Continuous Deployment, In Practice - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/01/continuous-deployment-trenches <comment><USER2> One of the more disappointing thing about programming for the iPhone and not the web, is that Apple's approval process makes it impossible to pull this off for any non-webview/data features. I guess that is the price paid for an app store that isn't littered with hardcore porn and scams.

<comment><USER3> Desktop computers have managed to survive without a review process. I think a lot of innovation is likely being stifled by Apple's approach.</comment></comment>


The Adventures of AV and the Leaky Sandbox [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-17/thursday/us-17-Kotler-The-Adventures-Of-Av-And-The-Leaky-Sandbox.pdf <comment><USER2> This is really talking about environments with very restrictive firewalls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmmm... Kapersky's response is quite concerning!

</comment><comment><USER4> that is not what an air gap is. if at any time there is an exchange of data between the air gapped hosts/network and a non air gapped one, there is no air gap anymore. and yes, that includes an analyst taking a sample to an internet- connected host.

side channel exfiltration techniques like "fansmitter"[1] and "diskfiltration"[2] or the well known TEMPEST attacks are more interesting challenges in air gapped designs than relying on a very basic security boundary violation. (and solved in very much the same way, by having the secure terminals be as dumb as bricks as possible, with extremely limited known inputs and outputs, preventing the insertion of unclassified electronics in the secure zone through policy, and enforcing it through physical searches, RF hardening the zone with a faraday cage, absence of windows, etc... the "Technical Specifications for Construction and Management of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities"[3] is a great ressource for those interested in such designs)

incidentally, there are awfully little true air gapped networks (which are not ICSes and/or assorted single purpose hosts/networks whose absence of network connectivity is not a primary design feature) in the wild. they're operationally heavy precisely because of their nature, and outside of very specific situations, their security is not perceived as cost efficient by management, for good reasons.

[1][https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.05915](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.05915) [2][https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03431](https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03431) [3][https://fas.org/irp/dni/icd/ics-705-ts.pdf](https://fas.org/irp/dni/icd/ics-705-ts.pdf)

<comment><USER5> The paper never once uses the term "air gap." It's only in the headline as submitted to HN.

<comment><USER6> Ok, we'll revert the title to the original. (Submitted title was "Air-gapped data exfiltration via cloud AV sandboxes".)

Submitters: please read the HN guidelines, which ask you to use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

<comment><AUTHOR> My bad, it was titled like that on Twitter, but I should have checked the title in the PDF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Misleading title, there's no real discussion of how you get to the cloud over an air gap.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. A mod should retitle this submission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> To call this "Air-gapped" would be a misnomer.

</comment><comment><USER10> Title Suggestion:

Leaking Data through Firewalls using Cloud AV.

Or original:

The Adventures of AV and the Leaky Sandbox

Mine is more descriptive.

</comment><comment><USER11> What does AV mean in this context? It isn't defined in the slides.

<comment><USER12> Anti-virus</comment></comment>


Transcript of New Orleans Mayor Landrieu's Address on Confederate Monuments - <AUTHOR> http://pulsegulfcoast.com/2017/05/transcript-of-new-orleans-mayor-landrieus-address-on-confederate-monuments <comment><USER2> It's about fucking time. Imagine if the Germans had built monuments to the Nazis with giant swastikas after WWII and they were still defending them as historical in the year 2100. This is no different. There is absolutely no redeeming factor to the confederacy or slavery. The two cannot be separated. A monument to the confederacy is a monument to slavery. Goddamn right it's about fucking time.</comment>


Wysihtml – lightest cross-platform rich text editor for web apps - <AUTHOR> http://wysihtml.com

<comment><USER2> We are trying to revive and modernise a once popular editor xing/wysihtml5. It is an open source project and we will keep it this way. Keeping a wysiwyg working needs constant attention and care as browser inconsistencies tend to change with every new version. All pull requests, issues and tests pointing to issues are most welcome at [https://github.com/Voog/wysihtml](https://github.com/Voog/wysihtml).

Voog team.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unlike most of the other wysiwyg html editors — Wysihtml makes use of contenteditable so it works inline, on-site and doesn't need a separate window or iframe. It also works on nearly all browsers and platforms, including touch.</comment>


Ask HN: HN Jobs board for Canadian startups equivalent? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Not sure what part of Canada you are from, but in my area there is a community group called VIATeC. _The Victoria Advanced Technology Council (VIATeC) is the conduit that connects people, knowledge and resources to grow a successful technology sector in Greater Victoria._

VIATeC has a job board [1], which I have personally used to find several jobs over the last 10+ years, so it works. I would look for something similar in your community and hope they have an equivalent. craigslist.ca is good too.

If you want to look at the province as a whole, there is the _BC Technology Industry Association_ , and they also have a job board [2], with _1116_ posting no less!

[1] [http://www.viatec.ca/job-board/results](http://www.viatec.ca/job- board/results)

[2] [http://www.bctia.org/Resources/BC-Tech- Jobs](http://www.bctia.org/Resources/BC-Tech-Jobs)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's StartupNorth which posts a majority of the startup jobs in Toronto. [http://startupnorth.ca](http://startupnorth.ca)</comment>


I'm a startup founder and I had sex with an investor – and I am sorry - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/sexism-women-silicon-valley-tech-why-startup-founder-sex-investor-2017-7/?IR=T <comment><USER2> I'm a junior developer trying to get a job in the valley and this part makes me so angry.

"I knew being hot got me in the door and that after that I had to make that work for me. Culturally, we are taught as women that our main power is our looks and sexuality. Then it's a matter of what you do with it. Personally, I used the s--- out of it, and I was more successful than my male colleagues because of it."

<comment><USER3> Why does it make you angry? In my experience, women on wall street play a totally different game than men in order to advance their careers. I don't see any reason why it would be different in silicon valley. All you have to do is figure out your own personal technique for success and advance in that direction, without worrying about other people's tricks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm, sex for money. Isn't that considered prostitution?

<comment><USER5> Read the article. She didn't take money from him.</comment></comment>


Opt out from online behavioral advertising  - <AUTHOR> http://www.aboutads.info/choices/

<comment><USER2> This just blocks targeted ads from appearing. They make no promises about disabling ads in general or the collection of tracking info.

Tor Browser is the easiest way to get privacy from marketers. If you use non- Tor:

\- disable 3rd-party cookies in browser prefs

\- AdBlock EasyList+EasyPrivacy (EasyPrivacy is not a default list, you have to manually add the combo subscription)

\- set referrer to site root (via a browser addon)

\- disable 3rd party javascript (NoScript)

\- disable Flash and Java plugins

\- choose a standard UA, screen size, and timezone (e.g., [https://github.com/dillbyrne/random-agent- spoofer](https://github.com/dillbyrne/random-agent-spoofer))

\- tweak other settings based on testing at [https://panopticlick.eff.org](https://panopticlick.eff.org)</comment>


We should do away with the apps & work with HTML 5 for mobile devices. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> ForFreedom: this community is mostly more pragmatic than that. People will use html5 when it can fulfill all their needs.

</comment><comment><USER3> We should do away with HTML5 and work with BASIC, C, assembler or Lua for mobile devices.</comment>


Downlink – real-time satellite imagery as your macOS wallpaper - <AUTHOR> http://downlinkapp.com <comment><USER2> Very cool.</comment>


China begins first of eight large-scale carbon capture projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/china-begins-first-of-eight-large-scale-carbon-capture-projects/article/495362 <comment><USER2> Carbon Clean Solutions built a plant in Tuticorin in southern India that captures carbon dioxide from its coal-fired boiler and converts it into soda ash (a chemical cousin of the baking soda you buy in a grocery store). And, in what Sharma says is a world's first, the commercial-scale plant set to capture 60,000 tons of CO2 annually does it so cheaply that it did not need any government subsidies.

Before Carbon Clean Solutions came along, the Tuticorin chemicals plant used to buy carbon dioxide to make its soda ash. It also bought coal to fire up its boiler. Now, instead of wasting carbon dioxide that burning coal produced, the plant is capturing it and saving the money on buying any more carbon dioxide. As a plus, the CO2 supply is also more reliable than before.

"I am a businessman," Ramachandran Gopalan, the managing director of the Tuticorin plant, told the BBC. "I never thought about saving the planet. I needed a reliable stream of CO2, and this was the best way of getting it."

[https://qz.com/878674/two-indian-engineers-have- drastically-...](https://qz.com/878674/two-indian-engineers-have-drastically- reduced-the-cost-of-capturing-carbon-dioxide-emissions/)

<comment><USER3> Amazing article. And a great way to show that being environmentally friendly and business friendly don't always have to be mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Capturing carbon is a valuable step, but only as part of a process that net removes it from the atmosphere. This project doesn't seem to have that goal.

> " _China 's new CCS project will remove CO2 from two coal gasification > (syngas) plants and re-inject the gas into previously exhausted oil > fields._"

> " _CCS "is an important set of technologies for reducing emissions from > fossil fuel use, while enabling important resources such as coal to continue > to contribute to energy security and economic objectives."_"

They aren't net taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. They're using it to pump more oil out of the ground and using it to argue to burn more coal. The CO2 in the ground won't likely stay there forever but much of it will seep back into the atmosphere.

> " _the world 's first commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant > opened in Zurich, Switzerland with the goal of selling compressed CO2 gas to > industry, basically re-purposing the gas._"

The Switzerland plant isn't taking CO2 out of the atmosphere either.

The article doesn't mention how much energy the plant uses to capture the carbon. If not powered by renewables, the process itself may not even be carbon neutral.

Let's hope others find ways to sequester the carbon, and maybe this step may help that process, but I don't see it offering much hope.

Meanwhile, almost no efforts put into changing people's behavior to reduce their emissions.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > Capturing carbon is a valuable step, but only as part of a process that net > removes it from the atmosphere.

The IPCC, the IEA, and a boatload of scientists disagree. _We cannot prevent catastrophic global warming without doing the type of CCS you describe as useless._ Sure, we also want to be doing stuff that's net carbon negative, but that's a long way into the future.

And CCS from power generation is only one aspect. CCS from cement plants, steel furnaces etc. is another thing we need - those processes will inherently emit large amounts of CO2 even if electric power is 100% renewable.

Finally, when it comes to capture from air, I think stuff like "biomass -> syngas -> water shift -> separation of CO2 captured and stored, H2 produced for energy" is much more likely to be successful, because you can make it net CO2 negative _and_ it produces something valuable as a byproduct. Capture from air is a whole 'nother matter, starting from a very low CO2 partial pressure and thus very inefficient.

(I work in CCS, happy to answer questions.)

<comment><USER5> > Sure, we also want to be doing stuff that's net carbon negative, but that's > a long way into the future.

Isn't refusing emitted carbon (net negative) the entire point? That wouldn't be an "also" then, and newfangled ideas that don't give such a result are nothing to be excited about.

Seems to me capturing from the air is a wholly separate matter, whereas capturing at the source (i.e. power plant) should be the focus.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I guess "net negative" can be interpreted different ways. I was thinking of "net negative" to mean "capturing CO2 that's already been emitted", as opposed to "capturing CO2 before it is emitted in the future".

I agree any CCS scheme _must_ be "net negative" in the sense that it doesn't produce more CO2 than it captures. But all the technologies in the pipeline today fulfill this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On one hand there is much concern and awareness about the environment and our carbon footprint. Businesses globally are under pressure to become greener. Individuals are trying to do their bit. There is activism and global concern.

On the other hand bitcoin and other crypto currencies continue to encourage millions to waste power for no useful reason beyond speculation without a care in the world, and without being called out on it. Can future designers of crypto currencies consider the waste of power?

A lot of concern begins to look self serving and mere finger pointing at others if whenever there is self interest and potential gain at stake all concerns go flying out, things are allowed to coast below the surface and hand waved away.

Are business that adopt crypto going to be boycotted for encouraging the needless waste of power?

<comment><USER7> It's it fair to attack cryptocurrencies for being wasteful when far more resources are being "wasted" on entertainment? How about we go after vacations? Cruises, airplanes, hotels sitting mostly vacant, RVs, snow mobiles in the winter, boating in the summer. How are these not wasteful?

Or rather why are you calling out Bitcoin instead?

<comment><USER6> Consider this, you have this huge truck consuming gallons of fuel and expending pollution and you have to drive it up and down a 1km road 24/7 to get some tokens. And that's it, just drive up and down. Do you think this is a proper use of scarce resources? Is this defensible?

You point to other trucks on the road, they are transporting goods and providing essential services to society and both truck manufacturers and users are under pressure to increase efficiency and reduce waste and pollution.

In this context how would you judge an individual who introduces a token that simply requires trucks to drive up and down 24/7\. Would it be fair to say this is an act of utter recklessness and irresponsibility?

<comment><USER7> >Do you think this is a proper use of scarce resources? Is this defensible?

Oh come on, you going to make an analogy about doing nothing and completely ignore my argument that vacations are nothing. Humans don't need vacations. Humans probably also didn't need cryptocurrencies.

>You point to other trucks on the road, they are transporting goods and providing essential services to society

And you ignore all the vehicles on the road transporting humans and their toys to the distant destinations where they are going, not to do work, no they are avoiding work.

>Would it be fair to say this is an act of utter recklessness and irresponsibility?

Would it be fair to say I never said Bitcoin was not that, just the we might have more egregious actions that we perform that are accepted as a part of daily life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Silly questions. Assuming someday we have an abundance of electricity, could we not just Capture x% of the Carbon from atmosphere and store them as Diamond?

<comment><USER9> You could, but where would all that power come from? Fusion is the only thing I can see that fits the bill, and we're decades from commercialization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Naive question: if the CO2 is being repurposed and used, is there actually a net benefit in terms of CO2 in the atmosphere?

<comment><USER11> Good question, I think. If that industrial CO2 ends up in the atmosphere after use, then there's no benefit. And, since it took energy to capture that CO2, presumably that generated even more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does this offset the hundreds of coal generating plants they have brought online in recent years and continue to build?

<comment><USER13> Obviously not, but it will give them experience in building carbon-capturing devices. That's not nothing.</comment></comment>


LibreSSL 2.1.5 released - <AUTHOR> http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=142655686417434

<comment><USER2> The LibreSSL version scheme corresponds to OpenBSD version numbers:

2.0.x -> OpenBSD 5.6, 2.1.x -> OpenBSD 5.7, 2.2.x -> OpenBSD 5.8,

Development slowed approaching the end of 2.1.x as the OpenBSD tree went in release mode lockdown. It is interesting to see the development coordination that stops and restarts the tree activity.

Things in the pipeline for 2.2.x include AIX, Cygwin, Visual Studio support, and wider support for optimizations (currently only ELF/OS X x64 is supported). In general, expect libtls to expand in features and improve usability, more code to be pruned and simplified.

There were not many SSL patches for OpenBSD 5.6, and there were not any LibreSSL 2.0.x releases after 2.1.x began. However, we are looking at possibly releasing further 2.1.x updates if there is interest. They would correspond to OpenBSD 5.7 errata.

<comment><USER3> If the LibreSSL corresponds to OpenBSD version numbers then it should be numbered 2.5.6 => 2.5.7 => 2.5.8 etc.

<comment><USER2> We wanted to also push out releases faster than OpenBSD's 6 month cycle. Maybe we should have started at 5.6.0. I dunno, hindsight is 20/20.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the release announcement :

This or earlier LibreSSL releases may also address issues that are to be revealed by The OpenSSL Project Team on the 19th of March, 2015.

<comment><USER4> That sounds a bit passive-aggressive, no?

<comment><USER5> Passive-aggressive from whom? OpenSSL who don't tell LibreSSL about security flaws, or LibreSSL who need to wait for OpenSSL to do a release before they can find out about security vulnerabilities?

<comment><USER6> Isn't that largely because the LibreSSL team refused the invite to the exclusive OpenSSL security list? At least that was the case the last time the LibreSSL devs complained about not receiving any vuln info in advance...

<comment><USER7> > Isn't that largely because the LibreSSL team refused the invite to the > exclusive OpenSSL security list?

Would you have a source for that? And for their reasoning behind it? Was "last time" poodle or something else?

edit: in the sister thread[0] rlpb suggests the point of contention is that OpenSSL embargoes but Theo/OpenBSD (and thus libressl) does not take part in embargoes (and other issues including Theo being Theo), linking to [http://lwn.net/Articles/601958/](http://lwn.net/Articles/601958/) as supporting evidence, which looks to cover just about all grounds.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9217022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9217022)

<comment><USER8> Story, with sources, at: [http://lwn.net/Articles/601958/](http://lwn.net/Articles/601958/)

They were asked to join the distros list, and they declined.

<comment><USER7> Yep, found it just a few minutes ago and added it as an edit to the original comment. Thanks a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Nice to see some work being done on the Windows port!</comment>


Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423)

<comment><USER3> > Previous discussions

FTFY :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24467635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24467635)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24471024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24471024)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you haven't yet, I highly recommend watching to the Royal Astronomical Society Press Briefing [1], where the main researchers present the results of their research. It's just 30 minutes and pretty well explained (although I'm not an astrophysicist).

One of the researchers, Dr. Clara Sousa-Silva, also have a 2-min video on how they know about the elements in other planets' atmosphere [2], and a great explanation about what is phosphine [3]. Her personal website is one of the best I've ever seen.

2020 doesn't cease to surprise me.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt7UBhYdM_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt7UBhYdM_o)

[3] [https://clarasousasilva.com/phosphine](https://clarasousasilva.com/phosphine)

<comment><USER3> > Her personal website is one of the best I've ever seen.

Wow, it's really good indeed!

<comment><USER5> Yep, clean and well structured

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be interesting to see if they also found H3PO3.

If so, then the inorganic synthesis pathway turns obvious, but the question where from H3PO3 comes on Venus arises.

<comment><USER7> It would be even more interesting if they found C3PO IMO.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but the odds of that are approximately 3,720 to 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Suppose we find primitive life forms after sending probe. What's the next step gonna be? Should we manipulate things or let the life form as it is?

<comment><USER10> We don't have the ability to manipulate that kind of ecosystem.

<comment><USER11> We do if there exist microorganisms on Earth that can survive and multiply in the atmosphere of Venus. (The upper layers aren't nearly as harsh an environment as at ground-level, though I don't know if it's survivable by anything Earth-native.)

<comment><USER12> How? If there's no water, how could there be an ecosystem of microorganisms thriving in the atmosphere?

<comment><USER11> It has water (according to wikipedia), just not very much in comparison to the Earth.

In theory, some hypothetical life form could convert sulfuric acid to water, but I have no idea if such a thing is possible or currently exists on Earth.

> Water vapor 20 ppm

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

> The concentration of water vapor (a greenhouse gas) varies significantly > from around 10 ppm by volume in the coldest portions of the atmosphere to as > much as 5% by volume in hot, humid air masses, and concentrations of other > atmospheric gases are typically quoted in terms of dry air (without water > vapor).

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Phosphine on earth is only created as a product of biological chemistry. This might be the case on Venus too, which would be a first sign of extra- terrestrial life.

<comment><USER14> It's interesting, but the conditions on Venus are of such high pressure (93 bar) and temperature is so high, that using the fact that phosphine does not appear naturally on earth (by that I mean by non biological means) doesn't mean there is a biological process. Venus is quite a different beast as environments go.

There could be a relatively simple process at high pressure/temperature that produces it in abundance (it's not a complex molecule).

My point is that until we have evidence of an actual organism, we cannot jump and say "life created this".

<comment><USER15> I think they've already thought through the high pressure/temperature situation. These are professionals and the videos seem to show that they've taken many variables into account.

<comment><USER12> From one of the scientist's personal site: "I found that, if detected on a rocky planet, phosphine can only mean life."

For one, this assertion seems too certain to be scientific. That they attempted to create phosphine using a non-biological method and were unable to do so does not appear to be proof of anything except perhaps it does indicate likelihood. However, we shouldn't be fooled into believing that nature's creativity does not often exceed our own, even our brightest minds.

Jupiter and Saturn are able to produce this molecule and while they don't fit the assertion's limitation of "rocky planet"...Venus certainly has many unique characteristics that may produce this molecule. Professionals get things wrong, too. As Feynman said, "you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest one to fool."

<comment><USER16> The point about Jupiter and Saturn is specifically addressed in the press conference. The processes that produce phosphine on gas giants rely on a very high partial pressure of hydrogen, whereas Venus has a critical shortage of hydrogen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Randall made a good comic again, covering this topic:

[https://xkcd.com/2359/](https://xkcd.com/2359/)

<comment><USER18> also an amusing one from SMBC [https://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/phosphine](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/phosphine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We might be weeks / months away from finding aliens, even if they are only microbes :) Exciting times.

</comment><comment><USER20> So much for terraforming Earths "Twin".</comment>


Cheap tricks for high-performance Rust - <AUTHOR> https://deterministic.space/high-performance-rust.html <comment><USER2> Although the article lists all the usual performance "knobs", I think it should have put more emphasis on more "hidden performance hogs", that (as the author passingly mentions) can only be discovered through profiling.

Moreover it also fails to mention that having all these enabled does have its own disadvantages:

* the build time goes through the roof; (and if you also disable incremental builds, the larger the code base, the more it takes to compile even for a single line edit;) * just by the fact that more code gets inlined, it might reduce performance due to the inability to cache enough executable code in the CPU low-level caches;

\----

As for profiling, I would say it's a much better "bet" when it comes to reducing execution time, than these build "knobs".

For example a few months ago I re-wrote a small Go tool in Rust ([https://github.com/volution/volution- md5-tools](https://github.com/volution/volution-md5-tools)) which had the simplest of jobs: read two MD5 (or similar) files, and compare which files are missing, which have changed, etc. Basically populate two maps and compare them.

Now, initially the code I used was almost a 1-to-1 rewrite using simple hash- maps, and to my surprise the Go version was twice as fast than even the Rust release version (with all of the mentioned performance tricks).

So digging through the code and profiling it here were a few surprising findings on what plagued my execution time (in order of surprise):

* deallocation -- after the Rust program has finished it proceeded to deallocate the two large hash-maps, which by itself took (if I remember correctly) at least 25% of the time; (Go didn't have this issue, as being garbage collected, the collector didn't kick in...) (the solution: use an `exit(0)` to make sure the deallocation doesn't happen;)

* `PathBuf` equality comparison -- I've used `PathBuf` as keys in my hash-map (because I wanted to canonize the paths); however the key comparison took another large percentage, which was solved by switching to `OsString`; (for some reason, comparing two `PathBuf`'s, implies splitting them each time in components, and comparing those one by one;)

* regular expression matching with groups -- apparently it's far more expensive to use regular expressions with groups for parsing, than just using them to "verify" the validity of the syntax, and then switch to another technique to actually tokenize;

So, as the saying goes "caveat emptor"... :)</comment>


Tell YC: Mjam West Coast Tour - <AUTHOR> http://mjam.at/tour/ We're a startup from Vienna, and in September 2008 we'll be touring the West Coast to

    * meet friends.
    * hang out with cool hackers.
    * attend a wedding.
    * do serious internet business.
    * eat lots of burritos and cupcakes.
    * court investors.
    * give talks.
    * show off our robots.
 If you're active in the local tech scene and passionate about what you're doing, we'd love to meet/visit you during our trip! Book quality time with us!
Please also tell us if you know people that you think we should meet! <comment><AUTHOR> btw feedback on the tour idea is very welcome! what can we do to make the most of our time in and around the valley?

also it looks like there's a news.yc bug triggered by our domain? (.mjam.at) instead of (mjam.at).

</comment><comment><USER2> Awesome stuff!

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a Hackers and Founders Meetup in Sunnyvale on Thurs Sept 18. Would love to see you guys there: <http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=30045271371></comment>


The rise of Python in computational science - <AUTHOR> http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=2062

<comment><USER2> > Can we stop promote imperative-ish languages and focus on where lambda can > take us?

nope, and why would we? For many applications, including the majority of scientific research, FP is a non-starter. You need a simple, robust, procedural language that thinks the way most of our brains are wired. There is no reason or payoff to wrapping your mind around an arcane style of programming when the software project is not going to need the benefits of that style of development.

<comment><USER3> How can you say FP was a non-starter? Just because some aging environments were designed by Fortran hackers? FP is better suited for parallelization. And where would you put R?

<comment><USER4> (disclaimer, I am a Numpy/scipy dev)

I think the language is just part of it. I would go as far as saying that from a purely "technical" POV, lisp and ML (e.g. OCAML) are superior languages to python in almost every way. Nevertheless, I think those are, at least today, not as good choices as python for scientific research, for at least two reasons.

First, I strongly believe scientific work in general needs to be more open, both publication-wise and implementation-wise. I see programming languages as a communication tool as much as an implementation tool for science, and I think python fills this very well, because it is very readable to the casual programmer. LISP is too foreign for this audience. P. Norvig mentioned about LISP relative failure for non CS scientists this at his talk for scipy09 (<http://www.archive.org/details/scipy09_day1_03-Peter_Norvig>) - and I think you can count him as a LISP fan. To quote his talk, at some point, "you have to stop fighting reality".

Secondly, there is something about the LISPs, haskell and OCAML communities which do not pave well compared to python. Those are very CS-savies, really oriented toward programming - which is fine. Different goals, different tools and all that.

Also, do not forget that in science, projects generally last much longer than in most other areas. That's one of the reason why Fortran is still so pervasive, after all. It is also maintained by different people (grad students, etc...), involving several generations in some cases. Having a relatively mainstream language is a requirements - python is already too weird in many cases...

Concerning parallelization: even if you assertion were true, that's a concern only for a tiny proportion of what people do. Speed really does not matter most of the time (but it is true that when it does, it often does it in a significant way - high energy physics, climate modellization, etc...). I would be cautious about FP being better for parallelization for scientific work, though: a lot of tasks can be solved using MPI, etc... and correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe FP brings a lot of advantages there.

Recently, a perspective from W. Stein, who started the SAGE project, was mentioned on LtU, and the article provides more insights, coming from a quite different background: <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3712>

<comment><USER5> It's interesting that in Norvig's talk you linked, while praising python, he also mentions that he is a supporter of the functional programming style for scientific work, both because it more transparently mirrors the mathematical formulation of the algorithm, and because it should make the use of massively parallel computations easier. I concede that there are currently few implementations of massively parallel, functional code (MapReduce and possibly Data Parallel Haskell come to mind) and it's true that the MPI-based Single Program, Multiple Data paradigm is dominant for now, the functional paradigm being but a very promising newcomer.

Given that, and the fact that languages such as Lisp, Haskell and OCaml are more aimed at the functional paradigm, wouldn't you agree that there is possibly a general shift going on in scientific programming in general, from Fortran/C(++) imperative style, via python, towards finally any of Haskell, Lisp and/or OCaml?

I don't really agree with your implication that the (at first) obscure way of doing things functionally makes the work less open, and that this makes it less desirable. If everyone worked in exactly the same way, communication would be easier, but there would never be any disruptive change. I think letting everyone figure out for themselves what language works best for his/her appliciation has more merits than trying to enforce a standard, be it python + numpy & scipy, or anything else. If there turns out to be one clear winner, people will gravitate to that automatically, but you shouldn't argue for harmonization for its own sake.

<comment><USER6> > and because it should make the use of massively parallel computations > easier. I concede that there are currently few implementations of massively > parallel, functional code (MapReduce and possibly Data Parallel Haskell come > to mind)

Not only are there few, their numbers are growing much more slowly than traditional C/Fortan/MPI environments. The "massive" in massively parallel is getting more and more massive every year. Running computations at full speed at these scales, 100K+ cores in multiple levels of hierarchy (same die, same board, same blade, same switch, etc) is a hugely mundane architectural problem. Not only is there no architecture besides MPI which has nearly as much effort invested in this problem, none are currently making the investment, so none have a chance to catch up within the next decade. The only way you will see FP doing massive parallelism at speeds even close to current best is if they wrap the C MPI interface, and I have yet to see any functional message-passing APIs which aren't tarted-up imperative environments. (If anyone knows any please share.) At it's core, message passing programming involves managing data, deciding where it resides and where it needs to go, which is kind of antithetical to FP.

You mention MapReduce, which I think is more of a data-center thing subtly but fundamentally different from HPC, involving less computation and more I/O. FP has a good shot there (cf. Erlang) but not much chance at cracking the HPC market.

<comment><USER5> _The only way you will see FP doing massive parallelism at speeds even close to current best is if they wrap the C MPI interface, and I have yet to see any functional message-passing APIs which aren't tarted-up imperative environments_

True, I would not be surprised if it evolved that way, but according to my (modest) knowlegde, it is possible for imperative routines to have a purely functional interface. The extreme case of course is the fact that any functional high-level code needs to be translated to assembly code to run at all, but I don't see why that boundary can't be on a higher level; As long as the developer programs functionally (and derives the benefits from that), does it matter that his code is being translated first into imperative MPI-ified C, and then assembly?

This is all provided, of course, that you can actually leverage the parallelism-related benefits of FP this way, which I guess is not known as of yet. You mentioned "functional message-passing APIs which [are] tarted-up imperative environments", care to give an example? I'm intrigued...

As for MapReduce, of course it's different from what the average HPC machine is used for, but being an embarrassingly parallel problem, it's one of the first problems where the FP approach has been shown to work. In other (eg typical HPC) applications, there's lots of work ahead in rethinking the algorithms so they can be expressed functionally, before you can even begin contemplating how to use the hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> why is python preferred above scheme or any other lisp, like clojure? Can we stop promote imperative-ish languages and focus on where lambda can take us?

<comment><USER8> Because Python mixes:

* Easy to learn (including a REPL),

* Multi-paradigm programming (doesn't shove a One True Way To Program(TM) down your throat), and, most important of all,

* Solid, battle-tested libraries for the domain (SciPy/NumPy/Sage/etc.) and an easy-to-use interface to/from C.

<comment><USER9> Also, the code is extremely readable. I can't think of another language that communicates the programmer's intent better than Python. People often write code aesthetics off, but it really matters. When your audience includes not just fellow programmers, but also potential collaborators, who may or may not know Python, as well as your adviser, who knows only FORTRAN, having a language that self-documents is helpful.

<comment><USER3> The French call it déformation professionelle, which works wonders when it comes to perceiving the weirdest stuff as perfectly normal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Effect of Disputed Warnings and Source Salience on Perceptions of Fake News - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3035384 <comment><USER2> No amount of fact checking will eliminate lies and "fake news", furthermore, some things we are presented with may, in fact, be wrong today and right tomorrow..

Teaching people how to think critically is the answer, informing people early about not believing everything you read and hear on TV or the Internet (wait, does internet get capitalized still, i forget..) Fact checking services, "official sources" and certifying things is just a way to filter information and limit available data. People need to be taught how to research and collect facts, weigh them and come up with their own answers, no amount of fact checking is going to eliminate lies.

What is the problem with this? Well, lets use the example of what Googles CEO said that "more than one answer/result to a search is a bug or flaw".. really? See the problem with in this thinking? In Googles future, anyone who is attempting to gather information is only going to get what their algorithm deems "the correct answer".. ? Do you see the problem yet? How about a news site that is 100% certified accurate by ABX fact checking service which is registered with the US Gov and regulated and swears that they validate authenticity within .010mf (that is "milli-factoids", a patent pending measurement of reliable information) I am certain you could feel confident that everything is on the up and up, right? Do you see now? All this garbage could be eliminated by educating people, however, that is not the purpose of this "fake news" narrative.

Information is power and there was a time when it was reserved to just some people, now it is everywhere and unstoppable, people cannot be as easily lied to and deceived. The mainstream news is caught almost daily. The truth will always be the truth, it doesn't take all kinds of theories, processes, flowcharts and certifications to back up, those are usually the lies.

Its pretty clear, we don't want people to think. We want to create subservient pseudo-automatons.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also found a discussion of the research: [http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/11/facebook-fake- news-...](http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/11/facebook-fake-news-fact- checks-242567)</comment>


Lonnie Johnson: The father of the Super Soaker - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37062579 <comment><USER2> Fascinating interview! I had just learned about Lonnie Johnson yesterday!

I was reading up on the Lingo programming language[1] and found out that it was invented by a Jamaican computer scientist named John H. Thompson [2], which led me to learn about Lonnie Johnson.

> "After I had settled into my new job and home, I set to work making the > parts of the plastic water gun on a little lathe and milling machine in the > basement."

It would be super interesting to find out which lathe and milling machines he had used. It sounds like they might have been Sherline machines. [4] I wonder how easy it would be today to 3D print a SuperSoaker prototype given the difficulties due to overhangs in the geometry of SuperSoaker parts (e.g. tube, barrel). Something tells me that manually fabricating it on a small lathe/mill like Lonnie Johnson did would be much faster for prototyping than 3D printing, even today ... but I could be wrong.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_\(programming_language\)) [2] [http://www.black-inventor.com/John-Thompson.asp](http://www.black- inventor.com/John-Thompson.asp) [3] [http://www.black-inventor.com/Lonnie-G- Johnson.asp](http://www.black-inventor.com/Lonnie-G-Johnson.asp) [4] [http://sherline.com/](http://sherline.com/)

<comment><USER3> Come to think of it, is there a 3D-printing process that involves a rotating lathe for some parts, when you know you need part of the object to be a tube?

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't that be a CNC lathe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a black man there is no way I can give my kid any toy that looks even remotely like a gun.

That a black guy invented this thing makes this even more ironic.

<comment><USER6> That's being a bit ridiculous . I get it that the news/cable stations plaster every cop shooting of a "black" person all over TV anytime it happens but I think it's not as bad as you're acting. We're at multi-decade lows of crime. I think everyone is hyper-sensitive with the news cycle.

I would tell my son if there was a realistic looking gun not to play around with it outside, but that's regardless of his color. I say that as a "black" man

<comment><USER7> I really wish people would stop telling black people how to feel about the way that police react to black people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always loved the supersoaker growing up. Glad to see that he didn't get screwed out of his royalties like a lot of inventors/creators did.

</comment><comment><USER9> What happened to real Super Soaker guns, like the 50, the 100, or even the 300? When I search for "super soaker" on Amazon I see only a few Nerf branded guns that look like cheap knockoffs.

<comment><USER10> Hasbro bought Larami then rebranded them as Nerf guns.

<comment><USER11> Wait they threw away the Super Soaker branding on purpose? This is madness.

<comment><USER12> They still use the branding but as "Nerf Super Soaker". Also, the guns look totally different than what Larami toys looked like.

[http://nerf.hasbro.com/en-us/toys-games/nerf:super- soaker](http://nerf.hasbro.com/en-us/toys-games/nerf:super-soaker)

<comment><USER13> I don't know if it's just my shoddy memory, or maybe it's hard to tell from the pictures, but those look a lot "cheaper" than the classic Super Soakers I remember.

<comment><USER14> You're not crazy

[http://www.isoaker.com/Info/2013/01/20130107-when-and-how- di...](http://www.isoaker.com/Info/2013/01/20130107-when-and-how-did-super- soaker-get-nerfed.html)

This is incredible... I can't find a single decent air pressure water gun on Amazon.

<comment><USER13> Shame. Oh man, the 2000 looks like the one I used to play with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I had no idea what to say to him. In the end, I said, 'Well… you know… I think we should have more of that.'"

I love it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I had no idea that the inventor of the Super Soaker designed real weapons systems as well.

In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER17> Johnson gave a talk at my department about the J-TEC. He really was quite polished and answered some tough questions we had.

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember a 60 minutes or 20/20 type story about him a while back. He was running the R&D lab. I would like to know more about the battery he developed- has that been commercialized?

<comment><USER19> [http://www.johnsonbatterytech.com/our- technology/](http://www.johnsonbatterytech.com/our-technology/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A couple prior HN discussions on him from when he's previously been in the news:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6702535](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6702535) (Super Soaker creator awarded $72.9M from Hasbro)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1785189](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1785189) (Super-Soaker inventor may have solar-powered fuel cell breakthrough)

</comment><comment><USER21> Awesome article. What a legend!

</comment><comment><USER22>
      > I went on to design the N-Strike range of Nerf dart guns...

Maybe having a guy like this design them is why they're so awesome. Those things are accurate at a surprisingly long range, in a package the size of your palm. I was quite impressed with the one I used.

</comment><comment><USER23> as a kid my favorite Super Soaker was the one that had a backpack as the reservoir. It was threaded just like a garden hose, so I would hook the gun up to the hose instead.

</comment><comment><USER24> This guy is my new hero.</comment>


IE Blows Away Rivals in Browser Security - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/213589/ie_blows_away_rivals_in_browser_security.html

<comment><USER2> The test was a measure of how well the browser alerts users to the danger of DOWNLOADED EXECUTABLES, based on "reputation." A neat idea, but not _NOT_ a measure of overall browser security.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see Microsoft just increased their ad budget for PCWorld.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's the trolliest headline I've read on a tech site in a while.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bullshit: [http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2010/12/14/tests-show- that-i...](http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2010/12/14/tests-show-that- internet-explorer-is-the-safest-browser-against-malware-wait-what/)

<comment><USER2> The link points out that the tests were run against rather dated versions of competing browsers.

<comment><AUTHOR> It justs points out the version of Chrome used was 6 instead of Chrome 8. It doesn't say they used dated version of FF or Safari. Also, Chrome 6 is handily beaten by IE8 and chrome 6 was in use till recently</comment></comment></comment>


Advice for a new CS grad - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone!
I would like to ask your advice. I am not a native speaker so I apologize for my mistakes.I hope you have time to read and reply.
For general case: - who should work for big tech companies(facebook,google,amazon etc)? - who should go after his ideas as an entrepreneur? - who should go for masters degree?
For my case :
I will graduate in June and I am not sure what to do next. Here are my  options :
- apply for big tech companies : I will have an interview with google on July but I tried my luck with others(Microsoft, Google, Spotify) and though I made it to final levels for some, I could not make it. I am not sure I am the right fit for these companies. I worked on interviews so much and I feel tired and lost my faith. During one  interview,a guy from Facebook told me that "if you were an actor you would come to Holywood, as a coder you should come to Silicon Valley" what do you think?
- Go after my ideas : like everyone, I have some ideas and a plus I have skills to build them. But in Turkey, it is really hard to get funding if you are not doing e-commerce. On the other hand I need to earn money.
- begin to masters degree in computer science: I am interested in NLP and there is a lot to do with Turkish.
thanks for reading, hope you have something to say! <comment><USER2> Go after the problems you're interested in working on (like NLP). Masters degree or not, having something interesting to show beyond a degree will not only let you develop your skill set in an area that fascinates you, it will bring you more job opportunities in the long run.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest joining an early stage startup. They pay really good money as well as give you equity making it a sweet deal. Some that are funded have sweet perks as well. Sounds like that will give you some experience to eventually work on your own idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> in Turkey startup culture is a little bit different(in terms of giving equity, perks and opportunities etc). But I understand what you meant. thanks a lot!

<comment><USER3> Move to to San Francisco. Startups are killing each other to find engineers. No joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> worth a shot,that will be my last move.

<comment><USER4> Couple of points:

1\. Not sure what your citizenship status is but if you are not a US citizen/Permanent Resident, it becomes rather difficult for you to get a job here (especially at an early-stage startup where sponsoring your employment visa might be expensive).

2\. I don't know how much you are into the whole NLP thing. However, if that is something you want to explore in depth (maybe work for a couple of years figuring out what you want to do in that etc), it might be better to target a late stage startup or a big co. The reason being that at many places in the early stage, things are in a bit of flux and machine learning/NLP is regarded at best as pixie dust that is going to magically solve problems and at worst as something that gives extra jazz to an application that doesn't really need any ML/NLP. Obviously there are some incredible early stage startups that are doing amazing work in the field: E.g. prismatic so there are exceptions to this rule too :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot! obviously there is a lot to learn about Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you may need to seek advice from your colleagues in Turkey more than Hacker News.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! already doing that. but I need different point of views,too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> just found this and it was really helpful : [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a- pro...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Even though I am sick and tired of the corporate culture, working on my side projects and hopeful of my own to-be startup soon, I highly recommend you go and work for one of the big companies for first 2-3 years. It will teach you a lot of things and most importantly, show you that you gotta do your own thing and not work for the man for the rest of your life. Unless of course, you have an entrepreneurial itch that you are already dying to scratch.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot! what are the cons of corporate culture when you consider your experience?

<comment><USER6> Corporate culture likes: access to lot of smart people, big teams, plenty to learn about large businesses, gives you perspective on many types of business functions, culture etc, you get to hear about _every_ possible tool/software in the world Corporate culture dislikes: too much red tape, takes forever to get something done including access to a particular software/tool, not much choice of working preference, shitty cubes (mostly), most ppl are there just to do their job and not many care about innovations or value add, too many crappy legacy software which no one wants to change. plenty more to add....

<comment><AUTHOR> who cares about innovations in corporates?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Comfort with meaninglessness the key to good programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/12/comfort-with-meaning.html

<comment><USER2> Wrong title is wrong! The good programmers take a guess at the laws governing what's going on, and apply that law consistently. They are capable of seeing laws apart from ordinary, everyday situations. They see _more_ meaning.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know whats all the fuss about programming being so "special".Everything is hard - music is hard, carpentry is hard, poetry is hard, designing a effiecient vacuum cleaner is hard , but wonder why only we programmers make so much noise all the time

<comment><USER4> If a musician has her instrument on hand, she can make music, every single time. Musicians are really quite reliable. Their improvisations and crowd- pleasers won't all be as good as the best works of Mozart, or Monk, or even Billy Joel, but chances are that the crowd will be at least moderately pleased. Cover bands do not routinely run 300% over budget and six months late, and if they do you can be confident that the fault was entirely theirs -- it's not that the gig, which seemed simple on the surface, turned out to be completely intractable.

A skilled carpenter or vacuum-cleaner engineer might not produce a masterpiece every time. But the result will probably be a house that doesn't fall down, or a thing that picks up _some_ dust for at least a _little_ while. Vacuum cleaners are a well-understood technology, and while carpentry projects do occasionally go nonlinear (if you change the specs mid-project, or a freak windstorm blows up, or they discover a natural spring while digging your basement, or... well, just go read _Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House_ , one of the greatest engineering books of all time ;) they are nonetheless relatively predictable, and the more experienced the carpenter the fewer surprises you can expect.

Now go read _Dreaming in Code_ , which shows that even if you are _Mitch "I Built Lotus" Kapor_ and you hire _Andy "Mac OS 1.0" Hertzfeld_ your software project may fly straight into a wall: You may blow the schedule by a factor of five, and the budget by a factor of ten, and _still_ not ship anything. [1] It has happened. People who write books about corporate IT throw around numbers like _fifty percent_ when discussing the odds that a given software project will succeed. And the reason why programmers don't stop talking about this is that it is vitally important that our clients understand the risk _in advance_! Which they often don't. Nothing in their everyday experience with plumbers, dentists, and caterers has prepared them for it.

\---

[1] Note: These numbers are not the ones from _Dreaming in Code_. I made them up. ;) I actually have yet to finish _Dreaming in Code_. It induces painful flashbacks.

<comment><USER5> You ever heard of a one-hit wonder? There countless of them. There are also numerous examples of extremely popular bands releasing an album that is panned by critics, fans, or both (read: Metallica). I agree with your parent post, every discipline involving art and talent is complex and difficult if you're interested in it and delve deep enough into it. It's just that programming gets a lot of attention on the Internet, especially Hacker News, but that's no surprise, is it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think "meaninglessness" is the right word for this. It smacks of journalistic spin. I wonder what a better word would be... maybe just "abstraction"?

<comment><USER7> "Meaninglessness" is the exact wrong word for this.

The test shows that those who consistently apply the same meaning to the types of questions they are presented with end up being the best programmers.

<comment><USER8> I've noticed this kind of mindset helps with debugging. I use it to eliminate possibilities and to also keep going. The latter is especially important when I think I've already tried all possibilities. It's a constant check that keeps me from thinking it's a problem on the computer's end, instead of a problem on my end. I can think of a number of times when I've been able to solve the bug precisely because I kept the right mindset.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I had a dime for every time a co-worker said it was a problem with the compiler, I would have retired years ago...

<comment><USER9> The problem with the compiler is that it implements a language whose rules, applied to the code I just wrote, yield a bug. That this language is consistent with the spec makes it no less a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The researchers posit that the students who start by applying rules consistently across problems learn programming better than those who don't. For me, this raises some questions:

1) Can this mindset be taught?

2) Can this mindset be taught to anyone?

3) Can this mindset be taught more easily to the young than the old?

4) Is this mindset a disadvantage in some areas? E.g. does it hurt you if you're a psychologist or a novelist?

I'd love to see some research to answer those questions.

<comment><USER11> _4) Is this mindset a disadvantage in some areas? E.g. does it hurt you if you're a psychologist or a novelist?_

It depends on what kind of novelist you want to be, I think. A good illustration of the differences comes from Brandon Sanderson in his essay on "hard" versus "soft" magic. Hard systems give the reader the satisfaction of solving puzzles and difficulties along with the characters. Soft systems preserve a feeling of mystery and wonder. Both can make for good writing.

On the one end you have Tolkien, and on the other, Asimov.

[http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/40/Sandersons- First-...](http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/40/Sandersons-First-Law)

<comment><USER11> As I think about this novelist mindset connection once more, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with LE Modesitt who is the author of some of my favorite 'Hard' fantasy novels. He has an extremely large base of readers who are engineers. They really love the logic and problem-solving he introduces in his magic system. Interestingly, another large lobe of his fanbase is female readers looking for intelligent romantic fiction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps this "deep comfort with meaninglessness" explains why -- anecdotally at least, in my experience -- there seem to be higher levels of atheism among programmers than among the general populace.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a grad student, I was a TA for an intro Java class, and I remember the students who just didn't get it. It is hard to say why they failed. Most of the worst students fell behind quickly, and never really had a chance to catch up. It would have been interesting if I had had more of a chance to try and figure out where they were stuck and help them out, but I think most of them gave up trying to understand the basics once they realized how far behind they were and just spent their time copying off other students to get a passing grade (many of them were later caught).

As far as the article goes, it says that no other successful predictors have been found for programming aptitude, but when I looked at one of the references cited, it didn't even include HS GPA or SAT scores. I would be surprised if there was no correlation there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool- however

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=215536> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97515>

<comment><USER13> It seems this is roughly the same article as the one referred to in the link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really, from what anecdotal evidence I've seen, the ability to deal with things abstractly is crucial. Moreover, it has seemed to me that the ability to maintain multiple abstractions and switch between them is also crucial. Note that this isn't "inconsistency" (to borrow the article's terminology), but rather an awareness of context.

This is precisely why I find that the hardest programming language to learn is your second. To learn the first, you just memorize some arbitrary rules. To learn the second, you must develop abstractions for both, and realize how they differ.

</comment><comment><USER16> "the machine will blindly follow its meaningless rules and come to some meaningless conclusion"

I think that would have been better worded to read "mindlessness".

</comment><comment><USER17> This is interesting, but I strongly recommend reading Alan Kay's commentary on the study:

<http://secretgeek.net/camel_kay.asp>

In addition to his work on Smalltalk and OOP, Kay spent a major portion of his career on the problem of how to teach students to program.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow.. Did the first comment actually say 20 20?</comment>


Recovering Evidence from SSD Drives in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://articles.forensicfocus.com/2014/09/23/recovering-evidence-from-ssd-drives-in-2014-understanding-trim-garbage-collection-and-exclusions/ <comment><USER2> The paragraph about reading from flash chips directly reminded me of [http://www.flash-extractor.com/](http://www.flash-extractor.com/) which is mostly for USB drives, but claims to work on some SSDs too. The forums there are full of posts with rather cryptic terminology about the on-chip layouts used by various controllers.

...and is it just me or do the majority of information and sites on data recovery seem to be from Russia?

<comment><USER3> The Americans who do this most likely work for "the government" and don't blog as much.

<comment><USER4> Actually there are americans working on digital forensics that are open about their work. Check forensicswiki, Simson Garfinkel, Golden Richard III, and the DFRWS community in general.

Note: data recovery is usually considered a subset of digital forensics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if there is an opportunity for the sellers of these SSDs to use privacy as a USP. "With this SSD, once you delete data it is gone and not even the NSA can find it again"

<comment><USER6> That's basically the pitch of data-at-rest encryption that the entire storage industry is working on in some form.</comment></comment>


New 10,000 Acre Urban Nature District for Dallas Larger Than Central Park - <AUTHOR> http://weburbanist.com/2016/12/17/trinity-river-park-huge-new-10000-acre-urban-nature-district-for-dallas/ <comment><USER2> Ambitious, glad to see this in Dallas. Urban parks are great, all cities should have them.

The best are usually those left to be in their natural state, Phoenix South Mountains, Foothills in Los Altos, and Sanitas and the Flatirons in Boulder are good examples. Takes a lot of foresight to leave a large swath of land undeveloped though.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is fantastic! I'm looking forward to following this projects progress. I lived in Dallas for a while and loved the way the city integrates green space into the urban landscape. I'm not surprised that Dallas would be the city to take on a project of this scope.</comment>


State of the climate: Heat across Earth's surface and oceans mark early 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-heat-across-earths-surface-and-oceans-mark-early-2019 <comment><USER2> Last weekend I overhead two older gentlemen talking about climate change. They were both agreeing with each other that it's all 'cyclical' and that clearly there are businesses that stand to benefit from climate change research. This is in Canada btw.

I don't know how you convince these people. Luckily, they're on their way out, but they still represent a large portion of the voting population for at least the next decade. Do we need more intense floods and forest fires every single year until they finally admit that maybe there's something to this climate thing?

<comment><USER3> Here's a snarky reply, because I've laughed out loud upon reading your _" they're on their way out"_ and the _" we need stronger policies that cannot be swayed by public opinion"_ posted in one of responses.

 _> how you convince these people._

Four easy steps:

\- show them the hockey stick graphs from models,

\- show them the graphs from actual measurements,

\- point out 2019 is colder than 2016, and probably than 2017, as per the article,

\- point out the graph looks pretty close to a cluster of sine waves when watched at any scale

Congratulations, now they are _convinced_ for life. You can celebrate that with them by watching the 2006 _An Inconvenient Truth_ for all the beautiful animations.

Snark aside, the gist is: people who have been following news for some two decades or more don't generally get alarmed that easily.

<comment><USER4> > \- point out the graph looks pretty close to a cluster of sine waves when > watched at any scale

Is this some kind of backhanded admission that you will never admit global warming ever, whatever happens to the global temperature? Any graph can be arbitrarily closely approximated by a series of sine waves, that's the basic idea of Fourier Transformation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Ocean heat content (OHC) set a new record in early 2019

> In many ways, OHC represents a much better measure of climate change than > global average surface temperatures. It is where most of the extra heat ends > up and is much less variable on a year-to-year basis than surface > temperatures. Most years set a new record for OHC and 2019 has been no > exception so far, with the first three months showing the warmest OHC since > records began.

> Changes in the amount or rate of warming are much easier to detect in the > OHC record than on the surface. For example, OHC shows little evidence of > the slowdown in warming in the mid-2000s, seen in surface temperature > records.

<comment><USER5> Have you seen recent claims that scientists can detect temperature changes of as little as 1/1000th of a degree in the deep ocean, occurring over a period of several decades? Are you gullible enough to believe such claims? I'm not.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Have you seen recent claims

No, I haven't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great. Well, if we aren't going to restrict CO2 and methane emissions any, can we at least agree to legalise all drugs for the going away party.

edit - I am only half joking. The war on drugs is not noted for its logical underpinnings, but if it has any, they are largely predicated on worrying about future consequences. If our official political stance is going to be 'yolo, fuck the future consequences', we may as well be consistent.</comment>


I haven't had a web app impress me like this in a long time - <AUTHOR> http://www.spokeo.com/

<comment><USER2> Another dumb app asking users for their email usernames and passwords. Wrong! No, it's not OK to tech users to be stupid, stop doing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah... it's dumb, but it's pretty incredibly powerful, in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For me the opportunity is for an app that would allow a small group (e.g. of founders) to create an integrated view of their contacts: answer the question who knows someone at X? But I agree with gnaritas that turning over the keys to your on-line identity was too big a step for me. Which argues, I guess for a distributed model that could share results.

</comment><comment><USER4> Powerful? Impress? Sorry - didn't impress me</comment>


Is Archive.is Not Working? - <AUTHOR> http://archive.is/ <comment><AUTHOR> The site is up, but it seems archiving URLs isn't working.

I get stuck with a message saying it's in a queue.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nevermind, it seems to be working again.</comment>


The risk of systemic healthcare failure due to COVID19 – let's talk math - <AUTHOR> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html?t=2 <comment><USER2> The USA has indeed a systemic healthcare problem. Of their own making.

"I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/06/us- coronavirus...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/06/us-coronavirus- death-toll-washington-state)

</comment><comment><USER3> Will they resist the path of a monstrous gouging of the American people, thus exposing them for what they are.....I suspect not - let the gouge begin...</comment>