpayers are long dead.

<comment><USER12> It's not Sound Transit's fault. The cities won't let them. Kirkland wants them to build out Buses and threatens to veto any light rail project. Residents by the CKC want to "save the trail" (aka we're selfish jerks that bought a property by a railway line, but don't want noise of trains)

[http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/12/kirkland-st- struggl...](http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/12/kirkland-st-struggling- to-agree-on-st3/)

<comment><USER10> The tracks still run through Renton and Bellevue and can connect to the rest of the light rail system in the Tukwila area.

I'd build the system to the border of Kirkland, and wait for the Kirkland residents to get fed up with rotting on 405.

<comment><USER13> Easy to say if the tracks don't go (almost literally) through your back yard as they do mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Meanwhile, on the east side of Lake Washington, we're busy tearing up all of the track and replacing it with bike paths.

</comment><comment><USER15> Building transit infrastructure is expensive and time consuming in metropolitan areas.

Case in point: a five mile extension on an existing Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) line and one new station cost $890 million and took seven years to build. [1]

The resulting extension is expected to increase in ridership by 5000 to 7000 daily trips in the next decade. [2]

[1] [http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx](http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx) [2] [http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx/chronology](http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx/chronology)

<comment><USER6> I have a strong feeling much of that is corruption and/or over charging. I have no proof but AFAICT Singapore and Tokyo have no trouble building new lines quickly and for far less money and I suspect they both do a better job.

<comment><USER15> Well, the Shibuya-Ikebukuro section of the Tokyo metro is 12 miles long and was built between 2000 and 2012.

It cost 250 billion yen, or just over 2 billion US dollars. [1]

[1] [http://www.treehugger.com/cars/trainspotting-new-subway- line...](http://www.treehugger.com/cars/trainspotting-new-subway-line-opens- in-tokyo.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish someone would give PRT a chance. Something like skyTran could be built for 1/5th the cost and would be significantly faster for commuters (since most time is spent at stops before yours).

<comment><USER17> Yep, I say this all the time, and people think it's an even crazier idea than bigfoot and alien sightings.

Somehow, it's realistic to think about us all having self-driving cars dealing with the chaos of city traffic and pedestrians, and it's realistic to propose spending billions and billions of dollars on slow light-rail systems which require years of construction where the roads are all torn up, but it's completely bonkers to think about building a system with elevated rails hanging on utility poles and small, autonomous cars riding on these rails for only $1 million per mile.

I can't wait until Israel has their SkyTran system working so all these idiots in America won't be able to say how "impossible" it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why 25 years?

</comment><comment><USER19> We should have the guys that ran the Big Dig in Boston take care of this. They can run that tab up to $100B in no time.

<comment><USER20> Just to point this out: sound transit's last project, which expanded the existing westlake->seatac airport light rail from Westlake to capital hill and finally to UW, finished under budget and ahead of time.

It was originally scheduled to open September 2016, and the first trains carried passengers last weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> is this system going to be anywhere close to the actual needs of the region in 25 years?

Seriously, 25 years out. That just seems ridiculous to me.

<comment><USER22> whatever happened to those maglev trains that I used to read about as a kid? Oh right, China...

[http://youtu.be/c8SqDVUdMtY](http://youtu.be/c8SqDVUdMtY)

[http://gbtimes.com/china/beijing-launch-first-maglev- line-20...](http://gbtimes.com/china/beijing-launch-first-maglev-line-2016)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR)

<comment><USER23> Line S1 will be much slower than most traditional trains, the energy usage of maglev isn't that much less than traditional rail (so they don't tend to run faster, the metal rails aren't a large limiting factor for speed) and the vertical alignment restrictions on maglev technology means it's not necessarily gonna be technology you can easily put everywhere.

<comment><USER22> Can you be more specific? How fast are traditional trains? These are intercity trains we are discussing, right? The S1 is being used where you would have a subway or light rail.

<comment><USER24> Well i'm not sure about outside europe but Italy's new trains run at ~400Kph

<comment><USER22> They run that fast between cities. Clearly we aren't talking about that. Japan"s intracity maglev is going to go almost 600kph.

[http://youtu.be/VuSrLvCVoVk](http://youtu.be/VuSrLvCVoVk)

Of course, you don't build that to go 10 city blocks.

<comment><USER23> > Japan"s intracity maglev is going to go almost 600kph.

No it's not. 603 is the fastest they've ever gotten the train to go on a test track, which doesn't make that the speed they'd actually run for commercial service. Their current plan is 500 with a top speed of 505. Which is really good, but also a decent ways off and involves some serious earthworks to make the track flat enough.

For comparison, the speed record for wheel on steel rail trains is currently 574 km/hr.

The rail really isn't a huge impact on the speed yet. At those speeds it really start being more about aerodynamics of the vehicles and the cost per kWh. Maybe maglev technology will change that at some point, but right now we haven't really seen results that would lead us to assume that big of an advantage comes from getting rid of the rail. Arguably the biggest advantage is going to come when someone figures out how to put the trains in a tube where the aerodynamic situation changes completely. That's why the hyperloop proposal wasn't just "use a maglev".

Maglev trains are cool as shit though, you're literally floating through the air, it's awesome. I highly recommend riding the one in Shanghai. Make sure you hit a 430 km/hr run and not the slower 300 km/hr ones, the experience is very different. It's fun as hell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish the train to the east side went across 520 instead of 90. Oh well.

<comment><USER5> It seems idiotic that we didn't allow for that on 520. Did we really screw it up that much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Clicking on the map to magnify it, makes it smaller.

</comment><comment><USER27> What was the cost for the monorail again?

</comment><comment><USER28> 50 Billion could buy a lot of self driving cars in 5 years.... why not just spend it on city owned cars that taxpayers can order on demand?

<comment><USER29> Cause that would do nothing to alleviate traffic congestion.

<comment><USER30> And neither does light rail. light rail is a bad investment. It is expensive and low capacity. It is 19th century technology.

Building bus rapid transit makes much more sense because it is felixible and less expensive. But politicians don't like photo ops with buses nearly as much as with trains.

<comment><USER31> Politicians like trains because their constituents like trains. Buses are stuck in traffic. Light rail runs on dedicated lines. Light rail is attractive because it is more predictable. The buses in Seattle are less attractive because they suffer the same congestion and unpredictability as driving.

<comment><USER32> Bus rapid transit specifically refers to bus lines on dedicated right-of-way.

However, once you are going to the trouble of building dedicated right-of-way, the incremental cost of making it rail isn't too bad compared to the enormous efficiency/scalability of rail over buses.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 - <AUTHOR> http://virtualization.info/en/news/2013/11/release-red-hat-enterprise-linux-6-5.html

<comment><USER2> Link to press release:

[http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press- archive/2013/11/red-h...](http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press- archive/2013/11/red-hat-launches-latest-version-of-red-hat-enterprise-linux-6)

Also, the virtualization.info post claims that RHEL 6.5 is supported on Itanium, which I believe is incorrect.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Docker support is awesome. But I'm thinking that's less of a RHEL feature and more of Docker itself?

</comment><comment><USER4> Good stuff. Can't wait for CentOS to pull this stuff in so I don't have to pay for it :)</comment>


Fisherman Interactive Music Video - <AUTHOR> http://andeinerseite.video/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's some explanation as to what this is. Seems extremely well done.

[https://www.unit9.com/project/kontra-k/](https://www.unit9.com/project/kontra-k/)</comment>


First step towards 'programmable materials' - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2014-03-programmable-materials.html <comment><USER2> This is really cool</comment>


Neural Networks and Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/index.html <comment><USER2> I find this stuff fascinating. I would love to study this formally but I only have a finance degree. What do people study to pursue this at a graduate level? Math/Comp Science?

<comment><USER3> From Hinton's course on coursera:

Recommended Background

Programming proficiency in Matlab, Octave or Python. Enough knowledge of calculus to be able to differentiate simple functions. Enough knowledge of linear algebra to understand simple equations involving vectors and matrices. Enough knowledge of probability theory to understand what a probability density is.

[https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets](https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Still long way to deep learning stuff. I have seen this book in almost same state in last posts. But the content so far are great, especially for understanding neural network and hands on experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> Again?

I love this, and bought the (unfinished) book since it was 1st announced, but it's the 3rd or 4th time this is posted here.

The duplicity algorithm clearly needs improvement. Maybe this book could help.

<comment><USER6> I'm the author. Thanks for the support! And I'm glad you're enjoying the book.

The HN search results suggest that this is the second time the book has made it to the HN front page.

However, you may have picked up a different impression because the second chapter -- a largely self-contained introduction to backpropagation -- also made it once onto the front page. Given that I'm rolling out chapters as I finish them, this seems to me like multiple posts from the same blog appearing on the front page. Certainly, the individual chapters are (I hope) far more substantive than most blog posts.

(For the record, I had no idea this would be posted.)

<comment><USER5> I've found 8 so far [1][2][3]. Some are exact duplicates, some point to / while others to /index.html, /about.html, etc.

Note: most submissions were done by real and reputable users, so I'm not implying any foul play here. Quite the opposite; I backed the original project on Indie Gogo, and am pleased with the progress so far. Would strongly recommend anyone interested in the topic to donate to Michael (BTC address below).

My gripe is with HN duplicity detector, that let people submit equal or very similar links, over and over again.

 _[1] Book: (some are exact duplicates)_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7920183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7920183)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6796703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6796703)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7555191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7555191)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7143192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7143192)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6801036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6801036)

 _[2] Indie Gogo:_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795285)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794584)

 _[3] Original Blog post:_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6796917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6796917)

<comment><USER7> I believe the dupe detector is left purposely "leaky."

I don't understand what's so wrong with dupes, especially the amount of effort you've put into this one. I don't see every headline on HN, neither do you, nor does anyone (I hope). What is your methodology for trawling through the archives to find interesting things you might have missed? Some people like having a chance for them to pop up again, which usually indicates that they're high quality. And inevitably someone will show up in the comments and link all the old discussions and then people can review those and also start a new discussion! And if you've already seen it, you can skip it! What's the issue?

Obviously, a massive flood of dupes is not desirable, so there is balance to be found, but I think they hit it pretty well. They also have to factor in the wide range of reading habits.

<comment><USER8> The policy, which has been stable for a long time and which we intend to put in the FAQ, is that reposts are ok if an item hasn't had significant attention in the last year.

In this case, both available chapters of the book have had significant attention [1,2], so I think a post of its home page has to count as a dupe. If and when Chapter 3 appears, however, that will make a nice non-dupey post.

(Good luck with the book, Michael!)

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794308)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7588158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7588158)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the clarification. Yes, it would be great to have that policy in the FAQ.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ErlyWeb vs. Ruby on Rails EC2 Performance Showdown - <AUTHOR> http://yarivsblog.com/articles/2007/12/09/erlyweb-vs-ruby-on-rails-ec2-performance-showdown/ I loved rails until I tried to implement something non-trivial in it and realized it was just absolute crap.  I suspect it is this way because it came out of the minds of designers rather than programmers...and DHH's attitude is "F You" so it will never improve...  but maybe I'm just spoiled having used WebObjects.
I ended up writing my own web app platform in about 3 months-- custom language, integrated persistence engine and http-server, no-thought-required concurrency... so I'm happy now.   I'm just kinda surprised that more people haven't done this.
If you don't have the time to do your own solution, use Erlyweb (which is hampered by being "Rails for erlang") or WebObjects (which is hampered by running on Java).
Anyway, I expect that the outperformance of Erlyweb compared to rails will be more dramatic-- in excess of 10 to 1, when running a more complex application, and even higher when running on a multicore cpu. <comment><USER2> The last commenter on the original thread is absolutely right: Rails follows different "concurrency model", i.e. it needs multiple processes to run well, especially on multi-core CPUs. He needs to create a cluster of 4-6 mongrels on 2-core CPU and the margin will shrink.

<comment><USER3> This is the next thing I'll test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ... and? Rails forks. It's slow even for a Ruby framework. You could beat both ErlyWeb and Rails handily in C, if your priorities were that far out of whack. Nobody uses Rails for its speed.

<comment><USER5> It's just about speed as much as how much abuse your server can take before it stops serving.

<comment><USER6> Servers is absolutely the LAST thing you should worry about today. They cost next to nothing when you compare their cost to the cost of development.

If you need more performance out of Rails, create another VPS and add the mongrels to a cluster. Problem solved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> EC2 instances are virtualized machines, right? What about differing CPU contention (i.e. steal times) based on the load of other virtual machines on the same box?

I don't think the results would change much, but to be safe, I think you should run this comparison on multiple random ec2 instances, to account for differing external loads.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, my comments about Rails, ERlyweb and WebObjects were deleted, and my title was re-written.

<comment><USER8> The comment is always lost if you also submit an URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any idea how they compare when using rails caching? Is there an equivalent in ErlyWeb?

I'd be curious to see the numbers, as the gap could go either way. I'm not sure if rails is worse with threads or worse with rendering or both.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author compiled ErlyWeb and YAWS with HiPE (<http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/hipe>). Are there any issues with using HiPE instead of the Erlang/OTP compiler?

<comment><USER3> I will try running the test after recompiling without HiPE and see what difference it makes.</comment></comment>


How to Pitch Your Company - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/07/how-to-pitch-your-company/ <comment><USER2> > If you're creating a new product or space (like Slack)

Weird example. Slack didn't create a new space. They created a new product that entered a supersaturated space. Pretty much any VC would balk at a company creating yet another chat application.

> You don't need to mention your GPA or that you once worked at Google.

You don't need to, but it helps.

...

Here is all you really need: build a good [great] product, get [paying] customers, get a little lucky. Other than the guy who got nixed from YCs HN Crowd selected funding program, it's pretty rare to have those three components and not get funding.

My cynical side reads this piece as an investor giving out, what appears on the surface helpful advice, but in actuality mostly benefits the investor by making their jobs easier by streamline the pitch process, so they can more quickly evaluate deals.

<comment><USER3> You're thinking like a developer. You see Slack as a realtime chat protocol and think there's already a million solutions.

You need to think about it in a business context. Pre-slack virtually no businesses used realtime group chat.

Developers sometimes used IRC, HipChat, etc. and some corporates used Lync/Skype For Business/Yammer but these were terrible solutions for the majority of businesses.

Slack didn't succeed by taking marketshare from IRC, it succeeded by bring real-time group chat to people who never had it. That was a new market with real questions as to whether there was any demand for real-time chat among the wider business world.

<comment><USER2> > You need to think about it in a business context. Pre-slack virtually no > businesses used realtime group chat.

Um, BBM?

<comment><USER4> Are you seriously comparing Black Berry Messenger to Slack? I had to Google BBM, and laughed when I saw that because people in businesses did not use Black Berry, or BBM, in any capacity even close to Slack.

I agree with most points on your original post though.

<comment><USER2> Straw man. I wasn't comparing slack's feature set to BBM, just refuting the point that before Slack, barely any businesses used group messaging.

> Pre-slack virtually no businesses used realtime group chat.

BBM, Real time group messaging, used by businesses. It was popular long before group messaging was popular.

Yes blackberry is now a joke, but there was a time when many businesses provided employees BB for communication, and it's users loved BBM.

...

That comment also missed the point: Slack didn't enter a new market (the claim from the referenced article), it entered a market that already was saturated, and by having a better product, is winning in that market.

Hipchat, Campfire, Lync, et al, are all competing for the same customers that Slack competes for.

Whether slack is better for businesses, or whether it was a direct competitor to BBM, completely misses the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > 2\. How big is the market?

"If you know how big the market is, you're too late." \-- quote I saw somewhere

Now, that's probably an exaggeration. You can probably have _some_ idea of the size of the market before you get into it. Is it a small niche, a medium-sized niche, or potentially huge? But I wonder if you can really be much more precise than that.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a lame-ass excuse for not even trying. Granted, if you're creating a market like Google or Facebook, it's hard to impossible. If you're doing the next AirBnB or Uber, it's pretty much on the table. If people can't come up with a realistic Market size and their reasoning behind it, 90% of the time they simply didn't do their basic homework (and usually the realistic market size is minuscule).

<comment><USER5> You really think the market size for AirBnB could have been reasonably estimated when it was just getting started? Even if the founders had had some clue -- and I doubt they foresaw it getting anywhere near as big as it has gotten -- could they really have produced a convincing argument to support their estimate? We know, in fact, that there were investors who passed on the opportunity (I forget who, but I'm sure I've read this); so they, at least, weren't convinced.

I do agree that the question is important to think about. And I think you should at least be able to say broadly how big you think the market might be, and explain your reasoning. And I also agree that it depends somewhat on the situation. If you're trying to create a whole new market, as you say, it's pretty much impossible; if you're trying to displace an existing player in a mature market, you should be able to narrow it down pretty well.

<comment><USER7> Yes. Airbnb's original 2011 pitch deck is online. They literally have a market size slide and supporting slides to back it up:

[https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/PitchDeckCoach/airbnb- firs...](https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/PitchDeckCoach/airbnb-first-pitch- deck-editable)

<comment><USER5> They launched in mid-2008 [0]. By 2011 they had been running a growing business for a couple of years; their Series A was in late 2010, apparently preceding this pitch deck (!).

I was imagining the market size question being posed at the seed stage. (And I suspect that whoever wrote the line I quoted above was thinking along the same lines.) If we could read AirBnB's YC application, would it have a similar estimate? I rather doubt it.

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

<comment><USER7> I mis-labeled the pitch deck as being from 2011. It's actually from 2008. Described in this BI story as being a copy kept by an MBA student from that period when investors were snubbing them. [http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnbs-first-pitch- deck-2015...](http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnbs-first-pitch-deck-2015-3)

<comment><USER5> Oh, okay. Well, point taken, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The first one, "What do you do?", should potentially be renamed "What do you do for your customers?". It took me a while to realize the importance of the distinction when pitching.

Using the Google example from the article, the bad one answers "What does Google do?" and the good one answers "What does Google do for its customers?".

<comment><USER9> I would even refine this down more to "What do you do for your profitable customers?". Using google the answer would be "We bring targeted and motivated leads to your website".

<comment><USER10> At Google's early stage, would that have brought investment? At the time they would not have had distribution/market penetration, which is what the search engine does for them.

<comment><USER9> When Google started they didn't really have a plan for how they were going to make money or get customers (as apposed to users)[1]. This is fine, but just be aware of this when you pitch investors. If you don't have a plan for how you are going to make money be explicit about it.

1\. Personally I doubt that Google was that clueless early on as how to make money. A better search engine is inherently valuable because of the ability to direct traffic flow to favoured sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somewhat analogous I believe to previous post I have seen from a YCombinator investor is basically: "Why You, Why This and Why Now?".

I'm paraphrasing. I can't find the original as there are lots of copy cats (including Seth Godin [1]... intentional or not). Even ATDC [2] the very startup booster organization that did not accept us (I laugh at this because our startup is still around and successful unlike all the others they did accept).

Which brings me to a great segue... you don't need a pitch if your company makes money.

[1]: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/why-you- why-...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/why-you-why-now.html)

[2]: [http://atdc.org/atdc-news/why-this-why-now-why- you/](http://atdc.org/atdc-news/why-this-why-now-why-you/)

<comment><USER12> Any chance the original post you're talking about was [http://codingvc.com/why-this-why-now-why-you/](http://codingvc.com/why-this- why-now-why-you/) or [http://blog.asmartbear.com/five- whys.html](http://blog.asmartbear.com/five-whys.html)?

<comment><USER11> Aha I think I have found one of the originals: [http://altos.vc/2013/05/why- big-why-now-why-you/](http://altos.vc/2013/05/why-big-why-now-why-you/)

IMO the above is very good.

<comment><USER12> Great article. Thanks for sharing it after you found it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" 4\. What's your unique insight?"_

I particularly liked this section. It felt like a new way to ask "what is your competitive advantage?" while generating a bit more insight into how the founders perceive the problem their solving.

</comment><comment><USER14> > _What is the ratio between what you've done and how long you've been working > on it?

>I want to feel impressed with how much you've done in the period of time you've had to do it. This can apply to a company that's one week old or ten years old._

You can't sustain the same ratio of work-to-time over the long-term. Barring superhuman attributes, that ratio will decrease significantly.

<comment><USER15> I guess it helps weed the 6 year old product that is just a landing page?

<comment><USER14> Of course. I'm talking more about cases where exceptional products are born out of early failure. There's usually a transition phase in between failure and success that doesn't involve tangible work. Sometimes it takes months just to figure out where to go next.

It's much easier to refine an idea when you've been immersed in a particular problem space. Longer time frames also allow for taking a step back to think and reflect—both of which are hard to do when your head is down and you're constantly working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is good advice not just for how to pitch a startup but also for how to pitch anything - say, a project within a company, or even yourself for a job. Obviously the market size would be more about quantifying the potential return on whatever it is you're pitching. And the one about the founding team might be more about focusing on just the most relevant factors for why the people involved are well-suited for the task. But overall these are great recomendations for making compelling pitches for any business decision.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am surprised that anyone would be against hearing genius ideas unless they mean ideas that are not really genius ideas. True genius ideas are so rare that they inherently interesting to hear about even if you don't want to invest in the startup.

</comment><comment><USER17> This advice applies to a lot more than just startups. Any time you're asking someone for (real) money -- grants, etc -- the evaluation will be like this:

1) What are you proposing to do? (proposal)

2) Will it make any difference? (market/impact)

3) Can you get it done? (personnel/environment)

That's it. If you can't knock every one of these out of the park in a few short sentences, you are unlikely to be funded by either the private or public sector.

And before anyone remarks on how different the two are, note that the SBIR/STTR program is mandated by Congress to pay out every penny of their granting budget each year to try and turn publicly-funded research into privately successful companies.

</comment><comment><USER18> Kind of piggy backing on the business model, you may not be thinking about how to monetize your business today, but investors want to see you have a theory around it. If not, you won't get their attention. We're in Techstars right now and it's something we're hearing constantly. We know we don't want to worry about monetizing the platform for the next 18-24 months, but we have to show a path to get there. Whether it's for the individual developer or small dev shops, we had to come up with some sort of answer that shows we're thinking about it today. Super helpful and it should be included in this blog post. Otherwise, spot on post!

</comment><comment><USER19> > I want to feel impressed with how much you've done in the period of time > you've had to do it.

If your startup doesn't pass this test, is there any good advice on how to fix it (either for this startup or future startups)?

<comment><USER2> What is causing your productivity to be so low?

Fix whatever that is, get productivity back up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >I also tend to value product development and customers first and other things such as fundraising or biz dev deals a distant second.

Can you walk me through the difference between customers first and biz dev deals?

<comment><USER21> Generally, customers are a direct source of revenue.

BD deals is creating channels that might result in customers/revenue. Both are important, but revenue is more important than the potential to get revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very similar to the general pitch process we emphasize for startups coming out of UWaterloo, just this article was a little too vague on the details. I summarized our pitch formula (with some overlap but more concrete tips) here: [https://medium.com/@dannyyaroslavski/perfecting- the-3-minute...](https://medium.com/@dannyyaroslavski/perfecting-the-3-minute- pitch-410285d971ce)

</comment><comment><USER23> All you need to do is bring us a guaranteed globally successful viral mega product that no one has ever thought of before, be perfect is all ways with no risk to us and we will graciously back you with terms that are crushing and ensure you as the entrepreneur get next to nothing in the event of a liquidity event.

<comment><USER24> What I found most valuable: what he tells entrepreneurs they _don 't_ need to spend a lot of time on, in building the company and in presenting it. I've seen so many decks and pitches devoted to the team's credentials and past work experience, and about deals they've done or are doing.

So Michael is saying something useful: we're willing to invest in a team with no credentials, no deals, no business development. Other things are more important. Things that are democratically available to us: building product, iterating with small customers, clarity of communication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What I like about the list is how it forces focus on how value is being created and added. Often when you have selected an idea you start looking for reasons why it will work, rather than looking for reasons to shut it down by testing that it doesn't work and instead it just keeps growing.

</comment><comment><USER26> It seems like this article is written for a small group of people that recently pitched him!

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone else have trouble figuring out how to determine market size? Do I have to spend thousands of dollars for independent research online or is there another way that I'm just too naive as a developer to be aware of?

</comment><comment><USER28> > "7\. What do you want?"

What would be a good way to ask something specific, without coming off as too arrogant or needy?

<comment><USER29> General outline: To achieve _X_ , we are looking for _Y_ and thought you might be in a position to help us out with that.

 _X_ = A goal you are working on achieving. It should follow naturally from the description of your business.

Example: We are looking to demo our product to attendees at SXSW next year, like Twitter did originally.

 _Y_ = What you are asking for (investment, introduction, etc.). Should be obviously beneficial towards achieving _X_.

Example: Who should we be talking to at SXSW to make that happen? We've already spoken to…

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> i like how the article is simple and to the point. thanks.</comment>


The Early History of Smalltalk (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html

<comment><USER2>
        millions of personal machines and users, mostly outside of direct institutional
        control. Where would the applications and training come from? Why should we
        expect an applications programmer to anticipate the specific needs of a
        particular one of the millions of potential users? An extensional system
        seemed to be called for in which the end-users would do most of the
        tailoring (and even some of the direct constructions) of their tools.

There are millions of people using personal computers. But the fraction of them who do any programming is miniscule. The applications and training come from a small number of companies becoming very rich by doing the programming for those millions of computers.

And yet I continue to read of people suggesting that the tailoring problem can be solved by teaching users how to program. What has happened instead is application developers have learned that it is much easier to program the users to suit the needs of the computer than it is to program the computer to suit the needs of the user.

<comment><USER3> > What has happened instead is application developers have learned that it is > much easier to program the users to suit the needs of the computer than it > is to program the computer to suit the needs of the user.

Apologies for going off on a tangent, but I feel this 'fact' (which strikes me as plausible) is one of the reasons that interfaces such as Siri, Cortana and Google Now are not used to their full potential by many people. In fact, most people with smartphones that I know consider the voice interface just a toy; a party trick.

A few months ago I decided to try and use Siri more regularly. At first it was primarily setting timers for cooking or a pomodoro-ish approach to my day. Then I started creating reminders (which on my phone are automatically sent to my OmniFocus / GTD inbox). Then I started creating one-off reminders for specific times ("siri, remember to bring my drawing notebook at 9:45" for a meeting at 10:00). Then I started using the geolocation feature. On top of all that I use siri for the simple requests like searches, the current time, whether it's going to rain, etc.

Having done this for a while, it baffles me to watch people around me set their alarms manually, install special egg timer apps, create manual tasks all the time, and so on, where a simple siri command would suffice.

While I do understand that many people might feel self-conscious using voice- commands in public, nobody I know uses them in private either, where they're plenty useful.

The only explanation I can think of is that the user is not properly programmed to use Siri, and Siri is not 'complete' enough (yet) to be used without some basic instructions.

(in a broader sense I notice this with all computer functions as well. Many people I know have no clue of what simple things they can do to vastly speed up their computer use. And that's largely because nobody taught them, and they're just not the type of person that constantly tries to find the optimal workflow.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      New ideas go through stages of acceptance, both from
      within and without. From within, the sequence moves from
      "barely seeing" a pattern several times, then noting it but
      not perceiving its "cosmic" significance, then using it
      operationally in several areas, then comes a "grand
      rotation" in which the pattern becomes the center of a
      new way of thinking, and finally, it turns into the same
      kind of inflexible religion that it originally broke away
      from. From without, as Schopenhauer noted, the new idea
      is first denounced as the work of the insane, in a few
      years it is considered obvious and mundane, and finally
      the original denouncers will claim to have invented it.

So true, sadly. I deeply regret that today, many people interviewing for programming jobs get grilled over their knowledge of this particular OO design pattern or that, while neither the interviewer nor the applicant may realize that some of these "patterns" are just dogmas invented to deal with particular language limitations of (older versions of) Java, and entirely different patterns (or even paradigms) are available if only one takes the time to look past the boundaries of one's preferred (or prescribed from above) programming language.

IMO, prospective programmers should be invited to show true creativity and insight, not to just queue up to create the (N+1)-th CORBA framework.

Structured programming, modules, OOP, FP, ever more elaborate type systems, whatever next new thing is going to be seen as the One True Way, I still believe that Socrates will have the last laugh (...or grin)...

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

</comment><comment><USER5> What's this address: email@example.com#_ ?

<comment><USER6> It's from the "old" days when there were many different email networks. The ".internet#" parts tells how to route to different gateways/networks.

See [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/inter-network- guide/](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/inter-network-guide/)</comment></comment>


Facebook have 'clocked on' to Crypter - <AUTHOR> https://crypter.co.uk/ <comment><USER2> Not surprising. Shitty, but not surprising. They didn't allow OTR for XMPP either.</comment>


Univalent Foundations: New Foundations of Mathematics [video] - <AUTHOR> https://video.ias.edu/node/6365

<comment><USER2> Here's a bit of perspective. By "foundations" for mathematics, we mean a system of _inference rules_ and _axioms_ for mathematics. A very limited but correct view of mathematics is that it is a game, where the inference rules are the available "moves", and the axioms are the "starting position". Given these two things, we can work out all the theorems we can possibly prove (this is because of Gödel's completeness theorem—not his incompleteness theorem, that's a different thing).

Now, at this point a lot of programming-oriented people get confused, because they think, "how can you ever change the foundations? How can you do any math at all until you've completely formally defined the foundations of the subject?" This is a philosophical question, but in truth foundations of math aren't as hugely important as you might think. Here's an analogy: on both Windows and Linux you can write an email client. Now, the process will not be identical: some things that are easy on Windows are harder on Linux, and vice versa. But at the end of the day, the result on either platform will recognizable be an email client, and your major challenges will probably be email challenges, not platform challenges. Most mathematicians do not work at the foundations—they work at foundations for their specific field (a ring theorist cares about the properties of rings, not often the properties of sets, for example). You can analogize this to using a framework, like GTK for example.

On the other hand, some subjects are poorly served by certain foundations, and some of the newer subjects in mathematics are running into that problem. The most pressing examples are category theory and homotopy theory, both of which are based on a study of _operations_ , not _objects_ , in a technical way that is poorly served by the current consensus foundation for mathematics. This would be like really wanting to write mobile apps—Windows would not be a good platform for it, and Android would be. As a PL theorist and kind-of- mathematician, I think the work going on in the Univalent Foundations project to be really interesting and extremely beautiful. I think it will have a profound impact on our understanding of mathematical foundations and higher- order logic, and I'm excited to see what comes of this effort. But I don't think it will really impact mathematics all that much—the impact of categorical thinking is the really important change, and that is helped, but not much, by new foundations.

<comment><USER3> This is a great and insightful comment. May I just clarify, you say you are a "PL theorist"—is that programming language theorist? What kind of work does that entail?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a very interesting project and it has actually set me on an interesting path.

In scientific computation one blends mathematics and computation. The math is highly advanced, and it will tell you important things about your resulting code such as what kind of stability properties you should expect, and how "robust" the code is (deliberately ambiguous term, but in most cases it means: does your code work equally well no matter what parameters you throw at it?).

In the realm of physics simulations, these math questions turn out to be amazingly delicate and failing to answer them before running your code on a very large problem very often leads to unexpected (and wrong) results, if the code actually ever successfully finishes executing.

There is therefore a tremendous amount of literature where these questions are answered, all containing a meticulous amount of careful detail as well as deep insights coming from all the relevant branches: linear algebra, physics, functional analysis.

The problem however is that as we gain more understanding and knowledge the math hasn't gotten any easier. Sometimes the arguments are so sophisticated that it really leads me to doubt whether the result can be trusted at all.

This leads into something which I know very little:

A better understanding of foundations really is called for here, and a foundation which lends itself better to computation than what is currently available. Computers need to start being able to verify proofs better. Proof assistants exist today, but their use is currently limited to computer scientists because they rely on deep results in that field relating type theory to mathematics - it represents a tremendous barrier to practicing mathematicians.

I hope in the future that "reproducibility" in my field means not only submitting your code so that other people can reproduce your performance claims, but submitting proof documents to be independently verified on someone else's computer. Whenever I read the small bits about univalent foundations it sounds like they are adding magic sauce to make this possible, and so I follow it closely (but don't understand it all yet).

The interesting path I spoke of earlier: I'm now learning type theory and functional programming just so that I can make sense of this branch of computer science that I originally didn't know existed.

<comment><USER5> You might be interested in Edward Kmett's automatic differentiation[0] package, ad[1]. It is one of my favorite non-trivial blendings of computer science techniques and more traditional mathematics. In specific, it uses Haskell's type system to prevent subtle numerical errors which other automatic differentiation libraries require the user to prevent by being very careful. The resulting code is much more trustworthy.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_differentiation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_differentiation) [1] [https://github.com/ekmett/ad/](https://github.com/ekmett/ad/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vladimir Voevodsky received Fields medal in 2002, so please note that it's not usual amateurish try to create new mathematics while knowing nothing about the old one.

</comment><comment><USER7> Please remember to append "[video]" to the title when it's a video.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just when I found myself starting to lean in he started skipping slides. Most frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have another link? For some reason its dead.</comment>


Biz Stone's Awkward Meeting with Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/07/18/twitters-biz-stone-on-an-awkward-meeting-with-mark-zuckerberg/ <comment><USER2> _Stone and Williams looked at Zuckerberg and enquired as to why he wasn't pushing to the front of the queue, only to be met with a "that's not how we do it here" rebuttal. The duo from Twitter promptly left, Stone telling Sagal "we don't like to be queued up"._

This story is told from Stone and Williams' perspective, but Zuck comes out sounding a lot better. Who wants to work in a place where the founders will push you out of the way to get to the food first?

Let's hope this is media distortion, not their real attitude.

<comment> brown9-2 From the transcript of the NPR radio show this is taken from:

 _Mr. STONE: That wasn't even the worst moment. The worst moment was he was like hey, do you guys want to go have lunch at our cafeteria. So we had to wait on this huge line for lunch. Evan was like aren't you the boss? Can't you like kind of cut the line a little bit here?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. STONE: And he's like that's not how we do things here.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. STONE: And that's when I said, oh my gosh, Evan, we have that thing.

SAGAL: Really?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. STONE: You bailed?

Ms. POUNDSTONE: All because you waited in a line?

(Soundbite of laughter)

(Soundbite of applause)

Mr. STONE: We don't like to be queued up.

(Soundbite of laughter)_

Really curious from anyone who has the time to listen to the whole audio if it comes of as a joke or not.

[http://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/138160765/twitter-co- founder-b...](http://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/138160765/twitter-co-founder-biz- stone-plays-not-my-job)

<comment><USER3> Realize that the blog mis-characterizes this as an "interview". It was an appearance on the NPR comedy show "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me". While Peter Sagal and crew are a bright group of people, they are producing a humorous program. This Q and A moment aside, Stone was on there to "answer three questions" unrelated to what he does or is. (They're changing the format slightly, but the segment has traditionally been titled "Not My Job".)

Still, it was an interesting moment of apparently candid observation from Stone, albeit with emphasis of humor as an obvious aspect. Zuckerberg does come off as difficult to relate to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tech founder a bit awkward shocker.

The most interesting thing in the whole piece for me is that (a) Zuckerberg took them to the canteen and (b) that he was happy to queue (while they weren't).

Now you can argue about whether it was appropriate to take them to the canteen but I'd argue that if you're going to do it then having the decency to queue is a good thing and the "we don't like to be queued up" is the shitty view.

Never thought I'd find myself on Mark Zuckerberg's side in this sort of thing but there you go.

<comment><USER5> I think I agree that they should wait in the queue just like everyone else. That said I hate long queues and I would think that those 3 guys could probably go out and grab some lunch outside of Facebook if they knew there was a long line everyday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It wasn't really a serious NPR Interview. Biz Stone was a contestant on "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," NPR's humorous news quiz program. I'd take it as a funny anecdote and not the literal, objective truth.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone listening to the actual recording should be able to discern that he was joking. He also says at one point in the interview "I would like to show you my crotch right now". This isn't TMZ. Chill out and stop looking for drama where there is none.

</comment><comment><USER8> The bit about closing the door is a stroke of genius. I suspect Zuckerberg responded exactly as vaguely as he meant to, evoking the non-committal response from Williams and learning much about him in the process.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure about "stroke of genius". I gave the same noncommital "yes" answer when asked if I wanted sausages for my dinner, aged three! This sort of humour is very common in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Talking in an interview with NPR's Peter Sagal"

Something tells me @petersagal would get a kick out of that characterization of a WWDTM appearance.</comment>


Selecting a Cloud Provider: A guide from Etsy - <AUTHOR> https://codeascraft.com/2018/01/04/selecting-a-cloud-provider/ <comment><USER2> Curious to know if there are other models like RACI adopted or tested at other places.</comment>


How Prince Got the Media to Use His Custom Symbol Ƭ̵̬̊ - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3059340/asides/how-prince-got-the-media-to-use-his-custom-symbol <comment><USER2> Prince doesn't always get his due as an entrepreneur as well as a musician. This is a _perfect_ example of how skilled and courageous he was.

<comment><USER3> Nice sentiment but reading the story I was more concerned about his mental health.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36107590](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36107590) \- Why did Prince change his name to a symbol?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's genius, not crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone more clued in to Unicode than I am explain what is going on?

Is that thing a combination of UTF-8 code points? Selecting it and searching Wikipedia brings up Prince's page, so something interesting is going on here.

If I dump the hex for the symbol I get:

       c6 ac cc b5 cc ac cc 8a

<comment><USER6> Using Python 3:

        >>> import unicodedata
        >>> s='Ƭ̵̬̊ '
        >>> list(map(unicodedata.name, s))
        ['LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH HOOK', 'COMBINING SHORT STROKE OVERLAY', 'COMBINING CARON BELOW', 'COMBINING RING ABOVE']

The first character Ƭ ('T with hook') is used in some African orthographies. The remaining letters are combining characters; they modify the letter preceding it. The 'short stroke overlay' is intended as a plain-text equivalent to the html s tag. The 'combining caron below' (more properly, a hacek) is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (a notation for transcribing the sounds of languages) to represent the voicing of an otherwise voiceless consonant (as in, d vs t or b vs p). The 'combining ring above' is used in European orthographies, such as Danish (e.g. å).

None of these symbols were intended to be used together, but the design of Unicode allows for such creative (ab)uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> RIP</comment>


Single Speaker Speech Recognition with Hidden Markov Models - <AUTHOR> http://kastnerkyle.github.io/blog/2014/05/22/single-speaker-speech-recognition/ <comment><USER2> Ask HN: Anybody got a piece of software to split an MP3 by speaker? (or output list of times where each speaker is speaking)

I've got an audiobook with a particularly obnoxious commentator interjecting dumb things every couple of minutes and I'd like to slice those out.

I'd do it manually if it were only a couple of edits, but there are easily 150+ comments spread through 6 hrs of material. Should be easy for a speech recognizer, just two voices with different genders.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be able to do this with independent component analysis (ICA). There is a block in sklearn, but you would have to write some Python.

Alternatively, you might look to see if the speakers are in separate channels (if recording is stereo). Then it would be really simple - just take one channel out and resave as mono!

If you have a sample I'd be curious to take a look - sounds like an interesting problem.

<comment><USER3> ICA helps you separate a superposition of two or more signals. Assuming the speakers are not speaking at the same time, he might rather want to use speaker identification methods to find what parts to mute (e.g. train a binary classifier that operates a spectrogram of the signal).

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I was thinking of two people speaking at the same time, but that would probably be hard to listen to :). Speaker dependent muting is a much more reasonable approach

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been studying HMMs lately. I think getting an initial estimate of HMM emission and transition parameters using Segmental K-means training (or Viterbi training) before applying Baum-Welch re-estimation should result in the latter converging better. That's what the HInit tool in HTK does. AFAIK, it's done in the following way:

\- Divide all examples (observation sequences) uniformly into as many segments as the number of states.

\- Cluster the observations corresponding to each state, and estimate the GMM using the cluster set so that each cluster corresponds to one multivariate Gaussian.

\- Do this repeatedly until convergence: get the Viterbi alignment of all examples, use it to get new segments, and estimate the parameters again using the previous step.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. Also, I have two questions:

\- What kind of accuracy increase should be expected if using both Viterbi training and Baum-Welch re-estimation, instead of just the latter?

\- What kind of accuracy should be expected if only using Viterbi training?

<comment><USER5> In my experience Viterbi training alone is often enough to get reasonable accuracy, at least in speech recognition. Instead of doing the more costly Baum-Welch training you can spend your time better elsewhere, e.g. use deep neural networks instead of GMMs or collect more data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting - I've never tried Viterbi training. Maybe it is worth implementing after all. I plan to do a hybrid DNN-HMM (or whatever it is called now) with pylearn2 in a followup post.</comment></comment></comment>