China has built an elevated bus that travels above car traffic - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/china-has-actually-built-that-elevated-bus-that-travels-above-car-traffic/ <comment><USER2> Can anyone provide some analysis / urban planning snobbishness? What are the disadvantages? Off hand it looks scary to drive under / around. Unlike a bus, one accident can cause the entire line to get backed up. You could say the same thing about subways, but subways can't get into car accidents in the first place.

Furthermore it can only run in places that have wide four lane roads (2 in each direction) to begin with. There's not that many appealing residential places next to loud, busy roads. Is it possible to build practical commuter routes serviced by this type of vehicle?

Of course I'm not a total cynic. If the problems could be hammered out then it will be quick like a subway (no traffic) but much less expensive. I'm curious to see how this experiment pans out.

<comment><USER3> There's no way this will work in China. If you have ever been in China you'll notice that

a.) cars don't follow traffic lights

b.) people create unofficial extra lanes

c.) scooters are everywhere. and they ignore lights/lanes

d.) people don't pay attention to traffic lights nor cars when they cross.

<comment><USER4> (a) Cars _do_ obey traffic lights, at least in Shanghai and Beijing. Perhaps you're talking about 10 years ago, or in tier 2/3/4 cities.

(d) People _do_ pay attention when they cross the road. You have to, because cars can turn right at a red light and, even though they're meant to yield to pedestrians, they don't.

(c) Creating an additional lane is rare in big cities.

I'm not saying this idea is workable, but the points you make don't seem the most pressing.

<comment><USER5> > (a) Cars do obey traffic lights, at least in Shanghai and Beijing. Perhaps > you're talking about 10 years ago, or in tier 2/3/4 cities

Most of the time? More so in Shanghai than Beijing, I still see cars doing very crazy things on a daily basis. I mean, what cop is going to dare and pull over a Black Audi?

> (d) People do pay attention when they cross the road. You have to, because > cars can turn right at a red light and, even though they're meant to yield > to pedestrians, they don't.

Most do, but after seeing a couple of cyclists hit and (probably) killed as they just blew through a red light, well, some obviously don't.

> (c) Creating an additional lane is rare in big cities.

Heck, 25% of the lanes in Beijing are being used for illegal parking, the scooters just spill out anywhere. Anyways, these buses I assume would only travel on very well regulated roads (if at all, this bus has been vapor for more than a few years now).

<comment><USER4> You're refuting points that I didn't actually make!

On (a), I said cars obey traffic lights. I didn't say they don't do other crazy things.

On (d), I said people look when they're crossing the road. I wasn't talking about cyclists going through an intersection. That's not what 'crossing the road' means in every day speech.

On (c), I was talking about creating an additional lane. I wasn't talking about illegally blocking an existing lane.

<comment><USER5> I see cars routinely not obey traffic lights, which is one of hose crazy things. The only reason it has gone down at all is because of the cameras, but you'll still see it happen on a daily basis.

People don't look when they are crossing, they just go. I have to warn the driver to be careful at such intersection because there is always some old guy or gal crossing. The bikes are much more dangerous, as the cars are expected to, and can, just go around the pedestrians who don't give a f*ck about the light, but the bikes are always surprises.

Beijing used to have lots of bike lanes. Technically it still does, but it is all being used for parking. The four lane roads on either side of my apartment are effectively one lane roads since parking enforcement is non existent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What will happen when a car or trunk with a height higher than accepted is on the road ? On a tunnel it is easier to guard against it because there is only 2 entrances and it happens a lot, but on a road with multiple cross road it will block cars and the tram. All this show is poor planning, the solution is to use a car line for a tram line or to plane a tram line in advance. But it is still a nice hack, and it will be interesting to test how drivers will behave with it.

<comment><USER7> Given the speed it goes at, 40mph max it says in the article, I guess most of the time cars would be zooming underneath it. In which case, the scenario will be that the bus-thing will block larger trucks from going past it as they cannot go under or around. Then those trucks will block cars, and the whole 2-lane traffic will slow to a crawl behind this monstrosity.

<comment><USER8> It seems unlikely that they would operate it on roads with significant truck traffic. I guess it might be hard to avoid roads that are used by delivery trucks, but they would be less likely to follow it for long distances (and in cities those roads would anyway tend to have speed limits closer to 40 mph).

<comment><USER7> Ah that's true, thinking were I live in Europe there are a few 2 lane main roads through the city, in fact I live on one, with that kind of limit or even less. No way you'd get up to 40mph there. This looks great and reminds me of something from Thunderbirds, but a normal bus seems much more practical!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jarrett Walker has a great rant on this topic:

[http://humantransit.org/2016/05/the-chinese-straddle-bus- is-...](http://humantransit.org/2016/05/the-chinese-straddle-bus-is-back.html)

"…If your starting point for urban design is that single-occupant cars, despite their extreme inefficiency in using scarce urban space, should be allowed to go anywhere at all, and that the surface plane should be designed solely for their convenience to the exclusion of all other citizens and needs, then this technology makes sense.

Remember, the primary cost of transit infrastructure is the cost of keeping transit out of the way of motorists, on the assumption that motorists have the prior claim to absolutely every bit of public space in our cities."

</comment><comment><USER10> Can we have a space race, but for awesome urban tech? Because that would be super awesome.

</comment><comment><USER11> Holy sht - they actually did it. And in record time too. Didn't they show off the 30cm model like a month ago?

<comment><USER12> One of my buddies here in China (who's been here for ever) told me that the China always say that we in the West talk too much. That we talk talk talk and never actually get anything done. In China people just do thing - often stupid things, but it's often the quickest way to learn how to do it right.

<comment><USER13> > One of my buddies here in China (who's been here for ever) told me that the > China always say that we in the West talk too much.

The main reason why "the West" talk too much is because they talk about safety concerns, and actually tackle potential problems.

China doesn't, and when the proverbial shit hits the fan they simply try to cover up the result of their incompetence, too often even at the expense of human lives.

Case in point:

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

Another reason why "the West" talk too much is because in "the West" projects need to have a sound business model, as there isn't a dictatorship that is able to throw piles of cash at problems just to save face and resorts to industrial levels of censorship to stop these problems from being discussed.

It's easy to have successes if you use force to silence anyone who dares point out any failure.

<comment><USER14> While the attempt of cover-up was ridiculous, the event as a whole doesn't seem worse than Spain's derailment that happened two years later, in which many more were killed, and for which all blame was laid on the driver.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Yep. Or the Valencia metro accident, where there is some quite convincing evidence that the authorities hid evidence and instructed employees to give a convenient version in their declarations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valencia_Metro_derailment#Subs...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valencia_Metro_derailment#Subsequent_reactions)

<comment><USER15> Or the myriad deadly Amtrak incidents that dwarf that toll.

<comment><USER16> Unless by "dwarf" you mean "less than 10% more" and by "myriad" you mean "exactly one", I invite you to join those of us who live in the real world. You don't have to like Amtrak, but there's plenty of nonsense on the Internet without you adding to it.

<comment><USER15> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/13/what-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/13/what- we-know-about-amtraks-history-of-accidents-injuries-and-deaths/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is cool - looking at the design, I was thinking they should put solar panels on the top and then it could also provide a free source of charging for people to charge their phones. But then, I had a darker thought and those chargers could be USB allowing china to hack into everyone's phones... I love the future.

<comment><USER18> If you are worried about intimate contact with public charging stations giving your phone the cooties, just use a condom (as [0]). Or cut the data lines in a charging cable. That'd be white and green in a standard usb cable afaik.

[0][http://syncstop.com/](http://syncstop.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So looks like it has tyres as well as tracks to guide it along a path it cannot deviate from --which makes sense as it needs to have as predictable a route as a rail car.

Is this solution cheaper than elevated monorails? The clearance for traffic definitely is something which has the potential to cause problems of either high clearance vehicles misjudging or the bus misjudging as vehicles exchange position in traffic --you know there will be people pushing the clearance, so they should think about failsafes.

<comment><USER20> > you know there will be people pushing the clearance, so they should think > about failsafes.

I'd imaging you'd just put up height restriction bars on all the roads entering the path.

Add in a sensor that checks the height of other transport around in case a car somehow got higher after passing a safety bar. ....

You'd reduce accidents to normal levels.

The Chinese would have thought of this on day one....

[edit] "To prevent traffic accidents, Mr. Song said guardrails would be constructed between the bus tracks and the car lanes that pass through the elevated bus. The rails would be able to absorb at least 70 percent of a collision's impact to reduce damage to the bus and other vehicles. Lanes for the elevated bus would be limited to passenger vehicles no higher than 7.2 feet, and the buses are designed to meet zoning and bridge height regulations in each city."

<comment><USER19> I hope so, but sometimes we're optimistic about the behavior of others. Restricting the height of vehicles able to enter a multilane multi purpose roadway is going to be tough. People will sabotage those just so they can use the same roadway to make deliveries, make a living, etc. But, who knows, maybe you're right and they have devised such a solution.

Another issue is people trying to turn away from the lanes of the elevated bus as the bus approaches --thinking they can beat it, unless getting in and out of those lanes is restricted to a few well managed merge and exit areas.

<comment><USER21> I guess since there will be guard rails that access will be controlled.

Do people often sabotage train tracks? It seems similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Practical or not, this isn't going to be the first time China builds something we didn't.

</comment><comment><USER23> Absolutely brilliant!

In London, the buses are a real pain because they are slow (both in terms of how fast they can go and because they stop every couple of hundred of meters or so) and you often cant get around them due to narrow streets/constant traffic coming the other way. "Sorry, I got stuck behind a bus" is a common (and legit!) excuse for arriving somewhere late. And in UK and London, we have a LOT of buses which does not seem to be the case in most US cities I have visited where Buses are probably less than 10% of traffic compared to more like 50% (or even approaching 75-90% in some central areas) in central London (anecdotal figures)

The fact that tall vehicles cant go under these is a limitation sure, but right now (in London at least) its very hard for ANYTHING to get past a bus (even cyclists or motorcyclists sometimes) so allowing cars to get past if not lorries is a massive step forward.

When can we get these in London?!

Only drawback I can see is people driving into the back of the thing. I imagine they will be riddled with sensors and big flashing lights if something too tall is approaching from behind (and I would assume that forward looking sensors will stop it just driving into stuff on its own).

<comment><USER24> Surely the bus lanes where they exist solve this problem.

<comment><USER23> Usually not because there are _other_ buses overtaking the one stopped in the lane, or there is something else in the way.

Plus there are not bus lanes everywhere. But in theory yeah :-)

If we had these in London we could return bus lanes to the rest of the traffic or use it for dedicated cycle-lanes or pedestrian use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This seems like only usable at straight roads, where only regular passenger cars are allowed. Allow a van there or a truck and you are up for accident. Also, I would assume that some driver being all of sudden surrounded by this machine can steer right or left out of surprise.

Hopefully they have this planned. Or maybe this is just a way to suck money from city budget to private pockets or even marketing stunt, that would make more sense.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's a cool idea, but I think it's very unrealistic to label this vehicle as a bus. It is more along the lines of a streetcar, especially since it will only be traveling along fixed paths and isn't able to turn down a side street to detour or make an ad hoc route change.

</comment><comment><USER27> Imagine a slightly longer, single-lane-width version of this running along the middle lanes of Oak and Fell in SF, one every few minutes, almost never late because traffic is irrelevant.

This coming at you from behind is not all that different to a motorbike, is it? You'd have a special traffic light phase at each end to allow it to loop around safely. This has to be much cheaper than digging tunnels anywhere where earthquakes are a concern.

<comment><USER28> Psychologically, a motorbike feels less like an alien battleship hovering over your head => I do not rule out human reaction to this overtaking them will be quite different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I still don't understand how it can turn without hitting all the cars under it.

<comment><USER30> Separate signal phase, probably. There's plenty of precedent for streetcars to do that.

<comment><USER31> You are right.

According to this video, the bus would have higher priority than other cars during signalling:

[https://www.facebook.com/shanghaiist/videos/1015460854966603...](https://www.facebook.com/shanghaiist/videos/10154608549666030/)

<comment><USER29> That's the same video that shows it magically transforming into jelly to make the turn at the 2:00 mark, so I'm not totally sure if I trust it.

<comment><USER32> Google "bendy buses" the design they are proposing between segments is exactly the same as this. Nothing magical or gelatonus about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A giant tram running at high speed above traffic supported on wheels under huge pillars that go between car-packed lanes.

What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER34> This might seem like a cool idea at first. But, why they did not built an elevated metro/sub-way line.

I don't think this kind of vehicle is energy efficient. The aerodynamics of the vehicle doesn't seem to be very good. That amount of energy can carry more people and be energy efficient(compared to this) for a regular metro/sub-way or trams.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wow, it doesn't seem that long ago that they showed off the concept art and now they're building it already.

</comment><comment><USER36> "New York has actually built an elevated train that travels above car traffic (and can't collide with it)"

Is this really better than a standard elevated railway? Trains fit much more than 300 people, _already_ , today.

<comment><USER35> It's different.

The use case for this is the same as light rail, shorter distances with more frequent stops. Basically this is to commuter rail as commuter rail is to high speed rail.

<comment><USER13> > Basically this is to commuter rail as commuter rail is to high speed rail.

In other words, this is a beefier trolley car. Same concept, larger capacity.

<comment><USER35> Yes, but one that doesn't have the costs of being elevated or the downside of being blocked by traffic.

<comment><USER37> How is it not blocked by traffic? There is no way for something to use the same right-of-way as traffic and not be affected by it.

<comment><USER38> RTFA. It's a tall "bus" which straddles the roadway so that cars can drive underneath it.

It does have to stop at intersections, but can also go faster than traffic on the same road.

<comment><USER37> I did. If it has to stop at intersections, how is it not subject to being blocked by traffic? If it is rolling along the same road, what stops cars from moving in front of it? As far as I can tell, this system has no advantages over a tram/streetcar.

<comment><USER38> A tram/streetcar needs a dedicated lane to be impervious to slowdowns. If dedicated lanes are on the table you could just use any old bus.

The idea is to ride on existing (or slightly modified) roadway without taking lanes away from cars.

<comment><USER37> How does this thing avoid traffic without dedicated lanes? It needs to touch the ground _somewhere_ , and the article talks about installing guardrails and other measures to keep traffic from interfering with its movement.

<comment><USER38> The parts that touch the ground aren't very wide, and can use something more like a gutter than a full lane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Brilliant idea. I had thought of building elevated train/road track sections, in a factory then, installing them above existing roads or railways, slotted together delivered by airships. This must be much cheaper though, I don't agree will cause accidents, drivers are amazingly adept at driving close together and missing each-other and other obstacles. Will be no more difficult to avoid, than obstacles found driving in Paris or Rome today.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's a train, not a bus.

<comment><USER41> More of a tram, but yeah, not the bus-concept that was presented a while back.

Limiting it to a controlled path makes sense for this design though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wouldn't it be better if the bus' wheels latched on to the actual sides of the road, like say fences/concrete walls on each side of the road? Seems to me like it would make it less scary for cars to drive under, as they would just have to worry about not hitting the sides of the road like they normally do.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is cool. It looks very spacious inside. Curious about what happens when there's a bus in front of it.

</comment><comment><USER44> I can't believe they actually built this. Am I completely crazy or is it much easier to juse use a rail system? They've already been forced to build rails into the road so it's not a bus per say. it's a rail-based vehicle that allows cars to pass through it.

<comment><USER45> This doesn't need a dedicated space like a railway, and won't be delayed by traffic like a tramway. Of course those would be easier, but what's the problem with innovating?

<comment><USER37> > This doesn't need a dedicated space like a railway, and won't be delayed by > traffic like a tramway

Those are fundamentally incompatible. Either it does have dedicated space (which the article certainly indicates it does, both elevated platforms and travel paths) or it will be delayed by traffic. You can't have both.

<comment><USER45> Well this does :D It goes over traffic, and as mentioned elsewhere, the height of vehicles is limited on these parts of the road, so it won't get stuck behind a tall lorry.

<comment><USER37> You are missing the point. It needs to touch the ground _somewhere_. That somewhere is either a dedicated right-of-way or subject to traffic blockage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm turning right, oh wait the bus / train thing is coming up behind me. Roads were meant for one class of vehicle on them at a time. This thing will cause so many accidents the plan will fail. Regular buses can do the job just fine.

</comment><comment><USER47> The concept is really cool. Wondering how they handle different car height though.

</comment><comment><USER48> Countdown till the first car collides with one of those posts, or tries to cut it off and is slammed sideways. This just seems like such a bad idea in general I can't believe they actually built it.

</comment><comment><USER49> This looks more like an elevated train then a bus. Can it even turn?

</comment><comment><USER43> video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS3ULbv2B0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS3ULbv2B0Q)

</comment><comment><USER50> Seems like an anti-pattern to me. The actual solution would be to reduce the amount of cars on the road...

<comment><USER51> It seems to me that a good way to reduce the amount of cars onto the road would be to build large buses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Creative idea. But wouldn't the accidents between cars under this be a bit more dangerous?

</comment><comment><USER53> Too low, I can see higher vehicles running into it.

<comment><USER54> Yes, an obvious and valid flaw, I don't know why you are being down voted. A car with a roof-rack word would prevent the bus passing, assuming the driver sees it. Not to mention cyclists.

<comment><USER55> And easily fixed. Put multiple warning signs, then hang some chains set at this height limit on roads leading in as a warning (nice loud crash but limited damage), followed by a nice solid bar blocking the section of the road this operates.

<comment><USER56> Some people ignore these. Or rent a truck and take their usual route.

It's almost that time of year in Boston when many people move c. Sep 1. Some get "Storrowed":

[http://realestate.boston.com/news/2015/08/28/your-guide- to-a...](http://realestate.boston.com/news/2015/08/28/your-guide-to-an-un- storrowed-move-in-boston/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> does anyone else remember seeing a concept video for this years ago?

super cool.

</comment><comment><USER58> Wuppertal.

<comment><USER59> You should probably have included a link to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Suspension_Railway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Suspension_Railway)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I predict a dramatic increase in car accidents because of the effect this will have on drivers' peripheral vision. Based on the various articles I've read it seems nobody has considered this at all, which is amazing in itself.

Time will tell.

<comment><USER61> Wouldn't it be like driving through a tunnel? Granted it would be a bit weird that it moves (you can overtake it and vice-versa) but given it short length, you can easily focus on the road and compensate.

I think they might add a vanity panel so you can't see the tyres and trusses making hitting the thing less tangling and perhaps even add flashing warnings if you are veering too close to the thing. Given the width and height of the TEB it looks rather stable.

<comment><USER60> You have to keep in mind that the majority of drivers use a sort of mental auto-pilot, which is why most car accidents happen in the first place.

Only someone who is aware of the dangers introduced by how their peripheral vision will be affected is going to have the foresight to "focus on the road". Other people are going to slam into the person in front of them. That's my prediction anyway, I might be wrong but let's wait and see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> It's a Shelbyville idea. Seriously though, does it strike someone that this is just adds to the massive problems that China already have?

</comment><comment><USER63> This contraption is representative of everything that is wrong with communism.

<comment><USER64> As if modern China was communist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> "There's a reason this didn't happen in America or Europe.

Same reason we're not building as many CRISPR labs.

We are afraid. They're not." \- [https://twitter.com/0xa59a2d/status/760659669735976960](https://twitter.com/0xa59a2d/status/760659669735976960)

</comment><comment><USER66> I read through most comments here, and nobody seems to say this so I do. This article is BS, Silicon Valley might not be the cutting edge in mobile, but neither is China. You can't just write a generic article because of few small advances.</comment>


On the cusp of something big - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2013/05/on-the-cusp-of-something-big.html <comment><USER2> _Startups are a long-term game._

While I agree with this, it's definitely not the position I see here often. The quick flip or at least buyout-as-a-business-plan seems far more popular and glorified.

I guess I can understand that, to a point, but it indicates a very naive view of success and an unrealistic idea of what business is actually like. Unfortunately, that's echoed and reinforced in many places -- intentionally and otherwise -- YC and its surroundings being among them.

I like the premise here. I think it's simply that motivation comes from the belief, valid or not, that you're really doing something that has serious potential. He doesn't quantify what that means, and I think that's best... "big" means whatever it means to you, whatever motivates you, because that's what will make you feel like you're doing something important.

I'm not a feelings person when it comes to business. But being a solo founder, those ephemeral little buggers are important.

<comment><USER3> I agree that this feeling of being on the cusp of something big is ultimately just that, a feeling, and one should not try to be more specific about it. However, it seems to me that there is at least one type of situation where that feeling is grounded in fairly hard and verifiable facts, namely, when the idea in question is a scientific invention. Rudolf Diesel had a pretty good grasp of what the advantages of his engine were, and Tesla and Siemens knew pretty well why and how their AC power system was superior to Edison's DC. I'm a little irritated by the fact that this kind of scientific evidence for the value of an idea receives practically no attention at all in today's treatment of startup businesses, like the Lean Startup movement. Today, we ask the customers if they want AC or DC in their homes, and if the answer is DC, we pivot to that. Perhaps it would have been worth to stick with the AC idea a little longer, to fight for it, and to let its benefits sink in with people.

<comment><USER2> The only issue I'd take with this is that when someone says "I feel this way," I take it to mean "I believe this but can't prove it." If you _know_ something, or if you have a good, scientific basis for a statement... that's not a feeling. That's a hypothesis, and it shouldn't be cheapened by being stated as anything less (at least when speaking to people who aren't already familiar with it).

When you've gotten beyond "I feel like this will work, and that's motivating me" and you've moved on to "this freaking WORKS and now we have to do something about it," then you have a new set of problems to go with your opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've felt far happier moving towards success than actually having success.

There's many aphorisms supporting this: the journey _is_ the destination; it's better to travel than to arrive; getting there is half the fun. People are enthralled by movies/stories about _doing_ something - not having already done it. Emerson's _Self-Reliance_ touches on this too (<http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm>), the soul _becoming_.

It's a bit logically absurd though - you're aiming at achieving something, yet it's the process of achieving that you really want... but absurd or not in theory, that's been the most fun for me, in practice.

<comment><USER3> I have experienced, and heard of others experiencing, something even more drastic: when achieving a goal after a long and exhilarating journey, not only was I less happy than during the journey, I was actually depressed, thought the thing just achieved was worthless, and didn't want it anymore. It's like a generalized postnatal depression.

<comment><USER4> Me too. I've also heard of one instance of postnatal depression where it was hoped that having a child would solve problems the parents were experiencing, both personally and in the relationship (I have no idea if this is a common cause of postnatal depression).

Assuming this _is_ a general cause of victories turning to ashes, of trying to solve other problems with it... what to do? Should we disregard this feeling, and start a new project (have more kids/brain children)? Or try to find something that will be genuinely satisfying, and won't turn to ashes?

I don't know. But I think it might be more like this: 1. get the basics right 2. have fun.

      1. basics
        exercise, sleep, food
        friendly, co-operative people, support/encouragement, help others and be helped
        be factual (not emotional reasoning), discuss (see POVs), keep perspective
        have a bigger philosophy: religion (Knuth and Brooks are religious), nature

      2. fun
        focus on the journey as enjoyable
        don't see the result as a solution to *how you feel*
        immediately go on to the next project
        it's just for fun, not to redeem yourself or make everything alright

NB: I'm in no way commenting on your situation; I'm just replying to your comment to articulate these thoughts I've been having on this topic.

<comment><USER3> Good thoughts, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _For this to work you can't be completely delusional, only partially._

This.

Or as I like to say: the most important pitch you will ever make is to yourself. Convince yourself and others will follow.

</comment><comment><USER6> While this philosophy is what sustains the entrepreneurial spirit, I think most people get int the game because they got an itch to scratch.</comment>


Amper raises $4M to use AI to write music - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/02/amper-funding/ <comment><USER2> $4M would pay for a lot of mediocre human composers to produce a lot of mediocre music.

I understand the value proposition here and it's neat technology, I just think it might still be a little bit early for millions to be pouring into the field. Every example I've heard of "AI music" has been some level of failure. But, maybe they just need a few million dollars to throw at the problem, and it'll go away.

<comment><USER3> The real niche IMO is in game music. If you can get the music to respond in real time to players actions without becoming repetitive that's probably worth 100+M across the industry even if it's never 'great'.

<comment><USER4> I think you nailed it.

The real utopia here is putting your headphones and listening to appropriate and good music.

Music responding to gaming, sports, chill, on-the-train, falling asleep, without user input would be pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this company faces some serious challenges, but to me the main challenge will be to create such incredible value from the interface between customers and the intended product that it is wholly better to use their software than just search "piano stock music" somewhere and pay a couple bucks (or pay significantly more bucks for a producer's labor).

From what the article says, it looks like this company is looking to provide their software as a tool for companies to generate stock music with minimal effort. They claim that stock music currently available for purchase is both overpriced and generally insufficient for commercial projects with specific demands. Perhaps it's also implied that paying a producer would similarly be too steep of a cost. My main issue with Amper's concept is not that the creation of music with AI is too farfetched- that is not a new concept. My issue is that the value of Amper's software depends on their ability to optimize the process of creating music according to strict specifications- something that I think is bottlenecked by the speed of human conversation. Like any producer, AI software can get the ball rolling, but ultimately creative decisions have to be made intelligently somewhere, and there must be an exchange of feedback which is more efficient and stronger than regular human conversation for Amper to succeed. Not only must the AI be very good, but the user interface itself must be so good that someone without a music production skillset and only a vague understanding of what's needed can do the work. I think creating this kind of interface for a layperson is the bigger challenge here.

I was also extremely unimpressed with the demo. The sound quality was very poor for commercial music and there really isn't a lot of range shown in the tracks. And it isn't because of soundcloud, there are plenty of even amateur composers with more professionally produced music. I know it's supposed to be stock music, but isn't this software supposed to be capable of generating excellent, detailed stock music?

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks promising. Having spent many years editing stock music for video we'd spend considerable time not only finding the right mood/genre but also editing the track to make it seem like it was "composed" specifically for the video. So, I think this solution only addresses half the problem.

What would be better is if you could download the individual tracks to import into a DAW where you could further edit/manipulate them to get that more custom sound. I went through the "Pro" tutorial and this wasn't an option.

<comment><USER7> so would you like some kind of tool within the timeline of the video in order to express things? Like some way to specify the a value corresponding to a dimension of the mood? What else would be useful? Perhaps a way to place a crescendo or a bridge? Would an option to do a MIDI export be useful?

I have no dogs in this fight, just curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. Sound choices are good, but the chord/harmony logic is pretty mediocre. I suspect there's an extremely simple Markov thing going on.

That may be good enough for production music.

At least it sounds like music, which puts it way ahead of most musical AI projects.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, the AI learned that Epic Cinematic soundtracks need the Inception BRAAAM ([http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/braaams-beginners- how-...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/braaams-beginners-how-a- horn-793220)) noise on every full measure. That's pretty impressive. [https://soundcloud.com/ampermusic/epic- cinematic](https://soundcloud.com/ampermusic/epic-cinematic)

</comment><comment><USER10> We can't automate filling out Excel spreadsheets, but investing 4 million dollars in automating music creation. Meanwhile there are plenty of CC- licensed tracks and plenty of aspiring composers/producers who would gladly work on creating tracks for "commercials or short online videos" for very reasonable price.

<comment><USER11> I think the question is of quality. Many people can make music, and anyone can automate making noise, but automating making music, _good_ music, is something that's hard to do, and has a huge market.

One can hope that one day we'll be autogenerating music based on individual preferences in a way that every piece you hear is a unique arrangement.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't want that any more than I'd never want to eat a favorite dish again. Novelty can be nice but it's not the only thing that makes an experience good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Music, entertainment, and branding cannot be separated in the mainstream. Let me put it this way - a large reason I listen to The Weeknd is because of the interesting lifestyle and excess that he portrays through his branding, his music videos, and his whole persona/vibe.

It's never _just_ about the music, which is why you see a ton of amazingly talented SoundCloud producers that no one has ever heard of. They understand the music but lack the branding and persona development that gets people to actually stick to their music.

AI produced music will be like computer generated art - too distant for most people unless there is another component on top of the music.

That's my initial take. Curious to see what people think of my opinion.

<comment><USER14> While you're correct, AI musicians can easily have all the features of a real musician. Check out Hatsune Miku. Although the music and lyrics are written by humans, the singer is a completely fictional character who sings (generates) the music. Fans love her (it?). So, we've already solved the persona problem. Just need to generate good lyrics and melody as well now.

<comment><USER15> Not really. Hatsune Miku is more like an instrument. Like piano or violin, but synthesized human voice (not completely synthesized even, they used voice samples from the real human). Miku is one of many vocaloids. You can think of vocaloid as family of instruments, like violin family in traditional music with violin, viola, cello etc. In my opinion, she is not even the best vocaloid, but most widely known for sure. And, as with all musical instruments, it all comes to how composer uses her. Most songs you hear only because composer is already fairly popular in doujin circles.

AI generated music is completely different field, because AI is the composer there. This is why in the original article they talk about how they want to create symbiosis of AI and human composer, essentially creating another tool aka instrument, but this time human needs to do even less in terms of actual music creation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll bet money they just pulled tensorflow magenta off github.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you want to try generating music yourself using machine learning, check out Magenta: [https://magenta.tensorflow.org/welcome-to- magenta](https://magenta.tensorflow.org/welcome-to-magenta)

</comment><comment><USER18> To me the demo was a bit bland.

What it really needs is the ability to add cues, similar to how ML painting programs are now giving you the ability to define areas of a photo/painting (this is sky, this is water, etc).

If you could say I need 30 seconds of uplifting music for my trailer but here are the 3 places where things are fast paced and here is the point that is shocking, the AI could in theory accommodate that into one piece that aligns with your already assembled visuals.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've listened to the examples and it seems a very nice work in progress

However it still sounds like basic themes put together and not a song with beginning/middle/end

</comment><comment><USER20> I can save people a lot of time: It's not about the information on the medium, the .wav file the algorithm produces. It's about the context in which the information is presented.

AI-generated music will go along with generic food and other products. Listen already to the generic soundtracks on most Kickstarters. It works because they're paired conspicuous consumption. Just use the phone app "SoundBot" to make a generic chord progression with 1/8th note rhythms.

"Compelling" (a la Magenta) art and music will have to understand the context, have a perspective and understand what is ineffable and attempt to convey it. That's an unbelievably large machine learning task, having essentially no boundaries and with very little data to source from.

Nevertheless, as a company, Amper may create some useful musical man/machine collaboration tools.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting coincidence. Just today I was thinking about when AI would be able to generate music for in Clubs (which are mixes of other songs / sound- effects).

I wonder how this will turn out. I did like the sound sample at the bottom.

<comment><USER22> It's extremely formulaic by design so I think that it's maybe not that far off.

<comment><USER23> As a 'traditional musician' (i.e. I play a couple of instruments, read music, jam and write songs with real humans etc), I used to think this way, however actual 'good' club music takes a lot of time to produce in terms of selection and mixing and mastering of sounds. A friend of mine, who is a talented performer and producer, deconstructed some of these tracks for me, and pointed out just how much effort and talent it takes to produce good pop / dance / club sounds. So while on the surface it would seem possible to do something passable 'automatically', I am actually not too sure how good it would sounds, especially to audiences used to hearing the best that most talented humans can come up with. Allow me to coin the phrase 'club muzak' for what early AI 'composers' will produce (although I bet then that these 2017 'club muzak' will become all the rage again across the solar system in the late 2050s')!

<comment><USER22> I used to be a rave DJ and am friends with a couple of producers. The core of a dance music track is pretty well dictated by the sub-genre.

You can do a lot with a few wel chosen loops and generative music algorithms. What really sets off the best techno tracks is engineering and mixing, and I actually think that might be harder to get right with AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Obligatory Simpsons reference..."Don't praise the machine!" [https://vimeo.com/18516240](https://vimeo.com/18516240)

Kidding aside, this looks useful for a specific audience and in a price point consideration that hopefully gets traction. I've been fond of royalty-free stuff via purchase / service for a long time, it's a great platform. Will be a good one to keep an eye on!

</comment><comment><USER25> Hey guys... Drew from Amper here. Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER26> Drew,

Most of the sample tracks on SoundCloud are 30 second in length. Is the platform capable of creating longer 2-4 minute songs right now?

<comment><USER25> Yeah -- we currently allow anyone to make music of up to 5 minutes in length. Would love for you to hop on Amper and give it a shot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Where's the AI? At best, it looks like they use a pre-trained algorithm to generate output based on a few inputs. Similar to the deep dream visual effects Google was generating a while back.

Amazon's recommender systems adjust dynamically, based on what users buy. Google's handwriting recognition is learning every time you select the correct choice and continue with your next scribble. How does this learn anything?

<comment><USER28> AI doesn't necessarily mean it needs to have learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do anyone know why music, video or basically media service|app have the dark theme like PS, LR, Premiere Pro, Final Cut etc. ?

<comment><USER30> Easier on the eyes. When working with media you tend to stare at details for long periods of time, a dark theme makes the UI non-distracting.

<comment><USER31> Everything I use a lot has a dark theme - it's easier on my eyes. That includes websites, thanks to Stylish.

<comment><USER29> Could you share your snippet? I use stylish just for turning gray/dark theme websites(domestic ones) back to colorful again since the King's passed away :/

<comment><USER31> I don't use my own themes - that's the nice part about Stylish: other people have made themes for most websites I use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The technology is definitely there (and it can be done in many ways); I recently came across researchers/musicians using the self-organizing properties of slime molds to create music: [https://vimeo.com/163427284](https://vimeo.com/163427284)

</comment><comment><USER33> maybe danceclubs could have a webcam to the AI for it to gauge the reaction of the crowd to a particular sample.

the first nights just monitor djs and then it can learn to be it's own dj. but I think in a way it could only come up with similar styles.

</comment><comment><USER34> Even before machine learning people figured out the chord pattern of most popular songs. You can probably program it use those 4 chords.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best value dev box? - <AUTHOR> I'm in the market for a new workstation PC for personal dev projects. Planning to dual boot Windows and Linux, and development will mostly be typical enterprisey desktop and web apps (not primarily graphics or ML workloads). Are there any great prebuilts in the $1200-$3000 price range? Is there a very large value advantage to picking parts and self-assembling rather than buying a prebuilt PC? <comment><USER2> The budget is quite large for the task. There's little reason to invest in high specs for your workload unless you see yourself going deep into VMs. If buying new, prebuilts basically offer a premium for convenience, and usually with less repairability(proprietary boards and cases tend to resist modification). Used and refurbished prebuilts can be fine with a fresh power supply.

To set a performance target, I suggest starting with a search for midrange gaming builds, then reduce the graphics spec and add more emphasis on memory size, fast storage, and core counts.

Anything leftover in the budget is worth considering for peripherals(monitor and keyboard), ergonomics(monitor stands or arm mounts, chairs, etc., mice alternatives that you can swap to to reduce RSI, macro keypads to ease boilerplate data entry), and subscription services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note about cost and perf targets. If I went with something new rather than used, what do you think is a reasonable amount to budget for a mid range dev box. $500? $1000? I've only ever bought laptops, so I don't have great intuitions about cost here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can look at logical increments for builds that have good part/value ratio: [https://www.logicalincrements.com/](https://www.logicalincrements.com/) if you want to build your own desktop

More gaming focused builds, but helpful for finding parts that work together if you don't know. If you truly won't do any gaming, then you can get a cheaper graphics card than the build recommends

</comment><comment><USER4> A set of raspberry pis can work wonders for cheap. They also let you work with orchestration and scaling.

If you want a real box, buying used is fine. Plenty of companies need top of the line and sell off their old stuff.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, those company machines get slow fast because they run so much corporate bloatware/monitoring software. They are a great option for home use. I have a PC I built 8 years ago that is so much faster than my work PC eventhough it has .5GHz slower processor and slower/less RAM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What do you value? How much is your time worth? How much is getting vendor or community support worth?

Answer these questions first, and that will help you figure out the answers to a lot of other questions along the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. I'm not that interested in picking my own components and place much more value on convenience and support. Hard to place a precise value on my time here, but I figure if a custom build gets me 1.5x or 2x more performance/dollar for general workloads (I'm guessing those numbers are achievable if I did benchmarking for very specific workloads), then it's worth my time to do some deeper research... any estimate of what the value add of going custom is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      I have built most of my personal workstations, so I can speak for building your own. I love the granular approach to it - I get to pick an choose across vendors and choose my favorites. Something to take into consideration: building your own *may* be cheaper, but it's not always.

      Of course this is valid for workstations - for servers to do target practice I can't stress enough as buying second hand servers is the best options in most cases: you can find servers that were the "hot s**t" 5-6 years ago, for 300-600$.</comment>


Volt: A Ruby web framework where your Ruby runs on both server and client - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/voltrb/volt <comment><USER2> I'd have to say this is very exciting, and something that from which the Ruby web community could benefit greatly. Having the boiler plate cases covered for data binding and synchronization across the client and server could really increase productivity for modern web application. For anything else that doesn't fit that mold, a developer could always degrade to using their front end framework of choice with Websockets or AJAX back by REST APIs where appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Opal is a really neat gem for translating Ruby to JavaScript. For those who know some math, I used it to convert some Ruby code I had written to perform finite field arithmetic ([https://github.com/robertzk/FiniteFields](https://github.com/robertzk/FiniteFields)) into an interactive webpage ([http://therobert.org/finite_fields/](http://therobert.org/finite_fields/)). It would be just as trivial to do with Volt.

<comment><USER4> So why not just use JavaScript to begin with?

<comment><USER5> Because Javascript is a horrible language to code in and debug.

If you're a Ruby programmer, you don't need to learn a new language, and you can have confidence that the Opal guys have looked after a lot of the issues you're not experienced enough to understand.

Your question is like asking a C programmer "why not just use assembler?" or an assembly programmer "why not just toggle 1s and 0s in, because ultimately your code is going to get turned into binary eventually, right?"

Abstractions and different models of describing a problem solutions are helpful for a multitude of reasons.

<comment><USER6> It has been my experience that JavaScript is a high level language.

In this particular case, Ruby is not being compiled to JavaScript but being transpired.

<comment><USER7> > In this particular case, Ruby is not being compiled to JavaScript but being > transpired.

First, "transpiled" not "transpired".

Second, "transpiled" is a special case of "compiled", so you can never correctly say that something is _not_ being compiled but _is_ being transpiled, in the same way you can't say something is _not_ a rectangle but _is_ a square.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the interesting bit for me personally:

Instead of syncing data between the client and server via HTTP, volt uses a persistent connection between the client and server. When data updated on one client, it is updated in the database and any other listening clients. (With almost no setup code needed)

\---

In .NET land, I used SignalR when it first came out and it has since been baked into ASP.Net.

In Rails, I use Pusher, a paid for service because it's just easy to use and iterate.

If this works like it says on the tin I am excited! Beyond excited! My one question though is how many users can it support? How many people can be 'listening' for a broadcast.

<comment><USER9> SignalR is not really baked into Asp.Net, it's only a gem (=Nuget Package) away though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The persistent connection makes volt a promising alternative to meteor. I guess I can't run pry debugging sessions in the browsers javascript console?

Server generated Javascript has come a long way since it was introduced in Rails, abandoned and then reintroduced again with opal. DHH wrote about opal one year ago [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3697-server-generated- javascr...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3697-server-generated-javascript- responses)

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the problem that this framework is trying to solve? I can't imagine that Ruby code will correctly compile into every possible use case for JavaScript. Even if it does I won't be able to leverage any gems, which is the real power of a mature server side language. It seems like this is just a crutch for Ruby web developers to use a familiar syntax and avoid learning JavaScript, which seems valuable if you want to do anything beyond a basic web page.

Please tell me if I'm missing something. I'd genuinely like to know.

<comment><USER12> I'm the lead developer on Volt. The goal here isn't to keep people from learning JS. I've been doing JS development since long before I found ruby. Just some thoughts on it I had been working on for a blog post:

In web development today, JavaScript gets to be the default language by virtue of being in the browser. JavaScript is a very good language, but it has a lot of warts. (See [http://wtfjs.com/](http://wtfjs.com/) for some great examples) Some of these can introduce bugs, others are just difficult to deal with. JavaScript was rushed to market quickly and standardized very quickly. Ruby was used by a small community for years while most of the kinks were worked out. Ruby also has some great concepts such as uniform access, mixin's, duck typing, and blocks to name a few. While many of these features can be implemented in JavaScript in userland, few are standardardized and the solutions are seldom eloquent.

Uniform access and duck typing provides us with the ability to make reactive objects that have the exact same interface as a normal object. This is a big win, nothing new to learn to do reactive programming.

\--

Also, just as a side note, Opal does a great job of compiling ruby to JS. The code is easy to understand, supports source maps so chrome for example can bring up your ruby code in the console and show line numbers in the ruby code. While many gems won't work without some porting, a lot do. Opal currently runs rspec (a very complex ruby project) with only a few patches. Really though, typically front-end solutions do different things than backend solutions.

<comment><USER11> Cool-- thanks for the responses. I agree with the issues in JavaScript, but I'm not sure I see them as justifying a new web framework. For example, the Math.max() boolean behavior is simply the result of treating true and false as 1 and 0, which isn't unique to JS. Blocks are a type of closure (which JS supports) and there are ways to achieve multiple inheritance and even mixins as well.

That said, the larger point seems to be that data synchronization is the biggest benefit. If you can write a model once and have JS objects automatically created that'd be a good start. I'll have a look to see what other capabilities are there. The HTML rendering when a URL is called directly could be particularly powerful.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like Meteor, which seems to be similar except that Meteor also supplies a synced datastore (MongoDB on the server and a light weight equivalent in the browser).

I will definitely try this out, especially since I have already played with Opal (used in Volt).

<comment><USER13> One day later: I had time to try Volt, and I really like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very cool! Would it be safe to say Volt is Ruby's Meteor?

<comment><USER15> Absolutely. I haven't contributed to Volt, but I've lived Meteor for the past year or so. Volt looks like an interesting option, to say the least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just out of curiosity, I noticed that mongo is used in all the demos, and seems to be the only DB supported.

Any thoughts on how or whether this would be support other backends like redis or more traditional sql databases like postgres and mysql?

<comment><USER17> Handling complex JSON documents is not easy with traditional sql databases like postgres and mysql. My team just got done building a large site with AngularJS, and using MongoDB (or any document store) allowed us an easy way of saving denormalized JSON documents. If you have a JSON object that contains an array of other objects, and each of those objects has arrays of other data, so you have a complex document that is 4 dimensions deep, with MongoDB (or any other document store) you simply put the document in the document store, but with MySQL or PostGre you would break that document up and store it in normal form, which means breaking it up into at least 4 database tables, maybe more. That is a lot more work and, crucially, that is much more likely to be impossible to automate. The code can not automatically know what deeply nested array of objects maps to some database table. The requirements for automatic normalization go beyond the features of your normal ORM.

There has been an explosion of these systems lately that automate the synchronization of frontend and backend. As far as I know, they all rely on document stores such as MongoDB.

<comment><USER18> Mongo may be the right call for your team, but just as an aside, the use case you're describing is perfectly doable with Postgresql using either text columns or json columns, and moreover, table denormalization is just as much of an option for relational users as for document store users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, as someone who hates JS and loves the server-side, this looks really really cool. I might have to learn Ruby just to try this.

<comment><USER20> There was discussions last week of compiled C++ being used on the client side too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8287700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8287700)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "If the user hits a URL directly, the HTML will first be rendered on the server for faster load times and easier indexing by search engines."

If I'm understanding this right, it sounds like an incredibly cool feature. Being able to use the same templates for both server-side rendering and a client-side SPA-like experience would be a huge win.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is the holy grail. Investigation begins...

</comment><comment><USER23> I would like to reach a point in web programming where JS, or something that eventually compiles into JS doesn't have to be written or maintained explicitly. GWT comes to mind, and this does something similar with Ruby it seems. Interesting take for sure...

<comment><USER24> There's plenty of flavors of JS that compile into regular JS. Pair that with Node.js and you've pretty much got what you're asking for. There's plenty of people using CoffeeScript on server + client, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very interesting! I am interested in how data synchronization works. What data stores does the ORM currently support (my guess is mongodb so far)? How was it implemented? Would it work with multiple servers? I am not proficient in Ruby code, reading some code didn't give me a lot of information :)

[https://github.com/voltrb/volt/blob/master/lib/volt/models/p...](https://github.com/voltrb/volt/blob/master/lib/volt/models/persistors/model_store.rb)

(edit: I probably need to note here that I contributed to a similar part of Meteor, that has data-sync to persistent storage too)

<comment><USER26> hey, I do all sync stuff too, shoot me an email (you don't have yours listed in your profile), I have some pretty interesting solutions and I would like to compare notes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looking at this, it seems something that sits between the view (html) and the controller (data) would be needed. I understand the reactive html is used for now, but that would not work for complex UI interactions.

</comment><comment><USER28> This reminds me of Lazo.js from Walmart labs ([https://github.com/walmartlabs/lazojs](https://github.com/walmartlabs/lazojs)). That is also a client-server framework with code shared between client and the server. Although Ruby is obviously harder to share, than JavaScript.

<comment><USER29> I'm sure Walmart labs is no joke. I can't think of a worse word association though.

<comment><USER30> You realize it is walmart right? There is no bad word association. Any company the size of walmart, regardless of how you feel about their core business, is likely doing some cool things with technology.

<comment><USER28> LazoJS is quite nice. It is definitely more polished than RendrJS from AirBnB (equivalent framework for building SPAs that have fast first page load and are SEO-friendly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Kind of funny that you selected a name so similar to Microsoft's attempt at doing the same with .NET: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta)

</comment><comment><USER32> Why is this "released" now? The projects seems to be semi-dead (only a couple bug fixes since last April) [1].

[1] [https://github.com/voltrb/volt/commits/master](https://github.com/voltrb/volt/commits/master)

<comment><USER12> Chris, I'm the main developer. So I haven't pushed much because I have been doing a big refactor on the reactive stuff and did get a little side tracked with some other stuff. The refactor is almost complete (400+ commits that should be out next week or the week after). From there there's just a few more things let and I think it will be ready for people to start building on. (After that I'll need to do a bunch of tutorials and videos)

<comment><USER33> Awesome, though why wait to push commits? Just put in a branch people can play with/watch until it's ready to merge to master or whatnot. Dunno if I'll have time but I'd love to play and see where it's going, much easier if latest stuff is online and visible :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just idea of it, I like it. I am big fan of JS and think it has great future on both sides, but just on initial description of this, I really like it. I will try to give it a spin in next few days to have a more realistic experience. Thanks for making it.

</comment><comment><USER35> How does something like Phonegap / Apache Cordova fit in to VoltRB?

</comment><comment><USER36> Reading over the source on the example apps, the first thing that jumps out at me is _underscore _prefixed _variables and it just looks odd in ruby, especially with :_symbols

<comment><USER37> Yeah, it looks like a Python refugee's code or something. I also don't like the .cur name that you have to use everywhere. It's not descriptive enough by itself. I wonder why .value wasn't used as the obvious choice.

<comment><USER12> obsurveyor, I'm the lead developer. I've been doing ruby forever. The .cur is going to go away, along with .or and .and I'm in the middle of a big refactor of the reactive stuff to simplify all of that.

<comment><USER36> Then why the _'s everywhere, ruby is snake case but I don't think I've ever seen anyone do :_foo => "bar" or _foo: "bar"

<comment><USER12> So the models in volt basically let you read and assign attributes with an _ We could use the model[:key] instead, but the nice thing with using _ is that you can then define your own getters and setters easily in the model class. The _ is sort of a quick prototyping tool, allowing you to start using attributes without defining them in the model. We're going to add it where you can say something like:

model_attr :field_name, String

then do:

model.field_name = 'something'

(without the _)

The _ keeps people from calling a method that isn't defined, since ._something will return nil if its not defined yet. But if you called .something, it will still raise an exception.

Does all of that make since?

<comment><USER37> That sounds ripe for misuse and kind of schizophrenic with the different behavior based on the name of the attribute. You should pick one behavior(throw an exception) and apply it everywhere. If you want quick prototyping features, then make that something you include with a gem or something, don't let it infect the framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This may be an ignorant question, but why not use the <% %> syntax popularized by ERB instead of { } for view bindings?

<comment><USER39> Handlebars/Mustache syntax is also widely used. And <% %> might very well confuse people into thinking the contents is raw code, as opposed to handlebar-style directives.

(Handlebars/Mustache restrict what actions you can take on view data substantially - you have to explicitly expose functionality in most implementations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I was just talking about wanting something like this the other day. Wow, this is great.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sounds like rubish to me.

</comment><comment><USER42> This thing would be million times more useful with Dart, which runs both in the frontend and the backend and is a stable language with some rich features. Still, a move in the direction though, I like it, but I think I'd never use this.</comment>


Oblivious DNS: Plugging the Internet's Biggest Privacy Hole - <AUTHOR> https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/04/02/a-privacy-preserving-approach-to-dns/ <comment><USER2> If the root servers and major .tlds would support dns-over-tls every home router could just run a full recursive dns resolver by itself, and we could be done with it. There would be no need for complicated architectures with proxies and stub resolvers, and nobody could see your queries. The root server would just see your NS lookup for .com, the .com would just see your NS query for google.com and the google.com NS would see your query for maps.google.com - but here you are in googles domain anyway, so it does not matter.

dns-over-tls would prevent your isp from snooping your queries to the .com/.org/.net/.club/... nameservers and we could close the case.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't that quickly overload all the root servers?

<comment><USER4> Resolvers should aggressively cache the root zone. And the traffic shouldn't be any worse than what google or cloudflare resolvers are seeing.

<comment><USER3> > the traffic shouldn't be any worse than what google or cloudflare resolvers > are seeing.

What are you basing that on? How many people do you think are really using Google DNS or Cloudfare DNS? I think even if just Comcast changed their defaults, the root servers would see a order of magnitude more traffic than Google or Cloudfare see.

One of the reasons DNS is hierarchical is for load distribution (and performance). Taking this design principle and all of a sudden throwing it out the window would likely have major consequences for a system that was originally designed and scaled with it in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's worth noting that privacy against ISPs, at least today, is hugely more important than privacy against DNS resolvers, and not just because first-world ISPs have a reputation of being less trustworthy than companies like Cloudflare (Google is more debatable).

You always have a choice of DNS resolver; you often don't have a choice of ISP. Especially outside of the first world, where the ISPs might be in the pocket of the government, like in the example from Turkey mentioned in Cloudflare's blog post, or in China. The ISP is the physical pipes, and if you can't get through the physical pipes, you're dead in the water. You can always change DNS resolvers.

This is still an interesting idea that's worth looking at. They just shouldn't minimize the significance of what Cloudflare is doing.

<comment><USER6> > You can always change DNS resolvers.

But you can't. First, it's technically hard for many or even most users. Some important platforms (mobile) may make this exceptionally hard even for savvy users.

Even if it's built in to the browser, the ISP can require you to use their proxy (some regimes already do this today) and then they can filter and/or alter DNS, even DNS-over-https.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > DNS: The Internet's Biggest Privacy Hole

Almost every packet on the Internet identifies the user's IP and the server to which they are connecting (with the exception of VPN traffic and Tor). DNS does not reveal much more than that.

I do agree that Cloudflare's 22.214.171.124 does almost nothing to improve end user confidentiality - there are so many other ways users are tracked, and in much greater detail than DNS can provide; and if your ISP is your DNS vendor, 22.214.171.124 only adds to the number of organizations that can monitor you. But 18.104.22.168 is an important piece of a much larger puzzle that could, if completed, provide greater confidentiality.

</comment><comment><USER8> I must be missing something here: "The ODNS server can thus return the answer to the client's stub resolver directly, possibly over a confidential channel such as D-TLS."

How does this not just move the trust problem to the ODNS server? Doesn't it now know both the requesting IP and the requested domain?

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the figure[1] on the side in the article seems to show something different, because there the response goes over the recursive resolver again. Maybe the text is wrong?

All seems to hinge on the recursive resolver acting as a proxy, so a direct response from ODNS server to the client stub doesn't seem safe.

[1] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/ftt-uploads/wp- content/uploads/2018...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/ftt-uploads/wp- content/uploads/2018/04/02004802/protocol-600x406.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about running your own TLD DNS server? According to [1] the gtld zone files are 1.5GB so it would fit even on a phone. The problem is getting access to the zone files. Services like domainlists.io will sell you the data, or maybe you could figure out how to crawl for it yourself.

[1][https://domainlists.io/gtld-domains/](https://domainlists.io/gtld- domains/)

<comment><USER11> Surprised there are no free data sets like this available - it seems to fit scans.io's idea. Are there projects that would help me crawl it with minimal effort?

<comment><USER12> I would also love to contribute to this if it exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If authoritative servers supported DNS over (D)TLS then running your own recursive resolver would plug most holes. The biggest remaining information leakage would be to the TLD NS operators, which could further be mitigated by spreading it to some sort of authoritative mirrors, maybe secured by dnssec?

<comment><USER14> Don't forget DNSCurve (thanks again djb!)

<comment><USER15> I've been reading up on this recently, and I've seen a few articles on DNSSEC vs DNSCurve, how would you weigh in?

<comment><USER16> DNSSEC (IETF standard) only provides authentication and integrity protection. DNSCurve can also provide confidentiality. DNSCurve does require the authoritative server to do crypto on the fly, so may require a lot more work for the root/TLD servers. DNSSEC is just signed DNS data, so the work can be done offline. So operators just do DNSSEC, very few operators deploy DNSCurve. Actually, most places do neither.

There is the possibility to mix the two - use DNSSEC for root/TLD servers and then DNSCurve on the lower level or leaf zones. It would be hard to know when to switch over from DNSSEC to DNSCurve(other than try at the 2nd level and below). Query minimization may help in privacy protection at the root/TLD level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not a good name. This is not an implementation of Oblivious Transfer, as one would asssume, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblivious_transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblivious_transfer)

Also, this is just using asymetric encryption for the communication between client to authorative servers, which would also overload the servers as they could not be distributed or cached as is done today.

<comment> Ar-Curunir Obliviousness is a property not just of OT; ORAM protocols are other "oblivious" protocols, for example.

In this case, as long as the ODNS root server is not colluding with the recursive server, the DNS system is "oblivious" to the identity of the user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is perhaps a stupid question. But, even if we had a real oblivious DNS, can't the ISP figure out what website I am connecting to by a reverse-dns lookup on the IP-address ?

<comment><USER19> Yes unless the websites are using a CDN with shared IP addresses. I wonder what % of the web that covers nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article claims that 22.214.171.124 is a joint project between CloudFlare and Mozilla. But the source it links to for that never mentions Mozilla.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this article better [1]? _Mozilla has partnered with Cloudflare to provide direct DNS resolution from within the Firefox browser using the Cloudflare Resolver for Firefox. What this means is that whenever you click on or type a web address in the Firefox browser your DNS lookup request will be sent over a secure channel to the Cloudflare Resolver for Firefox rather than to an unknown DNS resolver, significantly decreasing the odds of any unwanted spying or man in the middle attacks._

[1] [https://developers.cloudflare.com/126.96.36.199/commitment-to- priv...](https://developers.cloudflare.com/22.214.171.124/commitment-to- privacy/privacy-policy/firefox/)

<comment><USER21> Does it mean Firefox will work without having DNS configured at OS level and just force you to use 220.127.116.11 or what? Cannot find any information on mozilla.org

<comment><USER22> Only for DNS over HTTPS, which Firefox Nightly can deal with itself: [https://www.ghacks.net/2018/04/02/configure-dns-over- https-i...](https://www.ghacks.net/2018/04/02/configure-dns-over-https-in- firefox/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Will website name in certificate shared by server during handshake kill the DNS over https purpose?

</comment><comment><USER24> > Clients that you operate—including your browser, your smartphone, and any > IoT device in your home—sends a DNS query for each domain name to a so- > called "recursive DNS resolver".On a typical home network, the default > recursive DNS resolver may be operated by your Internet service provider > (ISP) (e.g., Comcast, Verizon).

Nobody says 'recursive DNS resolver' \- it's just a DNS resolver. See `man resolv.conf`.

DNS is inherently recursive. Saying 'recursive DNS resolver' is like saying 'ATM machine' or similar.

<comment><USER25> >Nobody says 'recursive DNS resolver'

>Saying 'recursive DNS resolver' is like saying 'ATM machine' or similar

Yes, because I never use my PIN Number

 _Nobody_ is a very small set, and a very powerful word -- use it carefully, like _Never_ , _Always_ and _Everyone_

<comment><USER26> Nobody should* say...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Seeking cofunder, funding, and feedback - <AUTHOR>

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AXauXDEtdabgZHA2cmhkeF8xNTBjNm40dGJndg&hl=en
feel free to edit, comment, or downvote me.
but i really could use the help <comment><USER2> where is your contact information on your executive summary?

<comment><AUTHOR> email@example.com, updated the summary too

thanks for the heads up</comment></comment>


Escape the iOS provisioning hell - <AUTHOR> http://tech.particulate.me/ios/2013/10/07/no-unexpired-provisioning-profiles-found-that-contain-any-of-the-keychains-signing-certificates-horror/

<comment><USER2> A couple of times it happened to me too, but I thought it was "magical" and "revolutionary" to say the least.</comment>


Language Breakdown for March "Who is hiring?" post - <AUTHOR> http://kanecohen.github.io/hn-jobs-langs-march-15.html

<comment><USER2> Once again, this is awesome. Can you elaborate on N/A? Are Clojure, Scala being captured there too, for example? Thanks!</comment>


Google Has Stored Some Passwords in Plaintext Since 2005 - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/google-stored-gsuite-passwords-plaintext/ <comment><USER2> Not quite as bad as it sounds.

These weren't real user passwords. They were temporary passwords for new users to 'print out' for use on your first day of work.

Except some people might not have changed that password on the first day, and in that case, Google was retaining the original in plaintext rather than hashed (presumably so the administrator could reprint the sheet with the initial password)</comment>


Higher Levels of CO2 May Diminish Decision Making Performance (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://eetd.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-6148e-is_co2_an_indoor_pollutant_v3.pdf <comment><USER2> Some earlier discussion: [http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/nk0/what_is_up_with_car...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/nk0/what_is_up_with_carbon_dioxide_and_cognition_an/) It's hard to see how these results could be possible, especially considering the broad null results from the many Navy experiments with thousands of PPMs.

<comment><USER3> What do you find impossible about the results?

While the blog post you linked to claims that the work finds "implausibly large effects", it doesn't clarify what the author finds implausible about them (and the author admits to only spending 30 minutes looking at the literature).

I would agree that the graphic in the PDF linked in this HN discussion, and in the paper referenced by the blog post you cited, uses alarmist labels (e.g., "dysfunctional" for performance scores at 25th percentile and below). However, the full version of the report, as linked by post, states that the percentiles are based on the reported scores from 20k other administrations of the test.

Therefore this report simply implies that some of the reported variation in some of the historical scores might be explained by variations in room CO2 concentrations. What's so implausible/impossible about that?

Disclaimer: I know several of the authors of this report, and have good regard for their scientific integrity, so my gut-level reaction to an undocumented accusation that their results are implausible, was skeptical.

<comment><USER4> _What do you find impossible about the results?_

The whole idea behind "breathing" is to regulate the CO2 in the blood at a very constant level. This is one of the strongest, fastest feedback loops in homeostasis. How are relatively small changes in environmental CO2 making their way into the bloodstream? Did they actually conduct blood tests to see if the test conditions were reflected in the subjects' physiology?

<comment><USER5> > The whole idea behind "breathing" is to regulate the CO2 in the blood

True, but two devil's-advocate what-ifs come to mind.

First, the system isn't so responsive to a lack of oxygen, and in many of the "low ventilation with people" scenarios, higher CO2 correlates with lower O2, because that's the conversion going on.

Second, might the body down-regulate mental resources as a response to chronically higher CO2 in the environment? As an adaptive or precautionary measure, helping keep that blood-concentration correct?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This will, of course, start to bite immediately on the margin.

If you have a poorly ventilated building, you're already at a disadvantage now with >400ppm outside air (higher in cities) than you would've been, say, 200 years ago with 280ppm air.

CO2 is absolutely a pollutant. Yes, plants like it, but we are not plants. It is a waste product, and too much of it affects mental performance.

<comment><USER7> our bodies are pretty darn good at reducing CO2 in our blood. CO2 isn't the problem for our bodies, by far.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. 400 ppm of CO2 compared to 300 is likely negligible for human respiration, compared to the 201,000 ppm O2 and 780,000 ppm N2 in the atmosphere.

0.04% vs 20% and 78%

<comment><USER9> Well, N2 molecules have very strong bonds that aren't easily broken so they ddon't tend to react with much of anything inside our bodies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Their test cases were 600 ppm, 1000 ppm, and 2500 ppm of CO2, and they found measurable differences in human performance between those.

I am curious what would happen if they dropped the CO2 concentration down to something that's less than what they see in an urban environment? Does dropping to 300 ppm or 0 ppm have any measurable benefit? Are there any downsides to breathing air with no CO2?

<comment><USER11> Well, too little carbon dioxide in the bloodstream changes the blood's pH, which is a negative. Can't tell how ambient CO2 levels affect it though.

<comment><USER12> This would be hyperventilation syndrome

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

CO2 is not simply a waste product we exhale, we need it for pH regulation of our blood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "But we don't need you to 'decide' anything, in this job. We just need you to put your your weekly quota of TPS reports. So stop complaining about the open office plan the ventilation, and just as importantly, stop confusing everyone with all this nonsense science talk. And get back to work!"

<comment><USER14> I'm more concerned about classrooms. In France it's perfectly accepted to keep pupils for 4hrs in a closed classroom (except the break), especially if it's winter, because heaters are half-closed for savings. Now when I lived in Australia, vents are adequate for the size of the room, I wouldn't be surprised if it has a huge effect on population education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, the worse CO2 levels get, the more climate change deniers we'll have... ;-)

Even if TFA seems odd, if the population is large enough, even a marginal change in performance will have measurable total effects.

</comment><comment><USER16> In a VC pitch, sneak in a briefcase that slowly dispenses CO2 while the founders clip their toenails.

<jedi-mind-trick> _This is one of the startups you 're going to invest in this cycle._ </jedi-mind-trick> :)</comment>


Dow Jones' watchlist of 2.4M high-risk clients has leaked - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/dow-jones-watchlist-leak/ <comment><USER3> Am I missing something or is misconfiguring your cloud the way to go if you're a vendor of an osint product?

Information from public sources - no liability? No DJ customer details - <USER2> loss of business? Bob Diachenko discovered it - so no dumps floating around? 3rd responsible - remains unnamed, no brand damage? Free sample included in the high traffic TC article

It probably was not intentional, but could Dow Jones have benefited from this press overall?

<comment><USER4> It is called shared responsibility security model.

AWS can not know what is your true intention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://outline.com/DEfmHq](https://outline.com/DEfmHq)

</comment><comment><USER6> So, where's data?

<comment><USER7> Now that most hacking is nation state driven we aren't seeing these datasets posted publicly nearly as often.

<comment><USER8> Do you have a source for that assumption?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know if the targets of this database have a right of reply, and given it is from public sources, does that mean media reports are the primary sources that inform it?

The consequences of those questions could be quite serious.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone explain why Dow Jones would store data like this in elasticsearch? This seems like a classic relational database scenario.

<comment><USER11> The data didn't leak from Dow Jones, and the article doesn't cover how Dow Jones stores the data internally. Some customer who had the data leaked it from their own open system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How to get a copy:)?

</comment><comment><USER12> Is Trump in the leaked "risky customer" DB?

We could find intel out about political candidates.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yet another sensitive database with probably no way to know if you're in it - GDPR sounds like a pain but I'm coming around to believing it's a necessary evil to stop this nonsense.

OTOH I guess this is relevant information and so they should be allowed to have it under GDPR rules? I'm obviously not a lawyer although my work, like most programmers' is affected by GDPR, PCI and whatnot.

<comment><USER14> Or we could just start punishing companies for massive and widely damaging data leaks. AFAIK about GDPR, it wouldn't prevent this. These things keep happening because nothing bad happens to companies that let it happen.

<comment><USER15> GDPR prevents this by putting rules in place that you, as the owner of the data, need to show that you're protecting it responsibly.

The threat of the gigantic fine is what gets people into compliance to prevent this from happening.

Lots, possibly even the majority of companies in Europe beefed up their IT security procedures because of this, and I wouldn't be surprised if almost everyone that sits at a keyboard in Europe didn't get called into a meeting to talk about how important it is for them to keep their customer's data private and ways to do that.

Without something like this in place, companies can just not even care about users data.. because 'oops, we did nothing to protect it' is still a valid excuse.

<comment><USER16> > _Lots, possibly even the majority of companies in Europe beefed up their IT > security procedures because of this_

On the other hand, they also don't provide internet services to people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So long as all the sources were public, I don't see why this is newsworthy at all.

You could probably build most of it with Google.

<comment><USER18> It is newsworthly for a number of reasons. Firstly, most people do not know that companies are scanning their customers, suppliers and employees against these Watchlists.

Secondly, people are placed on these watchlists with no burden of proof or right to recourse.

Thirdly, if you appear on these lists, which can be quite fuzzy, you can find that your banks accounts are frozen, with no explanation. Banks are now very risk adverse meaning that they are more than happy to alienate a few customers if it means avoiding the risk of massive fines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We are big aws customers at my current employer and have generally had success, and I use amazon products, but that said:

This is totally on amazon for not having vpc-enabled elasticsearch clusters for way too long, AND, not providing an upgrade mechanism to move an existing internet-accessible cluster to a vpc. I was mindblown when I first utilized elasticsearch service and was sure that there would be data leaks for only having public net.

<comment><USER20> While I agree and those defaults are certainly suboptimal with blame to share, I would argue the buck stops with the individual that indexed all the proprietary data on :9200 open to the internet. You can do all sorts of stupid things with AWS (or any other tool). That doesn't make it Amazon's fault entirely. The individual is responsible for attempting a basic understanding of the tools they use.

When I learned the ropes of ES, configuring the endpoint was one of the first things that came up in a large number of docs and posts. In this case, I also wonder if the person doing it even realized it would be a problem since the database was based on "Publicly Available data". "Sure, turn CORS on, let's roll."

Thankfully this leak was of public data combined into a proprietary reporting tool, rather than something more sinister that would cause greater harm.

<comment><USER19> Just so I'm clear -- AWS elasticsearch service was launched in October 2015, and VPC support didnt come around until fall 2017. So for over 2 full years the only way to utilize their elasticsearch service was to run it internet- accessible. I'm not talking about defaults here -- it was the only option.</comment></comment></comment>


Extreme CFD: Fluid Dynamics Projects at ACLF - <AUTHOR> https://www.rdmag.com/article/2017/08/extreme-cfd-fluid-dynamics-projects-aclf <comment><USER2> Are there any projects out there that use AI/ML/DL to speed up CFD simulations?</comment>


Startup Trends 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupconference.com/2016/05/07/startup-trends-2016/ <comment><USER2> VR is definitely trending. I'm working on a startup currently. I'm the technical and product side of a two person team. My business focused partner in passing asked if it would be possible to integrate VR into the platform. VR literally adds nothing, these trends can be toxic as they are productive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good to see blockchain pitches disappear.

But they'll probably come back after the halvening.

Any way, more room for the more useful blockchain products, if investors will still have an ear for it.

<comment><USER4> For those that are wondering the next halvening is projected to be in mid July. 75% of all bitcoins will have been mined. See more here:

[http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/#](http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/#)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> AI and Machine Learning weren't mentioned. Neither were DevOps or systems-y/database-y types.

<comment><USER6> Indeed agrees with you- "Leading Tech Job Trends": [http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends)

<comment><USER7> So I just spent like 10 minuted playing with that tool. It looks like Software Developer and Software Engineer job posts are on a clear downward trend when everything I've heard doesn't agree with that. Why do you think that is?

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/q-Software-Engineer-q- Softwa...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/q-Software-Engineer-q-Software- Developer.html?relative=1)

<comment><USER8> Maybe the postings have become more specific- Instead of a general Software Engineer, They're posting "Front End Developer" or something even more specific than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with understanding trends is that people naturally tend to think that the past predicts the future. What they forget is that what goes up, usually goes down. This is true in the vast majority of cases except for certain occasions (rise of internet, mobile, cloud). This is why hype such as 3d printing, VR, AI, IoT, chat bots, are just that -- hype, until we arrive at the point in time where the exact necessary breakthrough occurs for each, but I don't see it yet in many of todays cases.

<comment><USER10> > The problem with understanding trends is that people naturally tend to think > that the past predicts the future.

I hear this said a lot, but isn't it true? The weather today predicts the weather tomorrow.</comment></comment>


The US Patent System Is Killing Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5831354/the-us-patent-system-is-killing-innovation

<comment><USER2> Here is effectively the same story from other sources:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879813>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2847452>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840892>

No comments on those submissions, but you might be interested to see how so many publications are jumping on the same bandwagon.</comment>


GCC 6 Will Warn You About Misleading Code Indentations - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GCC6-Misleading-Indentation <comment><USER2> > "Specifically, a warning is issued for if, else, while, and for clauses with > a guarded statement that does not use braces, followed by an unguarded > statement with the same indentation."

> "The warning is not issued for code involving multiline preprocessor logic > ... The warning is not issued after a @code{#line} directive, since this > typically indicates autogenerated code"

Seems like a good thing to have, and pretty conservative about not causing false positives. In particular, constructs like double-iteration should be fine:

        for(y=0; y<ymax; y++)
        for(x=0; x<xmax; x++)
        {
            //...
        }

Which I checked because I like this construct and people very rarely think about it.

<comment><USER3> I apologize for the stupidity of my question but shouldn't that be

        for(y=0; y<ymax; y++)
        {
        for(x=0; x<xmax; x++)
        {
            //...
        }
        }

?

Edit: Oh, I get it, {} are only "mandatory" if we have more than one instruction, the second for loop gets counted as one instruction and hence the omitting of {}. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> If I were doing it that way, I wouldn't give the outer blocks' curly braces their own lines. For example in C#, where pretty much every file has a single "namespace" block containing a single "class" block, I write it as:

        namespace SomeNamespace {
        class SomeClass
        {
            //...
        }}

Which avoids having shifted the whole file an extra indent level to the right. But I haven't seen anyone else doing this.

<comment><USER4> I'm not writing C# but yeah: AS3 and Java both have the Package{class{ two- step before you actually write any code. I don't even indent inside class:

      package{
      class{
      main{
        now we indent
      }
      }}

<comment><USER5> You don't indent after a package e.g.

[https://github.com/apache/spark/blob/master/core/src/main/ja...](https://github.com/apache/spark/blob/master/core/src/main/java/org/apache/spark/JavaSparkListener.java)

And it's fair enough to indent with a main since it is so infrequent. Ideally you only have one main entry point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish more languages would have what are essentially compiler enforced style guidelines (e.g. indentation, variable/function naming, file naming). So much time is wasted debating style, dealing with code review comments about style and making/using related tools.

<comment> yoz-y I agree, although I think it should be done by a tool separate from the compiler. Purely because I'd have a stable compiler first and more code = more bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> PVS Studio support similar warning V640 [http://www.viva64.com/en/d/0258/](http://www.viva64.com/en/d/0258/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if it'll be able to make sense of our macro-abusing XML-in-C: [https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/master/src/lau...](https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/master/src/launch- libvirt.c#L1054) (Scroll up a couple of pages to see the definitions of the macros)

</comment><comment><USER9> This would certainly be a useful feature, especially for those learning C, but I wonder whether checking stylistic things should really be in the compiler or part of a separate tool.

<comment><USER10> The genie is out of the bottle already, gcc quite sensibly will warn you if it sees an assignment operator in an if statement. I'm sure it's saved countless man hours and pretty awful bugs since it was introduced :-)

<comment><USER11> I hope it doesn't warn for things like

if(0 != (i = getValue()))

<comment><USER12> It doesn't since the assignment is in brackets. You can also write

        if ((i = getValue()))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice, maybe this will finally quiet the wrongheaded opinion that braces should _always_ be used.

<comment> yoz-y I do not think that the opinion of mandatory braces is wrong - in a language that does have braces.

If not for anything else, then for the fact that yi{ will _always_ yank the current block for me. Omitting braces will ruin this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems like simply using astyle would be an improvement over catching this at compile-time.

<comment><USER15> The point of the warning is to find bugs, not enforce a particular coding style.

Running astyle would make it worse because you would hide the bug.

<comment><USER14> Having used astyle for exactly this, I simply have to disagree. Of course, you have to look at the code between running astyle and compiling it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So whitespace matters huh?

</comment><comment><USER17> No more "goto fail;"?

</comment><comment><USER18> clang-format is better

</comment><comment><USER19> And thus, every boneheaded project that ships with -Werror enabled will inflict an excrement tornado of FAIL on its grateful users and packagers.

THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD NOT USE -Werror. NOT EVER. (And if you can't bring yourself to do anything about mere warnings, you shouldn't be in software engineering.)

<comment><USER20> From the article:

> This new warning isn't enabled by default.

And even if it were, it's a matter of adding -Wno-misleading-indentation to make builds green again. Not a big deal. And besides, it's likely that fixing those warnings could be done mechanically. (and it's hardly true that _every_ project that ships with -Werror has such misleading indentation somewhere in its code)

<comment><USER21> _And even if it were, it 's a matter of adding -Wno-misleading-indentation to make builds green again_

How does that help the person who is building the release you shipped six months ago with a new compiler?</comment></comment></comment>


Would a Yahoo acquisition finally mean the end of the last Viaweb accounts? - <AUTHOR>

Yahoo! is still running the Viaweb lisp based systems for users who never "upgraded" to the rebuilt Yahoo! Store version.  Unless it has change recently, I believe paulgraham.com is still running on that system.  How long do you think it would take after a Microsoft acquisition before the last Viaweb accounts would finally be shut down?<p>Any chance they could get the Viaweb code to run on Windows? (mostly joke, partly serious) <comment><USER2> In a thread, PG has said was asked to switch to the C++ version in late 2007, so I believe the lisp version is no longer supported in production.

</comment><comment><USER3> does this mean pg.com will have a microsoft favicon?</comment>