An Orangutan Has Some Human Rights, Argentine Court Rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/orangutan-personhood/ <comment><USER2> I find very interesting the court argument: "chimpanzees can't fulfill the social obligations expected of anyone with rights".

Philosophically, the same could be applied to a paraplegic, or in most cases to somebody with Down syndrome, so I wonder if there was more in the ruling; I find this argument very poor.

<comment><USER3> I find any argument involving rights to be poor.

Our goals in a social context are always to make the best possible decisions with what we know, and to enable each other to do the same. We have goals, information, communication, and laws. Rights are inarticulate and overly- understand things -- almost to the point of purposelessness.

People should not be making arguments based on rights, but upon what is known about ourselves and our reality. We should use what can be rationally supported and what can be reasonably predicted based upon shared experiences and cultural knowledge. Rights are just a vague and small slice of this, easily made muddy by the fact that people can know they have rights without even knowing why they should have them, where they apply, or when to give them up.

<comment><USER4> Rights try to predefine 'best possible' for a culture.

This is a good thing because it provides a written moral standard and a legal basis for further argument - rather like a constitution.

Relying on 'rational argument' doesn't work as well because most 'rational argument' in politics, law, and economics is persuasion through sophistry, custom, tribalism, rhetoric, appeal to self-interest, and/or the application or threat of force.

None of these have much to do with rationality in the scientific sense of being able to build useful models of reality from data.

tl dr; Defining rights makes spurious political plays more difficult.

<comment><USER5> You haven't done much by defining rights, because who defines those rights?

ISIS will say everyone has the right to have a slave. The UN says everyone has the right to paid vacations (yes, it really does say that).

Who decides which rights should be accepted?

There is no one who can do so. Rights are arbitrary and reflect the culture of those who defined them.

You either decide to accept them or you don't. i.e. it's pretty much identical to "rational argument".

<comment><USER6> They may be ultimately arbitrary, but until you come up with a final conclusive objective ethics, proven metaphysically beyond questioning, the rest of us have to make actual decisions today. The UN, as a collective body, defines various normative concepts, e.g., by defining "human rights." If you have issues with them, you join the proverbial mailing list and state your case.

<comment><USER5> My point is that there is no difference between the "rational argument" TheOtherHobbes doesn't like and rights.

He has tried to define a difference between them that doesn't actually exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Philosophy, rest quiet for a moment -- [http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/dec/22/monkey- sa...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/dec/22/monkey-saves-dying- friend-train-station-india-video)

</comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is interested in the sate of legal thinking around "animal rights", I recommend this excellent book by Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum, which offers a nice overview of the field: [http://smile.amazon.com/Animal-Rights- Current-Debates-Direct...](http://smile.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current- Debates-Directions/dp/0195305108)

It includes leading proponents and opponents of legal protections for non- human animals.

</comment><comment><USER9> After school, I first attempted to study philosophy, before I got into computers and networks and such.

I got disillusioned _very_ quickly, but one _very_ interesting course I took was on the definition of personhood, and I had to give short talk on the "grey areas" of personhood. Biology alone is not going to cut it, and once we begin to extend personhood status to beings other than homo sapiens, it is going to get very fuzzy.

<comment><USER10> I once heard this from my philosophy professor. Philosophy is trying to answer questions you can't answer with current knowledge, or better put : science is what you get when you answer questions with the right answer, philosophy is all other answers.

Given that no important scientific advance has ever originated from philosophy ... (ie. the ones by accomplished mathematicians that were -usually posthumously- declared philosophers don't count)

It's like the "we have to redesign the methodology, find the lessons for the company" discussion at the end of every software project. It takes time and effort, makes management and project managers and even customers very happy, it involves programmers listening to the "good" advice of everybody who can't program and is about as productive as suicide, without the satisfaction at the end.

<comment><USER11> Science is when you try to answer questions about evidence, with evidence.

Philosophy is when you try to answer questions about definitions/language, with definitions/language.

That doesn't make philosophy useless. It just makes philosophy one part of the system -- a lot of times philosophy generates questions and ideas which are later addressed in a scientific way. It's a useful tool; be careful not to either overvalue or undervalue it. (Likewise, AFAIK no important scientific advance has ever originated from a grammar instructor, but coherent language is an important tool for allowing science to be performed and communicated.)

<comment><USER10> > That doesn't make philosophy useless. It just makes philosophy one part of > the system -- a lot of times philosophy generates questions and ideas which > are later addressed in a scientific way.

There is some truth to this. It is what I mentioned before : "Given that no important scientific advance has ever originated from philosophy ... (ie. the ones by accomplished mathematicians that were -usually posthumously- declared philosophers don't count)", specifically by the don't count part.

So two points :

1) this definition actually excludes most parts of philosophy [1]

2) This part of philosophy can only be exercised productively by people who also have extensive credentials in at least one other field (otherwise the "later addressed" part doesn't work). Which brings the question, is this philosophy ? Or is this logic ? (taking one example field that's well represented in philosophy's claims).

And to be honest, this is the same argument Religious studies makes. With one huge difference. Most important researchers were actually learned in Religion (vast majority were very learned in Christian religion, and they did credit or at least reference their religious knowledge with part of important discoveries, with Newton and Einstein as 2 very well known examples. Even though nearly universally learned in Christianity, I should probably mention some of them were Jews (including Einstein, of course). But there's examples of people of other religions further back. Weird part is that there seem to be very large differences between religions on this point. From the large majority of islamic scientists, for instance, it is well known that they weren't muslims, but rather non-muslim slaves at some court [2]. For Hinduism the reverse seems to be true. Like Christians, many Indian scientists credit their faith with pushing them to research nature (and like with Christians, the general population did not always agree with that assessment and killed a number of them for it))

I have actually seen this at university. There were several (about to retire, or even emeriti) professors that were monks. Given how they lived, I can understand how that would help with scientific research. One should take a look at, say the Jesuit atlasses of the sky, and you'll be impressed with the quality and quantity of their work. They are not just credited with lots of discoveries, but also with absolutely incredible amounts of grunt work, and with keeping knowledge of science spread throughout western culture.

For philosophers you can say the exact opposite. There are many "pure" philosophers. None, to my knowledge, have been credited with large amounts of grunt work.

And sadly, like Christianity before it, philosophy can be credited with inhibiting science as well. The big current example is research into human races, but there are other examples. From the closely related "bon sauvage" incidents, the "green" morality (believe it or not, nature is what might be termed chaotic neutral, it is decidedly NOT "lawful good", but we're repressing knowledge about this). The same thing is true for research about humans themselves, where lots of things are repressed (e.g. the reason that Freud is so fixated on sexual experiences during early age is understood to be that a significant portion of his patients were victims of paedophilia, but again I'm told you can't say this directly in papers). Humans must be good, especially scientists themselves (e.g. Galileo Galilei was deservedly a famous scientist ... who then decided to become a politician and a horrible, horrible human being. Which of those 2 things got him in trouble with the church (and with the state) ? Let's be honest here : the second (otherwise the timing becomes very hard to explain). General lesson to be drawn here : no matter how you are, if you start sending letters to every politician and priest how "their kind" will all get tortured and hanged as soon as he can make it happen, you'll be in serious trouble if it appears you are getting a following).

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

[2] For instance Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwārizmī al-Majousi al-Katarbali, who was instrumental in helping Greek and Roman algebra survive the Dark Ages was very likely a Zoroaster

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> \- I personally find this idea of "the closer your `intelligence` is to man the more rights you get" hard to understand. If a chimp has "some human rights" then why not a dog, or a cow can get "some" too.

\- Also, I find this whole thing distracting, if you have any energy to put into "rights", there are billions of humans in need of help for very basic things (including rights). Am I overlooking something?

<comment><USER13> Dogs do have more rights than other animals. If you take a dog to the zoo and feed it to a lion, you're going to have a problem. If you take a mouse to the zoo, and feed it to a snake, no problem.

Cows have no rights because they're tasty and boring.

<comment><USER14> I don't understand this either. What objectively makes an animal any less animal. I mean a mouse feels the pain of being eaten and so does a dog.

<comment><USER13> Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant.

What matters is the amount of empathy we feel with the creature. With dogs, we often think of them as our friends and companions. With mice, we often think of them as vermin and a problem.

Though, I'm sure if you took George's mouse Milo and fed it to a snake George would be extremely upset.

<comment><USER15> > Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain > felt ends up being irrelevant.

That's pretty far outside the mainstream -- lots of jurisdictions have laws about the humane slaughter of animals.

For obvious reasons, people tend not to restrict their moral consideration of pain to those beings that will never die.

<comment><USER13> > That's pretty far outside the mainstream -- lots of jurisdictions have laws > about the humane slaughter of animals.

The vast majority of people don't care at all. But the people who do care care a _lot_ , and make a lot of racket.

> For obvious reasons, people tend not to restrict their moral consideration > of pain to those beings that will never die.

I honestly have no idea what you could possibly be talking about. Can you rephrase? Specifically, since the set of "those beings that will never die" has size zero, the sentence seems like a truism.

<comment><USER15> >> Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant.

If I understand this correctly, you were saying that the animals' deaths essentially render their suffering irrelevant. It seems to logically follow that if _everything_ is dead "at the end of the process" then there's no suffering that we need ever care about.

I don't honestly think you hold that position, but it's at least consistent with your earlier post, so it'd be nice to know where your logic breaks from mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Next up, you cannot have pets.

edit, namely I have found the long term of many similar groups who support animal "rights" do not want people to keep pets. Having family members who breed and show dogs it is not uncommon to find these groups trying to get laws passed limiting pet ownership or worse.

Animals have rights, not human rights.

<comment><USER17> I dont have a problem with this. I keep hearing about how people can't train dogs, how dogs "misbehave," etc.

Oh course they have issues, pets aren't designed to live domestic suburban human lives. I just don't believe humanity automatically and morally should have dominion of all animals. I think giving up on non-working pet ownership is a step in the right direction. And when sci-fi style robotics gets here, give up on working animals altogether.

I say this as someone who loves and has owned several dogs. They're just not cut out for our lives. I think there was a study that showed most pets have severe mental illness. Not to mention, the ones that can't play the human domestic game and heaven forbid show their natural aggression or dominance traits, well they get killed. How the hell is this moral? Why is the loss of pet ownership this horrific thing? It seems like thats the way a compassionate society should be leaning towards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I applaud this decision. At least some people are recognising the direction of the arrow of history here.

My thoughts on this last time this concept emerged on HN: [http://swombat.com/2012/11/6/dolphin- history](http://swombat.com/2012/11/6/dolphin-history)

<comment><USER5> I hope you realize that by giving rights in abundance you have diminished the very meaning of the concept.

You have this assumption that in the future everything will have rights. All that will happen if that occurs is that the concept of "rights" will be laughed at and ignored.

The more rare something is, the more powerful and special, and meaningful.

<comment><USER19> What absolute nonsense.

Diminishing the meaning of 'rights' is great: if everyone and everything had appropriate rights, there would be no further need for the concept to be discussed. That's a good thing.

<comment><USER15> Giving puppies a legal right to have silly hats and birthday parties obviously diminishes the real rights that we all care about. Rights-proliferation leads to governments taking a pick-and-choose approach to enforcement, and many people would argue that having selectively enforced rights is tantamount to not having any rights at all.

See also: [http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case- against...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case-against- human-rights)

<comment><USER19> OK, I agree that you don't really have "rights" if they are unenforced.

Giving the rights to puppies as you mention doesn't chanage that either way; this is a red herring.

And I suspect it was not the parent commenter's point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Link- To get this straight: we pulled animals from their 'righteous' sanctuaries, where they were free, put them in captivity, and now we're asking them to be human to set them free, again?

<comment><USER20> You phrased it as if recognizing an injustice is weird

<comment> Link- That was not the intention at all. In fact, the comment is quite sarcastic and if I'm to rephrase it, it will be: We're asking animals to be humans to grant them their freedom which is quite absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Waiting for the day a robot has the same trial.

<comment><USER22> [http://markpneyer.me/2014/03/05/the-rule-of- threes/](http://markpneyer.me/2014/03/05/the-rule-of-threes/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Compared to corporations, animals, and especially our great ape cousins should have as much or more rights.

</comment><comment><USER24> Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

</comment><comment><USER25> Human rights are an interesting phenomenon.

Us humans don't even have basic human rights, as evidenced by the recent extensive publications regarding the torture practices of the US (rectal feeding?). Such a contrast to this (otherwise completely unrelated) article.

<comment><USER26> There is a big difference between having your rights violated and not having rights at all. The fact that we know the torture practices are wrong is because they violate our rights. We treat apes badly because they have no rights to which to compare the treatment.

<comment><USER7> "we have a right to not be tortured" is synonymous for "torture practices are wrong", rights do not exist in any other sense (ask yourself, where are they located?) unless you are a 18th century religious philosopher.</comment></comment></comment>


Solar City's Debt Burdens Tesla - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-06/hidden-by-model-3-mess-tesla-s-other-problem-is-about-to-emerge <comment><USER2> Non-linkbait title: Solar City's Debt Burdens Tesla

<comment><USER3> Changed. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is another article on how Tesla is going to die. I wish there was some please we can accumulate all these articles grouped according to author and publisher.

</comment><comment><USER5> The 'problem' cited is also Tesla's major advantage and play into a 10 trillion dollar energy market growing into the future. All perspective, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER6> This clickbait headline doesn't belong here

<comment><AUTHOR> Just for my own understanding. .. if an article is interesting, but title is click bait, is it really considered better to make up my own title vs. use the author's title? I could see arguments both ways.

<comment><USER6> Sidestepping your title authenticity question a bit: the risk of going with the clickbait headline is that you simply won't get any substantive comments because a critical mass will skip the posting -- that may have happened here (4h in and nothing yet). Meanwhile there is a third option: find another outlet that covered the topic is a less clickbaity fashion.</comment></comment></comment>


Examining a vintage RAM chip, I find a counterfeit with a different die inside - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2017/08/inside-fake-ram-chip-i-found-something.html <comment><USER2> Hah... Through the first few sentences I kept wondering which wondrous architecture are we talking about, that "64-bit" memory chip is considered "vintage"...?

It took me embarrassingly long to realize that it's not 64-bit bus, it's a 64-bit _chip_... holding an amazing 4x16bits=64bits of data total.

Just goes to show it's hard to be sure where your unspoken assumptions may lie.... :-)

<comment><USER3> What one thought also depends quite heavily upon whether one was involved in the field in some way during the 74xx series heyday.

For those of us that were, seeing "64-bit" and "TTL" together immediately told us it was a chip that stored 64 bits worth of data.

<comment><USER4> One of the classes late in my undergrad program was computer engineering for comp-sci. Took us through basic combinatoric circuits, mux/demux, 7 segment display decoding, all that classic ttl stuff.

final project was a 4 bit computer with 64 bits of ram. I remember spending many hours in the lab debugging my wiring. But it was super cool to toggle in data, advance the pc, toggle in an op, advance the pc and toggle in more data. i think i demonstrated 4 + 5 - 7 * 2

fun class.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _As for Robert Baruch 's purchase of the chip, he contacted the eBay seller > who gave him a refund. The seller explained that the chip must have been > damaged in shipping!_

I think at that point, you report them to Ebay for fraud, don't you? Or is that just spitting in the ocean?

<comment><USER6> Not only is it useless, it can be actively harmful. My wife had her account "suspended" for reporting too many fraudulent cases when she went on a buying spree from Chinese sellers. Normally you lose about a 3rd of the things you buy from China due to: -Non-shipping of items -Loss of items in transit -Counterfeit items -Damaged items -Completely wrong items -Wrong quantity items

Turns out she opened too many cases and they "suspended" her account, which is an eBay euphemism for being banned for life. That means that her account that she'd been using since 2000 was dead and gone forever, and she was no longer welcome on the site.

I agree with other posters. The eBay of old is effectively dead. You are better off buying things from Amazon or Ali Express 99% of the time. The days of great deals on items are pretty much gone. You can still find some rare and unusual stuff that is worth buying, but the dominance of eBay now means that most things are very close to market rate unless (or even if!) they are counterfeit or some other scam. More like a dollar store than an online auction house.

<comment><USER7> Much of the time things from Amazon are actually from Aliexpress.

<comment><USER8> That is why for a lot of things I prefer Aliexpress: no issues with refunds. The sellers usually even do not care about proof but just refund.

<comment><USER9> I've bought quite a bit from AliExpress, and the sellers have always send a new item or refunded. It can be annoying to keep track of, but that's what you get for the extremely cheap prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This, along with the complaints in the comments here, is quite discouraging. I'm ready to give up on third-party sellers on Amazon, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14993216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14993216) [I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon], and now Ebay looks like it's not going to be a viable alternative.

<comment><USER11> eBay has always been a crap-shoot in this regard, even before the P-p-p- powerbook days[1].

[1] Potentially NSFW: [https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=10...](https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=1016390), SFW summary: [https://www.engadget.com/2004/05/14/scamming-the- scammer/](https://www.engadget.com/2004/05/14/scamming-the-scammer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The eBay seller gave him a refund. The seller explained that the chip must have been damaged in shipping! (Clearly you should pack your chips carefully so they don't turn into something else entirely.)" ;)

<comment><USER13> Percussive electromigration.

<comment><USER14> Maybe it was packed next to a wand of polymorph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Why would someone go to the effort of creating counterfeit memory chips that couldn't possibly work? The 74LS189 is a fairly obscure part, so I wouldn't have expected counterfeiting it to be worth the effort. The chips sell for about a dollar on eBay, so there's not a huge profit opportunity. "

This sounds obscure. Small/Tiny mark up. Small market. High fake detection rate. I wonder if there is something about the story that we miss.

<comment><USER16> > High fake detection rate.

Maybe not in time. The companies buy lots of stuff that never gets used. It seems totally plausible for them to use up their end-of-year-budget stocking up on parts they don't necessarily need or expect to use through non- conventional channels.

Plus, unless you dig into it like this guy did, he can just say what he did and give a refund.

<comment><USER17> > The companies buy lots of stuff that never gets used

I seem to recall a few years ago, when looking for arcade ICs (Defender RAM IIRC) that unscrupulous sellers would put working ICs at either end of the tube, and fakes/faulty parts in the middle. Unless you were using them all to do a full RAM replacement, you wouldn't know your spares were faulty.

<comment><USER18> I worked in a PC shop in 1990 and we got RAM chips in bulk and in plastic tubes. The dealers would put in counterfet chips that would not work because of shortages. Then issue a refund later on. Some PC shops also ripped off other PC shops doing horse trading involving RAM or CPU chips. Had a high defective rate back then. Nobody thpught to examine the chips, either threw them away, horsetraded them, or sent them back to dealer for a refund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would be interested to know how the Pentagon deals with those 15% of counterfeit ICs, the implications are quite scary.

<comment><USER20> Yeah that does sound scary.

I'm just looking at the pdf they link to in this article: [https://www.semiconductors.org/clientuploads/Anti- Counterfei...](https://www.semiconductors.org/clientuploads/Anti- Counterfeiting/SIA%20Anti-Counterfeiting%20Whitepaper.pdf)

In the summary they say, the following on how to 'win the battle'

"The key to winning the battle against counterfeit semiconductors is elegantly simple: Exclusively buy semiconductor products either directly from the Original Component Manufacturer (OCM) or directly from the OCM's Authorized Distributors/Resellers."

I wonder if they have hardware to test the functioning of chips, like testing them to ensure they meet the parameters on the datasheets (like current consumption etc.).

<comment><USER10> This is a bit off topic, but right out of grad-school, around forty years ago, I worked at Texas Instruments. The process control engineers would do their best, but to some degree (at least back then), the yield for integrated circuits coming off the fabrication lines was very tricky to control. So parts would be tested and sorted by their performance as they came out. The components that could operate at hight frequency would end up as the more expensive part numbers. One front end line would end up making a mix of two part numbers determined by the testing.

Through some kind of magic, the process would be tweaked by the engineers over time and the yields for the more expensive parts would often increase to the point where they wouldn't even end up with enough of the low cost parts so they would just stamp the low cost numbers on the chips that could actually run under much more demanding conditions.

<comment><USER20> Neat! Don't companies like Intel etc. still 'bin' chips into different products? Although I'm not sure if the reasons for binning now are different?

<comment><USER21> Yep, absolutely still done, and for the same reason (in my experience), especially with Intel, and other companies who develop their own processes.

What typically happens is that engineers do the best they can before release to model the process and experiment with building devices at different process "corners". This gives an idea of what the distribution of different electrical parameters will look like over the range of expected process variation (logic levels of FETs, sheet resistances, etc. etc.).

Obviously this data is imperfect, because there are a TON of steps in a modern semiconductor process, and a TON of variables in each one. (For example, I worked on Ion Implanters, and we recorded hundreds of variables for our customers during the run, from vacuum levels, to gas dosages to voltages and currents in the various accelerator stages).

As parent said, there is another group, who IMO are probably the original "big data" folks, usually called manufacturing or process engineers. They monitor the yields, binning and specific electrical measurements of all the wafers and parts coming off the line, along with process data for all the nanufacturing steps the wafer has gone through. These guys do the black magic of figuring out what needs to be tweaked in the process. At the higher levels it involves a mix of knowledge -- not only statistics and optimization, but also the semiconductor physics of how these parts actually operate, (since experiments can get expensive, you want to justify the knobs you are going to tweak!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If one counterfeits a chip using something that will not work at all, why put any chip inside at all? Why not just place a resistor between VCC and GND?

<comment><USER23> There's a market for some old, obscure, obsolete ICs. People approach brokers, who search for them.

Other people - scam artists - see what's being searched for, and take a different IC in the same package and remove the existing markings, and put new fake markings on. They then sell this as the other IC.

By the time the ICs are tested the money has gone. (Which should be a hint - if they're not offering regular invoicing and 30 days payment they might not be trustworthy).

tl;dr not enough people design _for production_, and it makes things much harder.

<comment><USER24> When you just need one to a few of something, no vendor is going to bother with giving you quotes/invoices/etc when they know you a) aren't a big company to keep around for future business and b) aren't buying enough for any of that extra work to be worth it. If I'm working on an SBC and need a couple floppy driver chips, I'm not going to find any "real" vendors that have them in stock. All I'm going to find are second-hand dealers that might be selling fakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for this, was an awesome read. Any more such blogs for learning and getting into electronics and such low level stuffs?

PS. I am newbie software engineer (c/networking) and recently fascinated and drawn towards electronics.

<comment><USER26> Not sure about blogs, but I can recommend the book _The Art of Electronics_ (Horowitz and Hill). It's very expensive, but worth every penny.

<comment><USER27> I'll second this book, but also recommend Grob's Basic Electronics. Also very expensive...

...but that last bit has a caveat: These books are only expensive if you opt for "the latest edition". If you are doing this at a hobby level (vs taking a dedicated college course or similar), purchasing an older edition will serve you just as well. Electronics haven't changed that much between today and when the book's prior revision was published (or the revision before that - or even 5+ revisions ago).

Most of the changes are likely going to be very small and minor errata (spelling mistakes most likely).

All that said, Art of Electronics doesn't appear too expensive, even for a current edition (provided you stay away from the academic hardcover version, I'd imagine). Grob's is on a different level price-wise, but again, you can find cheaper versions.

I'd also like to point out Forrest M. Mims III's "Engineer's Mini Notebooks" series as something to go along with the above two books as well (or alone, if you just want the quick-n-dirty hack-on-electronics thing). They were originally sold by Radio Shack back in the day, but today can be picked up via Mims' site (which I think just redirects to Amazon). Old "vintage" copies (the new version combine multiple notebooks into one) can also be had fairly cheaply. They don't go into as much depth as the earlier mentioned books, but they can prove to give a quick and good understanding of the basics (provided you consume them in the proper order of course).

But if you're serious about electronics, they can't substitute for the previous mentioned volumes; get those first, then get the Mims volumes later (IIRC, Mims did write a separate book on learning electronics - it's probably mentioned on his site).

<comment><USER28> The previous-edition "hack" you describe applies to many textbooks but Horowitz and Hill is a bit of a special case. The current edition is the 3rd, published in 2015. The 2nd edition is from 1989, and while a lot of the material is timeless (part of why the book has become a classic), as you can imagine, a lot has changed in the world of electronics since 1989 and therefore the update to the 3rd edition was widely anticipated for many years. By all means pick up a 2nd edition if you find one cheap, but it is a book where it's probably worthwhile to prefer the current edition if you have the means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> From his posts, he's like the smartest person in the world. At least that's my impression.

Mine bitcoin with paper and pencil? Is anyone else in the world even thinking about something so far out?

</comment><comment><USER30> One of the first pics in that article comes from an earlier chip he previously reviewed - the Intel 3101. I'm proud to say my dad provided Ken with those two Intel 3101 chips.

Ken's review of the 3101 is here: [http://www.righto.com/2017/07/inside- intels-first-product-31...](http://www.righto.com/2017/07/inside-intels-first- product-3101-ram.html?m=1)

This is the first IC ever produced by Intel.

My dad had a few of these chips from an old computer. Some of the 3101 chips are from such early runs they don't even have the usual date stamps on the packages, and were outsourced by Intel into generic wirebonded IC packages.

</comment><comment><USER31> _The motivation (for the use of an LFSR instead of a traditional counter) is a shift register takes up less space than a counter on the chip; if you don 't need the counter to count in the normal order, this is a good tradeoff_

That's kind of a profound observation, even though it's obvious once you think about it. It never occurred to me that a maximal-length shift register is actually a simpler, more efficient logic structure than either a carry-chain adder or a ring counter.

<comment><USER32> One of the old TI microcontrollers saved a few transistors in the program counter by using a shift register this way instead of an actual counter. As a result, instructions in your program don't execute sequentially, but in a pseudo-random order. This isn't a problem, though, since you just put the code in the ROM in the same pseudo-random order and everything works out.

The underlying thing that makes the shift register more efficient is that you can build a dynamic shift register stage with two inverters and two pass transistor pairs, while the flip flop for a counter stage is probably six gates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Very cool article. I found myself strangely hit with a wave of nostalgia when the piece came upon "DTMF: dialing a Touch-Tone phone"

<comment><USER34> Anarchist cookbook, blue box, buzz box, etc...

<comment><USER35> Don't forget the red box, which you could make by replacing the 3.579545 MHz crystal powering the chip that the OP reverse engineered with a 6.5536MHz one, and then the top row and bottom column tones become 1700 / 2200Hz to simulate the pay phone nickel / dime / quarter tones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > _Why would someone go to the effort of creating counterfeit memory chips > that couldn 't possibly work?_

Because it's maybe a _mistake_?

Some of the people people working at the factory don't know a potato chip from a silicon chip?

True counterfeit chips use the correct die. It is stolen, but the knock-offs cut corners: you're getting something that is not quality controlled, or perhaps even a reject off the factory floor (that might just work in your use case so you won't notice).

Sometimes counterfeit chips use a different implementation, but of the right general spec. Well sort of:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685671) ("Ti NE555 – real vs fake: weekend die-shot ").

</comment><comment><USER37> So, the chip is fake, but how come such chips could work satisfactorily in their place in a PC??

<comment><USER38> This is downvoted, but actually a legitimate question. Often, counterfeits do work, but just don't match the specifications with respect to voltage rating, durability, etc.

<comment><USER24> Yes, a totally non-working fake isn't the most common thing to occur. Unless they got the counterfeits for free, the vendor is losing money on replacing the fakes with real ones. They are assuming everyone will either never use the chip or just assume they fried the chip and buy another. Selling rejects from the fab or clones as legit is much easier to get away with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Ken Shirriff is amazing. His blog entries are really worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why do you think the 74LS189 was being counterfeited? It was the touch tone chip being counterfeited, and disguised as a 74LS189. The buyer knew the ruse.

</comment><comment><USER40> This reminds me of the 1988 DRAM shortage.

</comment><comment><USER41> Any experts here care to tell how does one check for RAM quality? Does CPU-Z do it? (Writing from work, don't have admin perms to use)

Not talking about this particular case, but maybe case of a RAM not working in general.

<comment><USER42> Generally you use memtest86+ or something similar (IIRC Windows' bootloader contains something like that since vista).

On the other hand I've seen memory module with sufficiently unfortunate pattern of broken bits, that it could not be detected by memtest86. Even such tools need some part of memory that they run from and thus does not get tested (also some memory is reserved for BIOS). The problem manifested itself by completely unusable Windows and occassionally flipped bits in files downloaded from network on Linux (I assume that on Linux the faulty bit ended up in DMA bounce buffer, while on windows in something significantly more critical). To confirm my hunch, that it was memory related I netcat'ed few GB worth of CHARGEN output and analyzed the pattern of bit errors, which were perfectly aligned on some boundary. Finding which module was faulty then involved rearranging modules, running memtest86 and repeating the CHARGEN experiment.

Edit: actually diagnosing this took about month and half. memtest86 was passing and there was unrelated known hardware bug in used network card which I though might be related to observed behavior. Experiment with chargen was motivated by finding out whether the bit errors were somehow aligned to TCP segment boundaries, instead I found out they were aligned on some quite large power of two, which clearly pointed to memory issue.

<comment><USER43> What do you mean by "CHARGEN?"

<comment><USER42> Standard service on TCP port 19 :) It spits out printable ASCII characters to anyone who asks as fast as it can.

General wisdom is that it is security hazard and not useful for anything on the open internet, but having some server with so called "simple TCP/IP services" in your internal testing LAN is useful for exactly this kind of debugging.

Edit: this whole debugging happened around january 2009, so at the time when chargen was long dead and certainly not a service offered by almost anyone on the internet.

<comment><USER44> Sadly, chargen is still alive on the open internet. It's not really a security hazard, but it does have a huge DDoS amplification factor, so it's not a good idea to run it on public IPs (and if you firewall it, do the world a favor and firewall the incoming requests, don't try to 'fix' it by firewalling the outgoing responses)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Now I know why that project I designed didn't work...

</comment><comment><USER46> Chip inside of the computer with a little telephone hidden inside.

You don't mind if your computer will dial in to China sometime, do you?

<comment><USER47> Not the premise. This is an issue of taking a cheap, touch-tone chip and repackaging it as a more expensive product. The chip itself is not dialing out to anywhere since the final product wouldn't even work when installed. Just a counterfeiting scam.

<comment><USER48> Comparing the die shot to the 3101 die shot, it appears that the DTMF chip is significantly more expensive to produce than the 64 bit RAM chip.

But perhaps they had a large stockpile of DTMF chips they wanted to get rid of.

<comment><USER49> Maybe this was labeled a decade+ ago and the ebayer is just some salvager going through a warehouse. There's no way someone would go through that effort today, with neither chip being that expensive.

<comment><USER50> probably quite the opposite: e-waste disposal companies inventorying useless ICs for pin count vs barely useful ones and relabeling.. spend .01c to get .05c times 1 bazillion and you might actually make some money</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Researchers: Nearly Half of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Likely Bots - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots <comment><USER2> "We do know that it looks like it's a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks, but it would take a tremendous amount of resources to substantiate that,"

It seems irresponsible to say then. I feel that while bots are prevalent, so are idiots.

<comment> blaser-waffle Idiots don't write bot scripting operations. China and Russia have a proven history of this. There are others who invest heavily in this sphere too, like Israel, North Korea, and some non-trivial efforts by the Saudis and Iran.

<comment><USER3> > _Idiots don 't write bot scripting operations._

My personal experience is: an army of bots is useful but the effectiveness is limited. The key is to activate and mobilize a group of crazy people, by influencers or bots - real humans, genuine citizens - who's willing to be the online warriors of an ideology to work for you, e.g. "We must stop the globalist", "They're taking away our guns", or "Impeach Trump". The ideology is not limited to a specific one, anyone can use this method.

The Russian seems to have developed a powerful strategy against the USA: actively promoting conflicting ideologies of all sides to increase political instability.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but it's pretty labor-intensive and scripted bots help to relieve that burden as well as providing amplification capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What percentage of tweets in general are by bots? Not insignificant, I'm sure. Bots did not spring up for this occasion.</comment>


New book about Tesla written by a YC founder - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/Insane-Mode-Sparked-Electric-Revolution-ebook/dp/B01N18V9PU <comment><AUTHOR> My co-founder Hamish wrote this book (before we started our company) and it's just come out.

There are similarities between publishing your first book, and starting your first company. I wonder why more authors aren't founders (or vice versa)</comment>


Sony Pictures Presents: The Propaganda Model [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/2014/12/sony-wurlitzer.pdf

<comment><USER3> Cryptome contains a lot of interesting information. If you enjoyed the linked pdf, just navigate to the main site and check out the rest.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure that Bill Blunden is writing in a style that will communicate his point in the most effective way to those who aren't already "in the know", but it's refreshing to see another broad summary with new citations (Garden Plot was a new sound bite for me).

</comment><comment><USER5> Not only does this pdf contain zero information, there is no reason for it to be in PDF format.

I have to imagine that the few people who voted it up thus far did so while avoiding actually loading a PDF, but assuming that it has some substance: I mean...it's a PDF. Surely it must be full of rich graphics and charts, right? Nope, several paragraphs of text.

<comment><USER4> This is standard for cryptome. Honestly I don't know why they do it that way. I do not think there is a good reason. It might be because they don't want content crawled or something (does that reason even make sense - <USER2> not...)

The PDF however, contains a bunch of information. I would read what it links to.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: A good intro to set theory? - <AUTHOR>

Wondering if anyone could provide some links or good recommendations on set theory literature for a beginner.  I'm looking for something to give me a really good foundation on the subject, preferably with some interactive examples/problems.  Much appreciated! <comment><USER2> I haven't read it personally, but I've heard that "Naive Set Theory" by Halmos is the gold standard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Start here: <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Set.html> Then learn about types and, finally, read some CS papers to see how quants use them.</comment>


Coffee Prices Hit 34-Year High - <AUTHOR> http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/04/25/say-it-aint-so-joe-coffee-prices-hit-35-year-high/

<comment><USER2> Ah, time to grow some chicory in your yard (or just collect it "by the roadside" (Wikipedia)) and make your own fake coffee.</comment>


First Impressions: Windows Mobile 7, now known as Windows Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/02/15/first-impressions-windows-mobile-7-now-known-as-windows-phone/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft is coming to this quite late in the game. Apple and Google already have handsets that have been in the market for awhile.

I'd imagine Microsoft is going to end up fighting for second place with Google. Kind of like the Zune and the iPod.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite Python package in terms of design and usability? - <AUTHOR>

There are a lot of Python package for us to use, and many more under development.<p>I am wondering what is your favorite Python packages in terms of usability, and why? I intend to learn the design in those packages and use it for further package development. <comment><USER2> requests is by far one of the cleanest and intuitive libraries

</comment><comment><USER3> SQLAlchemy

\- [https://github.com/zzzeek/sqlalchemy](https://github.com/zzzeek/sqlalchemy)

\- [http://www.aosabook.org/en/sqlalchemy.html](http://www.aosabook.org/en/sqlalchemy.html)

\- [http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/rel_1_0/](http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/rel_1_0/)</comment>


Check out SimSimCity, a parody of SimCity and EA/Origin support - <AUTHOR> http://simsimcity.sexypenguins.com

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Try opening the Origin settings menu

2\. Try downloading the file to completion (hint: it's not actually that big)

3\. Try viewing the downloaded file

4\. Try asking for a refund in chat

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm sorry but this has been discussed to the death. This parody, however funny, does not provide any interesting or meaningful content to Hacker News.</comment>


Show HN: Scenery – a terraform plan output prettifier - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dmlittle/scenery <comment><USER2> What's the difference between this and landscape? [https://github.com/coinbase/terraform- landscape](https://github.com/coinbase/terraform-landscape)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of this tool and it was actually inspired by landscape. There really isn't a difference (yet) but I personally wanted something that didn't depend on my ruby environment and I could easily run anywhere. If you don't have a ruby environment, landscape suggests running it through docker and I don't see that as a good solution for a tool.

Long term (coming relatively soon) I'm adding the ability to parse terraform plan files (tfplan) and display the diff from that. This is something that landscape doesn't support and it would be much harder to add given that the tool is written in Ruby. Since this is built in Go, I can leverage terraform packages to add this feature (similar to tfjson[1])

[1] [https://github.com/palantir/tfjson](https://github.com/palantir/tfjson)</comment></comment>


Begin Japanology – Name Seals / Hanko (2006) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaABnATXQbY <comment><USER2> I really want one of these.

I _hate_ signing my name. I never sign anything the same way twice, and it's always a random scribble. I've actually gotten into fights with my bank over this, and before my landlord switched to electronic signatures, signing my lease every year was a huge chore due to the number of signatures involved. Maybe if I'm lucky, the first part of the scribble will look vaguely like the left half of a cursive A, but it falls apart after that. The only area where I'm consistent at all is my initials: I always write my initials as a ligature, as my initials are AJB, which easily link up. [0]

So I really envy that the Japanese can just drop down a stamp and be done with it. I've actually been considering having a custom seal made for me, either using my initials ligature (see [0]) or possibly with my name written in Japanese. I should explain the latter: I decided a while back that if I ever need to write my name in Japanese, instead of rendering my name in katakana [1], I'd use a Japanese name that has similar sound/meaning to my own [2].

[0] The main one I use, and an alternative I've been experimenting with [https://i.imgur.com/Z30PLre.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Z30PLre.jpg)

[1] Amy Book -> エイミー・ブック

[2] 本えみ <\- 本 is the kanji for "Book", and in my name I prefer to read it as もと (Moto), and えみ is Emi (written in hiragana, which is a syllabary that carries no semantic meaning), a fairly common Japanese name that sounds similar to Amy.

<comment><USER3> It's not clear by this comment if you live in Japan, but if you do, it's quite common to have a hanko even for foreign names (custom made, of course, ~¥1000+).

If you live in the US, signature seals are quite uncommon but probably acceptable.

That said, carrying around a seal (and sometimes forgetting it) is not particularly fun.

<comment><USER2> > It's not clear by this comment if you live in Japan, but if you do, it's > quite common to have a hanko even for foreign names (custom made, of course, > ~¥1000+).

Nah, I live in Texas. I'm just a weeb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Beware! Beware! Beware of the time sink that is watching "Begin Japanology" episodes!

<comment><USER5> I have not seen this but wanted to make people aware the NHK is available on streaming platforms and has no end to cool content, such as:

[1] Japanology Plus (a sequel to Begin Japanology?) [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/japanologyplus/](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/japanologyplus/)

[2] Journeys in Japan: [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/jo...](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/journeys/?type=tvEpisode&)

[3] 10 Years with Hayao Mizaki [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10...](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10yearshayaomiyazaki/?type=tvEpisode&)

<comment><USER6> Do you know what platforms and apps? Some of my absolute favorite shows are on NHK. This page wasn't very clear: [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/howto/](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/howto/)

<comment><USER5> I get NHK on the NVIDIA Shield (my main device). It is also available on Roku. Programming may vary between devices, but these two both have Japanology Plus and the Mayao Miyazaki special.

<comment><USER6> Thank you! I use an NVIDIA Shield as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A friend made a list of all the Begin Japanology chapters. An incredible time sink, but amazing nonetheless:

[http://japanology.tv/](http://japanology.tv/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Ironically, in Japan, the video is geo-blocked by Sony Music Entertainment Japan:

この動画には Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. さんのコンテンツが含まれており、お住まいの地域では著作権上の問題で権利所有者によりブロックされています。

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I find it interesting as a form of authentication, compared to a signature. Especially with one person having multiple seals, for different purposes.

<comment><USER9> I can't watch this because I'm in Japan and its geoblocked but hanko can be convenient. \- you can leave a hanko with an authorized person to sign on your behalf (eg when you're a CEO traveling abroad). \- you can unregister your hanko if it's stolen \- as you said you can have multiple hanko for various purposes. For large purposes like buying a house, it will be verified against the hanko the you registered in your city

On the other hand, \- if it wears out or part of it breaks, OCR algorithms can flag your hanko stamp and stop a basic transaction. \- As a foreigner, you have the right to sign instead of use a hanko, but in use for banking or whatever, it is run through the same hanko verification OCR algorithms, meaning your transactions using signatures are sometimes flagged due to 2 slightly different signatures \- A stolen hanko is a real liability risk (this is why you should not use your banking hanko for accepting packages, etc, but rather use a separate one)

<comment><USER10> > I can't watch this because I'm in Japan and its geoblocked but hanko can be > convenient. - you can leave a hanko with an authorized person to sign on > your behalf (eg when you're a CEO traveling abroad). - you can unregister > your hanko if it's stolen - as you said you can have multiple hanko for > various purposes. For large purposes like buying a house, it will be > verified against the hanko the you registered in your city

> As a foreigner, you have the right to sign instead of use a hanko, but in > use for banking or whatever, it is run through the same hanko verification > OCR algorithms, meaning your transactions using signatures are sometimes > flagged due to 2 slightly different signatures

As someone who was required to sign something at the post office and literally sent home to practice their signature until it resembles one on an almost 10 years old ID, I thing I'd prefer a stamp. I would not get anything done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It used to be a commonplace (and interesting) to see Japanese people frequently take out their stamp for anything requiring a "signature" but in recent years I really haven't seen it happening much. I was always able to use a signature on any official document and I think this has become a much more acceptable form of verification for Japanese people nowadays.

Also, it's a shame those episodes are geoblocked in Japan since some of the people who'd most enjoy and benefit from them are people who're visiting Japan for an extended period.

<comment><USER12> I'm no expert but I think they're still fairly commonly used in China. There's a rather popular small cheap 40w laser engraver (3020) sold on sites like Alibaba designed for stamp making that's become fairly popular elsewhere for hobbyist usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Docusign partnered with a Japanese manufacturer of hanko to create an authentication device.[1] That was in 2015. What happened to that? It seemed a nice way to package up 2-factor authentication.

[1] [https://www.docusign.com/press-releases/docusign-and- shachih...](https://www.docusign.com/press-releases/docusign-and-shachihata- to-bring-hanko-into-the-digital-age)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for a "boss as a service"? - <AUTHOR> I had the idea of providing the service of filling the role as a boss of someone else. This would help the person using the service to achieve his/her goals, set deadlines and remind them of things to do, ask non-abvious questions and overall make sure, they get things done. Of course the service would not actually/legally be the boss, just fill the role.
Do you think there is a need for such a service?
Would you pay for it? If so, how much per month? <comment><USER2> Of course you have already thought about the part where for a person who tends to procrastination, the whole point of having a boss is authority. There is no authority if he is paying you, and if he can play that game in his mind, he can proably also do it on his own.

But even assuming you have this sorted out, i wonder, how would you pull off the "asking non-obvious questions" thing? You have to be smart AND knowing the topic to make non-obvious questions. Do you plan to hire enough well-educated people to cover all your clients needs? Or do it all by yourself?

In my opinion, there are enough problems out there that need to be solved. What is the point of people creating new ones instead of solving something?

<comment><AUTHOR> All good points. I was just wondering if there was a need for the service. Haven't thought much about implementation yet.

There is a problem to be addressed, in my opinion. A lot of people need pressure to get work done.

Think of "mentor" rather than "boss". Authority is important but even if one has a "normal" boss this does not ensure things get done (or done fast).</comment></comment>


We have learned nothing from the genome --Craig Venter (CEO Celera Genomics) - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,709174-3,00.html

<comment><USER3> He's being very hyperbolic. But, it would be correct to say that the genome has not been the boon to understanding that we thought it would be.

I think the fundamental problem is that we don't quite know how to think about evolving genetic systems yet. We think too much like human engineers, and these systems are not built like the things that we build. "Quantum-scale electro-chemical interaction-probability-field network" is a better description of a cell than "machine," and evolution most certainly does not design things like we do.

</comment><comment><USER4> The title of the spiegel article is a total misrepresentation. The complete quote is "We have learned nothing from the genome other than probabilities." He actually talks a lot about what has been learned from the genome - <USER2> point is that the genome is all about probabilities and possibilities, it's not a crystal ball that predicts what's actually going to happen or when.</comment>


Finding a business/marketing co-founder - <AUTHOR>

I have built an advertising network which i believe would lead the way in advertising by providing publishers the ability to sell diretly to advertisers with little commission and ability for them to run backfill ads when their space has not been bought.The problem is i need someone with marketing skills because i hate marketing and dont have time to get the network off the ground. Any help with finding a marketing cofounder? <comment><USER2> Well - marketing seems crucial in this startup, so I'd say - do you aggree to be #2, and let somebody else lead the startup and be the ceo? A tech guy most probably cannot run an advertising network efficiently :)

It will be an uphill battle to find somebody that will want to run your business, so I'd recommend learning to like the marketing and run it yourself.

Anyway: where are you from? What is your experience? Are you a student, or did you just quit working for somebody else? Tell us and we'll be able to help you more easily.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am still a university student and haven't got the time needed to do effective marketing. I have had experiences building web products but never got any off the ground the way i'ld like because of poor marketing skills. The network is a bit like project wonderful but is not a bidding system. Publishers choose either cpm based or tenancy ad spots and sell at their own price and can also run backfill when they have an empty ad spot

</comment><comment><USER3> You hate marketing and don't have time but you want to build an advertising network that would lead the way?

Anyway, sounds a bit like ProjectWonderful or OpenX. What does your network do differently or better than those two?</comment>


The Village Voice (1955-2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.artforum.com/passages/voice-writers-reflect-on-the-iconic-alt-weekly-76575 <comment><USER2> Things come and go but when independent media goes it is especially pensive, heavyhearted and filled with melancholy.

Village Voice is gone but hopefully the New Times can hang on for a while.

Real independent people and voices _need_ a check on authoritarian structures, independent media is one of those checks and they are fading away.

</comment><comment><USER3> The SF Bay Guardian went down in 2012. Boston Phoenix, 2013. The Voice was the last of the major US alternative papers.

<comment><USER4> I believe Popula.com is trying to fill that void. They have fantastic writers but I'm unsure of their business model (it seems to depend on blockchain as a magic fix).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading through some of these accounts, I tried to guess whether the writer was a man or a woman (before looking at their name, and not counting obvious tells like pronoun usage)? Do you ever do that? While I haven't performed a real experiment, I gotta say, I'm pretty accurate at guessing the genders of writers--not 100%, but way over 50%.

<comment><USER6> There have been several papers about identifying the gender of an author with very high success rates using ML, so it's not surprising that there are at least some patterns even a human can pick up on.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't aware of that. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised artforum is still alive</comment>


Offload: Build seamless multiscreen interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://offload.strikingly.com/

<comment><USER2> "Offload is a toolkit: a set of APIs and libraries for developers to add multi-screen functionality to their apps. It enables seamless communication between apps running on smartphones, tablets and PCs using wi-fi or bluetooth connections depending on the capabilities of the devices."

I feel like this paragraph, currently buried at the bottom of the page, should be right up near the top. It's a more clear description than the current top matter.

Seems like a fun project. I wonder if it'd make sense to not only support multiple screens, but also other physical knob/button input devices. I often find myself controlling software via various sensors hooked up to a microcontroller. I use the rather popular firmata library:

[http://www.firmata.org/](http://www.firmata.org/)

It is embeddable on microcontrollers (mostly arduinos), and has many libraries in a variety of languages to easily interface with said hardware from a host "real" computer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds fun. Would this framework be using straight video streaming from desktop to mobile or passing parameters and rendering a native/web view of touch friendly controls via an easy to build mobile app?

things in the same vein I currently use:

Logic Remote (remote control of some features of Logic Pro X) [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/logic- remote/id638394624?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/logic- remote/id638394624?mt=8)

TouchOSC (control anything that uses OSC/midi on a phone) [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/touchosc/id288120394?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/touchosc/id288120394?mt=8)

Pixl Preview (preview your Photoshop designs on Android) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.markushi.pi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.markushi.pixl)

They are all great, would be nice if when I start the associated desktop app, the mobile companion would also start without (much) effort from me? Maybe through a notification, if not automatically? Right now I often forget/can't be bothered to run them since they are buried somewhere on my phone

</comment><comment><USER4> What I have looked for a couple of times is something that lets me use a high end android phone or tablet as a digitizer/trackpad.

Is that something this will simplyfy?

<comment><AUTHOR> When researching this I came across a few tools for using a phone as a trackpad, for example:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thingsstuf...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thingsstuff.touchpad&hl=en)

We couldn't find anything which worked as a digitiser and that is certinaly something we're considering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This takes the 'mobile-first' to a point where it's just 'make sure it plays on anything'. Interesting concept, for sure!

</comment><comment><USER6> I love the idea. It could change the way we interact with computers.

</comment><comment><USER7> A demo application or even a video would help.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      If your work isn't ready for people to try out yet, please
      don't put "Show HN" in the title. Once it's ready, come
      back and share it then.

      For example, blog posts, email signups, and fundraisers
      can't be tried out, so they don't count as Show HNs.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops! Sorry, changed the title.</comment></comment>


Technology creates more jobs than it destroys in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/china-technology-economy.html <comment><USER2> Not just that, it's also changing the nature of jobs [https://kr- asia.com/data-labeling-jobs-are-coming-to-underde...](https://kr- asia.com/data-labeling-jobs-are-coming-to-underdeveloped-regions-in-china-but- can-they-stay)</comment>


Looking for co-founders - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I'm looking for a co-founder for my startup as my current co-founder is leaving the company to invest full-time in crypto. There has no been any bad feelings or anything, he is just not interested in the industry.
Matter is, we're very close to some deadlines and there are 3 clients waiting to try it out (which is good, as long as we deliver). Also, there is some more good stuff.
So, I'm looking for someone who has built real, bullet-proof react + node.js apps. The better if you've build a chat used in production before. But hey, that's not etched in stone.
Anyone who wants to give it a try will need to work with me for a couple weeks before accepting and transferring the shares and all that stuff.
(company is based in London)
If anyone is interested ----> please, reply below: <comment><USER2> Hello,

I have past experience working on high volume chat systems. I have build a number of systems from scratch in the past and I work on nodejs as well.

Here is link to my profile:- [https://angel.co/raooll](https://angel.co/raooll)

Would be nice if we can have a quick chat.

:)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Rahul, sounds good to me! What time zone are you in? I'm available today from 19 p.m. onwards, London time.

<comment><USER2> Hey Hunterx,

Could you share you Skype so we can setup a time ? I'm in GMT +5:30 IST.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Rahul,

Sure! Skype is isaacalbets. Are you avail tomorrow around between 1-3 p.m London time?

<comment><USER2> Hey Issac,

Send you a request on Skype Let's do the call at 1pm london time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I'd seen this post a few months ago, I'd have applied. I found my team, though. Good luck with your hunt!

I'm also watching this thread to see if asking for cofounders on HN works :)

<comment><AUTHOR> What a pitty! Well, we'll find out soon :)</comment></comment>


San Francisco to scooter startups: Your customers are terrible - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/san-francisco-dubs-new-electric-scooter-startups-a-public-nuisance/ <comment><USER2> Cities are far too car-centric now. Though I expect the anti-techie/anti- shuttle NIMBYs will be out to "save their parking spots and public rights of way".

There's an easy solution to the "blocking the door" problem: convert on-street parking spaces into parking for dockless bikes and scooters. (Yes, that means building garages to offset the lost on-street parking.)

If you dedicate clearly marked space for parking bikes and scooters, then people will try to do the right thing.

Google has had a utopic bike-sharing system on its campus for years (at great cost -- the bikes keep getting stolen). It would be great to get something like that in the "real world". I think JUMP bikes is closest, but there aren't nearly enough bike racks in SF for JUMP to fully roll out with the ubiquity of the Google bikes.

<comment><USER3> Or, you know, folks could just park these somewhere other than in front of the door or the middle of the sidewalk. Say, for instance, the side of the sidewalk. Or directly to the side of the door.

I'm not one to complain, but I would agree things have gotten pretty ridiculous in the last couple weeks. Someone in front of me tripped over one walking this evening, because the scooter was parked smack in the middle of the sidewalk (at night).

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm not paying attention but I work in SOMA (scooter central) and have yet to see a scooter parked in the middle of the sidewalk or blocking a path. They are everywhere but not really under foot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Scooter startups, why not pay homeless people to relocate scooters to safe areas after people leave them?

You would be doing a good thing and cities would be happy to deal with your scooters if you deal with their homeless problem.

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems to me that the solution here is to fine people when they misbehave.

In the Amsterdam it was very common for people to ride on bikes without lights. A year of targeted action by the police fixed that almost entirely.

</comment><comment><USER7> Damn and I thought Chinese bikeshare companies were stupidly losing money and ubiquitous.</comment>


Software is hard - <AUTHOR> http://gamearchitect.net/Articles/SoftwareIsHard.html <comment><USER2> I worked at the Mellon Foundation for a while, and one of my jobs was to visit Chandler and find out what they were doing with our money (my boss had foolishly funneled them a lot of funding for a version 2, "Westwood", suitable for university use). It was a complete vanity project - Kapor had brought in his art collection, the offices were spacious and lovely, every developer had state of the art workstations with an acre of screen space - but the software never worked. Pointing this out just created tension and bitterness. The project floated along on Kapor's reputation and ate his money, and had no opportunity to make contact with reality. I think of it more as a cautionary lesson about lack of outside constraints than software complexity. It was a Spruce Goose, except nowhere near as pretty.

</comment><comment><USER3> Software is rather good actually. Only a small percent of any of it is faulty. It could be improved but it is largely not considered worth it.

Civil engineering is not as perfect as often supposed. There are plenty of defects from barely noticeable to catastrophic. The software world simply knows nothing about other engineering. There is an easy way to see: just check the references in software engineering books and papers and count how many point to other such disciplines: practically none.

Neither is civil engineering as predictable (or controllable) as supposed. The majority of time, cost, and risk is borne by construction, so this overshadows the part most equivalent to software -- the engineering design proper. But this stilll has the same inherent difficulties as any design work.

Saying software makes other engineering look trivial shows a lack of knowledge. If you learn a little of civil engineering you will find it is just as complex as software.

Software is not all entirely new: look at all the reused components, libraries, etc. That is substantial, perhaps even the majority proportion in some sense.

There is probably more complexity of interrelations of parts in software, since physical designs are constrained to a more 'regular' physical substrate. But I don't think it is too bad, because the design activity is intrinsically isolating to a large degree.

Software has almost none of the physical constraints in other engineering, and it is so changeable at any stage. It really has distinct good fortune and advantages. And it is everywhere, it runs the world. It is a great success. Yet it is seen as failing. We don't have a mature, perceptive, understanding attitude to it.

<comment><USER4> This point was actually made in the book fwiw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author makes some claims I think are conflicting - specifically that software shouldn't be built by brute force and ignorance, and that the Chandler project should have used C++ instead of Python because more programmers know it.

Maybe they were hiring the wrong people (programmers who didn't already know Python), but I really doubt that the choice of language was a major cause of their failure.

<comment><USER6> The problem with Chandler was that the requirements were shit.

People talk a good game about Agility and Extreme Programming, but if you do not know what you want software to do, it is going to do whatever the developer feels like making it do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am actually more interested in the small amount of information about Cyan. That's a spectacular flameout of epic proportions that I've never seen written about in any detail.

</comment><comment><USER8> ...let's go shopping? (sue me, I loved consultant Barbie and I have points to burn)</comment>


Steam Labs - <AUTHOR> https://store.steampowered.com/labs <comment><USER2> I love the recommender experiment with a "popular-niche" slider. I want this slider almost everywhere when not searching for a very specific thing I'm already aware of. It was a great feature in last.fm, and I miss it in other streaming platforms.

This is especially useful in something like steam, where you get the front page full of suggestions... that you've likely already seen many times, or heard about because everybody played them. I can't find anything interesting on the normal recommendations, but after going 100% niche I've added 3 games (from 2014-2016) to my wishlist.

<comment><USER3> still cant separate out co-op story from co-op because of multiplayer :-/

Why is it so hard to find story co-op games... always MMORPGs, RTSs, or sandbox games. Battleblock theater and pit people were fantastic co-op games.. and stuff like Halo's co-op campaign was great :-/

<comment><USER4> Lovers in a dangerous spacetime, Magicka, Rampage Knights, Borderlands, Monaco. Those are a few I have enjoyed.

<comment><USER5> Some more story co-op games to add: Guacamelee (co-op metroidvania), any of the Lego games, Trine

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's bizarre that the digital stores of multi-billion dollar corporations _still_ can't seem able to get _discovery_ down perfectly.

Steam seems better off than the rest, and I can't comment on Google Play or Xbox Marketplace but on the App Store, Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Store, it's still hard to discover what you're looking for if you don't already know about it.

For example, all RPG games like Baldur's Gate, or platformers in a pixel-art style with chiptune music. The best way that I know of for discovering all such games is to search for a name that I already know, and look in the Similar or "Also Bought" list on its product page. Of course even then their algorithms don't list all relevant games and are often swamped with microtransaction-loaded crapware/copycats.

YouTube suffers from the same sickness, and Google Search itself has been dumbed down over the past few years.

Is it deliberate? Are they afraid that rivals and "researchers" will get too much information about their business if their search and filter functionality was "too" powerful, or that users might leave sooner after they get exactly what they came for?

(I know I can use third-party sites like itch.io to discover games, but this is about the app stores' built-in functionality.)

<comment><USER7> It's not in the interest of the stores to let you efficiently find just what you need - this would deprive them of revenue from errors and impulsive purchases, and would reduce the time you're spending in store, exposed to various form of advertising.

Stores are not a good product discovery mechanism.

<comment><USER8> Or you know, they are just bad at it. It is quite apparent when you consider the allround quality of the stores.

They all have a monopoly in their field and barely anything they do will improve or diminish their revenue. So they just don't care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great that they're experimenting with content discovery mechanisms. Unfortuntely, with these micro trailers they seem to be going the same route as Netflix: enticing people with flashiness alone.

I think most people will go to the reviews section or an aggregator website like Metacritic before they purchase a game. Why not include that information up front along side the flashy visuals? Surely that would reward talented developers while giving users the best possible experience.

<comment><USER10> I like the idea of having metacritic and more review-oriented info upfront near games. There's currently a few browser extensions that solve these issues. Valve would benefit from reaching out to these developers and implementing some of these features directly into the storefront. [ although, I get that it's a balance of keeping it feature-full + lightweight ]

<comment><USER11> Steam at least used to include the metacritic score on the storefront page (though never as prominently as their own tomatoes-esque system).

<comment><USER9> Yeah, Steam does a good job at the moment of including user and professional reviews on the game pages. The fact they let you sort and filter game searches by average review is great. Also, the tools to track changes in reviews over time is really useful to see how early access games are changing during development.

Here's hoping for more in the same vein!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > We're always trying new things with Steam, but often only share them with > the world when they're ready to be made a part of the platform. Steam Labs > allows us to share these ideas earlier

...Steam has just entered the fabled early access phase :O

lol, for real this seem neat. In regards to the current 3 experiments: MICRO- TRAILERS] this is a cool idea, I like when YouTube implemented a similar concept. My only hesitation with this, though, is it appears to just grab from a random point in the game trailer. The thing I don't like about some of the game's trailers I visit is it takes so long to show any real gameplay or, worse of all, shows no gameplay at all. A novel, yet to be fair tough to manage, alternative would be to allow users to submit recorded gameplay clips, and have the community vote on the best "representative" clips, and show those instead. My personally favorite is the 2x2 grid for curators.

INTERACTIVE RECOMMENDER] this is dope. I love this. It probably won't become my default way to discover, but I can easily see myself using this either once a week, or whenever I feel like spending some money. As a Linux user, I'd like the ability to filter by OS, but otherwise this is, again, dope.

AUTOMATIC SHOW] I like the base concept, but I can't see myself sitting through 30 minutes of its current iteration. The mockup video with the voiceover definitely is more appealing to me, I'm excited to see with how they progress with robotic voice over. Honestly, even if the robo-voice sounds stilted and odd, I think that could add to the charm. Don't try to act like a real human is behind the videos, embrace the concept of a robot tirelessly producing these daily [ or weekly / whatever ] videos. Sorta like a Toonami vibe. Tom was awesome! Also, it'd be nice to split the videos into separate entities. One video for overall games, one video showcasing strategy, etc. Having to skip around in a 30 minute video to find the parts I care about is needless. Either split them up & let me choose, or develop an easy-to-use playback controller that lets me auto-skip to the parts that I'd be interested in. Like scene-selection on DVDs.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't get why steam doesn't implement GameSpy like features. That is, a common lobby that list (and allow you to join) public multiplayer sessions for all steam games that you own.

It would make it possible to revive quite a few of those "dead" niche multiplayer games. And greatly engage the steam users around the steam games.

<comment><USER13> Probably difficult to get developers for "dead" games to bother integrating with the API.

<comment><USER14> A lot of games are passionate creations and the creators would happily put a few hours in to report info to Steam servers if they thought it would double multiplayer use for another year or so at the end of a game's life.

It's the franchises which consider games dead after dropping the sequel, ie Call of Duty, FIFA etc. They want people to buy the next version every year regardless of whether the game is actually better enough to justify the cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The recommendations is pretty good but it is limited because a lot of the games it recommended me were games that I had bought through GOG, Epic, or other places. If it could pick up that I have a game on other stores it would be more useful.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, maybe a third of them did I play _elsewhere_. But I consider this a signal on how good the commender already is.

Don't think there is a good way for steam to pick that up automatically without it being a privacy nightmare. An "I played that" button would be nice, help steam improve/validate recommendations and might even be used to advertise new content / sequels / etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since we're talking about Steam... is there any way to check _in my library_: which ones are RPG, which ones are 3D and visually stunning (I just bought a fancy card and want to test drive)? API is fine.

<comment><USER18> To avoid the hassle of categorising games manually, I've been using [https://github.com/Depressurizer/Depressurizer](https://github.com/Depressurizer/Depressurizer) It took me a couple of tries to get a functioning setup with an older version, but it's working now and they seem to have improved the UI a bit. It allows automatically making categories in your library based on genres and user- defined tags from steam as well as some other things like ratings and time to beat

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like this a lot. What are some other sandboxes like this?</comment>