Microsoft takes a strong stance against reported end to DACA - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/31/16236738/microsoft-satya-nadella-daca <comment><USER2> As a close friend of one of the 27 Microsoft FTE employees living with DACA status and knowing their story, it's utterly maddening and counterproductive that Trump's administration would end DACA for the sake of his base. But then, he's the president who pardoned Arpaio and banned transgender people from the services, so it's almost an inevitability he'll get rid of DACA at this point. Anything to "trigger" those liberals, eh?

It's an established principle that we don't punish children for the mistakes of their parents - that's essentially the basis for DACA.

The biggest cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face part here is that these 27 employees are easily six-figure earners (I know my friend is...) - that's at least $25,000/yr in federal tax revenue (multiplied by 27 for $675,000/yr!) Trump's administration is giving up, sacrificed to the Republican myth of "come here legally!" when in many cases it's outright impossible (thank you, H-1B visa caps).

I'm surprised the Reganite part of the GOP isn't advancing a "buy your way into citizenship" policy: unauthorized immigrants who still made successes of their lives can make up for their earlier immigration impropriety by paying a "tax" in exchange for the safety of citizenship[0]. Why would anyone be opposed to that unless they were racist and/or xenophobic?

[0] I know there exist Green Card-for-investment programs and visas with a similar basis, but they require at least $500,000 at-hand immediately, which is inappropriate for someone who is an employee, not an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER3> Children should not be punished for crimes of parents but they should also not benefit from them. As legal immigrant that went through tons of trouble to get my green card after 8 years I feel insulted when people praise illegal immigrants. If you want open borders then change the law, until then its illegal. To me this is similar to parents robbing a bank and giving children 100K and government is saying "oh, don't punish children for parent's crimes so go ahead and keep those 100K, it's ok". They should be deported and blame their parents for it, not the government.

<comment><USER2> > I feel insulted when people praise illegal immigrants

Look carefully at what is being "praised". Few are praising their decision to become illegal immigrants, instead they're praising their children's academic and developmental accomplishments in the face of adversity (anxiety about being deported, likely a poor socioeconomic background, et cetera).

I'm a green-card holder myself, and I do not share your anti-illegal-immigrant stance. I believe in fully open borders and complete freedom of movement of goods, labor and people: Schengen is testament to this. I got my EB3 green- card _literally_ because I have a piece of paper (my BSc degree certificate) - but I know many people who have a greater work-ethic and intelligence than myself who decided that university wasn't for them, or they were unable to go to university for other reasons, and that means they're automatically ineligible for the same privilege I had. While EBx green-cards are largely meritorious they still exclude many "worthy" people.

I hate the "I worked hard to immigrate" argument because I believe the opposite is true: provided you meet the preconditions prior to even applying for the visa you're almost guaranteed a shoe-in: in my case I already had my degree, all of my immigration paperwork was handled by my employer and corporate sponsor, all I had to do was accept a job offer, do my job for 3 years, and wait. No adversity or "hard work" here. My contemporaries from India and China have a minimum 10 year wait for their EBx green-cards, largely for political reasons - clearly they will have to "work harder" for longer than me for the same privilege, how is that fair? Other LPR categories require less hard-work to obtain: marriage and family-based green-cards, or investment-based (literally: buy a green-card for $500k). I'm curious, what "hard work" did you perform that permits you to put yourself on a pedestal above those doing thankless, underpaid, back-breaking agricultural labor?

> To me this is similar to parents robbing a bank and giving children 100K and > government is saying "oh, don't punish children for parent's crimes so go > ahead and keep those 100K, it's ok". They should be deported and blame their > parents for it, not the government.

I'll concede that your analogy is valid - if extreme in its implication. If you agree that copyright infringement isn't theft, then I don't believe illegal immigrants are necessarily "stealing" anything from their new country - they're competing in the open, free market for their labor. There's a whole other debate to be had about what's involved there that I won't get into.

But in short: there are masses of people, willing to undergo hash conditions, to work in the USA - it would be a massive economic mistake not to capitalize on that. It's why Germany was so keen to take in many refugees from the Middle East: you have workforce-aged people entering the country for free: Germany didn't have to pay for their education (including elementary/Primary education) or prior health - allowing them to be employed immediately (subject to the same labor and wage conditions as indigenous workers) will only boost the economy - even if they're "unskilled" workers. If they're willing to trek across Europe, they're willing to go to a trade-school or get certification in the native language.

I also take exception to your conclusion that deportation should be the only and immediate consequence of immigrating illegally. It's dogmatic and reeks of "zero-tolerance" policies this usually thoughtful, reasoned and nuanced community strongly oppose. Nowhere did I say that illegal immigration should somehow go "unpunished" \- hence my suggestion for a retroactive taxation-to- citizenship as one possible solution to the problem. Your proposal is analogous to advocating that anyone who commits assault should be shot dead by their victim - while it is a victim's right in Stand-your-ground Law states when applied broadly it's utterly thoughtless; your school of thought places arbitrary nationstate borders above our shared humanity.</comment></comment></comment>


Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/paip.html <comment><USER2> Norvig himself instead recommends people read AI: A Modern Approach (<http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/>), though PAIP is supposed to be rather good as a Common Lisp book.

<comment><USER3> I much prefer PAIP. For example, AIAMA does not seem to have anything approaching the PAIP chapters on how to optimize code. Some of which is specific to Common Lisp, but much of which is applicable to any programming language.

Anyone have a differing opinion?

EDIT: er, besides the author himself, I mean.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup founder - should I default on my mortgage? - <AUTHOR> I wanted to get advice from fellow HN founders who may have faced a similar situation.
Background... I am the co-founder of a profitable but young tech startup (<3 years).  My wife and I own a home currently with a 6+% 30 yr fixed rate mortgage.  We've had this rate for 6 years and have never been late on a single monthly payment.  But since rates are much lower, we want to refinance.  Based on the math with current rates, refinancing to a 7/1 arm will knock our monthly payment down by 40% (big savings).
When the startup was making nothing, I opportunistically called our mortage provider (Wells Fargo) to see if I qualified for any of the gov't relief programs for mortgages, and I was told I had too many assets to qualify.  I was not distressed enough I guess.  This wasn't surprising.
Fast forward to this week... I went back to Wells Fargo since I am now paying myself a salary and coupled with my wife, our income is good.  The Wells Fargo team asked if I was an owner of the company after reviewing our personal taxes, and then asked for the company returns in addition to all the personal financial details (bank accounts, paystubs, 401ks, tax docs, etc).
And the verdict was... Our income (meaning my income since my wife works at big co) is not enough or stable enough to qualify for a re-finance.
The 'perverted' part of this whole equation is that if my mortage payment fell by 40%, I'd think that would make my wife and me much better credit risks to Wells Fargo.  But oh well, I was too credit-worthy to qualify for distressed programs and not credit-worthy enough for a refinance.
But enough woe is me...My current debate/questions are:
- Should I call Wells Fargo and tell them that I'm going to stop paying my mortgage. Basically engage them in a game of chicken. - Try to goto banks with looser standards? - Or do something else altogether?
Anyone who has been in or seen a similar mortgage dilemma who can share some wisdom?  Or if you work in the mortage industry and know how to beat the man, pls share that as well :)
I'm counting you on HN.  And of course, this ain't my real HN account. <comment><USER2> Here's what really happened: Wells Fargo checked out your income and determined that you'd likely keep paying them 6+% if they said no.

Yes you should check out lots of other banks. After all, you're paying them nothing right now, so you're worth more than zero if they sign you up as a customer. You should check out a mortgage broker, who could give mucho assistance.

If that path fails, you should actually stop paying your mortgage, not just tell them. After it's late, tell them there will be no more payments unless you can refinance at a lower rate. Don't do it unless you're serious about walking away. If you do walk away you'll save a boatload of money of course, and the worst hit to your credit rating will last 3 years tops. But you shouldn't need credit during that time, due to the savings. You'll be mortgage-free rent-free for at least a year, or two if you take steps to drag it out. Let Wells Fargo know that you know that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx. This is the "ballsiest" suggestion of all of these so after I expend other options, I will def explore this.

I'm praying it doesn't come to that. Thx.

<comment><USER3> You could also sell your house. If you skip a payment or two, the bank will probably start begging you to do a shortsale. In which case you rent for a year or two to fix your credit, and then buy another place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try a mortgage broker who specializes in refinancing, not a bank.

There's no reason whatsoever to stick with Wells Fargo for the refinance, because they'll probably still charge you closing costs, appraisal fees, etc.

I have no idea if defaulting on your mortgage will get you distressed mortage rates, but it will most likely make getting a refi or another mortgage a lot more complicated.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me that the last thing you want to do is to torpedo your credit rating.

I think Mz has the right idea. If Wells Fargo doesn't want your business, find someone who does.

You could also try a mortgage broker.

</comment><comment><USER6> Make some calls. When I refinanced a house many years ago, only one bank in town had terms that worked for our situation. You only need one.

</comment><comment><USER7> Often this is not a good idea, but depending upon family circumstances, if you can't get past the "too unstable" portion of lenders' analyses, you might want to consider whether you or your wife have well-off family who might be willing to co-sign (or even take over the property and issue their own loan to you).

An area fraught with emotional (et al.) landmines. But just if it might, contrary to prevailing wisdom, really fit your circumstances.

However, the circumstances would indeed have to be somewhat exceptional. Residential real estate is not a good place for someone senior to be devoting a significant portion of their assets -- or risk exposure.

P.S. I'm no financial guru, but I would _really_ hesitate to take an ARM, at this time. You can go down two or more points while staying with a fixed-rate product.

Also, I agree that "chicken" is not a good idea. Especially at a place like WF, I think you're basically fighting an algorithm. As they say, good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER8> I work in the mortgage industry (short sales), and from my experience you can't deal with banks as if you're dealing with rational people. You're dealing with a computer system that spits out verdicts based on an algorithm. Threatening to not pay your mortgage to someone in the call center in India will get you nowhere..

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. So far, the midwestern call center folks I've been dealing with have been nice but utterly useless so your point is spot on. Thx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wells Fargo probably doesn't actually own your current loan, but are being paid by Fannie Mae to service it. I know Bank of America unloaded my loan to Fannie Mae a week after they gave it to me.

If that is true, their negative answer to you is probably not predicated on the interest income stream you are giving them now, since they are receiving only some of that.

As for withholding payment, here is what I believe.

If we assume that Wells Fargo does actually hold your loan, and you stop making payments, the bank has two choices. Foreclose or negotiate. If the value of your house is less than what is currently owed on it, it makes sense for them to negotiate. This is the situation that has allowed this "stop making payments" meme to spread. However, if the value of your house is more than what you owe, and after 6 years, I suspect it is, than I believe they'll foreclose and flip the house.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to you folks for the responses/suggestions. I think I was pretty ticked at Wells Fargo for what seemed like a non-sensical result. But was also "cutting off my nose to spite my face" with my idea to play chicken with them.

Thanks for talking me off the ledge :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Do NOT engage them in a game of chicken. Trust me, it's not worth ruining your credit over.

DO speak to a local credit union(s) to see if they can qualify you for a better rate.

In my experience, dealing locally has been more beneficial than Wells, etc.

Good luck!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Credit unions. Hadn't even thought of them as I thought you had to be a "member" or something. But that's prob just ignorance on my part. Thanks much for putting me on to this as an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Things have changed, with Harp 2.0. Harp was the government program to allow underwater homeowners with good credit and no late payments refinance. It ended up being a flop because Bank's dragged their feet. Enter Harp 2.0, which started Fall of last year, but had a good number of bank's participating since April of this year.

Go google Harp 2.0, and then go ask your bank about it. And then go talk to other banks.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really really helpful. Thanks a ton.

<comment><USER11> Isn't it though? Glad I could help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Try other banks for the refi. Also, see this website <http://danielamerman.com/> regarding the value of a 30yr fixed mortgage in today's environment. The govt is broke and when (not if) inflation hits you will pay back that debt for pennys on the dollar (assuming you can afford to continue to make the payments, even at 6%). Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER13> Get in contact with a mortgage broker and have them shop you around. If they can't find a bank for you, no one can.

They can be shifty guys, but unlike in most instances they usually lie to the bank and not to you.</comment>


What would you pay a recurring subscription for? - <AUTHOR> Edit: To clarify, I'm mostly interested in subscriptions to services (of any kind) that can be provided by a small team or one person. <comment><USER2> A family member bought me a gift subscription to Raw Spice Bar. My wife and I very much enjoy cooking, so this was a nice gift. We get a new set of spices every month.

But at the lowest price, it's $84 a year, only a few dollars less than Amazon Prime. There is no way I would buy that for myself. At $12 for an entire year of spices, I might do it.

I would buy a subscription to a service that lets me watch movies in my home on the same day as their theatrical release.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would pay a recurring subscription for a service that translates designs into html/css.

doesn't matter to me how you do it. doesn't have to be cheap. it just has to be able to do 15-30 pages a month. with a turnaround time of about a day or less.

there are multiple ways to do this. you can either write good software or you could hire a bunch of filipinos.

id much rather pay for this than manage the employees myself.

you can easily deliver that as one person. you start out doing it yourself and as you generate more business, you hire people to do it for you. and then you scale up whichever way you feel like.

<comment><USER4> Have you checked out something like [https://psd2html.com](https://psd2html.com)

<comment><USER3> sure, but it requires an awful lot of talking.

It should be possible to convert a design into html/css completely hands-off. you dont need me to tell you that its pixel perfect. my eyes arent better than yours. its either pixel perfect or its not.

theres no point in using these services because they generate massive unnecessary overhead. its easier to find someone on upwork than it is to work with these services, because they are obnoxiously subservient and try to "overdeliver" by sucking away my time.

such a service should work like this: 1\. i have a design 2\. i upload the design 3\. i get a link to the finished assets

no talking, no meetings, no schedules. just do the work. send confirmation emails if you have to. but dont ask me to hold your hand while doing something this simple.

<comment><USER5> @wayn3 - do you mind sharing: are you a product company or an agency?

How do the finished html+css files fit into your workflow?

\- just courious ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excerpt repository

Not sure if this fits, but for a while I've been wanting there to be a site for written excerpts and their annotations, if any.

It would be for interesting non-fiction articles, books and for research papers, but not a TL;DR service, rather it'd pull out excerpts that the crowd has marked (including the reader's annotations) as thought-provoking or key to understanding a certain concept.

HNers sometimes do something similar when they copy/paste a key line in an article posted here and share it in the comments. I want it as a service.

___

News repository

Another thing I was thinking about today is how so many articles on so many different subjects get published per day yet they seem to just disappear into the ether after a few days. For example, where are the interesting articles about _____ from the first half of 2007? Again, I'm not sure if this could be a subscription service, but it'd be nice to be able to access 10 such articles per month and have them sent to my Kindle.

By the way, I checked Google News and did a search for a random topic from 10 years ago and it gave me a fair number of results from one major newspaper and one of its affiliates, plus one or other two random sources here and there. I'd bet that if I were sent back 10 years and took note of everything that came out about said subject, I'd come away with a lot more content, and from way more sources.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would pay for a monthly subscription for any teenager's monthly mailed "box" service. I currently subscribe to over 3 dozen such services. It's sort of an addiction...

Anyway, if you are a young entrepreneur building a site that offers a monthly subscription for something, I will almost certainly be interested.

Please PM me when you product is done. I would love to be your first subscriber!

</comment><comment><USER8> A collection of decently written sci-fi short stories every three or four months as a pdf/epub file. Think something like what Humble[0] puts out every couple of weeks.

[0][https://www.humblebundle.com/books](https://www.humblebundle.com/books)

<comment><USER9> How about this: [http://www.analogsf.com/store/](http://www.analogsf.com/store/)

<comment><USER8> This looks pretty good I might have to give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since you are specifically looking at services that can be provided by a small team or 1 person, I'm going to answer with services that I pay for that are managed by one person/small team than adding some things that I would like. Hopefully, this will help you get a subscription business idea you want to offer.

Personal training - I pay a monthly fee to my coach. I would certainly pay a monthly fee for other services such as cleaning, laundry, cooking if I could afford it.

Headspace app - Mindfulness course that costs between €6 and €10. I am just trying it out for a few days as I am curious about the field of mindfulness. I could see other types of courses delivered in the same way. I am not sure of the size of the team, but I imagine it is small.

City Bike scheme - I pay about €30 euro a year to use my local city bikes. It is a public bike sharing system. They have 1000s of bike that you can take between different bike stops.

Grammarly - Excellent app that corrects everything I write in my browser and my blog posts.

Lastpass - a service that has all my passwords.

GoCar Car Sharing service - Like Zipcar. It's why I have not bought a car.

GoRails - Tutorials on different aspect of Rails

Egghead - Not paying at the moment but will probably start again soon.

Sidekiq - A ruby gem I have used on many projects. Great business model. Run by one man ([https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq))

Some I don't pay for but consider valuable.

Distrokid - I am urging my friend, who is creating an album, to give this a shot ([https://news.distrokid.com/what-ive-been-up-to-for-the- past-...](https://news.distrokid.com/what-ive-been-up-to-for-the-past-4-years- ef06ab9c5cd6#.fe888isg9)). I would use this service if I were making an album. I have been thinking of writing a book, and something that would distribute my book across all the different digital channels would be perfect for indie authors.

Some other subscriptions that I would pay for include,

Supplements such as Creatine, Protein, etc. . . Based on my macros or sport

Coffee but that is done to death already.

If I had a child, I would pay a subscription for different educational toys each month geared towards a certain topic (such as reading)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the GoRails shoutout! <3

<comment><USER10> No problem. Great site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would pay a recurring subscription for something that was worth more (to me) than I paid for it.

Edit: After your edit: I would pay a recurring subscription for something that sent me seeds for my garden each season, with some basic instructions and a chart for when to plant & harvest, what to plant together, etc.

Presumably I would have some minor say-so in what kind of plants I was getting, (Root crops, fruits, veggies, sprawling, herbs, etc), but generally I want you to decide what I'm getting and when I should be ready to plant it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Examples?

<comment><USER12> I edited in an example, perhaps after you made this comment.

<comment><USER13> i believe it already exists:

get a variety of seeds monthly at [https://www.growjourney.com/](https://www.growjourney.com/)

ps: i'm not affiliated with them in any way shape or form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would pay a recurring subscription for an only audio Youtube app. This app should:

\- Let me create playlists.

\- Keep track of the audio progress.

\- Work offline.

There is so much valuable content in Youtube that I would like to consume but that I don't make the time to actually sit down and watch the video. The video component of this content is irrelevant to me and being able to listen to the audio on the go would be really neat.

<comment><USER15> ... Get out your wallet (Plus it comes with YouTube Red that lets you skip ads)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.youtube.music&hl=en)

(Apparently it is free to use, thought it required a YouTube Red subscription)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Little more context? Physical goods? Digital goods?

Not a whole lot you can't pay a recurring subscription for now a days. Vitamins, music, movies, cloud hosting, coffee - hell, I'd consider my mortgage and car lease to be recurring subscriptions - I pay a monthly fee; I get somewhere to live / car to drive.

<comment><USER17> Well, you can't just cancel your mortgage or lease and go on with your life :). You're under a contractual obligation. Maybe leases you can break, but with a high fee / penalty attached.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hmmm...

* Exterior vehicle wash / detail

* Residential linen service that gives you new sheets, duvets, drapes within a catalog of styles for variety and also keeping things clean/dust-free

Will update as I think of more

</comment><comment><USER19> Coffee. Currently do it on a 2 week schedule. However, would appreciate a rush feature for when my stash gets low

</comment><comment><USER20> City Bike Equinox</comment>


Reddit in NYTimes - Strangers on the Web Exchanging Presents - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/strangers-on-the-web-exchanging-presents/

<comment><USER2> I participated in a reddit secret santa exchange two years ago. I was flat broke, so I took my creativity and poured it into a series of envelopes. I made a collage of things my giftee liked, I took photos of things that were of his interest and made posters of them, I donated a small amount of money to a charity he was currently volunteering for (and sent him a screenshot of the donation receipt), and I wrote and had my band perform a song about him.

His review of my gift was "He took some pictures, played a song, and claims he donated some money. Better luck next year, I guess."</comment>


What do we know about Zeta Reticuli? - <AUTHOR> http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/the-truth-about-zeta-reticuli.html <comment><USER2> Hugged: [http://web.archive.org/web/20181203011649/http://www.armaghp...](http://web.archive.org/web/20181203011649/http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/the- truth-about-zeta-reticuli.html)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that, I thought it might be being censored by the Reticulans.

<comment><USER4> That would be reticulous.</comment></comment></comment>


Anyone interested in joining a team of Stanford students to try to get a Lightspeed VP Summer Grant?  - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=5632 <comment><USER2> Isn't the LightspeedVP Summer Grant's application deadline on March 23rd? There's not a lot of time left to find a team mate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well I'd assume this would be very dependent on what you're planning to work on.</comment>


Bootstrapped – A Python library to generate confidence intervals - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebookincubator/bootstrapped <comment><USER2> There are better algorithms for bootstrap intervals that you perhaps should look into. Better in the sense of quality, not speed.

Google e.g. "interval BCa"

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback Petters! I agree in principle. I am familiar with that method. The use case for this is for situations where you have large initial sample counts (so the correction should be less important, we do throw warnings when the initial sample counts are low). We also provide tools to check power (I'll commit an example of this later today).

Also - I gladly accept diffs if you are motivated. It is not clear to me that BCa and other variants provide substantial improvement for most practical situations. I would invite criticism here.

Tldr - thanks for the feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the project README:

How bootstrapped works tldr - Percentile based confidence intervals based on bootstrap re-sampling with replacement.

\---

MIT OCW 18.05 has this to say about the technique:

[https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-05-introduction-t...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-05-introduction- to-probability-and-statistics-spring-2014/readings/MIT18_05S14_Reading24.pdf)

The bootstrap percentile method is appealing due to its simplicity. However it depends on the bootstrap distribution of mean(x') based on a particular sample being a good approximation to the true distribution of mean(x). Rice says of the percentile method, "Although this direct equation of quantiles of the bootstrap sampling distribution with confidence limits may seem initially appealing, it's rationale is somewhat obscure."

In short, don't use it.

Use the empirical bootstrap instead (we have explained both in the hopes that you won't confuse the empirical bootstrap for the percentile bootstrap).

\---

Updated to reflect suggestions in comments below.

<comment><USER5> I'm not a big fan of the percentile bootstrap, but that reference is a little too cavalier with material that deserves to be treated more rigorously. Chapter 8 of Wasserman's "All of Statistics" is much more careful about outlining the conditions under which the percentile bootstrap will work. Moreover, he works through a specific example that demonstrates that the percentile bootstrap does not generate results that are profoundly different from other methods.

<comment><USER3> John, you are a true wizard. I admire you & will work to incorporate your feedback (gathered offline) into the library =)

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a reason you chose the percentile instead of something like the pivotal (and for not adding the options for other intervals)? Is it solely for simplicity?

<comment><USER3> Excellent q - we intend to add in other options as we go. Pivotal being one. Id also like to add in permutation tests. If you have ideas we welcome diffs =)

<comment><USER6> Would love to contribute. I'll try to put some work in this weekend when I have the time.

<comment><USER3> <3

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While on the topic of confidence intervals, has anyone encountered a package capable of generating multinomial confidence intervals similar to CRAN's MultinomialCI? I've yet to find a Python solution.

</comment><comment><USER8> Neat!

OP, how does this compare to scikits.bootstrap [1] feature/performance-wise?

[1] [https://scikits.appspot.com/bootstrap](https://scikits.appspot.com/bootstrap)

<comment><USER3> That uses the BCa method which in some situations is better.

This library gives you a/b test functionality and should be faster on large input datasets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a nice wrapper on a powerful technique. Could be very useful to some folks - but requiring numpy and pandas is kind of excessive.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I'm not sure that this is a fair comment: how would _you_ avoid the necessity of pandas and numpy? Besides which, in most projects where you're interested in confidence intervals you'll probably already have both imported for other functionally anyway.

<comment><USER9> TBH, I haven't used python for science in a few years, so maybe numpy is the norm now and I'm showing my age. But when I was doing more python, I wrote bootstrapping, monte carlo and CI code without anything but the standard lib. I probably used pypy to get it fast enough, but if everyone has numpy now then that's definitely the way to go and I retract my comment!

I'm not trying to sound arrogant or anything, if numpy is the standard now then there's definitely no point in reinventing the wheel. (But pandas is still overkill...)

<comment><USER11> pandas is the standard now for most python data munging I've come across. numpy is "low level".

<comment><USER9> bootstrapping does not require any munging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am 87% confident that this has a 74% change of hitting it off with the HN community.</comment>


High Concurrency MySQL @ Facebook #mysqlconf - <AUTHOR> http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dgjzt2ms_40gjxrjkdx

<comment><USER2> Those slides are incredibly dense and it's a little difficult to tell exactly what they mean. The OP's twitter stream has some good info though:

"facebook is carving out entire chunks from InnoDB to scale up concurrency: no deadlock detection, no read-ahead.." <http://twitter.com/igrigorik/status/12117662626>

"myisam has single mutex, will fall down after 3+ cores try to access it concurrently. stick with innnodb" <http://twitter.com/igrigorik/status/12116958816>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, just to provide some context / quick review of the talk:

It seems like the primary concern for Domas (presenter) is concurrency within InnoDB. Just to get it out of the way, he dismissed MyISAM, and went right into the low level optimizations & tweaks they're working on at Facebook. High level points are:

\- they're using XFS, and he stressed understanding the block math and how it relates to your record sizes, etc.

\- using "correct" scheduler has a big impact

\- swappiness = 0, etc.

For InnoDB itself, it seems like they're carving out entire chunks of functionality that he claims "never worked correctly" anyway. For example, deadlock detection is something they disabled outright because it gave them a large perf boost. Likewise, for read-ahead functionality within InnoDB. Those were the two he went into a lot of details.

Concurrency + threads: there is no definitive formula, but he suggested setting thread concurrency to be the min concurrency of your lightweight requests (claimed: threads are cheap).

For ops / day-to-day, they focus on slow servers and dive right in: custom tools + gdb + freeze the server. They are playing with the idea of providing stored procedures interface to app developers since it'll avoid the round trip time between different queries (TBD). Also, they sometimes go very aggressive (timeouts of 3s, or even 1s), to force internal app devs to respect the DB layer.

Also hinted that they're using "smart caches" which are capable of buffering counters / updates and doing one update instead.

All in all, their biggest problems seems to be thousands of (app) servers that are always connected, hence the need for high concurrency...

(I'm sure I'm forgetting a whole lot, but that's off the top of my head)

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot for the summary. Wish I was there.</comment></comment></comment>


Workers drill through last few feet of rock, creating world's longest tunnel - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/1015/Swiss-tunnel-Workers-drill-through-last-few-feet-of-rock-creating-world-s-longest-tunnel

<comment><USER2> Impressive! At first that seems expensive. But, $10,000,000,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the U.S. national debt, which is over 1300x the cost of that tunnel at $13,611,792,550,145.</comment>


Show HN: CState – open-source Hugo powered status page - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cstate/cstate <comment> gary-kim I'm using CState for my status page [1] which gets built from a public git repo on GitHub by CI and pushed.

It's been a nice way to let the players on the Minecraft server I maintain know when migrations/upgrades are planned and downtime.

I'm still looking for a system to send people emails about downtime and planned migrations but I may just switch to Cachet for that part. Maybe there's a self-hosted way to send emails from the RSS feed in a way that allows people to easily subscribe and unsubscribe? I'd be happy if anyone has any recommendations.

[1] [https://status.garykim.dev](https://status.garykim.dev)

</comment><comment><USER2> Hi, I'm the author of cState! I'll be reading some of the comments over the next day or so. Please do share any feedback or thoughts you have — here or on the issue board so I get the message right in my inbox — as that will help other people as well. :)

<comment><USER3> I was thinking of building one similar to this for our cluster. I think I will simply use this and work on automating some actions to it instead. I like that it is a self-container static website.

I can have a script update "status" and have git CI/CD turn it live!

Thanks for making it, and opening it up as open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The part that looks most interesting to me, the API uptime integration doesn't appear to have any instructions on how to reproduce the example shown in the README - all that seems to be provided is the ability to add a link in a custom tab. The example image looks aspirational rather than something currently supported (probably worth making that clear).

If the ability to monitor uptime/health, or at least integrate with services that provide thatinformation, which is rendered on the status page would make this really cool.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nothing in the README seems to tell me _how_ this operates.

Okay, I understand there's a demo, and changes in v4, and an FAQ, but I'm never told what the scope or method of operation is: what can this monitor? how is it monitored?

I don't want to read configuration files or look at a demo to understand what I can use this for and how it does it. I even read parts of the Wiki and I still don't understand what this is doing: is it essentially a special theme for Hugo, or is there some frontend JavaScript magic going on?

<comment><USER2> Hi, I'm the author.

> Nothing in the README seems to tell me how this operates.

Not directly. I didn't even really think about writing about how it works so much as about how to get it work.

> I'm never told what the scope or method of operation is: what can this > monitor? how is it monitored?

It is not something made for monitoring, it's for posting issues. You can add 3rd party automation if you wish (and yes the illustration is misleading and yes I'm thinking of how to fix it).

> what I can use this for [...] I still don't understand what this is doing: > is it essentially a special theme for Hugo, or is there some frontend > JavaScript magic going on?

There's little JavaScript since theoretically it should work on IE8 and is designed to be as 'foolproof' as I could think of (no external assets, all information on one lightweight page).

It's a special glorified theme for Hugo, if you want to put it that way, yes.

<comment><USER6> > You can add 3rd party automation if you wish

Any examples for this?

<comment><USER2> I haven't used these a lot in recent memory, but Pingdom, Uptime Robot, etc. Some company COULD totally make something specifically for this like in the mockup on the README

<comment><USER6> Are you saying that I could use Uptime Robot to automate CState or that I could just use Uptime Robot?

Because having a static status page like CState but auto updated would be amazing.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately there is no auto updating, not yet. I've definitely heard this feedback loud and clear, will be looking into how I could possibly make this work with another 3rd party.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


California's Wildfire Policy Backfired (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/11/californias-wildfire-controlled-prescribed-burns-native-americans/ <comment><USER3> Reminder: Southern California's wildfire regime is not Northern California's. In NorCal, fire suppression makes fuel build up and forest fires burn too hot. In SoCal, chaparral wildland burns two to three times more often than it did pre-contact.

The main reason for the increase was that the old primary ignition source was lightning, while now there are lots of sources: catalytic converters getting too hot, discarded cigarettes, farming machine activity, and arsonists are a few. And of course, lightning implies higher humidity, unlike the offshore wind-driven fires we get now, so the intensity is worse now. Our recent lightning-sparked fires now seem like something of a departure from normal.

Controlled burns could help in SoCal, but I'm guessing only to reduce fuel load and create a temporary firebreak.

<comment><USER4> Really good points, and really calls into focus the need to empower individual counties to define their own fire policies (I think that's the right scale).

<comment><USER3> Counties would be good. Or something similar to our air quality districts, which are almost county-shaped with a few added merges and splits: [https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/capcoa/dismap.htm](https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/capcoa/dismap.htm)

<comment> core-questions In BC there are Fire Centres which have their own level of management:

[https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire- status/ab...](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/about- bcws/wildfire-response/fire-centres)

The province is broken down by geography, terrain, and biome, so that specific resources and skillsets can be developed for each potential fire condition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I guess The West Wing was right about this back in 2001

> Josh: Putting out fires isn't necessarily our policy?

> Sam: Fire's good for the environment under certain circumstances. Forests > have a natural cycle that requires purging burns to reinvigorate growth.

> Josh: Someone just said that to you, right?[1]

[1] [http://westwingwiki.com/2014/04/season-3-episode-3-ways- mean...](http://westwingwiki.com/2014/04/season-3-episode-3-ways-means/)

<comment><USER6> Article:

> The Forest Service now admits that suppression backfired; excluding fire > created an unnatural build-up of dry brush and overcrowding of trees that's > partly fueling today's mega-fires.

In a fantasy book from 1998, the third book in the _Circle of Magic_ quartet [0], a green mage gets extremely pissed off at a fire mage who between him and his father had been preventing forest fires for decades. By the end of the book, just such a "mega-fire" formed in the built-up dry material on the forest floor.

It kinda seems to me like this is a decently well-known effect that the government has been just been slow to acknowledge...

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

<comment><USER7> > It kinda seems to me like this is a decently well-known effect that the > government has been just been slow to acknowledge...

I think the problem is that with controlled fires, there is always a risk they could get out of control and burn down some properties, which will probably end the career of any politician who supported the decision/policy to not suppress that fire.

Suppressing fires is safer in the short run, while creating problems in the long run.

<comment><USER8> Maintenance burns getting out of control has happened several times in the past. That's the reason they changed what they called them from "controlled burns" to "prescribed burns". They got tired of the "That fire wasn't very controlled hahaha" jokes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's really hard to reconcile the fact that we need to build a lot more housing in California with the fact that we can't keep building in places where that housing is going to burn down in the near future. I don't know how long it's going to be until we realize that in certain areas, single family homes are non-viable for the middle and lower class, since we need medium to high density housing in the valleys below hills where fire risk is at its highest and insurance rates _should_ be obscene.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's the problem.

People, especially as they get older, tend to want more space. Being close to nature -- and California, in those rare moments when it isn't on fire, has _beautiful_ nature -- is also a big draw.

The people living in those homes aren't, broadly speaking, lower-class. They live out there precisely because they aren't interested in medium- or high- density housing, for a variety of reasons.

I would say the primary cause is overzealous environmental legislation, brought to you by the same people that have fought tooth-and-nail against nuclear power -- _and thus for burning lots of coal_ \-- for the past seventy years.

Clean air is great. I like strong emissions standards on cars and factories. But controlled burns have been absolutely hobbled for years by regulators and environmental groups.

One of my nephews is a firefighter, currently in California. He'll rant your ear off about this.

<comment><USER10> If your nephew doesn't mention liability concerns as a reason controlled burns aren't done then you probably shouldn't listen to him.

Light night starts a fire, it burns down a house, who is liable?

Government in the name of fire prevention starts a fire, it gets out of control and burns down a house, who is liable?

<comment><USER4> You know, that's a fair point that I hadn't thought about. I naïvely assumed that regulatory frameworks would take care of this, and I'm curious what legal precedent there is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The headline is misleading. The original policy was the US Forest service - <USER2> federal agency.

As for calfire and the state being reluctant to authorize controlled burns, well given the risk of wildfire and having controlled burns escape, we probably need to not just be slack about who can burn what when, with which supervision.

The title does do the state of California a disservice. We already have a president* who is attempting to blame state leaders for fire, as a political fight. When the federal lands and federal agencies are also responsible for this as well.

The notion that not having smaller burns leads to larger fires is well established going back decades. We need to accelerate our adaptation to the new drier climate. This article could help. But give the blameology a rest.

Edit: also note the editorialization of the title. The original article title was a "native wisdom" approach, which got dropped for "some reason."

<comment><USER12> The bulk of public land in California is Federally controlled - BLM, USFS

<comment><USER4> True! Forty-five percent, in point of fact. That land is still jointly managed with the state[1], though.

[1] [https://www.blm.gov/programs/public-safety-and-fire/fire- and...](https://www.blm.gov/programs/public-safety-and-fire/fire-and- aviation/regional-info/california)

(Also, I learned something new today -- thanks!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Australia actually does a lot in its fire-prone areas: [https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/fire/prescribed- burnin...](https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/fire/prescribed-burning)

As an aside, some plants have in fact adapted to release their seeds in the event of a fire: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny)

</comment><comment><USER14> Protection of housing from wildfires is somewhat a solved problem thanks to the pioneering research of Jack Cohen, and this excellent episode of the 99% Invisible podcast is well worth a listen:

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to- burn/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/)

There's plenty of youtube vidoes featuring his research too:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM)

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jack+cohen+wild...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jack+cohen+wildfire)

Perhaps a good way to encourage the work to be done is through the offering of lower insurance premiums for housing so protected.

</comment><comment><USER15> When I was in Riverside California last year I saw either like this orange or pink stuff on the mountains. Is that some kind of fire suppression powder or something?

<comment><USER16> Yup, it's intentionally colored so the aircraft can see where they're dropping it, but unfortunately it can leave a mark on the terrain for a long time

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The Humboldt event united unlikely allies: Trump-supporting ranchers worked > side-by-side with retired hippies and back-to-the landers

Maybe unlikely if you just look at the D and the R, but non-politicized, local issues like this will still get widespread interest across party lines.</comment>


How do these news web-crawlers thrive? - <AUTHOR>

What is the business model for all these web crawlers which fetches the top news from blogs / news websites and display? Do they thrive only on the revenues from ads (or) is there any other means of earning profits ?? <comment><USER2> The main goal of the news web-crawlers isn't to turn a profit, instead they are doing their thing to provide search engines with the most accurate and recent news in the search results.</comment>


Designer: Fire that client. - <AUTHOR> http://startupinmexico.com/17-designer-fire-your-clients/

<comment><USER2> I kind of agree with both.

Learning new tools doesn't mean that aesthetics aren't important. New tools can help you be more productive and even spend more time doing the design work that you love.

I also understand that as a designer (or any other consultants) you want customers that are easy to work, pay you well and on time. It is your right to choose you customers. It is also their right to choose you.</comment>


Everything was connected, and I was fucked - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hondanhon/everything-was-connected-and-i-was-fucked-7dfac76d6ff8 <comment><USER2> Bravo! That's a good dystopian short story.</comment>


Singapore's factory activity shrinks for first time since 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/singapore-factory-activity-manufacturing-shrinks-may-2019-11592778 <comment><USER2> You play stupid trade wars, you win stupid prices. This will drag the world economy down and yes, the US of A as well.</comment>


Open source — Government Service Design Manual - <AUTHOR> https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/making-software/open-source.html

<comment><USER2> Even the manual is open-source <https://github.com/alphagov/government- service-design-manual>.

I suggested a comment on Saturday afternoon by Twitter, it was passed on via an @ mention, and I was told it would be updated Monday. This is government IT, but not as we know it.

<comment><USER3> How long until the entire .gov IT infrastructure gets owned because some civil servant decided to accept a pull request with an obvious backdoor?

<comment><USER4> Could you describe any plausible scenario in which one pull request could compromise the entire .gov IT infrastructure?

<comment><USER3> wow, where to begin?

<comment><USER4> Anywhere. Just one.

<comment><USER3> exec()

<comment><USER4> That's just code, not a scenario. Government IT systems are currently subject to oversight, testing, comprehensive threat risk assessments etc. Those controls don't disappear just because the software is open source. Right now it's not possible to just deploy new code, open source or not, into a production environment on a critical piece of infrastructure without review. If anything, the open source code should be significantly more secure, because you have added an additional layer of public review, testing and comment.

<comment><USER3> Let's hope you are right.. :)

The UK gov does not have the best record with IT projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, makes me proud to live in England. This is the way forward. Employees in most cases dont care whether they are given Windows or Linux as an OS.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's been mentioned here before but worth pointing out again. The UK government has an official github account: <https://github.com/alphagov></comment>


Anonymous' AntiSec Has Taken Down Stratfor, Claim 200GBs of Emails - <AUTHOR> http://www.stratfor.com/

<comment><USER2> Cached [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.stratfor.com/)</comment>


Mapping the spread of America's drug overdose epidemic - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2016/may/25/opioid-epidemic-overdose-deaths-map <comment><USER2> What I find interesting is how drug preferences change over time. Back in the 1980's and 1990's it was cocaine (powder or crack), then it shifted to methamphetamine in the 2000's and now there is a big shift to heroin.

Methamphetamine (amphetamines in general) was big back in the 1960's and 1970's, kind of went away, then came roaring back 30 years later.

Heroin was a major problem back during the same time period, kind of went away (at least the amount of attention on it), then came back in the late 2000's.

I think blaming the current popularity of heroin on prescription opioids makes sense, but I'd be curious what drives drug preference in other instances? Price? Availability?

<comment><USER3> The popular drug of the age always seems to reflect the general mood, the zeitgeist of the time.

I just assumed the era determined in what direction people generally choose to escape from reality, rather than economic factors. Go-go eighties. Tune in and drop out 60's, etc.

<comment><USER4> The rise of heroin is probably related somehow to the legalization of cannabis (medicinal and 'recreational'). When organized crime's cash cow went away, they just picked new products to supply to their target market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how this correlates with income inequality over the same period (using housing, gas prices and COLA as a simple yardstick) in those same regions.</comment>


Tesla workers claim anti-LGBT threats, taunts, and racial abuse in lawsuits - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/19/tesla-factory-workers-discrimination-claim-race-lgbt-elon-musk <comment><USER2> > "There is no company on earth with a better track record than Tesla," it > said in a statement to the Guardian.

This statement is a huge red flag. It's almost Trumpian in its useless superlatives.

No corporation is perfect, and even a perfect corporation is made up of imperfect people. In the end, what matters is how your corporation handles when problems arise, and by this measure, it seems like Tesla leaves something to be desired.</comment>


Wolfram Alpha: {y = Re(sqrt(abs(x)(1-abs(x)))), y = Re(-sqrt(1-sqrt(abs(x))))} - <AUTHOR> https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%7By+%3D+Re%28sqrt%28abs%28x%29%281-abs%28x%29%29%29%29%2C+y+%3D+Re%28-sqrt%281-sqrt%28abs%28x%29%29%29%29%7D <comment><USER2> This post reminded me of this legendary question on plotting a human butt: [https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/66538/how- do...](https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/66538/how-do-i-draw-a- pair-of-buttocks)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I arrived at these equations in 2014 when I plotted a heart using Matplotlib for my girlfriend (now my wife). The code and output is available here: [https://github.com/susam/heart/](https://github.com/susam/heart/). Some of the Matplotlib defaults have changed since then. With the current version of Matplotlib, the following code would produce good results: [https://gist.github.com/susam/2a7e38ba632c4a2780fad421d1ca5f...](https://gist.github.com/susam/2a7e38ba632c4a2780fad421d1ca5f61).

Today, I thought of sharing a WolframAlpha link to this plot here on Hacker News. I am glad you all liked it! :-)

By the way, I've explained these equations step-by-step along with graph plots for every step in this 6 year old Reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/comments/1xwuv3/math/cffeykn/](https://www.reddit.com/comments/1xwuv3/math/cffeykn/).

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+x%5E%282%2F3%29+%...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+x%5E%282%2F3%29+%2B.9+*+%283.3+-x%5E2%29%5E%281%2F2%29++*+Sin%5B-10++%CF%80+*+x%5D+and+x%5E%282%2F3%29+%2B.9+*+%283.3+-x%5E2%29%5E%281%2F2%29++*+Sin%5B10++%CF%80+*+x%5D+and+x%5E%282%2F3%29+%2B.9+*+%283.3+-x%5E2%29%5E%281%2F2%29++*+Sin%5B+%CF%80+*+x%5D++&assumption=%22%5E%22+-%3E+%22Real%22)

<comment><USER4> [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=batman%20equation](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=batman%20equation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> heres the same thing on desmos, my favorite free graphing calculator [https://www.desmos.com/calculator/lvespenn07](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/lvespenn07)

<comment><USER6> Desmos is the best thing ever! I'm certain I would not have passed Calc without it. I always struggled with math and put it off till the last year of grad school (funny enough, you can get into grad school for CS without it).

I only ended up doing calc because with it work could pay me ~$20k more.

<comment><USER7> I can't believe any respectable school would let in a CS grad student without calculus. Linear algebra is really important, too, but you have to know calculus to do much of the math behind circuits. Good for you for doing it even though it wasn't required.

<comment><USER8> I'd be surprised if many CS degrees (as opposed to CE) had a circuits course. But I agree that calculus would be a surprising omission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wolfram Alpha crawling. They should be caching queries.

<comment><USER10> 100% my first thought when loading this page. It really seems like they are running the calculation on query. Think about how much compute resource have they needlessly burned through by not caching user queries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have tried to draw the Duomo di Milano [0] for a local meetup, best I could do was [1]

        {y = abs((sin(2 pi x) - sin (pi x)) / x )}

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Cathedral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Cathedral) often represented as bars [https://duomo.shbcdn.com/blobs/variants/5/7/a/0/57a0e90e-25c...](https://duomo.shbcdn.com/blobs/variants/5/7/a/0/57a0e90e-25cf-45c2-b5c7-22960fc72abd_large.jpg?_636851465300023417)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/iDpCFKY.png](https://i.imgur.com/iDpCFKY.png)

</comment><comment><USER12> Highly recommended video by Iquilez, in a similar vein:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aNR4n0i2ZlM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aNR4n0i2ZlM)

Watching the guy hack away at graphics is super enjoyable

</comment><comment><USER13> From the loading speed it seems that the results are not cached. Isn't it?

<comment><USER14> WA is always pretty slow. At least to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Python anyone - [https://www.kaggle.com/nulldata/python-with-matplotlib- numpy...](https://www.kaggle.com/nulldata/python-with-matplotlib-numpy-just- for-fun)

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice but, completely off-topic, how is it possible that with uBlock Origin and behind Pi-Hole I get two banners on the right? This is the first place that I remember where it happens!

<comment><USER17> For me, the 2 banners are related to Wolfram Alpha. Possibly generated from the backend directly, so there's no ad network involved, which can be blocked.

<comment><USER18> There are some pretty aggressive rules in some blocklists. I had to disable one to read about an Aggregated Discovery Service because it just looks for /ads/ in the URL and decides to block it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My rendition of the heart curve: [https://gods.art/heart_curve.html](https://gods.art/heart_curve.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Aww. For those of us who have boyfriends and girlfriends who are not technical, this is a nice way to engage them with what we actually do during the day!

</comment><comment><USER21> this is valentine's day gold. Thanks :D

</comment><comment><USER22> thanks <3

</comment><comment><USER23> A day early?

<comment><USER24> It's never too early to spread some good feelings, though

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> <3</comment>


52 Hertz: The Loneliest Whale in the World  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_news/2012/05/52-hertz-the-loneliest-whale-in-the-world.html <comment><USER2> There is a paper on 52 Hertz from 2004 which is locked securely in Elsevier's fortress, safe from inquisitive minds.

Fortunately the US Defense Technology Information Center has liberated a copy: <http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a429410.pdf>

I wish NOAA had those recordings at real speed instead of sped up 10 times. 52Hz is well within human hearing, it's a G#, 4 frets up from the bottom of a typical bass guitar. Typically the big whales are around the C that would be past the left end of the piano and beyond human hearing.

From the paper, there is an interesting statement about the capability of the Navy hydrophone systems:

 _The lack of calls before and after tracking periods appeared to be because the whale was not producing calls, and not due to the lack of the ability of the monitoring equipment to detect the sounds. As the tracks demonstrated, the monitoring system was not limited geographically, and appeared to detect these calls, usually on multiple arrays, whenever calls were produced in these deep- water regions._

<comment><USER3> _I wish NOAA had those recordings at real speed instead of sped up 10 times._

Well, how high is the bitrate? If it's high enough, I suppose you can slow it back down 10x without significant loss of quality...

<comment><USER4> [http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/sound...](http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/sounds_52blue.html)

Looks like they give a 128kbps wav file. Not exactly audiophile quality unfortunately.

<comment><USER5> The sample rate is 8kHz, which means the Nyquist frequency is 4kHz. Slowing it back down won't sound good, but frequencies below 400hz will be present.

Here's a 8kHz .wav slowed down to 1/10: <http://dump.elektronaut.no/post/ak52_1x.wav>

edit: You probably need a subwoofer or a decent pair of headphones to appreciate the rumble.

<comment><USER6> Awesome, this deep rumble is oddly soothing in my MDR-7506s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's fascinating! Though it's interesting to debate if we should apply humanly qualities such as loneliness to whales (or even other creatures). Does this whale really _feel_ lonely (like we do)? Or is it just doing what its genetic program tells it to do? I don't recall where exactly I read, but I had read that the contribution of language is significant as far as human consciousness and feelings are concerned. It mentioned that animals have signals as a form of communication (show a ball, and dog would come over) but humans have signs. The whole conscious world is composed of signs for us and that is what makes us unique. It had further mentioned that even in aboriginal people who don't know much about modern cosmology, they still have a theory of some sort to signify the origin of world. Animals simply lack that kind of framework and therefore behave according to their genetic program or trainings.

Yes, the field was called semiotics and I recall reading about how a wandering bee doesn't give a damn to humans dancing and celebrating nearby.

<comment><USER8> Attributing feelings to animals can be appropriate, depending on the animal and the circumstances. I find it a little worrisome that you equate individual bees (which by all measures are little more than automatons) with a complex and intelligent animal such as a whale. (Recognizable) emotions are not something humans have a monopoly on, quite the contrary.

Most whales are social animals, and they're also pretty advanced mammals, so it's not unreasonable to assume that an individual might experience feelings of loneliness and abandonment given the fact that it's apparently the only one of its kind out there.

<comment><USER7> My main criterion of putting bees and whales in the same category was mainly the use of signals for communication, whereas humans use signs. I'm not very well read in this area but just brought this up because it's an interesting way to look at communication.

<comment><USER8> I guess the main point was whether we can assume animals are capable of having recognizable emotions or if we're simply engaging in an act of anthropomorphization, right? The problem was not deciding whether or not the song of this specific individual is intended to communicate loneliness (because that's impossible to know), it was about whether we can assume he/she is actually feeling lonely or not independent of whatever data is transmitted. And I contend that we can.

But we can just as well talk about language itself; it's a completely different discussion to have, though. Everybody and everything uses signals, and they are in a way always symbols for something. Bacteria do this in very much the same way bees do. Whales and humans do it as well. The difference here is that animals with higher cognitive abilities tend to do more powerful things with signals. Bees and bacteria use a genetically prescribed protocol to communicate according to completely hard-coded behavior. Towards the other end of the spectrum, as animals get more powerful at cognition, both internal state and communication protocols become more dynamic with humans being the apex as the ones who are most capable of formulating abstract concepts. But it's also worth noting that humans laugh and cry, these are examples of very simple signals still emitted by very complex minds.

So is whale song more like an advanced mammalian language, or is it more like a human laughing? We don't know (yet). But we _can_ make certain assumptions about this single individual's mental state without understanding its language. Imagine the last human on earth, wandering around. We can assume he's lonely, whether he's actually crying or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Brought Ray Bradbury's "The Foghorn" to mind - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_Horn>

<comment><USER10> Indeed. AFAICT from the linked post, there's no proof (e.g. visual sighting of a whale at any of the locations from which the sounds have emanated) that the source of the sounds is even a whale at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The link to a normal Whale sound is the same link as this chap at 52 Hertz.

I do find his path tracks interesting and they do seem to have a central point and do wonder what is of note there, food!

Supprised no DNA samples have been taken, though I suspect we can't eliminate some form of polution inducing a genetic mutation. We have humans with high- pitched voices so anything is possible.

But fair play to the chap in carrying on trying to find a mate in over 20 years, now that is tenacity.

<comment><USER12> Yes, the tracks are interesting. Note how the whale often tracks back and then takes a different route as if he/she was unsure about the route (something we often do on new/unexplored forest trails so that we don't get lost). The sharp turns might therefore be some sort of a landmark for the whale.

<comment><USER13> The sharp turns are poorly interpolated data points from a small data set.

<comment><USER11> Very good point. Datasets on maps realy should have the ability to see the resolution of the dataset or a zoomable timeline so people can see how the data plots on a map and its potentual variations. This would avoid seeing data from a limited viewpoint. Only good example of how having mulple viewpoints of the same data would be a picture of lighnight that appears to loop, lightnight travels in 3d and if viewed from some angles will appear from a 2d perspective to loop up and around back onto itself. It is a illution based upon a limited viewpoint of the data and in the case of the data plots without the samplerling period (which could be week or day apart) and how far a this whale can swim in that time to allow for a better perspective of the plotted data.

In short, I concur, whales don't do handbrake turns and the data is a literal plot of data points from course samplerling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another mystery appears. I wonder what happened in 1993-1994 to get his migration path off by 90 degrees.

[http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=10079&aid=47...](http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=10079&aid=4721)

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably due to missing data points. It may seem that the line is straight but it's possible the whale traveled circular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This has given me a sad.

Strange though that there aren't any attempts mentioned to actually get close and have a look at such an unusual specimen.

<comment><USER16> Maybe someone should build him a translator.

<comment><USER17> Someone give this whale a Babelfish!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's it - for me the sound of one hand clapping now will always be heard at 52 Hz.

That's made my day. :-)

Hope Mr 52 Hertz Finds Mrs 52 Hertz soon. Cheers

</comment><comment><USER19> Evolution in action? For natural selection to work some critters have to end up on the losing team.

</comment><comment><USER20> Loneliness probably has a new meaning! - 52hz and 2 decades on - a whale trying to communicate has been so lonely in the vastness of sea. It is truly invigorating and unimaginable .. Their 10million years of evolution far greater than the Man himself must be a remarkable insight towards our own evolution. Reading this story i kind of feel moved and touched at a much deeper psychological level than ever ...

<comment><USER21> _Their 10million years of evolution far greater than the Man himself_

Nah. We've all had exactly the same length of evolution.

<comment><USER20> We have had 3.5 - 4 million years. Whales evolved from mammals which went back into 'sea' .

<comment><USER21> I don't know about you, but my ancestors have been evolving for a lot longer than 4 million years.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent>

<comment><USER20> if you think Proteins are your common ancestor Yes, btw you don't have to know me to know 'what is correct' :-)

<comment><USER21> I think we have common ancestors with whales a lot more recently than proteins. It doesn't matter: we _have_ common ancestors with them, therefore we've been evolving the same length of time.

> btw you don't have to know me

This is the internet, where no-one knows if you're a non-DNA based lifeform -- as your first comment seemed to suggest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be interesting to fit her with a prosthesis that dynamically adjusts the frequencey and rebroadcasts the song in the normal range.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hey guys! We've been reading all your comments on this board about the 52 Hertz Whale and have been loving them! I too connected to this very special story, which is why I am currently working on a documentary that will physically search for 52, while exploring people's reactions. We are in production of this major documentary about the 52 Hertz Whale and would love for you to visit our Facebook page to sign up for our mailing list and learn more. Not only is the documentary about the whale, but it's about you folks who relate to this amazing story, and why we all do. Please 'like' us at: www.facebook.com/finding.52

</comment><comment><USER24> Other mysterious sounds: [http://weburbanist.com/2010/06/07/signal-or- noise-8-mysterio...](http://weburbanist.com/2010/06/07/signal-or- noise-8-mysterious-unsolved-sounds/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Let's be clear. This guy operates at 52Hz, but he probably has more spatial resolution than cobra dane.

</comment><comment><USER26> The Whale's sound: [http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/whale...](http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/whalewav/ak52_10x.wav)

<comment><USER27> That doesn't sound like a very good song

<comment><USER28> It's just one sample. Mix it with others and you have a new Aphex Twin album.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow that's sad, aside from casual flings I've been living alone 7 years longer than this whale has been known to.

</comment><comment><USER30> maybe he just want to be left alone

</comment><comment><USER31> I can understand that his migration routes are away from most other whales but one thing that keeps coming up, especially in the linked articles:

> _And here's the cry of the lonely 52-Hertz whale, which no other whale can > return -- as if whale songs weren't mournful enough._

Does anyone know whether this is true? Other whales could not hear/understand him even IF they were close-by because of the higher frequency? And he could not hear other whales either?? Both of these seem very unlikely to me, especially the second one, but I am no expert. I am just assuming if his signature is that of a baleen whale just at a higher frequency, wouldn't others still recognize that IF they were close?

If anything, following the human interpretation of this as the "poor lonely- heart whale", he just has to get out of his comfort zone and explore the waters more... this too "could be viewed as inspiration to anyone with a lonely heart"!

<comment><USER32> I take it that no other whale can hear him, but he can hear them. He's effectively mute (to them). However, loss of one sense is often compensated for by acuteness in other senses. If he can hear them, he can find them. Might he not have other ways of communicating? Whale sign language when near, or voiceless noises when far away? I'm hopeful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> the last two sentences of that story made me want to strangle the author. :|

<comment><USER34> I agree he was laying it on a little thick, but at least the substance of the article was interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Gosh, what a hipster.</comment>


MouseStats - Record website visitor activities and generate website heatmaps - <AUTHOR> http://www.mousestats.com/ A crazyegg/ClickTale alternative <comment><USER2> I don't know how everyone else feels, but tracking like this always creeps me out. I mean okay, there are good reasons to know what page someone is on and what they click to next, but having to track their mouse as well...that's going a bit far.

I add sites that use things like this to my "do not return ever" list.

<comment><AUTHOR> In normal conditions, I agree with you. but if you see this tool as an ability to improve the UX, it's a miracle. I can't imagine a better way to find out design problems.</comment></comment>


MVC Podcast Ep.21: Npm/leftpad, MS Tay AI Bot, Apps.gov, and More - <AUTHOR> https://soundcloud.com/mvcthepodcast/episode-21-npmleftpad-fiasco-ms-tay-ai-bot-appsgov <comment><AUTHOR> In this episode, Marty and Victoria talk about the situation with the Node.js npm development community when an important dependency package 'leftpad' was removed without notice. We also talk about Microsoft's "Tay" Twitter chat bot that was abused into tweeting offensive messages, and the rebirth of Apps.gov, a web site of technologies endorsed by the US federal government. We also read two listener emails, give an update on our lives, and do a thumbs up / thumbs down segment.</comment>


Last Minute Y Combinator Application Guide - Apply in 30 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://www.glebarshinov.com/blog/2013/10/last-minute-yc-application-guide.html <comment><USER2> Incidentally, the most important question (at least to me) has become:

      Why did you pick this idea to work on?  Do you have
      domain expertise in this area?  How do you know
      people need what you're making?

and that one shouldn't take long to answer, at least if you're on the right track.

<comment><USER3> I smiled when I saw this question. It's a question that heavily favors people starting a company in a field they work in and whose problems they're already intimately familiar with. While this might seem unfair to some, it's probably an extremely good indicator for investment quality.

<comment><USER2> You don't have to work in a field to be familiar with its problems. You can also be a user. But one way or another, you should understand the problems well.

<comment><USER4> I would agree with you on this one. I've never worked with news publishers before but we wanted to explore how the need for distribution affected news quality and what all we could do to extrapolate from there. Ended up spending a lot of time with a fairly large newspaper and iterating on ideas to finally arrive at personalisation as a solution. We got away with a product we could evolve, revenue and lots of insider information about how the publishing industry works. And, everyone knows everyone else, so they referred us to a ton of others too! :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another advice: do not apply two weeks before deadline (like me) because all posts with advices about YC applications are published in the last week.

<comment><USER6> You can always edit your application and resubmit until the application deadline

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure that there is any system in place to ensure that your edits are seen. So don't submit a bad application assuming that you can just edit it later. Make sure it's in a state such that you wouldn't be embarrassed if pg saw it.

<comment><USER8> Edits are seen as long as you resubmit after editing. There's even a warning on the application page if you have non-submited edits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks @gleb, I know I probably won't hear from YC, but you know the adage:

        "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The copy is not my best work. But hope it gets the point across -- a quick application is good enough.

</comment><comment><USER10> What about the video? I'm under the impression that while a good video won't get you into YC, a bad one can keep you out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, video is very helpful. But an application without video is much better than no application at all.

<comment><USER11> Better why? The best value for not accepted application is the time you spent on formulation ideas in your head and trying to make it simple/clear/interesting and of course worth money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ... pretty awesome...hihihihih</comment>


The Timeline of Web Development Technologies, 1990-2009 - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Web_development_timeline.png

<comment><USER2> This chart seems terribly confused. There is front- and back-end stuff, but not a single webserver is mentioned. Nor is fastcgi. They python track is almost completely about hte language, but eventually splits django, however there is no mention of zope or wsgi. Similarly perl is language specific, no mention of mason. Yet, there is a whole line about rails and not ruby, jsp and java.

I understand but am not necessarily convinced about other full stack components as well -- maybe not the db stuff or memcache, but load blancers like varnish, bigip and so on.</comment>


Ask HN: Showcase of most active github repos? - saiko-chriskun

There was this site where you linked your github and it'd really nicely showcase which projects you were working on, which were most active, which were old, etc. but I can't for the life of me find it. Anyone know of something like this? <comment><AUTHOR> <http://gitmetrics.com/>

<comment> saiko-chriskun not the site I was thinking of but still cool ;)</comment></comment>


Little Alchemy - <AUTHOR> https://littlealchemy.com/ <comment><USER2> This is an interesting kind of game. The drudgery of all the clicks and drags make you long for a more efficient way to get to the payoff of seeing new combinations. But the more efficient the mechanics are, the less of a game it is and more of just a spreadsheet showing the combinations.

You need a way to make the actual discovery process fun. So you could build a factorio-style pipeline that makes discovery more efficient over time. So that way the mind stays engaged for longer. I wonder what minimal set of game mechanics would fall out if you kept working on it.

<comment><USER3> The first Alchemy, DOS: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3NFBaYNhXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3NFBaYNhXo)

I also made one back then in Flash (called "Alxemy"), it got quite popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was a cool little game and even after I gave up at 32 and checked here ([https://littlealchemyguide.com/](https://littlealchemyguide.com/)) for how to make stuff, it still amused me.

I kept seeing Ice in the random hints, and I'm like HOW DO I MAKE ICE??

So I typed Ice into the guide and it gave me Cold + Water. Duh, but how do I make Cold? Human + Rain. WTF?

So how do I make Human? I can't even make Plant! And this spiral started(I chose a combo that I had at least one of):

Human = Earth + Life

Life = Energy + Swamp

Swamp = Grass + Mud

Grass = Earth + Plant

Plant = Earth + RAIN..... Facepalm.

The combinations are also an interesting look into the developers minds and can be pretty funny. For example, Bird + Ocean = Seagull. Of course! Bird + Earth? Ostrich. Haha

<comment><USER5> I like how life comes from a swamp which already has (plant) life in it. Very recursive.

<comment><USER6> I played this years ago, it's better to think of this separate from each other. As in remove the context of previous ingredients when making new things

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any chance of JSON recipe manifest?

Tangential: does anyone know a good (preferably open) dataset of crafting recipes to use for game mechanics?

<comment><USER8> You can download these files:

\- resources: [https://littlealchemy.com/resources/base.560.json](https://littlealchemy.com/resources/base.560.json)

\- names: [https://littlealchemy.com/resources/en/names.560.json](https://littlealchemy.com/resources/en/names.560.json)

Then you can run this Python code to extract/merge into one single file:

      import json

      with open('res.json', 'r') as f, open('names.json', 'r') as ff:
          res = json.load(f)
          names = json.load(ff)

      for res_id, res_name in names.iteritems():
          print("%s:" % res_name)
          for id1, id2 in res[str(res_id)].get('parents', []):
              print("\t %s + %s" % (names[str(id1)], names[str(id2)]))

Expected output:

      glacier:
      	 ice + mountain
      cart:
      	 wheel + wood
      nerd:
      	 human + glasses
      doctor:
      	 human + hospital
      wagon:
      	 cart + horse
      newspaper:
      	 paper + paper
      paper:
      	 wood + pressure

<comment><USER9> I wanted to see it in graph form, so a wrote I did pretty much the same but printed a dot code and piped that into dot. It was a disaster: A huge, unreadable mess. Try yourself if you're feeling adventurous:

        import json

        with open('base.560.json') as f:
            base = json.load(f)

        with open('names.560.json') as f:
            names = json.load(f)

        print('digraph {')

        for elnum, name in names.items():
            print(f'e{elnum} [label="{name}"];')

        for elnum, body in base.items():
            for el1, el2 in body.get('parents', ()):
                print(f'e{el1} -> e{elnum};')
                print(f'e{el2} -> e{elnum};')

        print('}')

        # python3.6 code.py | dot -Tpng dot.png

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a fun iOS game called GlyphQuest that works something like this -- there's a hexagonal grid of elements, and a monster. Connecting enough "like" elements (and, later on, combinations of elements) causes attacks on the monsters. Cute graphics, some nice leveling up mechanisms, well done.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a game on the app store called Doodle God with the same concept

Doodle God™ by JoyBits Ltd. [https://appsto.re/au/HwWBw.i](https://appsto.re/au/HwWBw.i)

Doodle God™ Free by JoyBits Ltd. [https://appsto.re/au/tNEDz.i](https://appsto.re/au/tNEDz.i)

Has IAPs and isn't the most fun game on the app store, but decent enough.

</comment><comment><USER12> Somehow very swiftly ended up with an atomic bomb......

</comment><comment><USER13> I played this one on Android, years ago: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.zed_0xff.an...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.zed_0xff.android.alchemy)

The Reviews suggest that it has gotten worse…

</comment><comment><USER14> So it looks like earth is in the "C" slot. Why is it that when I type "C", a text field appears and starts filtering out elements by name?

After seeing this happen, I tried typing out the whole word "earth" and hitting enter. Nothing. I tried typing "?" for help. Still nothing... "/" opens a find search box. By opening that and typing "fire", and then hitting escape, I've got fire hilighted. So I hit enter... nothing. I hit space... now the useless text field is there.

Not a fan of this game's onboarding!

<comment><USER15> Earth looks like it's in the "C" field because you have very few elements. The more elects you create starting with "C" the less it looks like that.

Also it's possible the searching with "/" is part of your browser. I'm pretty sure Firefox does that, less sure about others.

<comment><USER14> > _Earth looks like it 's in the "C" field because you have very few elements. > The more elects you create starting with "C" the less it looks like that._

There's no way for a fresh visitor to know that! The game should have some sort of basic instructions and at least consider the onboarding experience... and I say this as some who has created web games that fail on this front.

Is any way to select things with the keyboard? I've got an somewhat injured wrist and can't be doing hundreds of repeated click and drag motions via the mouse or touchpad.

(Yes, the slash behavior defaulting to search is part of FF, but it's also used to bring up keyboard shortcuts on Slack and many, many other sites)

Update: I see how the game works now. If it hadn't been on the front page of HN, I definitely would have just gone through the steps in my comment above, clicked on a couple of icons and bounced. Hope the feedback helps (assuming the creator reads this and wants people not to bounce)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> hints!

      function combRep(arr, l) {
        if (l === void 0) l = arr.length; // Length of the combinations
        var data = Array(l), // Used to store state
            results = [
            ]; // Array of results
        (function f(pos, start) { // Recursive function
          if (pos === l) { // End reached
            results.push(data.slice()); // Add a copy of data to results
            return;
          }
          for (var i = start; i < arr.length; ++i) {
            data[pos] = arr[i]; // Update data
            f(pos + 1, i); // Call f recursively
          }
        }) (0, 0); // Start at index 0
        return results; // Return results
      }
      var parents = [];
      for(b in bases.base) {
        if (bases.base[b].parents != undefined) {
          for (p of bases.base[b].parents) {
            parents[p.sort().join('-')] = b;
          }
        }
      }

      function gethints() {
        combinations = combRep([1, 2, 3, 4].concat(game.progress), 2);
        for (c of combinations) {
          let idx = c.sort().join('-');
          if (parents[idx] != undefined && game.progress.find((e, i, a) => parents[idx] == e) == undefined) {
            console.log(bases.names[c[0]], bases.names[c[1]]);
          }
        }
      }

</comment><comment><USER17> I like the pyromania version "little inferno"

</comment><comment><USER18> Would've been cool if you could combine the egg and the chicken to create paradox.

<comment><USER19> Did you get that far to have an egg and a chicken?

<comment><USER18> Yes, I got to around 50. Still feeling like a retard for not being able to make a tree.

<comment><USER20> I think tree is plant + time. Which kinda makes sense.

<comment><USER19> I later found googling can lead to any hint

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand, this has been an extremely common game on Android for ever

<comment><USER22> Honestly, I don't understand why not everyone knows about every single Android app ever made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Family + Atomic Bomb should produce Thread ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/)).

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm learning dutch, and this was a fun way to learn some words!

</comment><comment><USER25> unfortunately it stopped working for me after about 25; some kind of bug. i could no longer drop new things onto the canvas; they were not "droppable."

clearing the canvas had no effect.

<comment><USER26> This happened to me immediately after dropping the first two things on the canvas. There was a message in the console from their drag-and-drop implementation about some variable being undefined. It seems like they don't handle long latencies gracefully; the assets took more than 2 minutes to appear. (Before that, everything was just a boring beaker with some text.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is the goal to just find all combinations? It should be explained.

<comment><USER28> IMO Sometimes finding the goal is part of the fun. Minecraft similarly has no end goal for the game, at least initially. The goal driven storyline was added later I believe.

For me recognizing that the count on the left is simply new items I discover out of possible 560 was part of the fun aspect of this surprisingly simple but engaging game

<comment><USER29> Minecraft still doesn't have a storyline. Unless you count the achievement system, I guess. Or the separate point-and-click that has nothing to do with the actual game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I gave up at 18

<comment><USER31> So do a lot of people. Graduation is a bitch

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why is that even on hacker news ?

If I want links to all those little games, I would have a FB account.

In what way is it a news ?</comment>


NYC Meetup: Sunday at 7:30PM at Radegast Hall - <AUTHOR>

As we all collectively decided last week, there will be a HN meetup in NYC this Sunday at 7:30 PM.
The place: Radegast Hall. Take the L train, get off at Bedford Ave (first stop in Brooklyn).
http://www.radegasthall.com/
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=radegast+hall,+nyc&ie=UTF8&ll=40.717729,-73.959231&spn=0.008603,0.018797&z=16&iwloc=0x89c2595c2cac7f81:0x8d7987001867c2a3
You can easily identify me: I'm a generic looking white guy, and I'll be drinking beer. <comment><USER2> As mentioned in the discussion thread, some YCers (me) are under 21. I usually don't have a problem getting served anyway (it's the beard) and they claim to serve food as well so I'm not too concerned.

<comment><USER3> Bummer. No one responded when I asked if this was an issue.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241245>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _I'm a generic looking white guy, and I'll be drinking beer._

As am I.

edited!

<comment><USER4> Same here. What beer? That may be the only way to identify the HN crowd.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps we should all make an effort to wear technical swag? Or perhaps xkcd t-shirts?

<comment><USER3> I'll have a guitar and a black hat as I'll be coming from band practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll be there, wearing an F1 hat

<comment><USER6> useful descriptive, thanks. I'll see you guys there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Who is we? Link?

I'll try to make it...

<comment><USER7> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241126>

In case you missed the discussion last week...

<comment><USER2> I did, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How long will you guys stick around? My plane doesn't land in NYC until 6:30pm but I would love to get in on this.</comment>


Should We See Everything a Cop Sees? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/magazine/police-body-cameras.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Yes. End of story.

And if not the general public, then the defendant's attorneys.</comment>


Ask HN: Coders - what do you listen to while coding? - <AUTHOR> Feel free to post links to your playlists here! <comment><USER2> Months ago, I realized that basically most of what Sirius XM was playing, was available as a podcast, so I canceled satellite radio and just subscribed to all the dj's I could find / listen to. And I really only listen to EDM.

[http://podcast.wandwmusic.nl/podcast.php](http://podcast.wandwmusic.nl/podcast.php)

[http://laidbackluke.podtree.com/feed/podcast/](http://laidbackluke.podtree.com/feed/podcast/)

[http://podcast.borgeous.com/?feed=podcast](http://podcast.borgeous.com/?feed=podcast)

[http://afrojack.podtree.com/feed/podcast/](http://afrojack.podtree.com/feed/podcast/)

[http://podcast.armadamusic.com/asot/podcast.xml](http://podcast.armadamusic.com/asot/podcast.xml)

[http://podcast.djhardwell.com/podcast.xml](http://podcast.djhardwell.com/podcast.xml)

[http://tritonia.libsyn.com/rss](http://tritonia.libsyn.com/rss)

[http://www.galexmusic.com/podcast/gareth.xml](http://www.galexmusic.com/podcast/gareth.xml)

[http://intheair.libsyn.com/rss](http://intheair.libsyn.com/rss)

[http://feddelegrand.libsyn.com/rss](http://feddelegrand.libsyn.com/rss)

[http://static.aboveandbeyond.nu/grouptherapy/podcast.xml](http://static.aboveandbeyond.nu/grouptherapy/podcast.xml)

[http://toolroomknightsradio.com/radioshow/toolroomknightsrad...](http://toolroomknightsradio.com/radioshow/toolroomknightsradiopodcast.xml)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a coding music playlist that I've been improving over the last few years, it's nearly 70 hours of upbeat electronica & IDM with no almost no vocals. I try to only keep music that keeps me in the zone and delete any track that distracts me. The playlist is now on Spotify, but it had over 100 subscribers on Rdio before they closed down.

[https://open.spotify.com/user/syneryder/playlist/5YpeoHyEHG7...](https://open.spotify.com/user/syneryder/playlist/5YpeoHyEHG7ttNgvzAkW72)

spotify://user:syneryder:playlist:5YpeoHyEHG7ttNgvzAkW72

There was also a thread last week that asked about music: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11493678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11493678)

</comment><comment><USER4> Usually stuff without lyrics, or lyrics I can't really understand, so the songs remain in the background. Anything to drawn out the open office setting when I need to concentrate, and also to pump me up. Seems like repetitiveness can help reduce distraction. Most likely some classical, and then some aggressive rock/punk/metal.

</comment><comment><USER5> Defcon radio, of course! [https://somafm.com/defcon/](https://somafm.com/defcon/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Rock, Metal, OSTs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fans.</comment>