The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents - <AUTHOR> http://flightfox.com/contest/18969 <comment><USER2> Here are the winning flight details:

This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked.

       JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana)
       GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US)
       JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany)
       SXF 29-Jan-2013 AGA 29-Jan-2013 EasyJet (Berlin, Germany to Agadir, Morocco)
       AGA 05-Feb-2013 LGW 05-Feb-2013 EasyJet (Agadir, Morocco to London, UK)
       LTN 26-Feb-2013 SAW 26-Feb-2013 EasyJet (London, UK to Istanbul, Turkey)
       SAW 18-Mar-2013 IKA 19-Mar-2013 Pegasus (Istanbul, Turkey to Tehran, Iran)
       IKA 29-Mar-2013 KUL 30-Mar-2013 AirAsia (Tehran, Iran to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
       KUL 02-Apr-2013 PER 02-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Perth, Australia - YAY!)
       PER 07-Apr-2013 KUL 07-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Perth, Australia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
       KUL 09-Apr-2013 BKK 09-Apr-2013 AirAsia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Bangkok, Thailand)
       BKK 18-Apr-2013 KBP 18-Apr-2013 Aerosvit (Bangkok, Thailand to Kiev, Ukraine)
       KBP 18-Apr-2013 JFK 18-Apr-2013 Aerosvit (Kiev, Ukraine to New York, US)

Any questions, please ask.

<comment><USER3> This looks like a combination of one-way and RT tickets. Do your experts give instructions on how these tickets can be booked relatively quickly?

<comment><USER2> Just to follow up on laumac's comment, the booking instructions tend to be a large part of the secret sauce. In this case, we fully verified them and all the flights were bookable at the time of verification. We disallowed a few itineraries that didn't properly visit all continents. As an aside, it was interesting to define what countries fit in which continents. For example, Guam, Curacao, Turkey.

<comment><USER4> I think Istanbul is considered to straddle Europe and Asia.

Fly in to Ataturk (Istanbul), stay for a couple of nights, bus across the river and fly out of SGI (Istanbul). Europe and Asia, done?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi, I'm the creator of this itinerary. This is a site with great potential. If you appreciate the effort it took to come up with the trip and are interested in trying out the site, please follow my referral link and you'll get a 25% discount on your first flight! <http://flightfox.com/referral/16686> Thanks :) Michael

<comment><USER6> How did you find BKK to KBP to JFK flight? Skyscanner and Hipmunk don't return this within the results. But so doesn't Aerosvit site.

<comment><USER5> I'm new to this site. Are PMs possible? If so, PM me.

<comment><USER6> No, PMs are not possible, but my email is bblyuher AT gmail dot com. Thanks!

<comment><USER5> No problem :) Sent!

<comment><USER7> I'm interested in your magic as well. If you don't mind, you can reach me at kornholijo at gmail.com. Thanks!

<comment><USER5> Any flight in particular? I can't give it all away as that would be unfair to Flightfox, as well as other experts. Flightfox really is a very good site where experts work hard finding you the best price for your particular needs.

<comment><USER8> I'm New Jersey - would love to know how you found the JFK-BKK flight as well, please e-mail me usmanc---at----gmail. No need to give it all away - I plan to use Flightfox in the future for complicated travel. I just did a crazy complicated Middle East and Asia trip, it would have been worth $50 to me just to see other options than what my travel agent booked.

<comment><USER5> Hi, The price above doesn't hold for the opposite direction. Everyone asking me for flight prices, go to flightfox and I'm sure you'll be happy with the results. Thanks, Michael

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the cheapest route ($1,730), here are the cities visited:

Depart New York \- Georgetown (South Am) \- New York (North Am) \- Berlin (Europe) \- Agadir (Africa) \- London (Europe) \- Turkey (Europe) \- Tehran (Asia) \- Kuala Lumpur (Asia) \- Perth (Oceania) \- Bangkok (Asia) \- End New York

<comment><USER9> Geography nitpick: The airport in Istanbul is actually east of the Bosporus, making it Asia.

<comment><USER2> Hey mseebach,

We had a few issues in the beginning defining these border countries and decided to allow Istanbul as Europe, but will definitely group it for Asia in future.

We had a handful of difficult decisions, but luckily the winning entry visited all continents without contention.

Guam was the tough one for us. Would you say Oceania?

<comment><USER9> For the winning intinerary, it's a moot point as both Europe and Asia are represented at different stops.

Istanbul Atatürk (TAV) airport is Europe, Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) is in Asia. The border is the straight of Bosporus.

Continents are a rather vague concept[1]. Any definition is going to be arbitrary. For the purposes of your contest, I think the spirit would be to have gone to the continents "proper", i.e. I wouldn't count Guam at all, but say the continents are the _mainlands_ of: NA, SA, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica. I'd be inclined to allow New Zealand as part of Australia as the only exception.

1: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34>

<comment><USER10> > I'd be inclined to allow New Zealand as part of Australia as the only > exception.

Sure - why not, there's only a sea between us that you can fit an area the size of California to Nebraska into ... pretty close really.

<comment><USER9> Allow it as part of the australian _continent_ , despite the water. The alternative is to not recognize it as part of _any_ continent. Just like how California and Nebraska are part of the same continent despite, what, three deserts and two mountain ranges between them.

Did I mention that any definition of continents is arbitrary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Sorry all, we've put up a cached version on the live site, so it's loading now. We'll also post details of the flights here so you can see how the trip was created.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be up again in a minute - just upgrading the box :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am curious about the scalability of such an endeavor. If you have to verify the fares by hand, you need a certain minimum amount of return before it becomes worth it.

For example: I live in SFO. I might want to fly down to Vegas for the weekend, any weekend from now till (say) September, for $150rt. How much overhead would you charge to make it worth your while?

Also: how do you settle disputes? Say I get an itinerary from the contest (supposedly verified by you), and it doesn't work for me. Now what do I do?

And finally (apologize for too many questions): what about travel documents? Apparently, even if you're transitioning through LHR, you need a British visa if you're not from a certain blessed list of countries. What if I don't have a visa, but you end up sending me through London?

Please don't get me wrong: I like the idea. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how it can be scaled.....

<comment><USER2> Hi ajays, sorry for the confusion; we only verified flights by hand for this contest because it was somewhat contentious. With other contests, we let the contest holder rate/vet entries. If a flight hacker repeatedly enters bogus flights, we would deal with them. But that hasn't happened yet. It's in everyone's interests to spend time posting legitimate flights.

Right now, SFO to LAS isn't an optimal route for Flightfox. This will change very soon, but right now price is key and if you already know short domestic routes well, there's less chance we can help. In the near future, we'll capitalize on non-financial value of flights. This is really where we'll innovate.

If you aren't satisfied, for whatever reason, we offer a full refund. You generally need to ask for a refund within three days because we auto-award contests if they're abandoned. Our theory is that if you're not happy, you deserve your money back.

As for your last question about docs, we tend to leave that in the hands of the traveler. That should change soon as we build out the site (it's still very early days). We want Flightfox to be your one-stop-shop for flights, including all non-price info and all the tips and tricks that will make flying a much better experience.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the response. It is a neat idea, and I'll try it out soon. I wish you folks all the success!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd be interested in a similar contest but with business class seats instead.

It would be interesting to see how much it takes to fly around the world in comfort :)

<comment><USER2> We can definitely see that contest coming up soon. With this contest we thought sub-$2k would be a huge stretch, but the flight hackers seemed to manage it with ease. For business, we can't imagine it being less than $5-6k, but we'll see. Sub-$5k would be amazing.

<comment><USER13> I would also be curious with a maximum of say 1 or 2 month timeframe. If I was actually curious in an "around the world" trip, I don't think I'd want to stay 11 weeks in Germany, ha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cached Version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome- psyapi2&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fflightfox.com%2Fcontest%2F18969)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Sorry, only the contest owner can view flight details."

</comment><comment><USER16> they use still use a similar principle in India for a lot of travel -- its called a travel agency. I suppose flightfox is just making it very clear who the best travel agents are.

Gluck, I'll give this a shot during my next international travel.

<comment><USER2> Hi there, in one respect you're right; we absolutely value human-power in flight search, which is why we're crowdsourced. But compared to traditional agents, we're much more aligned to your interests. Our experts don't take commissions, so they only suggest flights on their merits. If someone posts a better/cheaper flight, they simply win.

Also, with crowdsourcing, you get access to expert skill and local knowledge all over the world. You're not limited to the skill and experience of one person. Frequent flyer programs are important in this respect because few agents have an in-depth knowledge of these programs. Airlines generally don't pay commissions on those flights, so it doesn't make sense for agents to become specialists in this area.

Our experts come from all walks: agents, travelers, frequent flyers, etc. So you get access to a wide array of experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I see the page and the prices but their website literally does nothing...

<comment><AUTHOR> People who need a flight can create a contest and then flight hackers compete against each other to find them the best deals/flights. This RTW contest was an experiment to see how far our hackers could go, and considering a RTW itinerary usually costs $4k+, their results are pretty impressive.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I should have clarified. I wasn't able to click to actually see the itineraries created even though there are "View Details" links. The other links I tried to click on the page also just hung. I guess all the hn traffic took them down.

Edit: I see your other post above now with the cities! Thanks!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My first thought upon clicking through was "Wow, a big crowd-sourced database of very cheap flights to random destinations. I think I know how I'm going to plan my next vacation!"

But then: "Sorry, only the contest owner can view flight details." And there's nothing more for me to see here and I go back to what I was doing. Very cool concept otherwise, though.

<comment><USER2> Hi actuary,

Apologies for the confusion. Typically, a customer puts up a contest so our flight hackers can find them the best or cheapest flight.Often this contains a lot of personal information, as well as the secrets of our flight experts. Flightfox hinges on competitive advantage, so we keep the flight details private.

I've posted some of the flight details above, so you can at least see where the flight stops.

But be assured that if you put your own contest up, you can see everything. Also, we're constantly adding more and more flight information to help you make an informed decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow that's a bummer I would have loved to at least see how far that money stretched (ie. places visited).

<comment><USER2> Hi hahla, please see my post above. We've listed the individual flights and airlines. All the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Love the idea. You'd really have me if I could at least see something about the itinerary. Dates, cities, at least. Why do you have a "view details" link that does nothing? I doubt that gives away enough to render your service unnecessary.

<comment><USER2> Hi Zwass, working on it right now. Just trying to keep the server up. But we'll get to it as soon as we can. For most contests it's important that only the contest holder can see the details, because they're often quite personal. But in this case we'll post the itinerary because it's quite interesting to see how the winner managed to construct a 6-continent itinerary for $1730. Will post back soon.

<comment><USER20> Awesome. I see your point, and am excited to see the results for this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there going to be a way to create more flexible contests like this as a Flightfox user? Right now it looks like I can only do the same sorts of things that I can do on other travel sites (one way, round trip, multi city)

I'd love to be able to put in something like me -> (any of these 10 destinations) or me + friend who lives elsewhere + friend who lives elsewhere -> (any of these 10 destinations)

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment you can put in whatever you want - we have with this contest - you can write a custom destination like "Anywhere in Europe" or "Round the World". There's a text box where you can put any requirements you like, you can even ask for help to use your 100k United miles etc. We've left it completely open to see how people use it and then build on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How is this different than buying an around the world ticket through an airline alliance (e.g. OneWorld, Star)? Those tickets tend to start at around $2000, sometimes less: [http://www.oneworld.com/flights/round-the-world- fares/onewor...](http://www.oneworld.com/flights/round-the-world- fares/oneworld-explorer/)

<comment><USER23> OTW fares were legitimate entries in this contest, but they _don't_ start very near $2000 for hitting all six continents. I briefly checked, and would've entered one in this contest if it were that cheap. :)

Even at low season, if you price out an itinerary starting/ending in North America and hitting all six, using OneWorld's online calculator, it always comes out $3500+. You can get lower if you don't have the six-continent requirement, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can I pay a small fee and see all the results? I would even pay a monthly fee for that. I would be very interested in that.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can create your own flight contest and note exactly which cities you want to visit and we'll find you the best/cheapest itinerary. We're discussing now about opening up the results of this RTW contest for a smaller fee, would anyone else be interested in that?

<comment><USER25> I think people most of us are curious to see the detailed results but I don't think more than a few people would be willing to shell out any $. Perhaps consider opening up the detailed results for this contest as a one-time-thing? I think that the interest+publicity you will receive (in addition to already being #1 on HN) would greatly out-weigh the few hundred bucks that you might get from a handful of people who'd seriously be willing to pay to see these results.

When a post is on top of HN, I don't think we're used to seeing the meat of the content stuck behind a quasi-paywall.

EDIT: It looks like you've posted the results publicly now, nice.

<comment><USER2> Love the idea; we'll definitely give it some thought, especially how the experts can profit from these fees well after they post the flight option.

Aside: we really didn't expect this post to get to the top of HN. Our intern was running around the apartment saying, "I told you we should have planned better."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There doesn't appear to be a way to register without creating a contest. As someone who'd doesn't have any trip plans right now (and doesn't want to clutter your database with fake data), I'd like to know if there's a simple registration page? I tried just /register to no avail.

<comment><USER2> Hi martin,

The only registration options are 1) becoming a customer, or 2) becoming an expert. There's no advantage to registering because only customers can see flight details for their contests and only experts can post flight options. Otherwise, what you see as a guest is all there is.

This will of course change as we build out the site, but right now it's just a one-trick-pony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very cool! I wish we didn't need humans to find flight tickets, though. Hipmunk is getting pretty good, but I always end up tweaking the itinerary manually. Seems such a simple problem (except this particular one, which is NP-complete)

</comment><comment><USER28> They've learned an interesting lesson from other travel sites too, in that they emailed me when I didn't complete my contest and asked why. Very nice.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is this using an eight content model, including Antarctica, Oceania, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia, and Africa?

<comment><USER30> I was hoping for the 6 Continent model, which would include Antarctica! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Number_of_continents> But no, search for "6 Continents:" (including the ":") on the submitted site:

      - North America includes Central America
      - South America is mostly the mainland
      - Europe is borded by Istanbul (Turkey), Azerbaijan and the Caucasus in Russia
      - Africa is mostly the mainland bordered by Egypt
      - Asia is the Middle East, East of the Caucasus, and Indonesia (West Papua)
      - Oceania is Australia, NZ and the islands

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why do you require my email address and a place where I was referred to search a flight?

<comment><AUTHOR> When you launch a flight contest, there are real people on the other end who are searching just for you, so we need to let you know when they've found a great flight. As for asking how you found out about us, we're just gathering information on what works best for customer acquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why would you use a human flight expert instead of an algorithm?

<comment><USER2> Hi science_robot,

The entire premise of Flightfox is that humans beat machines. Of course, in some cases if you only consider price this is debatable, but in many more cases, humans really do win.

Why? Because there is a lot of flight data and there is a material cost to performing a search. If you want a 6-Continent RTW trip, a flight search engine can't run 1,000,000 queries just to find you the cheapest route. The data providers impose pretty tight limits. When you hit those limits in aggregate, you risk very high costs.

Apart from that, and most importantly, humans have a wealth of knowledge that simply isn't catalogued. That's because it's too broad, too often changing, too obscure, or the airlines don't want OTAs to use that info; e.g. award flight availability across all airlines.

Our challenge now is to expand into many of these non-price factors and offer value even for short trips where we can't beat airline advertised prices. But as you can imagine, in its current state, Flightfox really comes into its own for complicated flights, even if just slightly complex.

The posted contest really beats anything on the web by a large amount. 6 continents for $1730 is pretty remarkable, or at least we think. It's not us who found it, it's our experts, who are the fabric of Flightfox.

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER33> Out of interest, how hard is it to get data feeds? Do you have to pay or is cost based on referrals? Do you have to enter an agreement? Understand if you can't answer.

<comment><USER2> List price (for minimum monthly spend) is in the 10s of thousands, but of course everyone does deals to reduce fees at this level. The problem is that those data feeds don't hold the key to the best flights. We're trying to leverage the stuff that won't be in data feeds for at least a decade (likely forever).

<comment><USER33> Thanks! Must be hard to be a startup wanting to get into this industry then (edit: without an obvious capital injection)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is "View Details" supposed to redirect to the same page?

</comment><comment><USER35> Love it.

It would be great to add premium economy in there too. :-)

</comment><comment><USER36> working for me..

</comment><comment><USER37> ybombinator'd?

<comment><USER38> Yep. For me as well.</comment></comment>


Intel SGX Extensions Talk 4/15 (live, stream,video) - <AUTHOR> http://ee380.stanford.edu/Abstracts/150415.html

<comment><USER2> > Join the live presentation. Wednesday April 15, 4:15-5:30. Requires > Microsoft Windows Media player.

Seriously?

Anyways, what I'd be interested to know is if Intel has found a way to ensure that if the private key is stolen, others can find out about it. Since that seems overly complex/almost impossible, then the alternative should be to let users have their own keys and allow them to change the keys as well. Intel should _not_ have access to those keys (in a provable way).

Otherwise we'd never know if the NSA has the keys to all future "secure programs" protected by SGX.

[http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2013_09_01_archive.ht...](http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2013_09_01_archive.html)</comment>


Against Intellectual Property by Boldrin and Levine - <AUTHOR> http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Link is to an online book by UCLA economics professors Michele Boldrin and Mark Levine, making the case against intellectual property -- patents, and copyright most especially.

The opening chapter leads off with the patent battles of James Watt, which are credited by some authors with setting back the start date of the Industrial Revolution from 1769, when the patent was issued, to 1800, when it (after parliamentary extension) finally expired.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think this is the final version? On the page you linked to, it says: "see the newer version January 2, 2008" with a link to here: [http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi...](http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment></comment>


Cloudy Gamer: Playing Overwatch on Azure's New Monster GPU Instances - <AUTHOR> http://lg.io/2016/10/12/cloudy-gamer-playing-overwatch-on-azures-new-monster-gpu-instances.html <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool to see! I personally don't think it will catch on too wildly in my circles, 40-80ms of input delay is not a trivial number, and in the video footage you can see it clearly. It definitely found a niche in this guy though, and probably many more as well. Even if I share some of the sentiments from the other comment, it's pretty amazing what we're able to do with the tech.

On a side note, is that laptop connected with wifi? I've found that even "in- home" in home streaming from my computer to a laptop can get pretty choppy if I'm not sitting in the living room in front of the router (sometimes that isn't enough either).

</comment><comment><USER3> ISP network engineer here: I really don't see this ever being practical in terms of latency, even if the distances from client to GPU are only 5ms or less. It is still an eternity compared to the latency and performance of a GPU on a local PCI express 3.0 x16 motherboard bus adjacent to CPU, ram and m.2 SSD. Just a distance like Seattle to Portland would be a latency killer. Even the routing/fiber path from issaquah to Seattle would be too much, at 2.5ms.

<comment><USER4> It's not uncommon for screens to have input latencies in the 50-100ms range - John Carmack tweeted "I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a pixel to the screen. How f'd up is that?". [0]

Given that people are generally happy to accept that kind of latency for a frame getting from their GPU to photons, I don't see why an extra ~10ms of latency getting a frame back and forth from a local datacenter would be a dealbreaker except for the most demanding scenarios. It does require that the datacenter is close to the user though.

[0] - [https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480622533120001](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480622533120001) & [http://superuser.com/a/419167](http://superuser.com/a/419167)

<comment><USER5> The latency to the screen is fixed with no jitter. The human mind can adapt.

Network latency is erratic and variable, sometimes packets are just lost.

<comment><USER6> > The latency to the screen is fixed with no jitter. The human mind can adapt.

In addition, latency is cumulative and after a certain threshold becomes extremely annoying. Adding network delays to the already-present latency elsewhere in the system just makes you more likely to hit that threshold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see this as being the sad, yet inevitable, future of gaming. First we didn't own the game, we owned a licensed copy. Next we are going to not own a copy, or own a license, but instead rent time to play a game at exorbitant rates and it will be heralded as "amazing" since it will be "cheaper for you" since you don't need to buy your own hardware.

<comment><USER8> This has been tried before (it was called OnLive AFAIR) and it didn't catch on. The perspective is not that great for publishers since the cost of investment and maintaining such a solution would be enormous for what would essentially be a subpar experience comparing to what we have right now.

<comment><USER9> I'd expect it to be a distributor providing this service. Think Steam as a subscription service. Play any game in the catalog, as much as you want, for a monthly fee, without any installations or driver hunts. Seems like a good proposition for the customer, provided it works and is cheap enough. Don't know how publishers and game devs would take it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can we acknowledge that there are a huge set of games that don't rely on low latency input or feedback?

Games like Civilization or X-Com could increase the level of detail by an order of magnitude, while still playing on a notebook.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely, even third person RPGs probably wouldn't suffer too badly.</comment></comment>


Do you still manage your blog community manually? try www.commun.it :) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sharelomer.com/2010/07/do-you-still-manage-your-blog-community.html

<comment><AUTHOR> A new product in beta, will love to get your feedbacks.

</comment><comment><USER2> that looks like a great solution</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for the name of an experimental programming language - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to find the name of a programming langauge, but my google-fu has been ineffective.
It is an experimental programming language and the only features I remember were these:
- It allowed types as variable names like this:

  TypeName = methodWhichReturnsType()
  TypeName.methodOnType()
 - It allowed multiple places for arguments in method names such as:

  String add(String string1)To(String string2)
 <comment><USER2> Was it Wake?

[http://wakelang.com/](http://wakelang.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, yes it was thank you!</comment></comment>


Apple to produce Conflict Minerals-Free iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://apple-cf.com/why.php

<comment><USER2> This is bogus

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that was disappointing. I guess no one appreciates a good Yes Men prank around here.</comment></comment>


China and Huawei propose reinvention of the internet - <AUTHOR> https://dnyuz.com/2020/03/27/china-and-huawei-propose-reinvention-of-the-internet/ <comment><AUTHOR> > China has suggested a radical change to the way the internet works to the > UN, in a proposal that claims to enable cutting-edge technologies such as > holograms and self-driving cars but which critics say will also bake > authoritarianism into the architecture underpinning the web.

[PDF link to the proposal]([http://prod-upp-image- read.ft.com/712584fc-7045-11ea-89df-41...](http://prod-upp-image- read.ft.com/712584fc-7045-11ea-89df-41bea055720b))</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Rejected By Y Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinator-arielle-zuckerbergs-rachel-sklar-2011-11 <comment><USER2> I don't know how or why this story got out, but I think it's completely inappropriate to call out a team for not making the cut. It's hard enough as it is to put yourself out there and apply, but making news of an unsuccessful application makes it that much more daunting for someone to even decide to give it a shot.

I hope this article doesn't discourage people from applying in the future.

-Arielle Zuckerberg

<comment><USER3> I agree, but for different reasons. It's simply not a newsworthy item. Gossip worthy? Looks like it.

<comment><USER4> i agree for both reasons. my first reaction was the same as yours - that this is simply gossip, and as so unworthy of posting to hn. but arielle is right too - it really is bad form to post a story by a third party about someone being rejected (if they want to post about their own yc application and rejection, that's a very different thing). i'm glad she spoke up about it, because that aspect of things really hadn't occurred to me.

<comment><USER5> I thought it was great when I read it. For one, it shows that YC is a true meritocracy, where connections does not necessarily get you in. Second, it shows that this new round of YC startups is really going to be amazing, if someone with this level of pedigree (and intelligence) couldn't get in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I felt pretty good about our application and stand behind it. Just a bummer to have what was a highly enjoyable process be capped off like this. As Arielle said, this sort of thing can have a major chilling effect - I hope it doesn't put women off from applying in the future. And btw I'd do it all again.

</comment><comment><USER7> Talk about living in the shadow. I doubt her relation to Mark was a contributing factor to her rejection, yet his full name is in the headline.

Whew boy.

<comment><USER8> I'm more surprised that Zuckerberg's sister even applied to Y! Seems she should have enough connections to pull this off herself.

Oh, wait. They did this to prove a point about women applying to Y! Ok.

And the reason why they weren't accepted seems to be that they didn't have much to show for. Guess that's what happens when your heart isn't into it.

<comment><USER6> Heart was and is in. BI was not...fully informed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> it's odd she'd want to give up equity considering she already has access (most likely) to plenty of sources of cash... and she should have connections...

very strange!

<comment><USER10> Its better for her to try and make it on her own. By the looks of it, she can do it.</comment></comment>


Not all information wants to be free - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2211486/ <comment><USER2> Best bit:

"That iTunes is a free-standing application and not contained inside a browser, as is the Amazon music store, is not accidental, and I reckon that its "outside the browser" design has played some role in its success. Consumers have been conditioned to think that content delivered by a browser is supposed to be free. They get annoyed when they encounter a pay wall on a browser but are more psychologically open to the nonbrowser Web interface."

Shafer argues that people are ok paying money for iTunes songs because it's not a browser app, which we've been conditioned to expect to be free.</comment>


Dato open sources SFrame – a disk-backed, compressed columnnar data frame - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dato.com/sframe-open-source-release <comment><USER2> this comment is very interesting:

 _I really appreciate you guys doing this. There 's now serious consideration of building the Julia (julialang.org) data-analysis ecosystem on top of SFrames. It will hopefully allow our community to focus on the unique strengths of Julia, such as the ability to write arbitrary JITed user-defined aggregation and transformation functions, while not reinventing the wheel of low-level scalable data carpentry primitives._

Anybody know how accurate this is ? Would love to compare R data frames or Pandas to SFrame in terms of feature and performance.

<comment><USER3> He actually wrote a Julia wrapper exploring this a bit more [https://github.com/malmaud/SFrames.jl](https://github.com/malmaud/SFrames.jl)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who are interested in the technical details, this blog post by Yucheng Low explains the architecture of SFrame very well: [http://blog.dato.com/data-processing-architecture-of- graphla...](http://blog.dato.com/data-processing-architecture-of-graphlab- create)

</comment><comment><USER5> The title here should have a (2015) in it -- this blog post is from September 25, 2015.

</comment><comment><USER6> What I don't get is: can you use SFrame without installing the graphlab framework at all? What are the limitations? Is there an example notebook using only SFrame and not graphlab?

<comment><USER4> Yes, SFrame is a subset of GraphLab Create. SFrame provides the core data structures to work with tabular and graph data at scale on a single machine. In addition, using GraphLab Create allows you to create/use/evaluate machine learning models.

Here is some user guide to get you started: [https://dato.com/learn/userguide/sframe/introduction.html](https://dato.com/learn/userguide/sframe/introduction.html) Just replace "import graphlab" with "import sframe".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone post a link to the comparison with other columnar database storage layer?

<comment><USER8> Most other stores are databases [http://www.timestored.com/time-series- data/column-oriented-d...](http://www.timestored.com/time-series-data/column- oriented-databases)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is a "data frame" just a table with (edit: a lot of) storage optimization?

<comment><USER10> As far a I know, the term "data frame" comes from R and its predecessors like S, where a data frame is the core data structure. Logically, it is indeed like an SQL table -- a column has a single type whereas a row has heterogeneous types.

AFAIK, all implementations are column-oriented, which admits certain kind of implementation and optimization. SQL databases are mostly row-oriented, probably since updating a row at a time is a common operation.

I would think of it as a table, but embedded in a programming language rather than a database (so you don't use SQL), with more operations, and which is very often used in a read-only fashion.

The syntax in R is nicer than SQL in my opinion. It's more algebraic and composable. Instead of "SELECT name, address FROM foo WHERE age > 30", you can write foo[foo$age > 30, c('name', 'address')].

Some links:

[http://www.r-bloggers.com/select-operations-on-r-data- frames...](http://www.r-bloggers.com/select-operations-on-r-data-frames/)

Pandas is a data frame library for Python, based on R:

[http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas- docs/stable/basics.html](http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas- docs/stable/basics.html)

This article explains the relevance of the relational model to data analysis / statistics (rows are observations, columns are variables):

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=77966238326629329...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=7796623832662932979&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&sciodt=0,5)

<comment><USER11> "data frame is the core data structure"

Actually, AFAIK a data.frame in R is actually a list of vectors (i.e. columns) with some constraints.

<comment><USER10> That's not true:

        > d=data.frame(a=c(1,2,3),b=c(4,5,6))
        > e=list(a=c(1,2,3),b=c(4,5,6))

        > class(d)
        [1] "data.frame"
        > class(e)
        [1] "list"

        > d[c(TRUE,FALSE),]
          a b
        1 1 4
        3 3 6

        > e[c(TRUE,FALSE),]
        Error in e[c(TRUE, FALSE), ] : incorrect number of dimensions

They are represented similarly in R, but they are distinct data types. The data frame is the core data structure in the sense that many functions in R operate on data frames (but not lists of vectors).

<comment><USER11> 1\. You shouldn't use `=` for assignments in R but `<-`. `=` does late binding.

2\. You shouldn't use `class()` here but `mode()` to check the actual underlying data structure.

        > mode(d)
        [1] "list"
        > mode(e)
        [1] "list"

3\. The reason `[` works differently is because it a S3 method which invokes different functions for lists and data.frames -- that's why class(d) doesn't return "list". See `methods("[")`.

See [https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-lang.html...](https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-lang.html#Data- frame-objects) for details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It doesn't support Python 3 :(

<comment><USER13> Hopefully soon: [http://blog.dato.com/state-of-the- sframe-2016](http://blog.dato.com/state-of-the-sframe-2016)</comment></comment>


Google China Uncensors Tiananmen Square Info - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-china-censorship-google.cn-chinese,9914.html

<comment><USER2> False

[http://126.96.36.199/images?hl=zh- CN&source=hp&q=tia...](http://188.8.131.52/images?hl=zh- CN&source=hp&q=tiananmen&lr=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)

Google's global CDN is too complicated for average reporters to write about. There are _enormous_ parameters to tweak if you want to mimic the real google.cn search behavior in China.

Also WHY EVERY WESTERNER USE TIANANMEN AS A TESTING KEYWORD?

tiananmen maybe famous in the west, but in Chinese it has other definitive meanings. Who the f__k would link a square with a massacre?

My theory is Google does not censor Tiananmen. e.g. the Chinese blog <http://liblog.blog.163.com/blog/static/53679382200981773143/> It's not because Google censors it, but because there are just very few Chinese blogs or pics named TianAnMen.

Tiananmen is just insignificant. During culture revolution people shooting each other with guns even mortar on streets, machine guns were pretty common to guard important facilities. My college even had a f__king cannon installed on the main building.

If you really want to test censorship in China, use a _real_ keyword, like this one

[http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C4%C9%C3%D7%B1%C8%D1%C7+%BA%FA%BD...](http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C4%C9%C3%D7%B1%C8%D1%C7+%BA%FA%BD%F5%CC%CE)

[http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%E7%BA%B3%E7%B1%B...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%E7%BA%B3%E7%B1%B3%E6%AF%94%E4%BA%9A+%E8%83%A1%E9%94%A6%E6%B6%9B)

<comment><USER3> English translation please? I have no idea what that keyword might be.

<comment><USER4> [http://translate.google.com/#zh- CN|en|%E7%BA%B3%E7%B1%B3%E6%...](http://translate.google.com/#zh- CN|en|%E7%BA%B3%E7%B1%B3%E6%AF%94%E4%BA%9A%20%E8%83%A1%E9%94%A6%E6%B6%9B)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not new. Generally speaking, Google only censors Chinese words, and this is how it has been since as long as I can remember (since 2006 at least). See here:

Chinese TianAnMen Search [http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh- CN&source=hp&q=...](http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh- CN&source=hp&q=天安门&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)

English TianAnMen Search [http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=chrome&q=tianan...](http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=chrome&q=tiananmen&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi)

Still looks censored to me...

<comment><USER2> It's really perceptual fallacy

1\. We don't even call TianAnMen event or massacre in China, more common expression is Student Movement or the 1989 Student Riot, or June 4th event

2\. TianAnMen is a symbol to westerners, but to Chinese it has other more important meanings.

Using TianAnMen as a testing keyword is simply _wrong_

<comment><USER5> Would Falun Gong be a better keyword? (Warning these can get quite graphic)

[http://images.google.cn/images?um=1&hl=zh- CN&tbs=isc...](http://images.google.cn/images?um=1&hl=zh- CN&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=法轮功&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&start=0)

[http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch:...](http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=falun+gong&aq=f&aqi=g2&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&start=0&social=false)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If a war breaks out between google and china, who do you think will win? My money is on China.</comment>


Fedora 17 can be downloaded now - <AUTHOR> http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/

<comment><USER2> Feature list: <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/FeatureList></comment>


Dual Quaternion Vertex Shader explained line by line - <AUTHOR> http://chinedufn.com/dual-quaternion-shader-explained/ <comment><USER2> can this run on mobile and is it unity friendly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup should work just fine as mobile. In fact - here's an example that you can view on your mobile device - [https://chinedufn.github.io/skeletal-animation- system/](https://chinedufn.github.io/skeletal-animation-system/)</comment></comment>


New Recipes App: Help me make sure I'm doing the right thing - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on a new mobile recipe app for about a year now in my free time. I recently watched a Google I/O talk called "Perfectly executing the wrong plan" and it hit me hard. I realized that I had never taken the time to fully validate my "critical assumption." Could you help me by participating in my dinner habits study? The purpose of this study is to learn about cooking, meal planning, and dining habits.
If you cook at home at least once a week, please help me by signing up for my study here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18uxASkdBSIkgb4vqr51GoCDQTcwNqa0VVmdeOLPDXgA/viewform.
I'm using the "experience sampling" approach described by Tomer Sharon in the Google I/O session. It's really easy to participate. During the study you'll receive a text each day for two weeks. All you have to do is send a quick response each day. <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the Google I/O talk "Perfectly executing the wrong plan": [https://www.google.com/events/io/io14videos/847e9312-a8ba-e3...](https://www.google.com/events/io/io14videos/847e9312-a8ba-e311-b297-00155d5066d7).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the link to my study: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18uxASkdBSIkgb4vqr51GoCDQTcw...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18uxASkdBSIkgb4vqr51GoCDQTcwNqa0VVmdeOLPDXgA/viewform).</comment>


Ask HN: How would you design an alarm for sleeping bus drivers? - <AUTHOR> There was an accident recently here in Turkey when the bus driver fell asleep. Several people died including the driver. This happens too frequently in the cut-throat industry of transportation. How would you design a system to trigger an alarm when the driver shows signs of falling asleep? What would you try to catch? His closing eyes? His nodding? Or something else? <comment><USER2> FitBit that starts beeping super loudly and vibrating when it thinks you're sleeping. The technology is already there and affordable, it just needs loud beeping.

<comment><AUTHOR> This doesn't seem to be true. I wrote to FitBit and this is their answer: "... unfortunately the Fitbit trackers can't notify you when you are falling asleep. They have only silent alarms, which you can setup manually and reminders to move for every hour. The tracker vibrates on your wrist, reminding you to stand up and walk. For more information, please visit Silent Alarms, Reminders to Move."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are different approaches, things like cameras, brain wave monitoring, etc. I would guess the ones that use heart rate would be the least expensive and easiest to retrofit. No idea how the different approaches perform though. Here's one that seems well suited for retrofit: [http://www.plesseysemiconductors.com/products/warden/](http://www.plesseysemiconductors.com/products/warden/)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/3349](https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/3349)

</comment><comment><USER5> Volvo seems to track head position: looking at the ceiling or floor is highly suspect.

</comment><comment><USER6> Low tech : 3 colored buttons, that the driver has to press in a random order as showed in their dashboard at random intervals.

High tech: Face monitoring with computer vision to detect signs of sleep.

<comment><USER7> Those buttons sound like an unfortunate way to distract a driver.

<comment><USER6> This system is used in trains.

<comment><USER7> Where the driver is interacting with many fewer other vehicles and has fewer demands on his or her attention.</comment></comment></comment></comment>